Buckley’s Medicines

I know, I know. My blog postings are all over the thematic spectrum. One day it’s theology, the next painting, and another day, today, it’s Buckley’s.

I am 67 years of age and until this week I had never tasted the medicine that advertises that it tastes terrible but it works. I suppose that the ads convinced me. But this week I became congested and Christine who had a bit of a cold starting last week purchased a bottle of Buckley’s and was soon over the cold symptoms. Of course she willingly ingests awful tasting stuff, such as liquid oil of Oregano for a sore throat. Then conversations with her for the rest of the day invoke memories of turkey stuffing. I still can’t do that but I did try Buckley’s.

Well I tried Buckley’s and true to the company word, I shuddered and shook when I swallowed it. Fortunately, Christine had a chaser of orange juice for me to wash down the lingering aftertaste. If you smell it first it will turn you off. Buckley’s website answers the question for us. What makes it taste so bad? It’s a blend of unique herbal ingredients. I recall my mother rubbing camphor on my chest as a child. That’s in there. Camphor is a mild expectorant and respiratory stimulant with some mild anesthetic and antiseptic properties. It contains Menthol which decreases nasal congestion through local anesthetic action and stimulation of cold receptors with resultant relief of symptoms of bronchitis, sinusitis, and nasal congestion. It has Balsam, yes liquid oleoresin from Abies Balsamea, a plant found in Canada and Northern U.S. from Virginia to Minnesota. Balsams have traditionally been used as an expectorant for coughs and sore throats. Then there is Pine Needle Oil. Who would have thunk it? It has historically been used as an expectorant for the treatment of coughs and chronic bronchitis. Finally Tincture of Capsicum which has been traditionally used as a counter-irritant to soothe conditions of the throat.
And that’s it. And Buckley’s have rubs and meds for kids as well.

By the end of the first day, Buckley’s not only removed the symptoms but I fully improved by mid second day. I love this stuff and it’s no sugar, no caffeine, no anything bad. It’s all good, and it tastes horrible. Get well.

Do we change the Gospel Model to Reach Newer Generations?

People who are stanch advocates of the veracity of the Christian Gospel will find it difficult to entertain the notion that a modified gospel may be necessary to reach different generations. After all, the celebrated good news is only ‘good’ because it remedies something so horribly ‘bad.’ Allow me to describe first the conventional understanding of the Gospel, and then suggest a conversation point.

Here is an abbreviated gospel summary. God is holy and created the first human creatures with the capacity to obey or defy God’s command. Although the consequence of disobedience was unambiguous, the insubordination of early humans infected all humanity subjecting it to God’s wrath and the punishment of death and hell after physical death. The good news comes because God’s mercy provided His divine Son Jesus Christ as a stand-in to experience God’s punishment and all who with simple trust in Christ as God’s Son and personal Saviour are exempted from this punishment because they are adjudicated as righteous now.

That’s the model with which the Christian Church has developed. What if the newest generations, like the iGens do not identify with the presenting issues that compel people to respond to God’s grace? What if iGens do not possess a sense of morality, which is a robust sense of right and wrong? That is the premise of Alan Mann’s book, Atonement for a Sinless Society. If you are going to stake you eternal hope of Jesus based on a sense that without him we are wrong and sinful and condemned, Mann argues that the iGen doesn’t feel that need. He believes that iGens do not feel guilt for sin as much as they feel ashamed when they don’t achieve something they should accomplish.

So the notion then develops that a different model of the gospel and of evangelism is required to reach these generations. Instead of heaping on the guilt, inundate them with the life of Jesus. Teach the life of Jesus, live out the life of Jesus and ultimately make him real. This is Jesus as seen in the lives of people genuinely filled with compassion rather than Jesus as revealed by institutional religion. They will like Jesus but perhaps not the church. The church may be too political, judgmental, organized, fundamentalist and chauvinistic whereas Jesus is obvious and real in the lives of believers who listen, help, serve, and heal.

Alan Mann, Atonement for a Sinless Society
Dan Kimball, They Like Jesus But Not the Church: Insights from Emerging Generations. Kimball on Youtube
Scot McKnight, The Blue Parakeet
Images of Jesus personality profile designed by North England Institute for Christian Education

Read Scot McKnight’s article The Gospel for iGens in the summer issue of Leadership Journal at LeadershipJournal.net

What are the real lessons here? I am pretty sure I don't have to answer this for you. I have to pull up my socks.

HI, MY NAME IS RON, AND I AM A DOLT

I have begun my fourth week as an invalid. It was my birthday three Sundays ago. I was upset - not about the birthday, but some difference of opinion I had with Christine. I admit it. I cannot now recall the nature of the disagreement. That’s usually the way it goes with events like this. The cause remains obscure for all time and the consequences are born, like forever.

It was supposed to go like this. Nana and Papa were taking the grandchildren for an afternoon escapade at White Rock beach and a stop at Andy’s ice cream parlor. Later we would meet at Jeff’s and Gina’s for my birthday family dinner at 6 pm. Nana (that’s Christine) was car seating all of our grandchildren into Tim’s and Cari’s van. Papa (that’s me) was upstairs in my studio. In a dumb man’s hurry I catapulted down our double flight of stairs, intending to make an immediate left turn down the hall and through the kitchen and laundry room and out the rear door to catch Christine before she left. Yep, I had been mad enough to say, “I’m not going.” Now I had suddenly changed my mind which is a stupid man’s prerogative. I feel at the moment as though I am attending a Dolt’s Anonymous meeting. “Hi, my name is Ron and I am a dolt.”

I customarily handle my physical weight quite well thank you. Never mind that I am forty pounds heavier than when Christine married me. I am confident about the strength of my legs. Can you hear me singing “I am invincible?” I powered my body from the third carpeted step to plant my right sandal foot on the hard wood and push off in one impressive and speedy move. All of my weight came down on that right foot which in the instant it impacted the hard wood floor, it folded first over to the right and then the left, noisily snapping bone from ligaments all around the ankle.

In that moment, I crumpled in a shrieking heap like some soldier stepping on an explosive device. I called in terror, “Christine, I need you!” I didn’t care about the irony of the admission just then. The pain was excessive, intensified by a rapid terrifying glance at my ankle which was now unrecognizable for its swollen size. We quickly put ice to the leg and Christine took the children to the beach. And with some crutches which hang in our garage as reminders of previous family mishaps, I attended my birthday dinner with my leg up.

I have missed three weeks of Indian summer weather when I could have been prowling the country roads with my MX5 convertible. Finally setting the crutches aside I have hobbled around the house and up and down the same set of stairs where grief visited me. My doctors have said “this could take months.” I returned to church yesterday for the first time and had at least three people familiar with soft tissue damage, tell me, “you would have been better off breaking the ankle. As it is you will never have the same range of motion you once had and you will develop arthritis.” Now I feel better.

New Painting - BICYCLE AT THE BEACH

As we move into autumn, it is so much fun to paint a scene reminiscent of an idyllic summer. I painted a small watercolour study of this scene earlier and it has already sold. This time I enlarge the format to 16X20 inches on canvas using acrylic paint. The format permitted me to include the distant shoreline. With this painting I listened to some counsel that I have recently received from well known artist Peter Etril Snyder. Customarily I anticipate what I will put on a surface by sketching the scene, making a plan. Then of course it becomes a fill in the blanks exercise - kind of a glorified colouring book. I haven't wanted my paintings to look like that. Snyder calls this front loading and he encouraged me to move away from this tendency. Here I painted in the sky and sea with solid colours which I mixed to suit my warm summer light. I decided not to detail the water at all. Then I scrubbled in the grasses that would be behind the fence. I covered the water with a towel and then shook a brush wet with paint on the grasses to create the impressions of flowers. I proceeded to paint in a solid sand colour for my path to the beach. I then again covered water and grasses with a towel and did what this inferior photo does not show. I covered the sand with tiny multi coloured spots of sand and stone drops of paint that I made by tapping a wet brush above the canvas sand. I scribbled a couple of bicycles on paper, cut them out and tried them on the canvas for size to see which size would look best in the frame. Then I pencilled in the rear wheel where I wanted to position the bike and I began to paint a bicycle. It's the kind of rusty handled old bike I saw at the beaches on the north coast of France, Normandy and Guernsey. Once the bike was completed I painted in the fence posts, the dark shade colour first for the entire post and followed that with a light colour to give the impression of sunlit sides. The last thing to be painted were the shadows of posts on the uneven sand - shadows cast from the posts on the opposite side of the path. It's a simple painting but the actual piece is compelling and hangable. Colours are vibrant. The online photo does not do it justice. In one of my gallery frames, 2 1/2 inch espresso colour with a 2 1/2 inch white liner, it will be impressive. I like it.

SALT & PEPPER designs by Christine

Since I first met her I associated Christine with music. A trained soprano, a choir and choral group conductor, a piano instructor. It is what she loved to do and wanted to do. She also has demonstrated an appreciation for textures, colours and designs. She has used knitting and seamstress skills to clothe her children as well as herself. Christine made Cari’s wedding dress as well as the bridesmaids’ dresses. She has often made alterations for people as an act of kindness. She has never regarded her work as exceptional. Others of us believe she is good at what she does. She has also not regarded herself as particularly creative but she is and she proved it again recently when she rose to a challenge. She selected fabrics and created several fancy aprons for a unique shop in Fort Langley known as Little White House.


Featured in Country Living, Canadian House and Home and Style at Home magazines, the Little White House is a delightful store, offering apparel, furnishings, jewellery, linens, lighting, gifts, vintage treasures, home décor and now, Christine’s aprons.

Christine’s aprons are presented under her enterprise name Salt and Pepper (designs by Christine). The name corresponds with the current colour themes of her fabrics and the features within the Little White House. On the reverse side of the Salt and Pepper label cards is a recipe for Crème Brulee. This modest initiative is a merchandising experiment now. Who knows what might become of it.

You can visit The Little White House at the Fort on 9090 Glover Road, Fort Langley, B.C., The Telephone no. is 604 888 8386

Ask for Salt & Pepper Aprons designed by Christine.

Murray Unruh is an Artist and My Brother

Murray is one of my two younger brothers. Murray was born in St. Catharines in 1947 five years my junior and when we were young I was the one who expressed himself artistically. He was almost an adolescent before he received corrective lenses to improve his sight. He considers that to be his emergence into a new appreciation of a world of light, colour and definition. He began to pay attention to the beauty around him. I could not have imagined that in Murray’s adult years not only would he develop an interest in painting but he would become a fine and versatile artist with a keen appreciation for what makes a good picture. He lives in a beautiful agricultural area, the fruit and wine country of the Niagara district of Ontario. He has watched this growing vineyard industry and recorded with his brushes and paint. He has practiced his craft like many of us as a hobbyist for twenty five years. Scenery, still life and now lately, a venture into some abstract expressionism of spiritual themes. On his website he mentions a current series entitled “Metaphors for Life” which he envisions as seven distinct pieces and as they are being developed he will describe the process and themes.

He is a man of faith, Christian faith. Like me he too was a pastor for many years. Recently he has identified with a group of people seeking to launch an attractive Christian witness in downtown St. Catharines. It will be an open community with some appeal to friends in the art community. He is a facilitator now rather than a primary leader and he has been asked to establish an art gallery as an essential aspect of this gathering place. That interests me. I will look forward to hearing how the arts and Christian ministry cooperate.

During this new season of artistic ambition he is making his art available to others for viewing and purchase. I am proud of my brother. He is a friend to many people and a helper. In the last image that I display for you today Murray has recorded our father and Murray’s two sons when they were boys and the three of them visited the roaring water of the Niagara Gorge. Dad is gone now so this an evocative memory for our family.

His VINTAGE IMPRESSIONS Art by Murray Unruh website can show you his other work.

Cari (Unruh) Locken – Scrapbooking Artist

It’s not every artistic father who has the privilege of writing about his daughter, an artist in her own medium and a good one. It’s not every day that a dad gets to brag a little about his adult daughter. Cari is a married woman with three children, ages 9, 7 and almost 5. She is an accomplished pianist, having graduated from the Royal Conservatory of Music with her ARCT in piano and from the University of Western Washington with a Master’s in Piano Performance. For some years she taught private lessons and has played worship music in her church. Presently her musical skills are for her own enjoyment only as she excels at preserving memories with the highly popular art form called Scrapbooking.


It’s an art form requiring proficiency with colours and textures and materials and design. Cari is recognized among the tens of thousands of scrapbookers in North America for her inventive, inspiring and attractive layouts and is frequently featured in Canadian magazines. As important as the design is the choice of words that often accompany the layout. One has to be a lyricist.

She began the creative outlet of scrapbooking in 1997 because it permitted her to tell the stories of her life and family using amazing visuals, textural products and extraordinary colors while also encouraging her photography skills. She has been widely published in BH&G (Scrapbooks etc.), Memory Makers, Creating Keepsakes, CARDS, Paper Crafts, Simple Scrapbooks, and Scrapbook Trends.

She is a member of the design team for several magazines including Canadian Scrapbooker Magazine, Scrapshotz, Black River Designs, The Inspired Scrapper and Cor'dinations ColorCore Cardstock. You can find her work in all these mags and usually with descriptions of the materials used and the application process. She is an instructor for assorted classes at her local scrapbook store and at various retreats and conventions.

In the Inspired Scrapper the June 12,2009 issue you will find June 12 2009 Challenge #24 - Teacher's Gift Card set by Cari Locken, a sample of her work for others to try. Here is a a gallery of some of her work for Cor'dinations ColorCore.


She has a personal blog called ‘Me and My Thoughts’ in which she displays and comments on her scrapbooking.

In the layout with Jayden, his daddy Tim and me, Cari has written, "While we were walking around the Blueberry Festival in downtown Cloverdale, Jayden asked me if I would take a picture of him with Daddy and Grandpa. I was thrilled to do that and excited with how the shot turned out. Love your smiles boys!”




In the last layout, Cari has written 10 Things she and Tim love about Ryan, her 7 year old son, the middle child. On can only hope these children will have opportunity later to reflect upon these memories and to know how well they have been understood and cared for.

IM, YOUTH, TECHNOLOGY & HOW LIFE, WORK AND WORSHIP IS CHANGING

I know the world is changing and will change more quickly than I know. My grandchildren at 2, 3, and 4 years of age open the laptop and go online to network games, mouse around and use the keyboard. In time they will be youth and teens. Holy Smoke, then what! Look at the teens now.

They are instant messaging each other when they wake, walk, eat and drive, yikes! A major shift is occurring along demographic fault lines in the use of technology. It is a shift in how younger people are interacting with one another. Of course those who are thirty years and older are using IM and Facebook and other networking venues to stay connected with colleagues and friends and their own children. However, teens and twenties today are using technology as no other generation before them has done and for that reason they will change the way work is done. They process tasks at incredible speeds. They write essays while tweeting. They hang out at MySpace not Starbucks. Their use of digital technology is changing society, organizations and the way business is done. It cannot be held back. And this young generation is entering the workforce.

Richard Leyland of Unwired in an article entitled, "Prepare for the Next Generation – Today’s Teens will Change the Way We Work," asks four questions in order to describe what we can expect from the IM Generation.
1. How do they use technology? IM is foundational to their lives communications rather than additional as with older generations. They have developed the skill of absorbing relevant snippets while surfing connections.
2. What skills will they bring? They will multitask, make complex immediate connections, quickly create, access and swap information and collaborate with one or many people.
3. What won’t work? Traditional authority structures, formal communication style, daily office presence and reporting, dull and repetitive jobs will not work. The IM generation wants to contribute and influence outcomes, operating informally and immediately, work nomadically from home, café or beach being utterly dependent on technology and information accessibility.
4. Should this worry us? Yes and No. Yes, because it requires every organization to adjust to these realities and take advantage of them. No, because their skills are suited to this emerging knowledge economy.

GPS Application:

Can the church close the gap between its Message and the IM generation?
If the bottom line is that the Church must embrace new technologies, then what kind of personnel will the church need to employ?
In the ever-changing technology landscape, churches wanting to maintain their relevance, have to consider new options to be the connected family of God.

EVEN MORE TO THE REST OF THE STORY ABOUT THE RUSSIAN WOMAN

You will need to refer to the previous post to understand the setting for this one.

When Pat is not working he occasionally pops into the Benefit Shop to look around. During one visit he noticed the manager preparing this painting for an auction. Given permission to look more closely at the canvas Pat found that the eyes and the smile of the Russian Woman reminded him of his own grandmother. Upon reading the tale on the back of the painting about the trade for a VW plus $1.00 and that the painting was to be left to my eldest child, he considered asking the local St. Catharines Standard newspaper to publish a feature story. He wanted to send me a diecast Volkswagon with one dollar and his contact information but could not locate the diecast VW. Time passed and at last he chose to contact me by email.

Pat's grandparents farmed in Thorold and owned Properties around the Niagara Region. His grandmother prepared daily family meals, managed 200 head of beef cattle and still found time at day's end for a cup of tea and a relaxing TV show, only to wake up in the morning to do it all over again. Pat greatly respected his grandmother and the painting reminds him of her.

Pat told me that he too would write on the back of my painting explaining where he had purchased it, would attach the receipt and for the time being the Old Russian Woman will rest, and perhaps one day travel again. He gave me permission to use his real name. And he asked me to enjoy my day. I am.

She Lives On - The Old Russian Woman

I have written about her before. This is the rest of the story. I left her behind. I couldn't take care of her. I didn't have room for her in my life. I hoped that someone else might take an interest in her and give her a home. But it was a faint hope, and frankly apart from looking at her picture in my computer files occasionally, I had forgotten her. I concluded that she was gone.

Before you castigate me for unfeeling cruelty to humanity and this woman in particular, permit me to hastily tell you that I am speaking about a 20X24 inch painting of an old Russian woman - a painting I painted forty years ago. I was twenty-two years of age and I needed a ride - wheels - transportation. My Uncle Les graciously swapped a 57 VW Beetle for this painting. The car took me to college, carried my new girlfriend on dates, and trips to my family to show her off - the girlfriend that is. Eventually I sold the car for $150 and accepted that both the car and the painting were history.

I graduated and began a career as a clergyman, pastoring four churches and CEO-ing one church denomination. Twenty years ago Christine and I made the move to British Columbia, leaving our extended families in Ontario and Quebec. In 1996 during one of my routine trips east, Uncle Les returned the painting to me, inscribing on its back that it should be passed on to my eldest son. Since I have only one son, Jeff was going to be the recipient. Considering that I had to fly back home and assuming that my son would have little interest in this large art piece, I left it with another Ontario family member who desired something that I had painted.

In 2007 the painting came into my hands once again, showing its age and some soiling. I didn't want to take her on my flight west and I was too nostalgic to give her up entirely so I tucked the painting behind my father's couch in his apartment - with his permission of course. When Dad died in May 2008 my brothers Murray and Neale, and I cleaned out the apartment. There was the Old Russian Woman. I made the difficult decision that I didn't want her. You might say I put her down - that is, I took her to the downstairs refuse room, propped her on the top of a garbage can and invited anyone who wanted her, to take her. If someone did, I hoped to receive a note letting me know, so I left my name, address, email, website and phone number. I heard nothing. She was gone.

Then this week, seventeen months after I turned the lights out behind me in the refuse room, I received an e-message from someone named Patrick in St. Catharines saying, "Hello, Mr. Unruh, Just wanted to let you know your painting, which you traded for a V.W. Beetle is at my home, won at the Christian Benefit Shop here in St. Catharines. Any possibility you may write some history regarding your painting for me? Have a Great Day, Pat."

So, someone saw her. Perhaps her happy, dancing eyes captured attention. Someone took her to a shop where she found a new caregiver. Imagine! I love this serendipity. It's the rest of the story. The Old Russian Woman lives on.