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