29-30 May - White Rock / A Rocha

Linda's family and my family go back a long ways. Our mothers were sisters, making us cousins. When our family came back from Congo every two years (as children), the place we most liked to go was to the Enns family. They had 8 kids and a number of us shared the same number of years of life of earth. So Linda is two years my junior, but she skipped a grade and somehow we became good friends. 

Linda married a David Klassen (how cool is that!?). He and I never spent much time together over the years, even though we would meet up periodically. They also served with MCC in Bangladesh back in the '80s so we shared that formative piece of our lives. It was a gift to spend these few days together now.

Linda and Dave shared their house with us for 4 nights so we spent a lot of time catching up, telling stories, sharing our life journeys, the good stuff and the stuff where we learned a lot. It was fun to discover how we understood the world similarly -- mostly in full colour, having discarded the black and white filters we started out with.

We suggested to ourselves that we play some games together, but somehow that didn't happen. There were too many beaches to walk on, good food and drink to taste and stories to tell. We also thought we would spend more time in the city of Vancouver than one day, but we figured out that making the 100-minute drive one-way was enough and we took up their offer to show us the beauty of White Rock/Surrey. We already knew that our families were basically intense, so we carried on with that tradition.

I always knew that David is an artist and produced a range of images on his canvasses, but I did not understand what informed his thought processes which eventually made their way into his art, like I do now. The man is clearly gifted...full stop! He has worked hard at figuring out ways to use this gift to share with his community both what is happening - creating a painting the dock which was partially destroyed during a storm - and the beauty of the incredible environment they live in.

Not only that; David has worked with the city at engaging and teaching graffiti artists how to channel their artistic expression in ways that beautify the city and bring pleasure to many. Wow! What a gift to us all and for that I expressed gratitude to David for opening himself to us.

Linda has been an educator for most of her life. During the last two years of work before her retirement she was a high school principal. It was fun to learn more about the intensity of her work, the contributions she made to so many young lives both through direct teaching and eventually sharing her leadership skills...all through the education system.

I loved Linda's non-judgmental orientation to life and to living with others, particularly as she has finally landed into retirement, living in a part of the world where she feels she doesn't need to go anywhere else to be in a beautiful environment.

Of course our children were a big part of our conversation because they are a natural part of our own expression in this world.

And the blue herons, eagles, seagulls and other birds gave us their blessing as we blessed each other...

We were gifted at the end of the day on 30 May to be invited to the home of Mary Lou's cousins, Rick and Crista, and their children. We met Rick at A Rocha, a place he has worked at for the past two decades. He has told us about what he does and what A Rocha tries to do for many years but this was our first time to visit and we were able to make so much more sense of the stories.

Rich shared with us how A Rocha works towards addressing issues surrounding sensitive natural habitats and threatened species, growing food sustainably and feeding people living on low income, inspiring school children and training young people. Essentially A Rocha is changing the way people treat the earth. They work in provinces across Canada and have work in different parts of the world including Kenya, Uganda and Nigeria. Rick's current role is to develop relationships and involvement from church communities.

We were impressed with the work and were encouraged that there is a group of people like A Rocha, which care enough to put human and capital resources towards researching and building awareness of the issues which are affecting us now and into the future.

Crista works in HR for a high tech company which specializes in imaging. It was fun to hear her enthusiasm for her work especially as it relates to relationship. We met both of their children (plus and minus 20) who shared with us perspectives that we don't often hear given that this age group of people are largely missing from our lives.

They live with 5-6 other families in a cooperative way owning 10 acres of pristine forest and agricultural land (which one of the family farms for vegetables). Having researched co-housing initiatives over the years we were fascinated how these families have been together since inception over a decade ago. They share weekly suppers together every week and have meetings every two weeks. Amazing!