About: Gains and Losses - Lifes Ups and Downs

This post started out as a short sermon to some elderly folks and I thought that perhaps it’s a message that deserved a bit wider audience.

I called it “Gain and Loss” because that is what life is like, and if you haven’t discovered that for yourself, look out!

Eventually, we will all discover the nature of loss, even though for the first part of our lives, most of us experience gain, after gain, after gain.

Our youth is all about discovery, learning, exploring, receiving, in fact it’s a bit of a dream world for many of us. I realize that this is not always so, many children experience an untimely loss of a parent, a pet, a sibling or grandparent or even their innocence.

But in general, the first half of our lives is often a steady series of gains and in the whole, is probably quite positive. But eventually we realize that there is much more to the story, this state of being can’t go on indefinitely, eventually life (or death) catches up with us.

Even though we probably recognize that life is a series of gains and losses, ups and downs we try our best to forget that every time that we gain something, as wonderful as that is, it opens us up to the possibility of losing what we’ve gained sometime in the future.

A house can burn down or it could be re-possessed, a car wears out and eventually quits. When we get a new puppy or a kitten, we know that it will grow older and one day it won’t be with us anymore.

We know that a job doesn’t last forever, our health deteriorates over time and when we get married, part of the vows say, “as long as you both shall live” so we know that even the best marriage doesn’t last forever.

Our kids don’t stay little; they grow up and move away. Our hair doesn’t stay red or black or brown or blonde, eventually it turns grey and sometimes it even falls out!

Now, I know what you’re probably thinking. “Who is this guy with all the bad news? This is depressing.”

But there is some good news and I’m getting to it right away here, don’t worry.  Because even though every single thing that exists will someday fade away, absolutely everything, even mountains will one day be gone, but there is one gain that will never turn to loss, there is one thing that is very real, that will never perish, never fade, never disappear.

Some of you may have guessed already what it is I’m talking about.

I’m talking about being fortunate enough to gain Jesus in our lives, to have a personal relationship with God; I’m talking about salvation, the most incredible gain that we can ever experience.

And the wonderful thing about knowing Jesus as our savior, about being saved, and having that assurance that we will spend eternity in the presence of God, the wonderful thing is that this is a gain that we will not lose.

In Romans 8:35-39, Paul says that nothing will be able to separate us from the Love of God that is in Christ Jesus our Lord.

Nothing! And that my friends, is GOOD NEWS!

So even though everything else will one day end, the most precious thing, the most valuable thing, will never end. And this is something that we can all have if we choose Jesus, it’s not some exclusive club that only the rich get into, we all have that opportunity to choose life.

Once we have truly accepted Jesus Christ into our lives and made that choice to love Him, to follow Him, to worship Him, then He will never leave us and our eternal future is secure.

I’m just full of good news now, aren’t I? This is the part of being a Christian that I love, not just knowing the good news, but also being able to share it with others!

So here it is again: Jesus died, He gave His life for our sins and He did it so that we can be forgiven, and our faith in Him guarantees our forgiveness and that means that we are truly saved.

Our faith in Jesus means that we are forgiven, our faith means that we can have hope, it means that we are adopted sons and daughters of God like it says in Romans 8:23.

Loss is part of life, death is part of life, and every gain will one day turn to loss and disappear, except one, the very best one of all!

Antique Skates at the Ukrainian Heritage Village

Weird Sounds in the Chimney leads to Tearful Confession

Have you ever had one of those days when you’re just minding your own business, sitting on the sofa and whammo, something weird happens? Well, I have. The other day that was exactly what happened when I began to hear weird sounds coming from inside the fireplace chimney. 

Those weird sounds reminded me of an incident that happened maybe 20 years ago when we came home from holidays to a bit of a horrific scene that was a bit reminiscent of a Quentin Tarantino movie, or maybe even a Walt Disney Movie, (why yes Bambi, your mom has been murdered by hunters, time to grow up!)

On this particular day many years ago, we came home to find that some poor, stupid young bird had blundered down the chimney and right into our living room. Of course, that probably wouldn’t have been too bad for the little avian invader except that we have a cat. The feline protector that owned us at the time was named Chenille and she took her duties to us and the cat community very seriously indeed. So seriously that she considered all of our personal property dispensable when it comes to repelling invaders, what a ruckus that must have been! Lamps knocked over, something like that movie with the famous song, “we are Siamese, if you please, and even if you don’t please.”

I imagine the poor bird must have eventually surrendered to thirst or hunger and tried to swoop in and sample the cats water or food dish that was being replenished often by my wife’s sister (in case you were wondering) and with a quick pounce that was the end of that.

So the other day when I heard the sounds of what could only be a bird in the chimney, I glanced around for our latest fuzzy wonder, Mischief, or Missy as we call her when she is occasionally being good. No cat in sight, so I sat back to listen and wonder why it is that chimney cap designers and wasp trap designers share the same tricks designed to trap inside whatever happened to blunder in.

After a few minutes of flapping around sounds, all went quiet, “good, I thought, this particular birdy is a bit smarter than the last intruder, no need for heroics on my part, what a relief.”

I didn’t give it another thought…….until the next day.

My wife, Rose got up a bit earlier than I did that morning and practically the first thing she said to me was, “can you do something?  Missy has been trying to get into the fireplace all morning, she knocked over the fireplace screen and she thinks there is something in the fireplace.”

“What do you need me for? Was my inner response, "why is it my job to kill the big hairy spiders that occasionally crawl out of the drain and to deal with whatever is caught in the chimney? Don't we live in an enlightened society (sort of)?" Then why does she get all, “somebody help me, you’re so big and strong and handsome, please do something, there’s a ferocious weasel trapped in the chimney and you learned all about how to deal with that in pre-marital counseling or boy scouts or something, right honey?”

Of course, I’m not so dumb that I would say anything like that out loud, no sir’ee, Mrs. Petry didn’t raise me to be so foolish. So what I actually said was, “of course, I’ll take care of it.” And that’s what I did, I proceeded to take charge, making life or death snap decisions like I was born to it!

“Ok, I’m going to open the patio door, we’ll put the fireplace screen here, blocking the way so it doesn’t go further into the house, Rose, you stand here and don’t let it get past you. Ok, all ready, I’ll open the damper and see what happens.”

I grabbed the handle of the damper and gritting my teeth, gave it my best Chuck Norris move. Wham, a giant cloud of soot and ash billowed out of the chimney……along with a very sooty, bedraggled, startled looking little sparrow. He, or she, took one very quick look around, didn’t like what it saw and flew straight out the patio door. Crisis averted, yay, Mr. Dad saves the day.

A second later and floompph, another cloud of soot and ash, and another very sooty, bedraggled, startled looking little sparrow, looking very much like a sort of befuddled looking miniature crow. That didn’t last long though and then it was, zoom zoom zoom, right out the window after his buddy.

“What is this, a convention?” I thought to myself. “Any more of you up there?”

Rose and I looked at each other and laughed out loud, “that was weird, she said. I think Mischief saved the lives of those birds!”

                                      A sparrow takes a bath in our backyard pond.     

It thought about that, if she rescued those birds, I imagine it was quite by accident, because if they were here right now, and even covered in soot and ash, I think she would gobble them up in a second.

As I reached up to close the damper again, my eye was drawn to a broken tile on the hearth, “oh no, I put those tiles in myself 20 years ago, now one is broken, great!”

Angry, of course not, (ha ha) I wasn't angry, just disappointed that I was going to have to replace one tile for sure and if I know my wife, and I do, probably all of the tiles, and the mantle, and the trim, and I suppose this would be a good time to repaint the walls and scrape off that icky popcorn ceiling and build a garage!

“Might as well just move and get it over with.”

"Huh?" she said, for some reason she wasn't following my train of thought!

Well, first things first, “let’s clean up this mess” she suggested, shrugging her shoulders. Soon the dustpan and the vacuum were busily employed cleaning up ash and after a few minutes I noticed my lovely wife had gone a bit quiet.

“What’s wrong honey?” I innocently enquired.

“I have a confession to make, don’t be mad at Missy, she didn’t break the tile.”

“Oh, this should be interesting,” I thought to myself.

“I broke the tile a couple of months ago when I was cleaning the mantle, I knocked over the mirror and when I tried to grab it, I knocked the plant off the mantle and the pot crashed down and broke the tile.”

“That’s why that Catch Phrase game sat there for a month and then I went out and bought a basket and set it over the broken tile, I was trying to find the right time to tell you.”

“LUCY, you’ve got some ‘splainin to do!” No wait, I’m not Ricky Ricardo and my wife is not Lucille ball and our lives are not the “I Love Lucy’ show in spite of the many similarities.

It was then that I had a little bit of a deja ‘vu moment that reminded me of a time when this same wife, (I’ve only had the one) told me a few years ago that she had been backing out of a driveway and we now had a nice fresh scrape down the side of the car. “How had I responded that time?” I asked myself. And then I remembered and knew just what to say.

 “Don’t worry honey, I like my car (or in this case tile) but I LOVE YOU!”

Picture Perfect

My brother, sisters & I

I was thinking today about what makes a photograph art? And is there such a thing as the perfect photograph? Of course there's the subjective side of things and we may all have a different opinion on any given image. But for me, the answer might be connected to our concept of what life is. Is life just a random confluence of matter and time and events that just sort of falls out of the sky, or the brain, to splatter on the pavement in front of us to be interpreted sort of like a street Rorschach test? Or is there a lot more meaning to life, and a lot less random particle collisions with weird outcomes and more ………………….life, love, beauty, and God?

A photograph can be a lot of things, just like a human life. It can be dull, boring and flat, but useful. It can be a record of a place or time, but with no-one to care about it or be interested in it, it might seem to have no point. But if it has a connection to something or somewhere that people care about and are interested in, it has a life and a magic of its own. If it has a provenance that is somehow intertwined with our lives or something we care about it comes alive to us.

 Today I was looking at a box of old pictures that really tells a story of who my family is. After my mom’s death, it seems I was appointed as the “keeper of the past” without even realizing it, (and I didn’t even get a tee-shirt). There are hundreds of photographs and negatives and papers and keepsakes that are a living record of my family throughout the generations. As I looked at these old pictures of people, many of whom I didn’t even recognize, I was sad. Who were these people who were so obviously important to people who were important to people who were important to people I care about?

Normally, I don’t spend a lot of time taking family pictures or people pictures at all, but looking back through these old photos, I realize that they do have importance, even for those of us who are not sentimental about them. Most people are kind of funny looking and they definitely are not models so they don’t know how to pose very well and they make funny faces and have bad hair and weird clothes, wait a minute, that’s just me I’m talking about, you on the other hand, look great!

Don’t get me wrong, there is beauty in just being family to one another. All of those traditions and little rituals and trade-offs that are part of growing up Canadian in the times that we live in, have a meaning and a beauty of their own, I know that. And I know that an incredibly beautiful photograph can be absolutely empty of any other meaning if it doesn’t connect the viewer with life in some way. The best pictures connect us to something in our own lives, a memory, a moment, a fear, a shared experience, a dream, an emotion, even a nightmare. That’s the challenge of artists of all kinds, but especially the photographer. That’s what separates the record keepers, from those that can draw the viewer into the scene and capture their heart.

There are at the very least, two kinds of beauty when it comes to photographs: The kind that comes from the existing emotional attachment that we have with the subject and the kind that the photographer manages to evoke through the subject, or in spite of the subject, even without a pre-existing connection.

Life also seems to diverge into two parallel paths, do we choose door A with the easy path, the wide path that so many are taking, do we just follow along because it happens to be the easy way and everyone is doing it, or do we choose the narrow door, the one that looks hard to enter? If my record in the supermarket checkout line is any indication, I’m in trouble! But I've learned to stick with it and ride it out, even if my mind says, “go that way, fool.” 

Sorry, I don’t have a lot of answers, but when it comes to beauty, I’m convinced I have it right. To me, much of the beauty around us comes from the family who loves you and makes you happy. Beauty and perfection, in a photograph are very similar, if you love it, and it makes you happy, that's great, and if it happens to serve God in some way, even just by sharing the wonder of creation, or by recording the family that He gave you and the moments that you've shared with them, you just might be on the right track.

Mom, Terry, Chris, Doug, & Duke in 1962.

A Visit To Harvard

What does it mean to a guy balanced on the slippery slope of being over fifty and looking down at what might be the shortest half of his life, to visit Harvard, the Ivy League school? I asked myself that question a few times over the course of our visit to Boston and over the weeks before we left on our trip. My wife Rose and I decided to go to Boston, “for the fall foliage” but really there were quite a few underlying reasons. One of the biggest ones was this, “it is well at any price to have peace in the home”. I believe it was Agatha Christie who said it through Hercule Poirot in one of her novels. Whoever it was who first said it, I agree wholeheartedly with the sentiment!

I went because my wife wished to go. Also, the new Sony A77 DSLT camera was supposed to be available at that time and I was hoping to persuade her that I needed the new camera to photograph the lovely fall foliage. She would have fallen for it to, but as fate would have it, because of production problems and a flood in Thailand, I had to use my old camera, can you believe it!

Rose spent her early years in Eastern Canada, Newfoundland and Ontario, kicking around various army bases with her parents, her sister and her dog Sporty. She always goes on and on about the red leaves of the trees down east and I finally decided that if I could get a new camera out of the deal and it would end the “red leaves are soooooo beautiful” talk, then it would be well worth whatever it cost.

By the way, Alberta may not have red leaves (except along 97 Street North of 137 Ave.) but when it comes to dog stories, it has way smarter dogs. All of her stories about Sporty involve washing him with tomato juice because a skunk sprayed him, or pulling porcupine quills out of his nose or some other goofy thing like that. But in Alberta we breed amazingly smart dogs like “Duke” who was our family dog when I was a kid. Duke was a cross between Lassie, Rin Tin Tin, and that lovable little dog named Lou from the film, Cats and Dogs. He was an action figure of a dog, if he was a people, he would have been GI-Joe or Rambo, (but with a heart of gold). He was a German Shepherd and a very big, smart and opinionated dog from all of the stories my dad told. First off, he didn’t like policemen. I don’t know where he got that, I really don’t, well OK maybe I do, but I’m getting off track here so I’ll only tell you one story today about Duke.

Duke was so smart that while a certain eastern dog was still wondering why the sight of anything black and white, even a cat, made him cringe involuntarily and run for the hills, Duke would patiently wait on the little rug by the back door for his wet feet to dry so he wouldn’t get water on the hardwood floor. I kid you not, even though it must have bugged poor Duke that we kids ran all over like monkeys and he, the dog, was the one with manners.

But we didn’t go to Boston to talk about dogs and the rivalry between eastern Canada and the west doesn’t have a lot to do with dogs, or leaf colour for that matter. We went to Boston because it is steeped in history and it is one of the oldest cities in North America and it is beautiful and we thought it would be fun, and it was!

There was a lot to love about Boston and if I had to pick one thing, red leaves would not be it! As it turns out, it wasn’t a great year for “colour” as the tour bus driver called it. Oh Francis, what a character you are! This guy referred to himself in the third person, “Francis” he would say, “you have a heart of gold” or “Francis tries very hard for you folks, to find some color, yes he does.” He sounded a bit like Gollum from “Lord of the Rings” actually, if you can imagine Gollum saying, “Move that car, ya bum!”

Like most places that I’ve visited, it was the people that were the icing on the cake. All of the wonderful museums and restaurants and attractions and old churches and parks would mean very little if they weren’t peopled by “folk”. I may love to take pictures of the buildings and natural beauty of this world around us, but it really is the people who make it come alive, and the dogs and cats of course.

There are real live people who we interact with as we go about our business and move from place to place who make life special, but there are also those people from the past who made history and who are the soul of those places. Boston is a place like that, populated today and throughout the years with bigger than life people involved in bigger than life events.

You can’t go ten steps in Boston without hearing about Paul Revere and his midnight ride and, “The shot heard around the world.” If I hear one more reference to “the minute men”, or “the Boston Tea party” or “Bunker Hill”, euuuahhhh!!!!

I love history and all of this is fascinating, it really is, and I get tourism, I do, but as with all else in life we need a balanced approach. Boston has a great history and a great story with a place in American lore as a city fuelled by movers and shakers, but that’s the past. Today matters too!

Harvard, in nearby Cambridge, is an amazing place and for me it had a kind of magical aura that lingered and permeated every building, statue, museum, church and cobblestone that we stepped on, visited or passed by. It's steeped in history but still vibrant and alive today.

Sure MIT is newer and cooler in some circles, but HARVARD, what more is there to say? Harvard to me, is a special place and I’m not even sure why, but I loved it. I loved the atmosphere of clever, rushing students, clutching their Starbucks cups and talking with their heads together. I loved the fleet of bicycles that were everywhere and the tweed jackets and scarves and messenger bags of the Professors and students. I loved the Harvard Yard and the maples turning colour as the people sat under them reading or working on their laptops in one of the hundreds of brightly coloured chairs that looked like they could stand up to just about anything.

Harvard Yard

Harvard University, which celebrates its 375th anniversary in 2011, is the oldest institution of higher learning in the United States. Maybe I’m just a bit of a romantic when it comes to Harvard, and the reality would fall far short of the fantasy and the anticipation of being a part of something with so much history, that’s probably it I suppose. But one thing is sure, it makes you think! What if?



An e-mail to a friend

I really think I need to tell this story. A few years ago we were out at Moose Lake Gospel Camp and it was part way through the week and one night after the evening service had ended, (it wasn’t really over, but you know what I mean, a lot of people had wandered off for mug up or whatever) something special happened.

See if you can imagine the scene:

It was a hot summer night, so hot that in the old Tabernacle they had raised the sides up, they were on hinges so that when it was hot you could prop them open and let the cool evening air into the building. It was an absolutely perfect summer evening, not even any mosquitoes!

Rose and I and April were standing along one side where the walls were propped up and the worship team, which happened to be from NECF that year, were still playing. Many people had left and the worship team was very tired, but there was obviously something special happening, you could just feel it. I should say here that many times in the past I had a hard time really entering into worship. I was often distracted by what people were doing, what they were wearing, how the music sounded or noises or just what was going on in my own life and in my own head, or what the worship team looked like, you name it and it distracted me!

But that night God did something, he gave me a gift, (one of many over the years) that totally changed my concept of worship. Of course I knew intellectually what worship was supposed to mean, that we worshipped God because He asked us to, that it is an important part of our relationship with God and it’s one of the ways that we communicate with Him. Worship is one thing that we can do that we know pleases God. I knew all that, but I don’t think that I really got it, if you know what I mean.

As I said, it had turned into a bit of a marathon worship session and maybe 25 people were still left when I began to sense something happening, it was no longer the same old worship for me in the sense that I wasn’t completely still me. It was the weirdest thing, I felt like I was seeing the worshippers and the worship from god’s perspective. Not completely of course, but I got just enough of a glimpse that I think I gained an insight into just why we are called to worship God in that way.

You’ve probably seen those dramatic re-enactments of near death experiences when the sick person hovers up by the ceiling looking down at themselves? It was kind of like that. I saw the absolutely pure and beautiful faces of the worshippers, without the distractions that would normally cloud things. I could sense the pleasure that God felt as he received and communed with His people. I could see what worship should truly look like and how it was designed to be. It was a truly remarkable and wonderful and beautiful experience and back then I had no idea why I had received such a precious gift.

Of course I told Rose later that night and a few other people at camp, (Rose made me tell) but I have never put down in writing exactly what happened until now. Often we don’t know why God chooses to put people in our path, or why circumstances seem to throw certain people together. 

I know that The Alpha Course has brought many special people into my life. God has richly rewarded me through my participation in the Alpha Course in so many ways. It was through Alpha that I was nudged out of the pews, (so to speak) and into a position of leadership through service, and I will always be thankful for that. God could have used anyone to reach out to certain people, but He brought them to me and somehow, despite my weakness and inadequacies he spoke to them and brought them into a relationship with himself. It was such a blessing, and it gave me such confidence to write the eulogy for my dad and to be able to deliver it with faith and compassion. I feel God used even that to reach out to people in my family.

I love God. He loves us all and He wants each one of us to experience fully what it means to be in relationship with Him. That’s why He does these amazing things for us when we just can’t seem to get it on our own. Maybe God showed me that little glimpse of what worship means to him, partly so I could share it with you now. Maybe He wants you to be able to push past whatever barriers prevent you from really entering into the beauty of the full worship experience. I can’t say for sure, all I do know is that I felt compelled to send this out to you!

I wish you all the best, all the blessings that God has for you, all the adventures and all the abundant life that is God’s wish for those who Love Him and follow Him and serve Him. May you be counted among them!


Copyright - Doug Petry