New minister not yet able to walk on water - or was that mud?

Went for a stroll up the beach last night, before the tide came in...I said it was time to turn around and someone else said "I'm going on to the next point". Well, I thought I'd go too, but on the very next step ---- down I went! Both feet into a sinkhole!

Things to be thankful for: rubber boots; a tall strong husband; a sense of humour; the privacy to strip off before going in the house; a hose to wash the clay off my jeans and boots!

Home again, home again, riggity, jig

I was thinking about that line yesterday as we travelled from Morrisburg to Rose-Bridge...I'm sure it's from an old nursery rhyme, but the question that came to me was what is 'home'? Where is home?

When I'm in residence in Rose Bridge and I refer to 'going home' I mean going to the rented house we occupy there. When I'm in Morrisburg, and I say I'm going home, I mean the house we own there that actually has most of our worldly possessions in it. When I'm staying at a B&B in Dundas and visiting family 'home' becomes the B&B...and when we're travelling in Crannie, our van becomes "home". Home seems to be a rather loose concept for me, and yet I know lots of people for whom 'home' is a very specific building, in one town where their family has likely lived all their lives.

For me, it seems, home is more like a feeling - that place where I return to for rest, for safety, and to be with people I love. Perhaps it's where my bed and toothbrush are, at any given time! Perhaps it's the fact that I've always been a nomad: we lived in an ancestral home only until I was 4 years old. Then, at the age of 10, our rented apartment burned to the ground. I lived with my parents in another rented flat until I left home for a university residence home. After that it was 2 rented apartments, 4 houses, 1 apartment, 2 houses, 2 apartments, and now 1 owned house and 1 rented and our beloved van - all at the same time!

So don't tell me you have no home! Home is indeed where the heart is. Home is where there is love, where there is space for welcoming others, where there is some measure of privacy and where you keep your bare essentials from day to day. It is where you return to and where you go out from...and isn't that, after all, our True Centre?

Of birds and signs of Spring...

Several pair of golden eye ducks are entertaining us these days, waiting around our corner of the Bay until the marsh thaws enough for nesting. A raft of 18 Canada Geese...a flock of seagulls...a pair of pintail ducks this morning! Life at the end of our spotting scope is awesome these days: an osprey at low tide was seen standing on his catch of the day, biting great chunks out of it!

And on the land side, there are some daffodils in bloom across the road and the ditches are lined with little yellow coltsfoot (?)...buds are swelling on the trees and there is hope in my heart!