What's the obsession about flaming pieces of charcoal?

I do have a counter on my website, though it's invisible. What's fascinating to me are the routes by which people end up on my website. Besides the regular readers (some of which I know, most of which I don't), I somehow end up on quite a few google searches. Do you know what the most common one is? I apparently come up quite a bit when you google 'heap burning coals on head' (try it!). What makes me wonder, however, is why so many people, all over the planet, are googling that particular phrase...

A normal blog post

This weekend has been particularly punishing, though I loved every bit of it. Today, having to accompany a parent to a doctor's appointment, I arrived early, and promptly took a two hour nap, which caused my parents to wonder if I was sick or not.
However, it's been a jam-packed session: Not only did I take in a few short-term mission reports, I then had to awake early to prep for my nephew's birthday party, hung around for that, made dinner for four and hosted a board games and dinner night, participated in worship for our baptism service, went to a luncheon reception for one of the newly dunked, hosted another small group meeting at my house, had barely shooed them out the door when a missionary serving in East Asia came over (on short notice; their agency needed a place for them to stay) for the night, for which we went for dinner and regaled each other with stories 'from the field'. Breakfast and tidying up this morning while my guest slept, followed by getting them safely to their next destination, resulted in me going to my parents' house to sleep. The end. No wonder I think my life outside of work is much more interesting than work itself! I suppose this also explains why I've been a bit sluggish in posting regularly!

Inspiring men

What is funny is who inspires me. This past weekend, I had gone to dinner with people who are all committed to the cause of eradicating child prostitution and trafficking in Cambodia. Sure, we had some good food, and some great desserts, but what thrilled me was the presence of men. Admittedly, I've known these men in this group for a while, but it encourages me in that they are two in number, in a sea of women committed to the cause.
Listening to them speak eloquently of what it means to them, as men, while confronting the causes of human trafficking, of dealing with their own notions of masculine sexuality, makes me admire and respect them all the more. The fact that they speak so boldly to other men, challenging their notion of what it means to "be a man", and encouraging them to face up to their own sexual desires and fears, such that they would also be free to fight on behalf of little girls is quite something to behold.
This ties into a dear friend of mine, who works with college aged students, mainly men, who lamented as to why men think it's cool to be apathetic and not to care. He has been trying to figure out that question in order to inspire his guys to seek the Kingdom, to be passionate, to really live.
I am not sure of the answer to that; I know it's multifactorial, and I certainly have some ideas as to why this is, but watching L and A talk, and seeing their passion for the liberation of thousands of little girls reminds me that though they are rare, men of nobility do indeed still walk amongst us.

Slow Food at it's best

So, I've been spending the last few free days that I've had at home, making preserves and sauces for the winter. So far, I've made apple crisp filling, apple butter and crushed tomatoes. I still have several jars more to make of apple butter, and then I'd like to think that I'm done for the autumn - we shall see how that goes.
I think there is a lot of tranquility and beauty in preparing and stirring produce, making sauces and jams, and thinking of the people who provided me with the fruits and vegetables that I'm preserving. It is nice to think that all of the apples and tomatoes I will be eating this winter are fresh, organic and made with lots of love by people who care for me! The careful stirring, the addition of spices and salts, the aromas that rise from my little kitchen, the bubbling of the canning pot - all of these things bring a simple joy and quiet, and harkens me back to a time when this was the only way to prepare for the winter's cold. Seeing the long lines of jars, with their bejeweled reds and golds, bring about a sense of accomplishment and beauty to my pantry shelves!
If we still lived in a society where we were wholly dependent on the abundance of our land, and the mercy of God, to feed us, then this would be the way we would be fed when the howling winter winds blow. However, we have largely abandoned that; I know I can easily find a banana, or a tomato, on Toronto streets in the dead of winter if I so choose. It sometimes seems to me that we have lost the acknowledgement of God's great and generous hand in providing for our very nourishment by His seasons, as we have taken control over the food supply, allowing us to have all the food we want, whenever we want it. This is particularly poignant today, as it is Thanksgiving. Our abundance of food consumed this weekend is often sadly separated from the original celebration; the original settlers would thank our great Father for providing yet another good harvest and for their well-stocked larders for the coming winter, celebrating with the abundance of what they had gathered in. Today, we are no longer sure where anything we put in our mouths come from, whether it's the tinned pumpkin pie filling, or the fruit from everywhere (and nowhere), or the disproportionate turkey. Now, I love Thanksgiving dinner as much as the next guy, but I often wonder how deep our thanks can be to God the Father, if we are not truly dependent on His hand for our daily bread...

Better than a kick in the teeth...

I will have some more interesting things to post in the future, as soon as I get some time, but I do need to share this story, even though it didn't happen to me.
So the other day in the clinic, the unfortunate doc who was on got struck by a pretty bad stomach flu, so was running back and forth from the bathroom between seeing patients. She, of course, could not go home and leave the clinic unmanned, for, heaven forbid that a doctor be allowed to be sick and go home from the office early. She was trying her best to keep up with the onslaught without getting into big trouble with her bowels.
One patient comes in, and, because she had been waiting a whole (gasp!) twenty minutes to be seen by the doctor, starts making a ruckus with the secretaries. She complains how if she was in a life and death situation, then the clinic would be in biiiiig trouble for making her wait so long to see a doctor. It's explained to her that the doctor's gone to the bathroom, and, frankly, if it was a life or death situation, she'd be far better off in the local emergency department, for, in a small clinic, if you're in a life or death situation, death will surely win. She then states, bald-faced to the doctor, "How dare you go to the bathroom? You guys are not allowed to go to the bathroom when you're on shift!".
Personally, I would've punched her in the face, or at the very least, refused to see her, especially under the circumstances. However, our good doctor did not, and asked how she could help this jerk. Well, her so-called life and death situation was that she needed a new requisition to go for a test, for she had had her previous one eaten by her dog. That, my friends, is the self-centredness and idiocy that makes up the Canadian public, I'm afraid...

Lying bastard!

I can't believe the audacity of people and their sheer selfishness... the other day, a girl comes into the clinic, saying that she had had a vacation day several Fridays previously, but Human Resources was asking for a doctor's note for the day. I clarified, as that didn't make sense to me; why would Human Resources require a physician's note for what is a legitimate vacation day? She stated that was 'just the way' that her company worked.
That totally didn't make sense to me, and I tried to clarify several times as to why her employer would need a doctor's sick note for a vacation day. At any rate, I then shrugged my shoulders, and proceeding to write a note about how this patient had had a vacation day several Fridays beforehand, but that Human Resources was asking for a physician's note, so I was complying by writing a physician's note. Of course, our sick notes do have a fee associated with them, charged to the patient.
So she picks up her note, reads it, and then comes back to me, saying, "No, I need a note saying that I was at the doctor's office that day.".
"Excuse me??", I say. You had a vacation day, you were never seen by a physician that day several weeks prior, it was conveniently a Friday, and I am certainly not going to write a note for you saying you were seeing a doctor, for, you see, that would be LYING and FRAUD. Somehow she seemed totally unfazed by this, but then demanded her money back for the note that would not have gotten very far with her employer. I'd like to say that I denied her her money, just to teach her a lesson about lying, but I didn't. I am hoping, even though I don't believe in karma, that she gets something coming to her for trying to deceive me.