and the strike

is “re-conducted” for another week.

“Le National” may look nice from here, but this is only the view you have from the balcony. Under the balcony there are no chairs and this time it was quite hot and there were so many people, that I didn’t feel quite safe!

Isaiah

Isaiah was right when he said, “Woe to those who call evil good and good evil, who put darkness for light and light for darkness, who put bitter for sweet and sweet for bitter.” (Isaiah 5:20). It is appalling how this is true in my little university world, how lies are embraced and how the truth is rejected.

“Funny” thing: Some people brought a bottle of wine that they used for their presentation. Later on during the class, while other people were doing their presentation, the teacher grabbed the bottle of wine and started drinking. To be sure, my literature classes are interesting at times.

Paska story

Well it’s Easter weekend so I thought I’d make some paska. Paska is Ukrainian Easter bread, it’s sweet and it has icing on top. It’s more of a dessert than anything else. I first had paska in Saskatchewan, we made lots of it for Easter and I remember that the cooks gave me a loaf to bring home since the students were gone and, well somebody had to eat the left overs.

So I got up this morning and decided to try it out. I had never made paska before, only seen people make it. To my great disappointment the dough did not seem to rise, even after an hour the size was exactly the same. You know, I’m “used” to see bread doughs rise quite quickly, even after 30 minutes, it’s obvious it’s growing. So I waited a little bit more and since there was no sign of rising, I put the dough in a plastic bag that I was probably going to throw away when I wouldn’t feel so bad about it, I don’t like wasting food but I knew I couldn’t do anything with a dough that simply didn’t rise. So I put the bag in my room so that nobody would remind me I knew nothing about baking. At the end of the afternoon and went to my room and noticed that the bag had gotten bigger - I started to hope. I punched it down and placed the dough into a big bowl to let it rise again. I’ve been sneaking under the cover every once in a while to see how it’s doing and it’s rising.

So anyways, don’t forget to be very patient with paska bread. The pictures are the dough “before and while” rising.

L’Olympia

We usually met on Mondays to discuss and vote about continuing the strike or not. Last Monday had been an uncomfortable experience since we met in a very old and humid theater, without chairs. This time we met on Wednesday (well, today) at l’Olympia; another old theater, old, but looking much better, with a lot more room and chairs (you see the picture there >>&gt

We again spent four hours sitting and listening to people stating their points. We don’t hear people speaking against the strike anymore. In the first few assemblies there was a number of people actually going to the mic and speaking against it, but it’s been a few weeks now that all we hear is in favor of the strike. There is a lot of arguments to go for it and little against it and those who are against are called selfish.

Obviously, the strike is continuing until next Wednesday (26th). But the good news is that I played on my ipod so much that I got to level 23! People around me were cheering every time I cleared a level!

So, well, I am quite tired of this strike. Especially because I’m in between two outcomes: the semester is canceled or we’ll stop the strike and we’ll be extremely busy until the end of April, trying to catch up in all our courses. If the semester is canceled, all the work I’ve done ahead of time will count for nothing and I would have wasted time that I could have used to get a job. That’s quite frustrating to be in the middle like that. At least I’m resting and enjoying doing the dishes, reading, working on assignments, cleaning our home, taking walks and sometimes visiting my family, but still.

Weak-Willed

“How weak-willed you are, declares the Sovereign Lord, when you do all these things…” (Ezekiel 16:30)

Ezekiel 16 is said to be an allegory of Jerusalem’s unfaithfulness to God. Jerusalem turned away from her husband (God) to run after her lovers (idols, other nations). When God looks at how she behaves He declares “How weak-willed you are… !”. I may be wrong, but that’s probably not what most people would say of someone who acts like Jerusalem nowadays. For instance, a woman who leaves her husband to run after success, career, lovers, so-called happiness; this woman wouldn’t be said to be “weak-willed” (and the same goes for a man). Men and women are usually almost praised for getting out relationships in order to achieve or find their own happiness. And this applies for anything else, you don’t need to break a relationship necessarily, you can simply spend less time and energy with a friend, your kids, etc. because your heart is after something else that does not include these people. People truly believe that what is most important is personal happiness, no matter if it hurts people around or not (although there are some boundaries when it comes to physically hurting people). Society says that seeking personal happiness is not being weak-willed, it’s actually the opposite.

What remains is that God calls unfaithfulness to Him to be weak. Unfaithfulness is the work of weak-willed people, because they are not willing to put aside their own view of what happiness should be, and follow God’s view of happiness. We are weak-willed not necessarily for looking for happiness, but for not believing that God knows what we need and refuse to simply trust and accept God’s will for us. Sometimes it seems that God’s will for His children is quite boring and rather hard. It doesn’t please our sinful nature. Well, we need to persevere, knowing that “We live by faith, not by sight”. (II Corinthians 5:7)

Hey look, I’ve got a twin brother!

New Doctrine…

I really did not feel like going to the Bible study this morning, but I had said I would go so I went. I even had the ridiculous thought that God was keeping me from going when there was a problem with the metro and we waited for a while, but still, my Catholic friend was all by himself when I got to the cafeteria. We chatted for a while and concluded that nobody would be coming to the Bible study.

He jumped right in the last conversation we had together - on praying to the saints - he’d looked into the question and simply re-stated his points. I knew that the second conversation I’d have with him would be on salvation, well, I wanted it. So I asked him, “What do you need to do to go to heaven?” It took him a little while to figure it out in words, but he gave me a Catholic answer that I disagreed with and he, did not feel comfortable with. So I asked him, “What would YOU say to someone who would want to know how to go to heaven?” (I tried not to use the word “saved”). It took him a while again and all he said was basically, “You need to lead a just life…” he then asked me what I believed. I told him. He quite agreed with everything I had said and praised evangelicals for being so willing to recognize their helplessness and depravity. It was the first time he seemed to ask me an honest question.

Later on in our conversations he really surprised me. We were talking about hell and heaven and he said something that sounded as if he was going to hell, then in heaven. So I asked him what he meant and he seriously believed that when he dies, he goes to hell until Jesus comes back on earth (second coming) and then, Jesus would conquer Satan and hell and bring him to heaven. Man, that was something I had never heard before. I didn’t tell him that if that was true, it was quite useless to pray to the saints because, they’re in hell since Jesus hasn’t come back yet, but I told him that Jesus had overpowered Satan and death at the cross, those who repented from their sins and trusted Jesus would never ever taste hell. He told me he felt as if he wouldn’t be ready to go directly to heaven after he dies (even though he believes purgatory to be a little ridiculous he seems to have traces of the idea of paying for our sins before going to heaven in him). I tried to explain to him that Jesus died for our sins and His blood washes them all away, we traded our sins for his righteousness, God forgives us and sees us in Jesus, clothed with divine justice, so those who trust Him, are ready to join Him right away.

I was really impressed by our conversations, he seemed interested in what I had to say and seemed quite open to consider my words. We’d spent two hours chatting so as we left, I encouraged him to keep reading the Bible.

Strike

I gave my student card to the list guy sitting at his table right in front of me, wondering how much he was actually able to see. The light was quite dim in this people-filled room. He gave me my card and a (this time) red paper. The girl beside him looked at me and said, “You’ll have to take your shoes off; some people will be sitting on the floor.” I thought it was interesting, but was not ready to see what I was about to see.

I walked through the doors that opened to the theater. There was a high stage in the front, the sound system stuff right in the middle and people sitting at the edges of the room. There was no chairs at all, just the floor and some big wooden boxes in the back. I took off my shoes, feeling the cold floor under my feet and walked to the back with a friend. We sat on a box and waited in this old, cool and humid theater.

it was only around 1:30, an hour later, that everything started. People argued their points, lots of misunderstanding and headaches and backaches from sitting on a box and finally we voted.

I came to the strike assembly with high hopes that everything would be stopped. As the weeks went by, votes were closer and closer. But I was surprised to see a rise: 62% voted for the strike.

So we’re in for another week off school. I can hardly believe we’re in our fifth week.

Good thing about the strike: I’ve been playing VORTEX on my ipod during the assemblies. For a long time I was stuck at level 12, but today I cleared level 16!

51.2%

Today was a long day bad and then good. As it has been our tradition for now a almost a month, I spent another entire afternoon sitting and listening to people debate on the idea of continuing or not the strike for another week. After two hours I left and met up with a friend and we attended the rest of the strike dispute together, me playing on my ipod (thank you family!) and her doing homework. Around 4:30 we finally voted and if there would have been 1.3 % of the people against the strike, it would have ended. But no, the strike is continuing for another week. It’s getting me tired.

So my friend and I left, tired and discouraged and the best thing we thought of doing was to “eat out emotions” so we went out for supper. I was a little amazed because at one point my friend said, “hmmm, it’s 7″, then we continued to chat and chat. Next time she looked at the time, it was 10. I seriously did not believe her, but the waitress confirmed: we’d been there from 5 to 10, then we chatted (with the waitress) about driving trucks… how comforting it was to talk about such a thing on Ste-Catherine Street, downtown Montréal!

I had a good time chatting with my friend and it reminds me again of the value of Christian friends encouraging, challenging and praying for each other. It’s good to have people that keep us accountable to think and do good.

interesting

The lady asked me, “When was the last time you had your eyes checked?” (…) I was counting the years “Well a good four years, around 2002″ I guess I’m bad with math, I got my last glasses at the end of 2002 - it’s been five years… I had a hard time not smiling as we went through the various little eye tests - I just think they’re funny, that’s all. As she was measuring the strength of my glasses I told the lady that since my first glasses (back in… 1999 I think) I never knew the actual strength of my lenses. ” - 0.75 on both eyes myopia, then - o.50 and - 0.25 astigmatism ” according to my lenses. After all the little tests that made me dizzy and partly blind, she told me my vision hadn’t changed a bit apart for my astigmatism that was better. She told me twice that my glasses were very good for me.

When I got my appointment yesterday I was certain I was going to buy new glasses, there was no question. I was quite happy to get out of the “spectacle trade” (hahahah!) knowing that my eyes were fine and my glasses too. To be sure it would have been neat to get new glasses after five years but, these are still quite alright. So there’s just less money going out of my bank account.

Another interesting thing, look closely at this picture:

You can find THREE books that are upside down. What is their common denominator? They are French books and they actually are not upside down. All the books you see are “up side up”, only the French books have the side writing going the opposite way, upside down, while the English ones have the side writing “up side up”. Interesting eh?

’bout time

Hello readers.

There are so many things I could do but I do so little. I’m starting my third week of strike, well, it is not that I personally am on strike but my university faculty is, so even if I would go to class, strikers would keep me from getting to the room. We’ve been voting, at the beginning of every week to see if we want to continue the strike or not and so far, there has always been more people for than against, so no school. I must say that I enjoyed the first two weeks off but now I find it quite frustrating and more people are afraid that we’ll lose the whole semester. We’ll see what happens. All I can do is sit for 5 hours every Monday and vote against it - I’m sort of wasting a lot of time right now.

So I don’t really know what to do with so much time on my hands. Well, I do have to work on a few assignments so they are ready when the strike is over and I do have Bible study meetings every week, but apart from that, the routine gets me down and I feel like there is little meaning in my life right now, I’m just waiting for the strike to be over I suppose.

Anyways, that’s my life right now.