"Das ist Gut" - by Linda Aleta Tame

Summer. She calls for drowsily basking on the deck. She demands you slow down, take a break, drink lemonade.  She's bossy that way, yet her temperament can be so calming, so quieting too.  Her breath wisps across your cheeks, and she gently closes your eyes, drawing you away from the world around you and into her hazy, lazy dreamland.  

Oh, that dreamland!  In it you wander the glistening, colourful streets in Paris, France, dodging puddles, navigating your umbrella over and under those of passersby.  You get lost when you take a side street from the bustling Champ Elysée.  A storekeeper, who crafts magnificent guitars and violins, kindly tries to direct you, but you don't understand French. His voice echoes away, and it seems you've somehow teleported to an Italian kitchen in the Tuscan countryside outside of Florence, Italy. 

Red pots and pans hang from the ceiling. Leafy herbs line small stoneware bowls beside the stove. The cook, Francesca is working at a small table. She has flour in her hair.  Her joyful conversation is in Italian, but her laughter is understood in any language.  Francesca draws up the skirt of her apron to dab the corners of her eyes and continues turning a crank on the pasta machine.  Her smile warms you, stays with you even after her image pixelates and transforms into a monument of Johann Strauss II.  

Now you're in a gorgeous park in Vienna, Austria.  Stadtpark.  You walk toward the music.  An orchestra exquisitely performs "The Blue Danube Waltz" right there in the park. Elegant dancers in formal gowns and tuxedos float with the notes, gliding away from and back into each others' arms. You almost faint from the breath-taking beauty. A park bench is conveniently right there, so you sit with an elderly woman who tosses bits of bread to at least a hundred waddling ducks near the pond. Glints of golden sunlight ripple through reflections of the lush overhead foliage.  "Das ist gut," she says.  You smile and nod.

Summer.  She moves you with her heat, pushing you indoors to cooler air.  You don't want to leave her dreamland, but she's bossy that way.  So, you go inside, peel some potatoes and review those blissful encounters with far-away lands. Soon you will write something, something about a summer's dream. 

An Odd Way to Give Thanks -- Pamela Mytroen

Sometimes God has a funny way of asking us to be thankful. Take, for instance, the Jewish Festival of Booths. It falls after their harvest, coinciding with our Canadian Thanksgiving.

After God cared for the Hebrews in the desert for 40 years, He asked them to set aside a week every fall to remember his provision. Jewish law expects every family, to this day, to build a ‘booth’ or a ‘tent’ and to live in it for a week. The law demands that it must be made from something that grows from the ground, such as wood or corn-stalks.

Even more unusual is that the twigs or wood on the roof must be spaced far enough apart to allow the rain to come through. I'm not sure about you but I don't like leaky tents. 

Also, those same openings are to allow the star-light to shine in.

At first glance, it's strange, but maybe that faint scent of rain while lying in a stifling tent wouldn't be so bad! And to feel the hint of a breeze and taste the first sweet raindrop that plops on your cheek? Hmmmm... And at night, what could be better than laying on your back with your arms behind your head, and gazing up at the twinkling Heavens? 

It may be an odd way to give thanks, but it may also carry a profound meaning. Jesus claimed to be Living Water. Living off the land where lack of rain meant starvation, the Jewish people would have blinked and raised their eyebrows when Jesus made such a bold statement. They could taste the wind-blown salt of the Dead Sea which was close by. Jesus declared to be the opposite – to save them from death with His own source of water.  And, in fact, it was on the final day of this Jewish Festival of Booths that Jesus made this assertion. He stood up in the Tabernacle and said, “If any one thirsts, let Him come to me and drink” (John 7, The Message).

Jesus also professed to be the Light of the World.

Maybe it's not so far out, then, that He asks us to crack open our wooden hearts, to push aside some of the busyness of our own brittle booths and take time to remember his care. To allow the fragrance of rain to awaken our stagnant souls, and to welcome his life-giving, soul-cleansing downpour!

And in our dark hours when our hearts are heavy, He wants us to know that, though He’s silent as starlight, He’s still there. He only asks us to lay down. Rest. Peel back our worry just a crack. Allow His peace to filter in and spill over us like sleep.

In the booth of a humble heart, let’s thank the Lord for providing Jesus. And along with the Jewish people, who recite Psalm 27 during this Festival, let us proclaim together, “The Lord is my Light and my Salvation” (Psalm 27:1a).

By Pamela Mytroen

The Lynching - Bonnie Way

The rain drizzled down steadily from heavy grey clouds that showed no signs of breaking up. My hat dripped in front of my nose and raindrops ran down my plastic poncho with each step I took. Mom had stopped singing her rainy day songs and we were simply trudging along the trail, cold and wet and wishing we were at camp. That was when Dad decided to stop by the trail to cook lunch, rather than pressing on for the next campground.

We hiked for a bit further before the glad cry came that we’d found a stream by the trail. It was a short scramble down a slight incline, but there were also heavy spruce trees there to provide cover from the rain. In a minute my brothers and I had dropped our packs beside the trail. Dad sent Bob for water while he got out his cookset and we began manufacturing pizzas. My job was to open the cans while Dad mixed up the pizza dough.

As the first pizza went into the frying pan, decorated with mushrooms, pineapple, and meat to Will’s taste, a couple of teenagers hiked past. They just nodded to us, but the next group of three stopped to chat for a minute, explaining they were part of a youth group and were hiking into Berg Lake for the night. The group continued to trickle past in twos and threes; some stopped to talk and catch glimpses of the fresh pizzas coming out of the frying pan and being devoured by my brothers and I; others just kept walking, their heads down against the rain. They’d be cooking their ichiban noodles for supper once they got to Berg Lake.

Then one of the group leaders came along and recognized Dad. Dad introduced his family to his old acquaintance and they caught up on the news. They were hiking further than we were, so chances were that we wouldn’t meet them again. Then Dad’s friend headed on, the last of the youth group straggled past, and we finished our pizzas, packed up our “kitchen,” and hit the trail once again. With hot food in our stomachs, the rain no longer seemed such a problem—Dad had showed his usual skill in motivating his young hikers.

It was a couple days later that we were back at Kinney Lake campground, packing up after breakfast for our short, seven-kilometre hike to the trailhead. The same youth group began hiking through camp, in the same bunches of two and three, and Dad’s friend stopped in our cook shelter to say hi again.

“You know,” he mentioned to Dad just before he went after his group, “by making fresh pizzas on the trail like that, when those kids only had ichiban noodles to eat, you almost got lynched.”