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Lighthouse

Posted on by stephen t berg / 1 Comment

I’ve noticed that I have a fascination with lighthouses. I automatically take a picture every time one comes into my horizon. Of course they all pretty much look the same. Even so, I reach for my camera when I spot one.

I remember doing this when I was hiking in England, and I do the same thing when I go to the West coast. Perhaps it’s the Mission in me. The "rescue" element in our ministry has a nautical theme. Where I work our first logo was the anchor and life-buoy. As well our Mission’s founder, before coming to Canada, worked on the boats off the northern coast of Norway.

Or perhaps it’s the grand metaphor itself. While easily overused, it is still an apt one for all we humans. We all need a lighthouse in our lives.

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I should mention that the one basic difference with lighthouses here is that some have "houses" built into them. Our hosts knew the family and their six kids that grew up in this one. Seems that it might have been idyllic to grow up in a lighthouse.

Politics

Her Honour Barbara Hagerman

Posted on by stephen t berg / 1 Comment

Lieutenant Governor Barbara Hagerman ran out of Government House into the rose garden were we were ambling, smelling the perfumed air, and watching the Canalilies sway in the slow breeze.

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She came out to see her friends, our hosts. We had just finished touring the house, learning the mysteries of a two hundred year old piano, the 1864 Charlottetown Conference that led to the birth of Canada, and French realist wallpaper.

The Lieutenant Governor lives and works here, and after our tour the guide had given notice of our presence. Earith, Deb’s cousin, didn’t want to bother her. After all, Barabara Hagerman had just been "installed" two weeks ago. Our hosts could call her up any time. They knew her well. Also, she had been the church organist at Summerside Presbyterian, where they went to church.

Barbara is vivacious, energetic, and comes on as someone who has never met a conversation she didn’t like. I asked her how she was enjoying here new post and she said "It’s just like performing at Carnegie Hall every day."

She knows of what she speaks. She is, apparently, an amazing musician; but she is also a keen community booster. Her Carnegie Hall performance was the result of her organizing and directing and playing for a choir from the island. What our own Lois Hole was to gardening and community, Barbara Hagerman is to music and local society.

She is also as engaging and grounded as Lois Hole was. No guile or pretense. Even as representing the Queen to the province, she does things like run out to flower gardens after old friends.

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(Above) Lieutenant Governor Barbara Hagerman with her "home" in the background.

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(Below) Deb and her cousin Earith.

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Politics

Nothing Complicated

Posted on by stephen t berg / 0 Comment

Maritime life, I was told by a "therapist" friend, would suit my temperament.

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P.E.I. is all about primary colours. Nothing complicated.

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Cavendish cliffs…where we went picnic-table-rolling.

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Many of the island’s lighthouses are still operational. Main land lighthouses are disappearing faster.

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Peace/Violence

Conflict and Sunrise

Posted on by stephen t berg / 1 Comment

The lady selling me the highlighter wasn’t exactly sure if the yellow inky stuff inside the highlighter was banned. I had asked. She said no one told her she couldn’t sell the pens but that I might as well just "innocently" stick it down further in my shirt pocket when going through the boarding gate. As I was already within the secured area I took her advice.

Mean time the lady at Second Cup was pouring all purchased bottled water and juices into plastic cups to make sure people consumed them before boarding.On the early morning ride the cab driver had said the terrorists were sticking up the world and it "just wasn’t right".

It’s difficult to know what goes on in the brain of a bomber, especially a suicide bomber. Ideology, revenge, property, resources, historical claims etc. all figure into it I suppose, but after a while it seems that violence and the war itself is the object of desire.

My wife Deb said it might be hard to find an old suicide bomber. It’s true. Usually age greys ideologies of blood and soil, confidence in violence wanes, maybe even possessions are seen with clearer perspective, and maybe relationships are venerated. All of this makes it hard to blow yourself and others up.

It’s the young that warlords and ideologues know to recruit. A dispossessed young person is fertile ground for an absolutist cause, particularly when that cause is habitually linked to a transcendent cause and calling.And any cause will do. Christian, Muslim, Jew. As long as the victims are well hidden. That is, abstracted and exterminated as infidels or pagans long before any plastique or nitroglycerine tears their limbs away.

In the end the bombers probably have very little knowledge about their "cause", outside of what’s been prescribed. "Causes" are like that. Veneers of freedom and security conceal confusion and a great vacuum. The original object of conflict is lost and people get locked into a spiralling conflict.sunriseonwing

But then…as we took off for Canada’s east coast…there was the morning sunrise…

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