Be The Best.This video is amazing.
AC sent it my way and I couldn’t stop watching it.
It features Alice, an amazing 106 year old survivor of the Holocaust.
The music is amazing. The story is amazing.
Her words are incredibly powerful.
Do you hate? No. Hate only produces hate.
Alice, I learned a few things watch you.
I strongly urge you to invest the 12 minutes and watch this.
It will change you.
As many of you know and have read here, my Dad, Jake Friesen, went through two surgeries in Sept and is now recouping at home. Not one to stay down, he and Mom continue to be wonderfully positive even during some very challenging days.
I bugged Dad last week that his state of medical recovery may have kept him away from some sermons and meetings that he leads. I suggested that he could write something for this blog and I would share it.
I didn’t expect something this deep, powerful, emotional, wonderful and poignant. I should have known better.
Here’s my Dad, Rev. Jake Friesen and ‘The Fall’.
————–
The ‘FALL’ (September, 2010)
In the Spring came the Fall, ill-timed and out of season.
A young man, scarcely adult, is cut down in the flower of his dreams.
That is not the end of the story, thank God.
Jesus, the Font of Life, is cut down in Spring.
But death cannot contain Him: He is raised to new life, a life He passes on to all who belong to Him and love Him.
Fall is nature’s way of shutting down, admittedly with a burst of color.
We get older, we shrivel, our bodies stumble, we die.
Yet every fading energy drives us forward to the hope of a renewed body promised us by the One Who created these bodies in the first place.
(Years back, when Max & Chris were little, we were ‘farm-sitting’ in Matsqui and had the boys visit us overnight. We treated them to some male quartet music, including the song, “I’ll have a new body; I’ll have a new life”. Somehow the boys, and specially Chris, latched onto that song, and got very excited about it. Little did we dream he would be applying for that new body so soon…)
We give thanks to the One who allowed The Fall to challenge Him in the Spring-time, so that He might become the Rescuer of all who would be touched by the Fall, whenever in their lifetime…
I’m looking at a painting tonight that I was given last month.
It’s a watercolour showing a wooden pathway through a forest leading to a glorious sunrise or sunset. You really can’t tell which one it is.
It’s called ‘into the light’ and reflects an image from Long Beach on Vancouver Island.
I love that picture.
Over the past number of months, the creation of music…sort of whatever was flowing in my mind at the time…has been a great way to express those things that there are no words for.
One of those songs I called ‘stair into space’. The original title was ‘stare into space’, but when I saw this painting I changed the title.
I can see Chris’ journey and our journey as depicted through this watercolour. We’re ALL on a journey constantly moving forward and moving towards the light with every step.
Maybe different stairways, maybe different pathways. We may take some detours and will most certainly have many decision points along the way. That being said, the movement is in the direction of the light.
Stair into space. Here’s the link:
Sort of.
Maybe.
It may be how you spend the money you have.
I’ve thought a lot about happiness in the past 7 months. What has made us happy in the past? What do we most cherish now that Chris continues with us in spirit only? How do we be happy now? Is it realistic even? (answer: yes…another blog or book on this one!)
The Province Paper had an interesting article today entitled, ‘Ten Ways to Buy Happiness’.
Really?
I expected a quick read, but found myself absorbed by the UBC Prof, Elizabeth Dunn’s comments.
Here are five ways money can buy happiness according to the Province article referring to Dunn’s paper.
Many small, lovely things….like COFFEE! Ingrid and I calculated a number of years ago how much we were spending at that place that makes coffee and rhymes with Moonshucks. It was a lot. Then we had another thought. We devised a coffee budget that allotted for that expense and simply skipped a dinner or two out each month. Done deal. For us, the coffee time provided that 15-20 minute ‘quick connect’ with busy schedules and allowed us to maximize family time while still being connected. It was always more that coffee…it was a connection. I get this point…and love it as I’ve learned to love the long pour americano…with room. Find a good barista, grab your spouse or friend and try one!I take some razzing at work because I like to play Ping Pong. Yah…capital letters.
It’s a sport.
Some call it an activity, pastime, club; but that is totally incorrect.
Last year I had the opportunity to play a police officer from Berlin during the Police and Fire Games held in Vancouver. The Ping Pong tournament was held at BCIT. You can see some footage below. She kicked me…hard.
In any event, I love to play.
Chris loved Ping Pong too, but it was played slightly differently. Sure, he would play with his Dad from time to time, but when his buddies came over, the real Pong started. They took off their shirts and up to 6 of them would run around the table taking turns hitting the ball. In short order, someone would miss. The guy at the other end of the table who had taken the victorious shot was then given a chance to smash a ball as hard as he could into the other guy’s bare chest or back.
Ever been around 16 or 17 year old males? This is actually pretty normal.
They would laugh, smash balls at each other, admire the welts they had made and do it again.
It’s called male bonding and I loved to see that gang have a great time…as long as their parents weren’t worried about where the welts were coming from!
In any event, my nephew Steve, when he was up in September surprised me with a birthday gift. It was a sandpaper Ping Pong bat custom designed with a Be The Best logo and a CF2 on the other side.
How cool is that!
I’d play with it, but don’t want to take a chance of wrecking it, so I’ve settled for a little online Ping Pong as pictured below.
Remember…Ping Pong is a sport.
November 2006.
A family get together.
The cousins doing their cousin thing…having fun and goofing around.
Chris had this knack of peeling a mandarin orange in such a way that it became an elephant trunk.
Try it if you dare.
That kid could make anyone laugh…and feel comfortable and safe and secure and loved.
He had a skill for that too.
I don’t know who Blackie is.
I don’t know why he or she spit.
I do know they named a place after it and it’s in Crescent Beach near White Rock. That’s the name: Blackie Spit.
We had never walked that far down the beach, but we did today.
I love the Fall. The colours, the crisp air, the light.
There was a big flowering bush we found again today. All the flowers are gone at this time of year, but we still knew it was the one….at the very entrance of Blackie Spit that we hadn’t ventured past before. Chris and Max had posed for pictures there dutifully with grandparents and parents on an outing when they were 10ish and 8ish we were guessing.
Today we walked past that bush to a path we had not been on before. A new trail. A new road. A new adventure even. And many more lay ahead.
I’ve gone a week or two without a blog post about quilts.
That won’t do.
I found these pics today from August 2009. We were having a Friesen family reunion and this was the time where my Mom had the idea to make a family quilt. You can see that finished product here.
Anyways, I loved these pics of Chris making his square as well as a great shot of him and his cousins fooling around.
These times are so exceptionally treasured.
I was struck by two very different articles in this morning’s newspapers.
The Province carried a story called, ‘Take back Facebook’ which highlighted an ugly reality of cyberspace. That reality is that there are people out there (called trolls), who search for memorial sites and place inappropriate (at best) and confrontational messages. Sad to say, we’ve seen those trolls on Chris’ site too including this past week. We remove them and ban them and then move on. You know why? They are wee trolls (as in small and insignificant). In other words, those actions only speak to the people conducting those actions and they are not indicative of the majority.
I wrote early on in this blog experience about how Facebook Saved our Lives. We remember those days so clearly. Ingrid would spend hours each day reading the messages of support and in those darkest of nights, they kept us going. We still encourage anyone who wants to know about Chris and our family to read this blog and read the messages on his memorial site. The whole story is there including the 2 part eulogy.
So from wee trolls we move to article number two featuring We Day. This is very cool. This is an event happening in Vancouver today that is tied to Free the Children. What I love about this is that it is youth inspiring youth. It is everything that is positive about young people. Vision, desire, passion, action. Love it.
You can check out We Day and all it means via this link.
Technology provides opportunity. As humans we can make that positive or negative.
We will continue to monitor the bad and deal with wee trolls, because we know that the power of good as exhibited through the We Day events is the REAL power of young people today.
The Canucks honoured Stan Syml the other night at Roger’s Arena.
For those ‘well aged’ enough to remember, Stan ‘Steamer’ Syml epitomized the lunch bucket, hard working, never quit attitude of the Canucks in the early 80’s and led the Canucks on their improbable run to the Stanley Cup Finals in 1982.
I talked to Max and Chris about Stan Syml and my new favourite over the more recent years Trevor Linden.
I have the most priceless pictures of each of those players drawn by Max and Chris (Max drew Linden, Chris drew Syml) with their hockey cards inserted in the frame. They gave them to me as Christmas or Birthday presents about 10 years ago and they are still proudly displayed in my office at BCIT.
The thing I loved about Smyl was that he just never quit. It wasn’t about talent. It wasn’t about speed. It wasn’t about size. It was about heart.
Love it.
As we enter another hockey season, I will never forget the conversations about hockey and sports and how we weaved that into conversations about life and working hard to achieve goals etc.
That’s Be The Best!
Be The Best.