Linda Hoye's Blog, page 58

Day Begins

It’s dark when I rise these days. Still night, really. Certainly too dark to step out on the deck and greet the morning (I stopped doing that a few weeks ago when I encountered a black, hard-shelled creature the size of a Volkswagen). I sit in a wing chair near the window where, eventually, I’ll

Continue reading →

Questions, Six Months In

On March 11, 2020, the World Health Organization (WHO) declared the COVID-19 outbreak to be a global pandemic. We’re six months into this thing, friends. Half a year has gone by as we have wrestled with trying to understand, explain, and make our way through day by uncertain day. Are we stronger for having come

Continue reading →

Remember When We Valued People Above Politics?

There was something extraordinary about the server who brought a Belgium waffle piled high with whipped cream and strawberries and a plate of bacon, eggs, hashbrowns, and toast to the table where Gerry and Makiya were enjoying a morning of grandfather/granddaughter time. She was notable enough that Makiya told me about their interaction and the

Continue reading →

In-Between

In the morning, when Gerry takes Maya out for her morning constitutional, he finds evidence of a visitor on the front lawn and in the evening we watch three hungry black bears amble by on the other side of the fence in the back yard. In between, amid hugs and laughter (and maybe a few tears),

Continue reading →

A Divine Moment

I’m going to the community garden to water and pick blushing tomatoes. I pick early, allowing the fruit to ripen in the safety of my laundry room, to foil destructive garden thieves who are apt to pluck growing things from garden plots at this time of year. My laundry room is a party of ripening

Continue reading →

A New Season

Well, we did it. We made it through spring and now on this the last day of August, for all intents and purposes, we’re wrapping up a topsy-turvy summer. It’s dark when I rise now, and there’s an unmistakable chill in the air. Even in the afternoon when it’s warm (or hot—there’s still a good measure

Continue reading →

An Ordinary Monday

There’s nothing especially remarkable about the sky right now. I’ve been watching it gradually grow light, and for a while I thought it might be spectacular. Not so. Not yet. There are more days like this than there are extraordinary ones—in terms of sunrises and experiences. We must learn to appreciate the ordinary, and see through it

Continue reading →

The Better Work

I will spend the rest of my life figuring out how to do these things, doing them, not doing them, and trying again to do them well. Whether I worship with others in a sanctuary, a cathedral, a park, on ZOOM; in solitude; or while walking through a forest, along a beach, or tending a

Continue reading →

Mid-Summer

It’s hot. Kamloops summer hot. Oh, how we love it! I head to the garden early to harvest beautiful tri-colour beans. Back home I wash, snap, blanch, and tuck them in freezer bags. I sit on the deck and read what was once my favourite book (The Velvet Room by Zilpha Keatley Snyder). I lost

Continue reading →

How’r We Doing?

Another Monday in COVID time and we’re all still holding our breath a little—or a lot, depending on the hour or the day. It’s the last one in July and how in the world did we get here already? How’r you holding up?  In other times (BP: before the pandemic), when someone we knew was

Continue reading →