outWORD by Matte Downey

Christmas Day 2017 started out with great hope and expectation. Dean and I woke up just after 4 am and headed to the airport, eager to celebrate the holy days with our families in Manitoba. That changed somewhere over Ontario when vertigo paid me a visit. I won't regale you with the not-so-pleasant details of how many airsick bags I used or the dread that came over me when it was time to get off the plane and take that long walk to the airport exit. Let's just say that with great discomfort, I finally made it to my destination in Winnipeg and, for seven days, did as little moving and looking as possible (who knew vertigo affected your ability to focus?). When I could manage it, I read up on vertigo. The official name is benign paroxysmal positional vertigo. Benign means that it is not related to another illness. Paroxysmal has to do with the intensification of symptoms during episodes (my body seemed to have missed this part because my symptoms were continuous, not episodi...

Image from paradigm-shift-21st-century.nl These past few weeks have been a bit of a blur. Two weeks ago I was in Toronto at Wycliffe College for a symposium. Last week I flew to Edmonton for another symposium at King's University and stayed an extra few days to visit friends. On the way home, I got stranded in Toronto overnight, but I arrived back in Montreal on Sunday morning just in time to give the talk at our weekly faith gathering. After a day or two at home, I got on the plane again and flew to the East coast for some meetings with church leaders. I have enough boarding passes to wallpaper a small room. Okay, that's a bit of an overstatement, but you get the point. In all of these travels, I have been privileged and extremely grateful for the opportunity to see different parts of the country, explore various institutions of higher learning, meet many new people, and spend time with old friends. We are made richer by our wanderings. Some of the people I met had tal...

Hiking in the Alps 2014 The last month has been a bit disruptive. In the midst of finishing my doctoral comprehensive exams, writing a paper for a conference, Christmas preparations, spending a week with family in western Canada, traipsing all over Switzerland, attending a conference just outside of Zurich, and diving right into teaching a course the day after I got back from Europe, some of my usual practices were disrupted. There were no blogs, my workout went out the window, quiet and contemplative times were sporadic, gluten was more abundant, sleeping habits were affected, and housework was neglected. Despite this, for the most part I have felt energetic and encouraged. And I did read quite a few books due to the amount of time I spent in planes and trains. In general, I don't mind disruptions - in fact, I get kind of antsy and restless if the same old stuff happens day after week after month after year. I love good disruptions like vacations, unexpected dates with Dean,...

3D chalk drawing by Julian Beever Some people (and I can be one of them) tend to see the world in black and white, in terms of either good or bad, right or wrong, hot or cold, left or right. It makes life easier in many ways because when there are only two choices it is simple to tell the difference between them. Compartmentalizing life in this way (either/or) means that when we find ourselves on the "good" side of things (and we place ourselves there most of the time, admit it), we can relax. No gray areas to worry about, no nuances to unravel, no complex ethical quandaries to wrestle through. Just do the right thing and we're good, no questions asked. But not asking questions is a bit of a problem. People who don't ask questions, who don't look at situations from different angles...well, we call them extremists, blind followers, and even radical fundamentalists. We know them as people who don't bother to engage in the complexities of human experience. We...

The problem with containers is that I like them. I love their different shapes and sizes and the promise of tidiness that is attached to them. I like stacking them and arranging them on shelves. However, there is a major difference between containers and what they carry. Sometimes I forget that. I can focus on the loveliness of the container too much, and then what is inside becomes almost secondary. Events, meetings, and traditions are containers. They are meant to carry something that is valuable to us. These containers can come and go and morph into different forms, and we should never get too attached to their malleable shapes. A weekly church meeting is a container. It is meant to carry something really important, but it is only a container. It is a time and place to recognise that we are part of something bigger than ourselves. It is a time to recognise the presence and work of an almighty God and see beyond our limited world of work and play. It is a place to devote ourselves to...

On Saturday night, my laptop succumbed to a malicious virus. After an hour of trying to identify it, delete it, and in the end, merely hoping that the computer would boot up and recognise who it was, I gave up. The sneaky bug had made its way into the registry and the poor machine didn't even know how to do something as basic as turn on. Fortunately, I had done a back-up a few days ago and all my writing and photos and contacts were safe on an external hard drive. Nevertheless, I felt stupid and helpless and wondered how I had let myself get into this predicament. I am usually very careful what sites I access and what I click on, but even though I tried to say no to all the pop-ups I got hit with after I went to a site I had not been to before, I now know that even clicking on the "No, thank you" button is an acknowledgement of some sort. Sigh. I went to a computer store to see what they could do for me and they recommended wiping the hard drive clean and starting over. S...

This week I watched a workshop video from world-renowned percussionist, Evelyn Glennie. What is so profound about her is not only her musical talent and genius with all things percussive, but her attitude towards listening. She describes sound and listening in terms of one's whole body and not just the realm of the ears. Thinking we experience sound with only this one tiny organ is a very limiting way of looking at things, indeed. I realised this as I watched her interact with her instruments and her environment. This ears-only attitude most definitely narrows the range of what we hear to a very small spectrum of what is really going on around us. You will perhaps be surprised to discover that she is profoundly deaf, and yet nothing about her demeanour would inform you of that fact. Out of necessity, she has enlarged her idea of listening to include her whole body as a resonating chamber. She hears with her feet (performs barefoot), her fingertips, her hands, her arms and chest, he...

It was Alfred Hitchcock day on Friday. I was watching an old movie, called Rebecca , by the famous director around noon on that fateful day. Really, I was supposed to be cleaning my house in preparation for guests, getting some groceries, writing this blog, working on my fiction, and picking up some dry cleaning. But, in doing some research for our book club, I stumbled upon this movie and started watching a few clips. Besides, viewing a classic movie is an excellent warm-up for housework, isn't it? As I was watching the unnamed heroine interact with the evil Mrs. Danvers , I heard a strange noise coming from somewhere. I looked over the balcony rail to see if there was any unusual cat action happening, but all was quiet. I continued my movie and again heard a rustling. It was coming from my right. I walked over and saw Jazz intently staring at the fireplace, her face with its big eyes pressed close to the glass. And then I saw a brown flutter and heard that familiar rustling again...

I have been told that I have the ability to see things in a unique way, which is why I can take some fine pictures. I am able to blot out all the busyness around me in order to see an important and interesting part of life. And by taking a picture of it, I am able to single out these rare moments and show others the things that capture me, that grab my attention , that speak to me of beauty and strength and life. Dean was speaking this past Sunday at our gathering about using the gift God has given you, and one of the verses he read struck me right in the solar plexus : "...some of us recognize when God's Spirit is present." from I Corinthians 12:10, The Message. Most of the other translations of this particular passage in scripture say something about the discerning of spirits, but phrased like this, I saw it in a new and very relevant way. Yes, I have the ability to see God in situations. I can feel him very near in a tangible way at times; I can sense when the...