Each summer, my family heads north – to a lakeside cottage in the Gatineau Hills of Quebec. Its a great experience for our kids. They get to do all kinds of things they can’t in the city, like eating the raspberries that grow wild along the side of the gravel road.
One of the most delightful things is watching them swim in the lake and most especially watching them learn to jump off the dock into the water. Its like this little rite of passage for each of the kids. They start of tentatively, putting a foot in, climbing down the ladder, step in holding your hand, but then eventually they build up enough courage to let it rip and jump.
Just the other day I came across a picture of our daughter Tess, in which she is practicing her newfound skill jumping off the dock. She’s only two and a half years old. She has floaties strapped to her back, tiny pink water shoes to match her pink bathing suit. The photograph captures the exact moment her foot leaves the dock. She’s an inch in the air, arms, hands, and every finger extended (no coincidence it looks like a cross to me), seemingly suspended between the dock and the water.
And it occurred to me looking at this photograph: that this is an Easter moment. This is a moment of resurrection: where we leave behind the security of what we know – the dock – and jump into the something new – launching ourselves to the air, plunging down into the water, only to discover its embrace and then to be raised back up to its surface. Continue reading
This morning, many people who partied a little too much in their observance of St. Patrick Day are beginning to experience a common set of symptoms: headache, dry mouth, aches and pains, and every noise in the world seems incredibly loud. In short, a hangover. To ease these symptoms some will partake in a little “hair of the dog.” Do you know that turn of phrase? It’s the folk wisdom (a term I use very loosely) that a little nip of drink in the morning lessens the effect of the hangover.
