The following text may have been generated by Optical Character Recognition, with varying degrees of accuracy. Reader beware!

THE WEEKEND OUTLOOK Friday MV OH Page 13 Religion God is a baby whose work is never done Jim Ryan Trinity Sunday Matthew 28 May 26 A Baby Work Is Never Done Our five month old baby is the hardest worker in our household No this another story about the recession and unemployment Us a story about the way babies push out against reality extending the temporal and spatial limits of their world This sounds like a too serious ad in the Globe and Mail for an ultra serious job But as Fay Weldon writes her novel The Hearts and Lives of Men no one has to work harder than babies She writes that they have to learn how to touch to grasp to sit to crawl to stand and to utter their first few words We re not at the sitting crawl standing or first words phase We ve watched the touching and grasping phase We been enjoying the endless experimentation child psychologists call it vocalization that precedes the first word phase From my point of view this experimentation is far richer than the first Mama or Papa Last weekend I was sitting down with my feet up at rest physically and mentally a tion I enjoy But I noticed that while baby was also sitting down with his feet up he certainly at rest He was moving constantly head eyes mouth tongue arms hands fingers legs feet and toes He was follow ing every sound and movement in the backyard while at the same time testing his vocal cords checking out hand mouth coor dotation and doing some leg While he was doing all this discovering his body and his en vironment and the relationship between the two I was just sit ting there God if we could only retain some of this constant effort It is work after all the work of discovery of self society and en 1 His work is done with good humor Even if he wakes up with a cold he wakes up with a smile 2 His work isn t selfcentered He constantly sending out con links with others In fact he s a pretty good barometer for the psychic and emotional pressure in our household His work t selfish He shares his smiles and laugher freely Springtime in Ontario The ideal Workplace Combine a five month old in with spnngtime in Ontario and you have a setting for cons tant delight and discovery Everything is extraordinary and every moment is fresh and new Remember your first with cool green grass on bare Religion and Reality by Jim Ryan feet or a delicate red poppy or a warm breeze or the sun on bare legs Of course not Watch a baby and it will come back God Is a Baby Whose Work Is Never Done This is beginning to sound to me like a pretty good metaphor for God Usually we picture God as an old man with a long white beard A good simile if what we want is wisdom and experience But sometimes wisdom and ex penence are limiting Does God want to be wise all the time What happens if we picture God as a five month old inf anf If God is five months old heshe will at you and grasp your finger no matter how much you screwed up in your life A five month old God care if your hair is thin or dirty or unkempt or if your hands are thntic or you smell If you can smile that s enough Wow There s a work skill the ability to smile A five month old God care if you re unemployed or homeless or haven t paid your taxes in years or whether you re hooked up to a respirator or have been evicted from a trailer park He still laugh and spit up on you and rub his wet hands on your face A five month old God will get you up m the middle of the night even if you have to get up for a job interview in the morning He II scream out at you if you forget he s there even if you have to prepare for your next commit tee meeting And then he 11 laugh and kick his legs and wrap his arms around your neck Having God wrap his arms around your neck feels pretty good Mid Recession PostGulf The work of the Trinity is never done whether that work is as Creator Redeemer or Consoler Even in this springtime in Halton Hills mid recession post Gulf War God is Creating and Redeeming and Consoling God never stops What about us When did we stop creating redeeming or con soling Are we too old or too young or too untalented or too uneducated or too busy to create redeem or console I don t believe it Empty head or heart Tolerance condemned as passive By Rev KenYlnger Pastor GraceBapllstChurch Hornby Love Beyond Tolerance In the Herald s Education Week supplement Shem Hat field expressed her concerns about the increased evidence of racism in our society That con is well founded Racism and prejudice he very near the surface and in times of economic stress and constitu tional crises they will be even more evident Prejudice is pre judging It is making a judge ment before one has sufficient knowledge of the person or situa tion In a TV age of news stones with no context of marketing images rather than realities and where twominute editorials are the deepest thoughts we are con fronted with is it any wonder we do not take the time to think before we act or research before we pass The inability to think critically is a root of prejudice The great rights advocate Rev Mar tin Luther King said it best in one of his sermons There is an almost universal quest for easy answers and half baked solutions Nothing pains some people more than having to think What many people use as their foundation for relating with those who are different than they are is images they have from hearsay When most people think of pre they think of slavery and repression but what about not renting your basement to an East Indian family or not letting your daughter marry an Italian Most prejudice is subtle and most peo ple would say they don t hate anyone What s good for them is fine with me But tolerance is not the solution to prejudice Tolerance says You do what you want 1 11 do want I want and as long as we don t bug each other it s OK Tolerance does not have to think or act It does not demand we get to know anything about others Tolerance never gets to the roots of understanding Tolerance does not take a Black History course nor does it try to learn the geography of Central America to understand the Salvadoran next door Indeed tolerance can be harmful Not all ideas and behaviors should be tolerated Hitler s programme of genocide should never have been tolerated Drug abuse should not be tolerated it should be dealt with By REVEREND DALE Assistant Pastor of Halton Gospel Temple Empty Head or Empty Heart Have you ever been told that you have an empty head One of my sisters relayed to me an mci dent involving her threeyear old son in which the above thought was conveyed On one particular day this three year old son Paul by name was told that he was going to go to Grandma and Grandpa to spend the night As with most threeyearolds he looked for ward with great anticipation to sleeping at his grandparent s house That night Paul reached the special destination and before long was sawing logs With the first crack of dawn Paul set his saw aside and scampered to Grandad s bedroom Unfortunately upon arrival Grandpa still had his saw running in overdrive This however was not going to deter a young excited grandson from be ing with his grandfather so Paul silently slipped in beside sleeping beauty and began his wait While waiting he thought of all the neat things he would do that day In the midst of his thinking he took his hand and placed it upon an unsuspecting head Grandpa s head most of which is bereft of hair This early morning massage quickly reviv sleeping beauty and started some conversation Suddenly from the lips of threeyearold Paul came this powerful perception Grandpa you have an empty head What a glorious way for balding grandad to start his day to be told that he has an empty head I m sure he chuckled and was glad that his grandson perception was not literally true When I heard about this inci dent I too chuckled at my nephew words but then pondered their true and deeper significance I considered those in our society who tend to live life with an empty head or rather an empty heart They pursue people position and prosperity yet find in the end that such pursuit is empty and void of fulfillment in the truest sense of the word The French mathematician and philosopher Pascal echoed this truth when he stated that There is a God shaped vacuum in the hear tof every man which cannot be satisfied by any created thing but only by God the creator The honest empty hearted person will have to admit that Pascal statement is true because a God shaped vacuum can never be ultimately ruled by people position or even prosperity These pleasure pursuits will always come up short A God shaped vacuum can only be filled and satisfied by Creator God In John 10 Jesus said that He came to give life and that to the fullest extent He can and wants to fill the emptiest heart to give true and everlasting fulfill ment Mavbe you have never been told you have an empty head but could it be that you have an empty heart CHURCH DIRECTORY DENOMINATIONAL PENTECOSTAL ALL PEOPLES CHURCH DELIVERANCE CENTRE SW Corner 7 Bible Study Worship Deliverance Sunday 10 30 am 7 Wednesday 00 pm We Provide Children Church Nursery Service English toItalian Translation George A 792 CHURCH OF ST ALBAN THE MARTYR NEW APOSTOLIC CHURCH WHERE APOSTLES Sunday School 9 a SERVICES 500p m Wednesdays 8 m HALTON HILLS CONGREGATION Ma SI Sou Ac on Hoc S A HEARTY WELCOME TO AIL Good Value Home Insurance Helen Glllon Keith Johnston When it comts to home good means complete protection for vour home or condominium coerage prompt claims settlement competitive rates Good value also means ing vour policies backed by a company you can trust The Cooperators We ve built our reputation by providing friendly and efficient service for over years That just one of the reasons why we re Canada s leading multiline insurance company with more than offices nationwide Cill The Cooperators for home insurance Good Value From People You Can the cooperator InsuranceFinancial Services 8770131