Each Day Holds Surprise + Privacy, what Privacy? + Open the Door!

Good Morning from Prince Edward Island, 

Thank you for letting me into your world today. I hope you had a peaceful and stress-free week.

Let’s have a cuppa?

I brought my favourite morning tea to start the day. Darjeeling Ambootia a flowery and full-bodied tea; harvested on the Ambootia tea plantation on the Himalayan mountains’ edge.

PEI Covid News + PEI Weather

I am happy for this family—what a great day!

It is lovely that we can celebrate another’s good fortune.

Each day holds a surprise. But only if we expect it can we see, hear, or feel it when it comes to us. Let's not be afraid to receive each day's surprise, whether it comes to us as sorrow or as joy. It will open a new place in our hearts, a place where we can welcome new friends and celebrate more fully our shared humanity. ~ Henri Nouwen

Thinking about last week, all I can think about is the book—Blood in the Water by Silver Donald Cameron. Three readers of this blog wrote suggesting this book. Oh my, I loved it.

A shortened description from Indigo.

A brutal murder in a small Maritime fishing community raises urgent questions of right and wrong, and even the nature of good and evil, in this masterfully told true story.

In June 2013, three upstanding citizens of a small Cape Breton town cold-bloodedly murdered their neighbour, Phillip Boudreau, at sea. While out checking their lobster traps, two Landry cousins and skipper Dwayne Samson saw Boudreau in his boat, the Midnight Slider, about to vandalize their lobster traps.

This story is not about lobster but the grand themes of power and law, security and self-respect. It raises a disturbing question: Are there times when taking the law into your own hands is not only understandable but the responsible thing to do?

My favourite books are the ones that make me laugh and cry. And this was one of them. 

I learned more about our regional history, especially the Acadian community.

In my early teens, we had a city mayor who was a well-known bigot against the French community. I didn’t understand; they were some of my best of friends. I loved their humour, loyalty and camaraderie.

One loyal friend is worth ten thousand relatives. ~ Euripides

It was all too confusing to me; I wanted to run from this city for several reasons. Mainly to get away from the negative discourse all around me. Looking for peace, an opportunity to find it revealed itself Christmas of ‘72. At 15, I would leave school and move to North Carolina with a golf family to begin my journey of becoming a golf pro.

After three weeks of life’s lessons in a segregated North Carolina, I decided it best to drive back with the family and finish high school.

Heading back didn’t get me closer to an understanding of why people dislike other people. Language or colour, really?

Do you want peace? I learned it is about the heart. Show me your spirit. Not your rancour towards others.

I am sharing a bit below from Blood in the Water, page 166.

"Privacy?" cried a friend. "Privacy? I'm an Acadian, me—I don't know what that is."

I came to realize that although I didn't have much privacy, I didn't greatly care. I wasn't doing anything I was ashamed of, and my neighbours' attitude towards one another's foibles-and mine was one of amusement. Over time, I came to feel that the two great Acadian values are truth and tolerance. Acadians want to know what's going on, want to understand who you are and what you do. There had never been a freelance writer here before, and people were intensely curious. What kind of exotic bird was this, perching in their local tree? Eventually my neighbours decided I was a tradesman, like a pipefitter or an electrician working construction. My home was a base, I had no one employer, I was highly skilled, and I travelled a lot. It's an excellent analogy-far better than the mystical nonsense about the tortured role of the artist so common in literary and cultural circles--and it satisfied my neighbours' passionate need to understand.

But they never used their knowledge to wound me. I was alone and I welcomed company, so people dropped in, invited me to parties and barbecues. One time, early on, the man filling my order in a lumberyard asked if I was married. No, I said, divorced.

"But you got a woman wit' you?"

"No," I said. He fell silent and looked out to sea for several moments. I wondered what he was thinking. Then he turned to me, looking apologetic.

"I don't know any women," he said sadly.

While writing today, I have been listening to an Apple Music playlist called Piano Chill. 

When we honestly ask ourselves which person in our lives means the most to us, we often find that it is those who, instead of giving advice, solutions, or cures, have chosen rather to share our pain and touch our wounds with a warm and tender hand. ~ Henri Nouwen

Many of you send me book recommendations; keep them coming. I’d love to read more Maritime writers and will start seeking.

On book recommendations, here is a neat site. People well known and not so well known list the books that they recommend. Most Recommended Books 

How are you doing?

Are you stuck?

The painter Vincent van Gogh on taking action:

“I tell you, if one wants to be active, one mustn’t be afraid to do something wrong sometimes, not afraid to lapse into some mistakes. To be good — many people think that they’ll achieve it by doing no harm — and that’s a lie, and you said yourself in the past that it was a lie. That leads to stagnation, to mediocrity…

You don’t know how paralyzing it is, that stare from a blank canvas that says to the painter, "You can’t do anything." The canvas has an idiotic stare and mesmerizes some painters so that they turn into idiots themselves. Many painters are afraid of the blank canvas, but the blank canvas is afraid of the truly passionate painter who dares — and who has once broken the spell of "You can’t."

Life itself likewise always turns towards one an infinitely meaningless, discouraging, dispiriting blank side on which there is nothing, any more than on a blank canvas. But however meaningless and vain, however dead life appears, the man of faith, of energy, of warmth, and who knows something, doesn’t let himself be fobbed off like that. He steps in and does something..."

It is the weekend….let’s dance!

I wish you a lovely weekend and a great week ahead. 

Thank you to Bev, DeFrench, Derinda, Lillian, Marcia, Mary, Molly, Murdock, Susan, Tati, Victoria for taking the time to leave a comment last week. I appreciate it.

With love from Prince Edward Island,

Bruce & Millie

Ps. Your Morning Smile.