Gratitude

I realized the other day that I haven’t done any blogging in a while, and I think it’s because things are still pretty difficult around The Dale, and within myself. Many good things have happened… and over all it’s been tough slogging. I don’t want to downplay or diminish the hard things, but I do…

The gift of giving

As December gets rolling, everything around us tells us to think about giving gifts. Like I said in my last post, I have a lot of thoughts about this… but for today I want to ponder an alternative way of thinking about gift giving, which applies all year long. Central to the vision/mission statement of…

Experiences of redemption and gezelligheid

November has been a very full month so far! I am part of a team of that worked together over the last few months to plan a conference for young women in ministry, which we called “Junia’s Daughters” (Junia is mentioned in Romans 16:7, as being “outstanding among the apostles”. Her name was mistranslated “Junias”-…

Home is where the heart is

Erinn and I have noticed a distinct increase in concerns surrounding housing recently. A couple of people are fearing eviction because of bed bugs. Others are hoping for a more stable living situation, or just any living situation for a few months over the winter. The changing of the seasons is definitely contributing to the…

The beauty of shooting the breeze

I just got home from outreach in Parkdale. It was a cold, rainy night, so not many people were out and about. We ended up spending the majority of our time in Tim Horton’s, chatting with friends from the community who had joined us on our walk, and friends that we happened upon at Tim’s.…

We’re on each other’s team

A good friend and I often remind each other that “we’re on each other’s team”. By this we mean that we’ve got each other’s backs, we’re cheering for each other, and we believe in each other. I’ve been noticing lots of examples of this around the Dale recently too: A woman in distress came up…

Welcoming the stranger

Today a group of junior youth from Stouffville visited Parkdale. Together, we did some cleaning in one of the spaces that we use throughout the week, bought some more plants for our garden plot, and talked about what The Dale is/does/stands for. And then we split into groups and walked around the neighbourhood. As we…

Stumbling along The Way

Erinn wrote a great post this morning about a question that we sometimes hear… “What difference does The Dale make?” I really couldn’t have answered that question any better, so here is her response: http://erinnoxford.wordpress.com/2014/06/18/whats-the-diff/ One of the lines reads: “The journey is not a straight-line: it is marked with fumbles and missteps and requires…