Perspectives with Rev. James Tripp

I love October. I love Thanksgiving. I love autumn. Seriously, what’s not to love?  Nature becomes a treat for all the senses with the changing colours, the cool temperatures, the smells of roast turkey and pumpkin pie… the taste and touch of comfort. 

Every October I’m reminded of a famous Bible verse, which I’m almost positive most of you have heard at one point or another. It begins: “To everything there is a season, a time for every purpose under the sun.”

Autumn is a time for change. It’s a time when the earth takes a much needed rest, readying herself for a full period of growth in the coming spring.

This past weekend, with the Seaway District High School graduation and the Thanksgiving holiday we found “a time to weep and a time to laugh; a time to mourn and a time to dance.” It was a time to reminisce over memories of yesterday and talk about our hopes for tomorrow.

Graduates have entered a new phase of their lives and, just in time for Thanksgiving, they were able to share their successes (and disappointments) with friends and family. Change has embraced them and they’re being challenged to step up and be their best.

As teens transition toward adulthood, residents in the SD&SG riding prepare to make a transition of their own: a political riding that has long been red has emphatically changed its colour to blue.

Conservative Jim McDonell is replacing retired Liberal MPP Jim Brownell. 

There is “a time to keep silent and a time to speak.” On October 6th, did you speak up by voting or did you stay silent? How did the choice you made on the 6th contribute to the outcome of the election?

Will our new MPP be able to meet the challenges of his new position? More to the point, will he be able to make things happen for this riding when he is a Progressive Conservative working in the shadows of a Liberal Premier? On that note, will our Liberal premier be able to work effectively with a minority government? 

With so many questions left unanswered, can we be sure of anything? Yes, we can. “To everything there is a season…”

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Do you know what the hardest part of dealing with a major holiday is? The extra goodies.

On so-called ordinary days of the year, I zero in on sweets with the tracking intensity of a smart bomb. (A two day old slice of commercial pecan pie locked inside an iron safe at the bottom of a concrete bunker would not escape me.) 

You can imagine how challenging it is for a perpetual dieter like me, therefore, to be confronted by major holidays. Surrounded on those days by dinner tables, bakery shelves and candy counters literally groaning  under loads of extra goodies.

It can make you crazy.

And there is no use pointing out that all I need to control my cravings is a good dose of will power. If that actually worked, I wouldn’t wake up the morning after a holiday,  my head throbbing, to discover a stained saw clutched in my hand and the frozen remains of a caramel fudge cake scattered around me.

Diet. One of the vilest four letter words in the English language. 

Yet for most of us, it is a word that we constantly use in even casual conversations. We openly discuss preparing for a diet,  being on a diet, recovering from a diet, or purchasing billions of dollars worth of books with titles like The Hollywood Dog Biscuit and Warm Tonic Water Diet.

Unfortunately, the warning signs of overindulgence are all too easily spotted. 

The inability to bend over in our jeans. Or do them up. Realizing the driver’s seat is already as far back as it can ever go. Pausing to check out one’s stomach profile on a bank of motion activated computers, only to see a sign pop up on the monitor which reads “continued on next screen.” 

Serial dieters confront  daily dilemmas. Brussels sprouts versus double chunk chocolate ice cream? A plain tossed salad, dressing on the side, versus five cheese lasagna with garlic bread? 

Some one actually shared with me her foolproof solution for coping with these issues.

She maintains that all she has to do is rigorously diet every single day of the year except for two hours on an official, designated, national holiday! In those two hours, she claimed she could dive into the forbidden goodies: but only for that fixed amount of time,  and only on specific holidays. 

I really think her designated holiday solution may have merit.

And may I take this opportunity, here and now, to remind everyone of the following lesser known holidays: National Tooth Decay Day (Oct. 20), Celebration of the Invention of Velcro Day (Aug. 18), International Yodelling Day (Jan. 13), Replacing Furnace Filters Day (April 16), Civic Take Down Your Christmas Decorations Day (July 27)…

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