Some things need very little explanation. Here are my nephew Evan, his wife Amanda, and newborn Andrea Willow McReynolds Doran, to be called Willow. How glorious is this!

It was a cold and starry night...so my picture is a little fuzzy...but this is the sign on McArthur Road, just east of the Vanier Parkway, which was the venue for a Coffeehouse/Arts night last night at which good times were had by a middle-sized crowd. Music included presentations by Fanfan Séléger and his friends (drummer/singers) and a couple (Damien and Lysanne, whose names I hope I spelled right) singing a number of songs, including a wonderful tribute to Mona Mahmunizad, the young woman martyred in Iran when she was only 16, in the '80s, for her belief. In addition, my cousin Jack and I were both asked to read poems, and I read three about my dad and one about my friend Carlos in Belize.

I will try and post a couple of little videos of the event, but for now, let me share a picture or two. Here is Wendy James with her dancing partner!

We were also pleased to see our family's friend, someone I have known, literally all my life (I would have been about 4 when we met), Ann Wilson. I called Mom and Dad after the event to share greetings, and will share a photo of my sister Andrea with Ann, although it's not a great one since they are chatting, in profile, so you hardly get to see their smiles. However, it was great fun...

More on War:

Steve inspects tanks

More War and Peace

Today I spent the afternoon at the National War Museum, touring through in the company of my sister Andrea, her husband Steve, several of his family, my niece Audrey and nephew Rowan, and taking pictures galore. This one is my favourite, not for its composition but for its irony. The button, of course, began an animated display. I wondered if the people who had made the caption had been conscious of the ironic double entendre.

The place is quite heart-wrenching. I saw more machinery for war than I had ever thought I would, and many displays were captioned with self-explanatory quotations from prominent voices of their respective times. Battles from time almost immemorial, New France, the War of 1812, the Boer War, WW1, WW2, Korea, the Cold War...in the next while I will post some of my pictures, and give you a little walking tour, with me, of memories of the past. The museum finishes its display with a dramatic moving triptych collage of scenes from war, and a few from peace.

It was emotionally powerful, in some ways, and I was glad to get home to better news than retrospecting about a sad past, despite the good company in which I passed the afternoon. Today my second great-niece was born: welcome to the world, darling Willow.

Sid Korn is someone I knew at Maxwell, back in the day. While looking around YouTube, I discovered that he'd made this lovely video of the Holy Land, and since Bernie and I will be going there with our children in July,I thought I might give you a foretaste of the beauty we hope to experience.

This is Chelsea. She and I got to know one another back in the day (probably 2000, maybe 2001) when I started teaching at her junior high school and she was in my visual arts class. The other day, we met again at the Adult Education segment of the WQSB, where I occasionally fill in for other teachers, and often meet former students.

Chelsea gave me permission to take her picture and post it for you...I once asked her how long it took for her to get her hair to stand up like this and she told me she has it down to about ten minutes. I find her quite stunningly beautiful, don't you?

Last night, my sister Andrea was at the bedside of her mother-in-law
as Joan passed to the next world. This poem is in memory of a true lady.

at passing
(for Joan Doran)

if one could give
a tanka in her honour
it would speak to beads
and unfamiliar sound
of her rosary, singing,

speaking memory.
she would live again inside
six strong and distant men,
each strong generation passed
to the rising moon

to hold her as she
slips away. west, something new
opens to a surging sea
while smoke, unfurled,
wisps slowly past closed eyes.

never again will
we like the colour yellow.
he puts these fine brushes down
to search for stillness, finds it
in another art, their sons.

Tonight I want to again give you the opportunity to find beauty: go to my friend Paula Murray's beautiful site, and also to Margaret Bremner's mandalas. Both lift my spirits with their art. Magic.

A couple more interesting links for your interest: a friend referred me another friend (you know that's how the world gets smaller) and I refer you to Steven's sites. Another is more academic and developmental, but interesting. I have 'met' Steven in cyberspace through our mutual friend Carol, who knew that we are both really interested in spiritual education.

This morning I direct you to segment on television (which is prefaced by a movie commercial but hang in there). It's a brief spot done by my friend Susanne Alexander of the Marriage Transformation Project and I think it's self-explanatory: www.myfoxcleveland.com/myfox/pages/InsideFox/Detail?contentId=2030554&version=1&locale=EN-US&layoutCode=VSTY&pageId=5.7.1
for you to look at.

Susanne and I have been friends since we were teens. It's interesting to me that both of us have ended up interested in similar topics: her life, and her husband Craig's, are largely devoted to the work they do with assisting couples, while my first published book is on the subject of marriage.

Winter has finally arrived, and I completely wiped out on ice yesterday en route to class, ass over teakettle. It wasn't glamorous, but fortunately it also didn't hurt too much, so I picked myself up a little gingerly and off I went again. The prairies are where winter is really hurting, though, and we have been watching the National news with some pleasure that we are not, currently, in Saskatchewan. My sister made it out from her home in Saskatoon just in time; she is here in the Ottawa Valley to say goodbye to her mother-in-law, who is preparing to leave the world and who had her last Christmas with all six sons and their families gathered round. At the same time they (Andrea and her husband Steve) are waiting for the arrival of their second grandchild, any minute now. And so it goes...winter turns to spring, death turns to birth.

With this I would like to share with you a lovely prayer I encountered last night at our Ruhi group. This is written by the sister of 'Abdu'l-Baha, whose name was Bahiyyih Khanum: we Baha'is refer to her as "the Greatest Holy Leaf", a title of love and deep admiration. A recent book about her life, by Dr. Janet Khan, is called Prophet's Daughter, and can be ordered via the same links I gave you a couple of days ago for the van den Hoonaards' book and for mine. If you are interested in Baha'i history, I recommend it. I am about half-way through reading the book, and gaining a much stronger sense of an astonishing woman in a difficult time. Here is the prayer that this gentle and intrepid soul wrote:

O kind Lord! O comforter of anguished hearts! Send down Thy mercy upon us, and Thy grace, bestow upon us patience, give us the strength to endure. With Thy generous hand, lay Thou a balm upon our sores, grant us a medicine for this never-healing woe. Console Thou Thy loved ones, comfort these handmaids, heal Thou our wounded breasts with Thy bounty's remedy, restore our festering hearts.

With the gentle breeze of Thy compassion, make fresh and green again these boughs, withered by autumn blasts; restore Thou to flourishing life these flowers, shriveled by the blight of bereavement.

With tidings of the Abha Paradise, wed Thou our souls to joy, and rejoice Thou our spirits with heartening voices from the dwellers in the realm of glory.

Thou art the Bounteous, Thou art the Clement, Thou art the Bestower, the Loving.

This morning, before going to teach my second class at University of Ottawa, it is my pleasure to share with you some information from a friend of our family's, a Professor at the University of New Brunswick, about a new book written by him and his wife. Check it out! I can't get the text from the jpg to show up large enough but you can see the cover, above. My book is also available from the same distribution services, to which I have helpfully! provided a link.

Have a lovely week...

We are enjoying a covering of snow. Never thought I'd say that...but I am glad to see it. Time for some reading!

New Book: D. K. and W. C. van den Hoonaard (2006) The Equality of Women and Men:
The Experience of the Baha'i Community of Canada
ISBN -0685258-1-4. Available from Bahá'í Distribution Service Canada or from BDS USA.

I thought I would share a little of our updated Ottawa Airport...because it's kind of pretty...peaceful. Whatever.

Happy Birthday, Valerie. Today my niece is 24 and is still very, very cute. She has just graduated from UVic and will return to her new job in Victoria next week, but is here for the holidays and we therefore enjoyed celebrating her lovely day with her. I made dinner for the gang, including carrot cake and mocha cheesecake, at Val's request, for dessert.

Today I recommend a book. My sister-in-law, Joanne, is great at finding books...and she gave me, last weekend, Naomi Wolf's stories of her father, Leonard. It's a lovely read. The Tree House: Eccentric Wisdom from my Father on How to Live, Love, and See. Serendipity always seems to bring the right book at the right time, and this one is no exception. It is a book of the soul of poetry, and the power of symbol and image, and healing. All of these. Lovely prose, and some pieces of poetry which are a delight to rediscover. Somehow I manage to continue to read, amidst the good times of lots of company.

I am borrowing this picture from another blog: here are our friends Nysa & Harsh, who are currently studying and working in Ecuador. Check out their blog for the full story. Harsh is an old friend from Maxwell and Nysa is usually our neighbour here in Gatineau. Good to see them together.

Another picture is from this evening's sunset, too beautiful not to share as we enter another week of unseasonable temperatures. We start off at +5 C and are supposed to see +14 C later this week. It makes me nervous, though I do not miss the cold. Rowan and I went for a walk today and it smelled like spring, in January. Who knew?

It is quieter here. My sister Laurel has gone shopping with daughters and nieces, and my son is here with his girlfriend and his cousin Rowan. I have enjoyed my last day of 'holiday' (university begins tomorrow) and thought I would share a picture taken in December, as I reflect on friendships. I have been asked to give a talk at a devotional next week (Tuesday evening; get in touch if you are in the area and want details), and this has me pondering...again.

At the left, you see my friend Linda. We first met when I began working, in September 2000, at Hadley Junior High School in what was then Hull. Now the city has become amalgamated with Gatineau and the school has moved to a building shared with the place I went to high school, Philemon Wright. Linda is still teaching there and has also become a dear friend. She joined us for the farewell dinner with Mom and Dad, as did my daughter's boyfriend Jal, pictured at right. Jal had gone to both Hadley and Philemon Wright (which is where he and my daughter met each other), and thus knew Linda and me before he met his girlfriend! Funny how things work out.

Both of these people know the value of loyalty...and joy...and so many wonderful qualities that it's hard to list them all, especially 'publicly'...but I want to say that they are also both possessed of a characteristic that always means something to me when I encounter it in someone: a kind of quiet, gentle sweetness. They are humble, not loud about their accomplishments or interests, but loving participants in our lives. I am thankful for Linda and Jal in our lives, and just wanted to say so today, as we enter...another fine day.

This seems like an appropriate image with which to greet a new year: it's a photo taken by my son when he and his aunts and cousins went through the newly renovated Museum of Nature and Science the other day. In addition to the Einstein exhibit, there were many dioramas of dinosaurs and apparently, of birds. He took a lot of pictures of birds! However, this little model seemed to be the best one to include for Happy New Year wishes to those of you following the Gregorian calendar. Rebirth...of course, this is illustrating the rebirth of a species now long extinct and I hope there isn't any kind of hidden (or blatant) irony there. In any case, may 2007 be all that you hope it to be.

One of the unexpected blessings of this holiday is that the family from Fort St. John brought a copy of a book written by my late colleague, Jerry Secrist. Jerry was originally from Utah, and he passed away last winter after a long and courageous battle with cancer. I was in FSJ during the time of his passing and was able to attend his funeral and pay my last respects. It was mentioned that after his retirement, never one to entirely slow down, Jerry had written a novel, and it was this book which David B. brought me to read. So in my quiet moments, I have been reading A Place to Stand: A Tale From the Peace Country. Jerry and I were colleagues at the English department in North Peace Secondary School, and I am very pleased to have had an opportunity to read his book. It's a lovely story and it is set almost entirely in the Peace River Valley country of northern B.C., where we lived and where Jerry was an avid outdoorsman. He traces the history of the development of the area as a part of his story, and the affection he felt for its rivers, valleys, and natural wonders is palpable. His vivid descriptions of the land, and the hard, cold winters tempered by the soft colours of spring and the vibrant summers are beautifully drawn. I also appreciated his inclusion of the First Nations people of the area in a sensitive portrayal which ensured that despite a depiction of some of the social problems encountered by many in the north, there was also a strong voice of appreciation for the husbandry of the land and the culture of the area as including its traditional peoples. At least, I think so. He did not write in an appropriative voice, nor did he sugar-coat the story, but he did make very sure to include some writing acknowledging the racism endured by many of the people and the struggle for cultural survival in the face of increased immigration. So I enjoyed the book at many levels, not the least of which was an opportunity to re-visit an area which Bernie and I, and the children, remember very fondly, and where three of my sisters and their families now reside. Bon voyage, Jerry: well done!

I am also putting finishing touches to a couple of manuscripts which have to be sent, so wish me luck in the writing department as well.

Yesterday I looked at some of the videos which have been posted to YouTube with the tag "Baha'i". Some, of course, are either inaccurate or inexpert, but there are some lovely examples of prayers and readings set to music and visuals. Take a look sometime if you are interested in finding some additions which could be used for Feasts and Holy Days if you have the technology for broadcast. One I particularly enjoyed was of a children's class play in Belmopan, Belize. After our many years there, it was quite wonderful to see the children and grandchildren of friends of the family, and others, so involved in teaching the shining light of faith and hope.

A good place to start 2007: the shining light of faith and hope to all of you.