Why was the perfomance we attended Saturday night of Mendelssohn's Elijah so moving?

• Because it begins with such a moving lament? "Help, Lord! wilt thou quite destroy us? The harvest now is over, the summer days are gone, and yet no power cometh to help us! Will then the Lord be no more God in Zion?
• Because the soloist Elijah was so dramatic, so good that I took him for the very spokesman of God? "If they pray and confess Thy name and turn from their sin...then hear from heaven and forgive the sin."
• Because I discovered the context of one of Christianity's most beloved songs? "O rest in the Lord, wait patiently for Him, and He shall give thee thy heart's desires."
• Because we were sitting close up, near the choir, enveloped by the music and caught up in the performance?

Because of all of it. Because God really does speak to our soul through the Scripture, through art, through dedicated, practiced singers, through imagination. Through his Spirit.

Life may be a spiritual journey, but there are many meandering paths we take along the way. On this page we'll show you an occasional snapshot of what we see or have experienced along the pathway. The rose where we actually paused long enough to smell. The root we stumbled over. A breathtaking view. A present ache. An enticing side trail. I hope we'll be candid and spontaneous enough to show you what we see today, not a picture that's been so thoroughly edited and sanitized that you don't even see the smudges. Keep checking. This page will change weekly.

Opitciwon trip. This was a "work-related" trip, but living the experience with Richard and Jean-Marc means I made two new friends. Very good friends. Funny how this happens. You can't "plan" to "click," but that's what happened with me and these two guys from Quebec City. From sharing similar sense of humour to sensitivity to people to hurts from the past to passion for people to quirkiness--all this and much more goes into "connecting." They conceded to my whim to make a stop at the Fromagerie Perron in St. Prime, which is where we took this pic.

Mike Mason, Practicing the Presence of People. This book is always handy--on the coffee table, the sofa, my desk, or in my computer case for reading on the plane. Mike Mason has a soothing, reassuring, creative truth-telling manner. A short chapter of this book calms my soul at the beginning of a venturous day. This morning, for example, I read about Nelson Mandela in his inaugural speech quoting Marianne Williamson:  "Our deepest fear is not that we are inadequate. Our deepest fear is that we are powerful beyond measure. It is our light, not our darkness, that most frightens us.... And as we let our own light shine, we unconsciously give other people permission to do the same. As we are liberated form our own fear, our presence automatically liberates others."