Transitions

It's been a long time since I posted to this blog.  I'd like to say there was a good reason, but I'm not sure there is except that I felt very busy, whether I was or not.

But this post does mark a number of transitions:
  The first transition is from Lent to Easter.  Guyanese really come out for Lent, not so much for Easter [except to fly kites on Easter Day and Monday], which seems odd to me, since Easter [Day and Season] is much more celebrative than Lent.  I think they like to feel penitent for six weeks, but since they like to party the rest of the year, see no need to join the party which is Easter.  I could be wrong on that.
   We are approaching the transition between Easter and Pentecost - only one more Sunday of Easter.  Then we begin the long season of Pentecost - what we used to call the Season of Trinity and what Roman Catholics refer to simply as Ordinary Time.

May 26, marks a different kind of transition.  It is Independence Day in Guyana - only since 1966 has Guyana been an independent member of the Commonwealth of Nations [aka the British Commonwealth].  To commemorate this glorious event, the Parish had a 'fun day' at #63 Beach - that would be the beach that is behind [in front of?] #63 Village.  The British didn't bother to name all the little places where people lived; they often just gave them numbers.  But speaking of the British and independence therefrom, many people here still remember life under British rule [or remember hearing the stories from their parents].  There is a certain nostalgia for those days - when the streets were clean, when the water in the pipes ran all the time and with enough pressure to bring it all the way to the second floor, when there were lovely parks and concerts therein, when Guyana was the 'breadbasket of the Caribbean.  But what is overlooked at times is that there was a ceiling to achievement - there were no Guyanese managers, no Guyanese engineers, few Guyanese owners - and they only small.

So we took the day at the beach and had fun.  The bus we hired was not big enough for everyone, so we took The Pastor and myself and seven others to the beach [our car, if you recall, nominally holds 5, but this is Guyana]. We played cricket on the beach [a first for us North Americans] and we splashed around a bit, though that's not something most did. There was a lot of drinking - a normal thing for any Guyanese celebration - and a lot of walking and talking with folks we know and folks we just met.

And let's not forget that the Pastor found another snake - this time a live one - another 3-metre Anaconda which I was invited by its owner to photograph, for a price.  

 Then there have been those other transitions - three funerals in less than week and one more coming up.  We keep in mind that this world is transient, that we look beyond our current fun or past political arrangements.  We are already in the Kingdom of God, but not yet.  We are strangers and pilgrims on earth awaiting the fulfillment of our Faith.

But as Christ came to give us Life and life abundant, we celebrate whenever we can - holding snakes to amaze our friends, and frolicking on the beach.

Puppies and grandchildren

There is a dog that lives at Lutheran Courts in New Amsterdam - a bitch, to use the proper term as it was intended.  From stories we know that it has been here since it was a pup.  How old it is or how many litters it has had we do not know.  But she has had a litter now, just on Sunday [April 27], and they all seem to be doing fine.  We moved them into the garage from this dirt pile, so they can continue to stay cool, but aren't quite so dirty.

What I found so peculiar and somewhat annoying is that people refer to them as our 'grans.'  While I may not be quite as ferociously dog-loving as PETA members, I am all for the humane treatment of animals.  But I stop short of adopting them into my family, calling the pups of the 'parish dog' our grandchildren.  I am not related to these animals in any significant way.  The puppies are cute, and the mother now allows us to touch her and even her pups, and we have even bought dog food so that mother has enough nutrition to properly nurse her young.  But that is a long way from calling them our grandchildren.
   Yet we have known people who will call them just that.  Or when they take care of their children's pet, they will say they have the grandchild staying with them, especially if there are no human grandchildren. Perhaps it is because couples are often delaying having children, but not pets, that we collectively have started referring to pets as if they are human relatives.  Or perhaps for the animal rights crowd or childless couples the line between human and animal is increasingly blurred.  For whatever reason, I think we can respect and even love animals without making them part of the family in quite that way.

Just to be clear:  This is our granddaughter, Rowan, who is recently 2 years old and happily [most of the time] living in Regina, Saskatchewan.  She does not have siblings with fur who live here in New Amsterdam.  She, too, is cute, though in a way different from the puppies.  She will not meet these pups because they will be left behind when we leave in another 13 months.  Her parents have a cat which we have never referred to as our grandchild.

Let us not be confused about the differences between humans and animals just because we are more alike than either are like vegetables.