Dear Friends,

Christ’s peace to you! As I sit in front of our trusty computer, I listen to the sound of falling rain. El Niño. We expect a warm winter this year.

 I don’t hear outside the meow of the stray cat whom Alanna adopted this summer. I said then: “No cat in the house. He’ll terrify Joshua (our budgie). You’re allergic to cats. Some visitors will be allergic as well. No cat in the house!” Alanna looked at me as if I had ordered her to live outside. She built him (he has no name — we call him “the little cat”) a little house outside our back door.

As winter drew on and it got colder, Alanna would say, “It’s so cold out. Can’t he come in?” Rain. “Can’t he come in?” Raccoons scare him away and eat his food. “Can’t he come in? He’s such a timid little cat.” A dog chased him up a tree. Now he’s scared to go into his house. “Can’t he come in?”

Remember Jesus’ story about the persistent widow (Luke 18:1-8)? Jesus knew whereof He spoke. Last night I gave in. Not for the cat’s sake. He’s not near as pathetic as his advocate. We put him and his house in a sort of closed in porch for the night.

This morning I put him and his house back outside. It’s been rainy all day and I haven’t seen him. Alanna has been away on day two of her new job (I’ll get to that.) If he doesn’t show up by the time Alanna gets home, I am going to have a distraught wife on my hands.

What’s that! I hear the sound of our little red Toyota pickup driving into the driveway! Oh no! Alanna’s home and no cat in sight. But wait. What do I hear? Meow! He’s back in the nick of time. Another day, another crisis averted.

After a year and a few months of unemployment, one of us found a job. Alanna has been hired part-time (four days a week) as assistant director of L’Arche Victoria, one of the Vanier homes for mentally handicapped people. After two days on the job she’s not threatening to resign so I guess things are going okay.

I remain gainfully unemployed, very busy with lots of unpaid ministry, while looking for a job. I’ve spent a lot of time working as a member of the National Coordinating Team of Corpus Canada. Corpus was founded by married Roman Catholic priests and their families as a support group and has in the past couple years begun promoting the development of small faith communities across the country.

What is a small faith community? It is a small group of people who meet monthly or weekly at someone's home for an evening to share their Christian faith, pray, and support one another, often finishing off with coffee, tea and goodies.

I also do a fair bit of theological writing for the Corpus Journal, a bimonthly publication. If you’d like to receive it, let me know. It’s free (i.e., financed by donations).

We are healthy and grateful for our little rented house, our many friends, the work the Lord gives us to do in His vineyard, our budgie, our cat, and (guess who’s grateful for these) the internet and the Toronto Blue Jays. Thanks, Ted, for giving me that Blue Jays cap for my 48th birthday. I wore it on the plane all the way home from Toronto. (Who’s Ted, you ask? All you need to know about Ted, I’ve just told you. He gave me a Blue Jays cap. The man’s a prince.)

    Alanna becomes more beautiful every day. I’ll drink to that, and to you too!

God bless you,

Art and Alanna