I’ve thought about what to write about On this cold and wintery day. But no words seem to do them justice Who paid such a gallant price, So that I may sit here in contemplative peace And warm myself by a quiet hearth.
I wear my Poppy, have memorized the poem “In Flander’s Field”, but still it seems not enough, To honour the Fallen who sacrificed their lives On those battlefields and in the trenches on foreign soil.
O’Canada, they stood on guard for thee! Many still are standing, dressed in fatigues, Keeping the peace today. Many have returned as wounded warriors, Battle weary and battle scarred. O’Canada, how do we honour them?
We have no sooner put away the Halloween chocolate, Than the Christmas decorations go up. The jingle bells and holiday music drowns out The calls to remember our Veterans The first eleven days of November.
Is it too much to ask?
To hold off on celebrating before we have Laid our wreaths of tribute To those who have served our country. The ones who did not come home for Christmas, And to those who eat their dinners in soup kitchens now, fighting a different war at home.
Is it too much to ask?
To buy a Poppy, fill up their store rooms with food, Stop, and stand in solemn silence for two minutes When the bell tower chimes on the 11th hour, Of the 11th day of the 11th month To remember them…
It’s been a busy several weeks. To those who follow my blog, my CT scan was clear! Praise God! Now we just need to figure out why I still struggle with overwhelming fatigue.
I’m half-way through teaching my creative writing class to eleven very enthusiastic Junior High school students. My Friday afternoons with them have become the highlight of my week! We have played a variety of word games to try to build up their vocabulary, and we have focused on writing a good opening sentence, show don’t tell, characterization, and plot structure. It’s a crash course for sure, and when I get home from teaching, I do crash…literally. I am able to build up my stamina to teach but then have nothing in the tank when I get home. Thankfully, my husband understands, and generally has a plan for dinner worked out on Fridays so I can rest and recover.
I’ve been tasked with organizing files, pictures, and more in preparation for our church’s 35th Anniversary in March next year. My husband and I have attended there since 1990. I guess that makes us the “old timers”, but more importantly we have been blessed to be a part of a church for so many years, and be involved in ministry there. As our community has grown, so has our church. As I look back on its history, it brings back memories of people, events, outreach activities, youth and children who are now adults. Many of the kids I worked with when I was the Children’s Minister there, I still have connection with on social media. It warms my heart to see many in full time ministry, on the mission field or in pastoral ministry. Many are married and raising their own children, and serving in their churches.
There are also those who are the prodigals. Young adults now who were so actively involved in church as children and youth and have walked away from the faith for a variety of different reasons. I pray for them. I know God has a plan and a purpose for each of them. They are precious to Him and to me, so I do what I can to stay connected and I pray.
An ongoing prayer burden for the empty nesters who make up our weekly small group gathering is for our prodigals. Each family has children, extended family, or grandchildren who are not walking with the Lord. With tears in our eyes, we hear the stories, and feel the heart sickness in the telling. Our group shares health concerns regularly, but it is praying for our prodigals that can illicit the most emotion and heartfelt concern. It prompts me to devote more prayer time in lifting all those young people I know and have known before the Throne of Jesus.
Here are a few scripture verses I am praying over my prodigals:
Ezekiel 34:16 “I will search for the lost and bring back the strays. I will bind up the injured and strengthen the weak, but the sleek and the strong I will destroy. I will shepherd the flock with justice.”
Ezekiel 18:32 “For I take no pleasure in the death of anyone, declares the Sovereign Lord. Repent and live!”
2 Timothy 2:19-26 “Nevertheless, God’s solid foundation stands firm, sealed with this inscription: “The Lord knows those who are his,” and, “Everyone who confesses the name of the Lord must turn away from wickedness.” In a large house there are articles not only of gold and silver, but also of wood and clay; some are for special purposes and some for common use. Those who cleanse themselves from the latter will be instruments for special purposes, made holy, useful to the Master and prepared to do any good work. Flee the evil desires of youth and pursue righteousness, faith, love and peace, along with those who call on the Lord out of a pure heart. Don’t have anything to do with foolish and stupid arguments, because you know they produce quarrels. And the Lord’s servant must not be quarrelsome but must be kind to everyone, able to teach, not resentful. Opponents must be gently instructed, in the hope that God will grant them repentance leading them to a knowledge of the truth, and that they will come to their senses and escape from the trap of the devil, who has taken them captive to do his will.”
Jude 1:22-23 “Be merciful to those who doubt; save others by snatching them from the fire; to others show mercy, mixed with fear—hating even the clothing stained by corrupted flesh.”
Matthew 18:12-13 “What do you think? If a man owns a hundred sheep, and one of them wanders away, will he not leave the ninety-nine on the hills and go to look for the one that wandered off? And if he finds it, truly I tell you, he is happier about that one sheep than about the ninety-nine that did not wander off.”
2 Peter 3:9 “The Lord is not slow in keeping his promise, as some understand slowness. Instead he is patient with you, not wanting anyone to perish, but everyone to come to repentance.”
Luke 5:29-32 “Then Levi held a great banquet for Jesus at his house, and a large crowd of tax collectors and others were eating with them. But the Pharisees and the teachers of the law who belonged to their sect complained to his disciples, “Why do you eat and drink with tax collectors and sinners?” Jesus answered them, “It is not the healthy who need a doctor, but the sick. I have not come to call the righteous, but sinners to repentance.”
Luke 19:9-10 “Jesus said to him, “Today salvation has come to this house, because this man, too, is a son of Abraham. For the Son of Man came to seek and to save the lost.”
Luke 15:31-32 ““‘My son,’ the father said, ‘you are always with me, and everything I have is yours. But we had to celebrate and be glad, because this brother of yours was dead and is alive again; he was lost and is found.’”
Math was never my favorite subject at school. I barely scraped by with a passing grade and to this day I am still very intimidated by anything that is more complex than adding or subtracting numbers. However, when it came to hockey stats in the early 70’s, it was like I had an eidetic memory. I could rattle off the jersey numbers of every player in the NHL (National Hockey League) and I knew the stats of every single player on my favorite team.
I was in Grade Nine, growing up in the small logging community of Sooke, British Columbia. My two best friends and I were avid hockey fans and femme fatales, all in the throes of the feminist revolution. While the other girls at school fretted over their hair and makeup, we took a shop class and played on an all-girls floor-hockey team at our high school. Our favorite NHL team was the Montreal Canadiens and my idol was the up and coming superstar, Guy Lafleur. I took great interest in every game and I followed his career with a statistician’s preciseness. I was abysmally disappointed when my idol was not selected to play on a team that saw NHL stars pitted against a selection of Russian players in a friendly eight game exhibition that would be called the Canada – USSR Summit Series.
The series was played at a time when Cold War tensions were running high. I wasn’t interested in the overall politics of the games, but I knew our nation’s prowess in hockey and so I was convinced that our guys would dominate the series knowing that hockey was, after all, Canada’s game! When Russia beat Canada soundly 7 – 3 in the first game in Montreal, my friends and I were as much in shock as the rest of the country. We talked of little else during the next few weeks. School work assigned was mostly forgotten or at least put on hold. The only math homework I did was trying to comprehend the bewildering stats of our national team: 1 win, 1 tie and two losses on Canadian ice. It just didn’t add up!
When the fifth game shifted to Moscow, my friends and I were riding the roller coaster of nationalistic furor. No longer were the games just about playing hockey, it was about securing our dominance of the game and declaring our national pride! We sported the Team Canada colours by purchasing too-large jerseys for our tiny girlish frames. Canadian flags were put up in our bedroom windows…but there was just one thing we hadn’t calculated…the time difference.
While we had been able to watch the first four games on television because those games had been played in Canadian cities, the final four games were in Moscow so those games would be telecast early in the mornings in our time zone, the exact same time as we were supposed to be in Mr. Ruxton’s math class!
A black and white T.V. was set up in the school library for students with spares so they could watch the fifth game. We could hear their cheering while we were in agony trying to concentrate on integers and fractions. When an audible groan rose up from down the hall we learned that Russia had won 5-4. I all but blamed Mr. Ruxton for the loss.
My friends and I had a sleepover so we could watch the Sunday morning game six. Team Canada was up against the formidable stickhandling of Yakushev and Kharlamov as well as the brilliant goaltending of Vladislav Tretiak once again. We breathed a collective sigh of relief, when Team Canada won the hard-fought game 3-2. Later, my friends and I huddled together to figure out how we could see the last two games at school the following week. We hit on the idea to bring our transistor radios and using headphones we could listen to the play-by-play during math class. (This was long before iPods or iPhones and students were never allowed to be “plugged in” during class.) We knew we would be taking a huge risk if we were caught, but it was a chance worth taking!
I hid my transistor radio under my jean jacket and camouflaged the earbuds under my long hair. Game seven had already started when I put my head down and tried to look as studious as possible while at the same time concentrating on the game that was statically broadcast on the radio. With the score tied 3-3 close to the end of the third period, my friends and I exchanged forlorn glances. I felt like crying. Then with less than three minutes to play, Paul Henderson deked out the Russian defenseman, Tsygankov and scored on Tretiak! My two friends and I reacted instantaneously and sprang from our seats screeching, “Yahooooo!” in unison. It was like a nuclear bomb had exploded in the class.
Mr. Ruxton jumped from his desk and glared menacingly at me, “What is the meaning of this outburst?”
Without hesitation I said, “I just LOVE math!!”
He shook his head while the rest of the class giggled “busted!” and then he motioned for us to show him our radios. We sheepishly obliged and then he asked, “What was the final score?” He had been on to us from the very beginning!
On Thursday, September 28th, 1972 in an unprecedented move, Mr. Ruxton dismissed our math class early so we could join the rest of the school in watching the eighth and final game of the Summit Series on T.V. My statistician brain was adding up the facts. Heading into that final game each team had three wins and three losses and one tie but the Soviets were ahead in goal differential by two goals. It didn’t take a math genius to figure out that Team Canada had to win this crucial, last game in order to win the series. With the Soviet team ahead 5-3 at the end of the second period, I remember looking over at Mr. Ruxton who looked as subdued and depressed as I did. Surely even going back to math class was better than watching Canada go down to defeat. Then Phil Esposito scored midway through the third period to put the Canadians within one goal. When Yvan Cournoyer scored soon after to tie the game, everyone around me went wild! All our eyes were fixed on the time clock maddeningly counting down to the last minute of play. In those last few seconds I held my breath. No one moved, no one blinked.
It all looked like it happened in slow motion. With only 34 seconds left to play, Esposito shot the puck at Tretiak only to have Paul Henderson pick up the rebound. Tretiak went down, Henderson lifted the puck and then Foster Hewitt yelled, “They score! Henderson scored for Canada!”
I remember the cheering around me was deafening as I grabbed my two best friends and we twirled in a circle, holding each other in a frenzied display of unabashed joy. We were crying, we were laughing, teachers and students alike. Mr. Ruxton, looked over at me and winked. I hated math but I loved Mr. Ruxton at that moment! While the players shook hands there in Moscow, we all burst into the spontaneous singing of “O’Canada”, and I knew that I had just witnessed a moment in history that would never again be repeated.
(Used by permission. My story, “The Greatest Goal” was originally published in the Chicken Soup for the Soul book: The Spirit of Canada – June 6, 2017.)
Paul Henderson scores the winning goal – Canada-Russia 1972 Summit Series
Lynn Dove's Journey Thoughts 