Travelling with Gershom

Well, it has been a long long time since I posted anything on my blog...Boo me! Hopefully, this can get me back in the swing of things. A lot has happened since my last entry in April: we vacationed in Germany and Austria, returned to Canada, started to settle back into our house, began to establish new routines, and more. So there is a lot to write about. But let me start with Elton John. A few weeks back Sir Elton played St. John's. Amazing enough in itself, but factor in that it was just him and his piano on stage, in a small venue, and that he played for almost three hours - wow! He played so many hits - Daniel, Benny and the Jets, I'm Still Standing, Don't Let the Sun Go Down on Me, Crocodile Rock, Rocketman, Nikita, Tiny Dancer, Sorry Seems to be the Hardest Word, Philadelphia Freedom, and Candle in the Wind, to name some of them - that it wasn't until later I realised how many he didn't play: Saturday Night's (All Right for Fighting), Goodbye Ye

Aman Iman , or Water is Life , is the latest album from the band Tinariwen. It is a collection of evocative, blues-laced rock from a group of Touareqs from Mali. On their web site you can learn about them, but this paragraph sets up the feel of this album: The Tinariwen story is already well marinated in startling myths; fierce nomadic desert tribesmen toting guns and guitars, Ghadaffi's poet-soldiers spreading their gospel of freedom throughout the world, turbaned rock'n'roll troubadours, Stratocaster on one shoulder, Kalashnikov on the other, 17 bullet wounds and rawest desert blues on earth. All this fabulous imagery is the modern equivalent of the legends that have always stuck to Tinariwen's people, the nomadic Touareg of the southern Sahara; the noble desert warrior, the blue man, the lord of the desert, mysterious, secretive, covered from head to toe with eyes only bared to the world. The music is difficult to describe. It has tribal rhythms, complete with ro

Dust swirls around sandaled feet Coffee and snow; chocolate and night. Cloth of moonless sky brushes that pristine, pure and bright. Heads bowed, bodies bent Hands clasped against a fall. Slowly pushing against the wind, Shadows on pink sandstone wall. Married, met, and fell in love A path they’ve walked for forty years. From woven tent to marble arch, Through vale of joy and veil of tears. Eyes undimmed by endless sun See clearly to the past. Two lives, two souls, inseparable Love always young, forever lasts.

Much, much dust in the wind around Doha these days. There have been high winds blowing from the interior of the country for the last couple of days, and this has kicked up a lot of sand and dust, and it is expected to continue for three more days. You can feel the grit in your mouth when you walk outside, and even inside. As I write this at my desk near the front door of my villa, I can see dusty trails on the floor where the wind has found it way in through the gaps in the door frame. Temperatures are down too. At 7:30 this morning it was 14 degrees (that's Celsius), pretty cool for this time of year. Coupled with a sand storm, well that's pretty miserable. Misery is, of course, a relative thing. When my daughter Stephanie and her friends bundle up for this weather they put on a hoodie or a windbreaker. Getting ready to drive to work requires windshield washer, and clearing a path to the car means hard work: Looks like I'll have to break out the broom in a day or two...

Actually, it's 1 for 14.5 million...dollars...for the license plate 1 in the UAE. Abu Dhabi businessman Saeed Abdul Ghaffar Khouri, seen at the auction in the photo to the left, was apparently prepared to pay almost twice that amount to possess the plate. While the special number plate auction raised a significant amount of money was raised for the establishment of a rehabilitation centre for the victims of traffic accidents ($24.4 million), it still seems wrong somehow. Not the fundraising, but the willingness to spend so much on a license plate. Maybe it's just me. But I am certainly as materialistic as anybody else (sadly), and I could something better to spend the money on, and still support a good cause. How about Product (Red) for example, where the seller gives a portion of the proceeds to charitable work in Africa, at no extra cost to the buyer? My iPod Shuffle cost the same as the shuffles in other colours that do not bear the Product (Red) logo, yet Apple made a donat

Just a quick note between flights...I am in Frankfurt airport for the first time, and I have two words for you: German sausages. Juicy, savoury, and crisp, with rich brown mustard on the side. That's the greatest. Two more words: self-disinfecting toilets. Flush, and an arm slides out over the seat, releasing a cleanser as the seat rotates clockwise 360 degrees. And that's the latest. Note to self: see if this technology is available for home. And if I can import sausages...

An article in this morning's Arabian Business electronic newsletter discussed the upcoming auction of licence plates in Abu Dhabi. Interesting reading, about the selling of "special" number plates for your car, with the proceeds going to charity. Here is a picture I took in Abu Dhabi a few months back, of a Rolls parked in front of a hotel: (Yes, it is actually a Bentley and two Rolls-Royces, but stop quibbling!) The center vehicle has the licence plate 5; here is a somewhat blurry enlargement for proof: This plate was purchased at auction last spring for a record-setting AED25,200,000, or C$6,917,380.43, at today's exchange rate. Similar auctions have been held throughout the Gulf, but nothing has come close to this. How much for an old orange NFLD plate, I wonder?

I recently stumbled across the blog of Andrew Jones , who has written a compelling article on "offensive language and the emerging church movement" in which he argues that what people find offensive varies across time, place, and culture. What I find interesting is the context: people who are finding their way to God, and the response of the mainstream church to them, who they are, and where they are in their spiritual walk. I was reminded of a friend who was relatively new to the church, especially a church of the evangelical Protestant variety. She would invariably use the name of God as a means of emphasis, in a very Newfoundland manner, with such phrases as "God, that was horrible" or "God, it was wonderful seeing them again". Having struggled with swearing during my own time looking for God, I was a little uncomfortable with this (as mild an oath as many consider it these days). I considered discussing this with her, but fortunately a more mature f

I just finished reading The Rest of God by Mark Buchanan (his earlier book Your God is Too Safe was also excellent). A pastor on Vancouver Island, he offers a considered, gentle, and scriptural perspective in his writing. The Rest of God is about the Sabbath, about Sabbath-taking and Sabbath-breaking. Rather than dictating what Sabbath is or must be, Buchanan examines his own journey in becoming a Sabbath-taker, and provides hints and practices for us so that we can enter into the rest of God. Buchanan invites us to explore this call, and to taste and see that it is good. As overly busy modern people, it is easy to dismiss the Sabbath day as an archaic practice that doesn't consider that we have to work six or seven days a week in order to complete our assigned tasks. And we often get caught up with our failure to get something done, or at least I do. I look at my responsibilities at home and at work, my to-do list that gets longer each day, my languishing PhD studies, and I fe