What Moms Need

Today I blogged over at Canadian Writers Who Are Christian. Go there to read my post, What Moms Need.

While you’re there, read posts by other Canadian Christian writers.

And for all the mothers reading my post, may you be blessed with love and time with your family, yes, even with long-distance calls.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

My mother on her wedding day

A race or a team?

 

Here’s a letter I had forgotten about, one I wrote  in late 2009 when I was President of our Toastmasters club, the Energetics. I just unearthed the letter today and thought it was worth sharing.

Most organizations, I think, go through times of losing members and losing momentum. I’m happy to report that by the end of that year, we had gained momentum again and grown our club considerably. Here, for others who may be feeling discouraged by low enrollment or participation, is that letter.

 

Dear fellow Toastmasters

Two meetings ago, our theme was “Slow and steady wins the race,” a lesson we get from Aesop, a 6th Century B.C. Greek writer, who wrote The Hare and the Tortoise. He wrote entertaining short stories and fables that were meant to teach a lesson.
http://www.online-literature.com/aesop/

The tortoise, a rather slow moving creature, challenges the hare [rabbit] to a race. The hare sneers at the tortoise for his crooked legs and slow movements, and he brags that he can win the race easily. He accepts the challenge, assured that he can win. He leaps on ahead, while the owl, who is judge, and all the forest animals eagerly watch the race.

Hare had used so much energy bounding ahead that he decided to eat some carrots alongside the path, and then, since tortoise is still so far away, to take a nap beside the path as well. All this time, the tortoise plodded along steadily. Hare woke from his nap just as tortoise approached the finish line, and for all the hare’s hurry, owl declared the tortoise the winner of the race.

I thought how much that lesson compares with our Toastmasters journey—the slow and steady part. It might take awhile to get that Competent Communicator designation, but week after week and month after month of practice moves a member further along.

We are not to compare ourselves with others but to progress along our own course with the help and encouragement of the others. We learn from the others and not in isolation. The race analogy fails here. We are more like team members who work together to achieve something we cannot do alone. We are in a course alongside others who are also learning and growing.

If we continue along steadily, week after week and month after month, we will surely reach our goals. We will become better communicators and leaders. We are not in a competitive race to reach our goal, as the Hare believes. If one person takes two years and another member takes one to achieve the CC or ACB or whatever designation one chooses, it doesn’t matter. What matters is that we join in and learn.

There has to be action and learning and cooperation among members. When only a few carry the load, they get tired and discouraged. When they get discouraged or drained from doing too much, the whole club suffers. Our club needs all of its members. And yes, I know, we have a life beyond Toastmasters.

Let’s renew our energy, beginning this new month of December, and continue on through the rest of our Toastmasters year, to reach those personal goals, and at the same time support others who are working toward theirs.

Sign on to the club website and put yourself in roles as often as you can. Work toward those goals you’ve set for yourself or challenge yourself to a new one for 2010. Let’s make the rest of the year a team effort where everyone wins. Game’s on!

Respectfully,

Your President

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

At Open Doors Waterloo, a Toastmasters initiative

 

 

 

 

 

 

At Huron Natural Park, photo by James Woo, Clickr Photography

Canadian Writers Who Are Christian–What is a Mission Statement?

Yesterday, I posted over at Canadian Writers Who Are Christian, as I do once a month. Read my post on mission statements and while you’re there, take a look around and read posts by other writers such as Peter Black, Eleanor Shepherd, Linda Hall and Rose McCormick Brandon. May this reading be a blessing to your day.

C. R. Wilker, author of Once Upon a Sandbox, pub. 2011 by Hidden Brook Press.

Available from selected book outlets (Fanfare Books, Stratford; Merrifield Book Shop, Woodstock; and Chapters Waterloo, Waterloo, ON), author, and from publisher.

http://www.carolynwilker.ca

book cover

 

In the Stillness

This morning I awoke with a particular verse from Scriptures going around in my mind. In the quiet, I lay there thinking about it.

The verse (11) comes from I Corinthians in what is often called the Love chapter. Here it is from the International version, with the Apostle Paul addressing the Corinthians:

“When I was a child, I talked like a child, I thought like a child, I reasoned like a child. When I became a man, I put childish ways behind me.”

How many times I get caught up in an action and realize later that it was the child in me acting, perhaps wanting some safety, wanting one less change, one less disturbance in my world, that is, until I catch up.  Other times, however, I accept change better or am more adaptive.

Have you ever felt that way, grown-up one minute, and like a child another time?

We are God’s children, and here I think of an angel leading two children safely over a bridge to their destination. In the guidance of Jesus, we can grow stronger, more mature and listen to what God says to us. To allow him to guide us. We’re not alone.

And here is Ali Matthews singing: In the Stillness

Saturday Snapshots-Fishy’s gone back in the lake

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Last summer we went camping with our daughter and son-in-law, and on that trip, a grandchild learned about fishing. Here she looking out at the lake after the caught fish was thrown back in the water.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Let’s catch another one, Daddy!

 

 

At Home With Books hosts this popular meme. Post a photo taken by you or a family member, one that’s clean and appropriate for all eyes. Then go and link with Alyce on her blog and see all the other photos.

Saturday Snapshot–Celebration of Community

 

Waterloo Region Museum, a celebration of community and the many people who make up Waterloo Region

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

The Conestoga Wagon, pulled by horses, brought many people to our community from the USA, Mennonites, and more

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Arrival at Pier 21 in Halifax, and then across country to Ontario and other provinces

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

The Grand Trunk Railway Line. The intersection in the middle of the hallway, but of course the train does not run through that line anymore.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Travelling trunks from many countries around the world

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Let’s not forget the Home Children, who were sent here—not by their own choice—but who also make up a  section of our community.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

People settled here and worked together to build a community with those who were already here.

 

The Storytelling Series at the Museum, this winter and spring, feature stories of immigrants coming to any part of Canada

 

This meme hosted by At Home With Books. To participate in the Saturday Snapshot meme post a photo that you (or a friend or family member) have taken, then go to the site and connect with the page by our host, Alyce. Happy Saturday, travelling from one blog to another.

You Can Be A Hero Again!

Once a month, approximately, I blog over at Canadian Writers Who Are Christian. It’s a place to be inspired  and challenged by others. Sometimes you’ll laugh too. We are Canadian writers with a Christian worldview.

Today my post is titled, You Can Be  Hero Again. Stop in and read. Leave a comment if you wish.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

photo copyright of Carolyn Wilker

Learning from our grandmothers

We learn about who we are by exploring the history of our family. Storyteller Dan Yashinksy says in Suddenly There Were Footsteps that he is connected to his ancestors by stories his grandmother brought over from her native country.  He said that was almost all she brought with her.

I, that sense, I have been fortunate. I  have learned about my grandparents by spending time with them in their homes or their visits with us, albeit one grandmother more than the other.

Needing to know more about my history for my own book, I asked a lot of questions, asked for stories too. Some of them were uncovered as my parents shared their own memories the year of their 60th wedding anniversary.

My father’s parents moved off the farm when I was a small child and went to live  in the city. Because of that and since they went to Florida every winter for a number of my early years, I didn’t spend as much time with Grandma Flora as I had with my other grandmother. Grandma Flora died when I was twelve. She was 75 years old.

The time of story sharing and asking questions was one of discovery. I asked family members— my father, his sister and my mother. Grandma Flora had  grown up on a farm, moved to the city with her parents when they sold the farm. Then as a young adult, she worked in a special order  of a department store where she would have honed her sewing skills and learned millinery— hat making.

My father’s parents on their wedding day.

Credit: family photo collection.

While I’m not a hat maker in the millinery sense, Grandma Flora’s attention to detail was as important in her work as it was to me in my business, and now as I edit the work of other writers. The few family photos we have show Grandma Flora dressed attractively, and her daughters were too.

My dad says that she would have been embarassed about the school photo. My father had not told her about their picture day, and so the day the photo was taken, he was wearing a safety pin on his overalls where the fastener had broken. She would have been sure to fix that ahead, if she had known.

But it wasn’t only in her sewing where careful attention to detail was important. After marriage, she and my grandfather moved to a farm. She kept a large garden to feed her family, canning food for winter as the harvest produced more than they could eat over the summer and fall.

She liked beauty and order in her home, using pretty wallpaper to decorate the older house. She was also involved for a time with the Women’s Institute, thus being interested in happenings beyond her home and in her community.

My maternal grandparents on their wedding day

Credit: Family photo collection

My maternal grandmother, Grandma Ardena, lived longer. She was in her 80s when she died and so we had much more time together. From her, I learned how to make pancakes, tie a comforter, and watched her at her crocheting and tatting, when she had time for it. When I lived with my grandparents one summer, we played card games together. My crocheting lessons with her don’t count. I wanted to learn, but I just wasn’t ready then.

True, I have learned more about Grandma Ardena since then, and with maturity, have understood her better—her sense of humour and the way she went about things—and about her life as a farmer’s wife and mother of eight children. So I could say I learned more from Grandma Ardena, but that’s just the way life worked.

If you have the opportunity, ask questions. What do you know about your family? What have  you learned about them or from them? How does it affect the way you live your life and pass on stories to your succeeding generation?

WordPress Challenge–Study Abroad?

That’s it, I’ve taken a challenge for the week, to write something here every day.

And here’s the prompt that I’ll start with ( from Dec. 23)

If you were asked to spend a year living in a different location, where would you choose and why?

A place I have always wanted to go is Switzerland. Perhaps because some of my ancestors came from there. Perhaps because of a CBC film we watched when I was in grade school, with those  high white-capped Alps where the fictional Heidi lived with her grandfather and learned to tend sheep. The place had an attraction for me, but all I could do was dream of it.

Now say there was a special course or series of courses on life story writing that was hosted somewhere in the Alps, it could be attractive. Even more if it were in English, since I don’t speak German, and taught by someone I respected or whom I had read about. Oh, perhaps I’d best take classes in learning the language too.

If there was time off for social events, I would want to go places, but not by skiing, since I’ve never done it on anything but a small barnhill. I would go into Berne while I was in Switzerland to find places inhabited by those ancestors I mentioned, and I would try to locate them and write about that too. All the more reason to learn German, I suppose.

Finally, I don’t know about going there for a year. I’d  have to take someone along with me and I’d miss my grandchildren so, and the rest of my family. That’s it, I’d need a Skype connection so I could see everyone and watch the little ones grow from afar. A year would be a long time.

A Heart this Heavy

The story of last Friday’s tragedy in Newtown, Connecticut, continues in the news. More details come out, but we are not much, if any, closer to the why.

My heart is heavy, seeing all those young faces in the newspaper. And yes, their teachers too.

Jeff Goins wrote this week about his reaction to that news:

“I believe language has power and impact, that it can be a salve to our wounds. But not today. Today, I have no words.”

And fellow blogger, Ann Voskamp wrote earlier this week:

“I don’t know if legs can hold a heart this heavy.”

Investigators are trying to find answers—any answers that would help them solve the mystery. But who helps the families devastated by the death of their children? Who comforts the families of the teachers and principal who tried to shield the children from harm?  Who lives beyond it without being changed in some way?

The tradgedy is removed from us by many miles, but the news brings it to our homes in newspaper, on the radio and television. The people  affected are unknown to me,  and yet I am a mother and grandmother. I cannot dismiss it and go on as if I don’t know. I have prayed since Friday for those people affected.  It’s hard to find words. Sometimes just saying the words, the families in Newtown, is enough.

Ann continues:  “When grief is deepest, words are fewest.“

Jeff would agree. He adds later in the same posting:

“But we forget that sometimes silence can be louder than our strongest voice.”

He cites the Jewish custom of Shiva in which people sit in silence with those who are facing a loss. “To not say but show we are with those in mourning.”

Sometimes no words are the best when sitting with grieving. I pray that someone is sitting with those affected families and just listening.