Johnny Cash: Remix (my take on Johnny Cash)
(YouTube original biography on Johnny Cash watched by 1.7 million so far)
Miriah Reitmeier, with Janice P Hird accompanying, sang ‘Holy, Holy, Holy’ for the online North American Christian Ashram. This song was written by Reginald Heber and John Dykes (no copyright)
CCLI: 11623918 Streaming License: CSPL172030
Miriah Reitmeier and Janice P Hird sang ‘Thou Art Worthy’ for the online North American Christian Ashram. The song https://youtu.be/d_iz3S1AgjQis written by by Pauline M Mills (Fred Bock Music, 1963, 1975). The second verse is by Thomas Smail.
CCLI: 11623918 Streaming License: CSPL172030
Mark Hird and Janice P Hird sang ‘Speak O Lord’ for the North American Christian Ashram.
Many of our books include references to and stories about E. Stanley Jones.
To purchase any of our six books in paperback or ebook on Amazon, just click on this link.
To receive a personally signed copy of any of our books within North America, just etransfer at ed_hird@telus.net, giving your address. Cheques are also acceptable.
My Great Grandmother Mary Mclean Allen was a pioneering Canadian reporter for the Regina Leader newspaper. In those days, the reporters were not given bylines in order to protect them from physical and legal assault. Mary was the principal reporter who wrote about Louis Riel, after she gained access to Louis Riel in the RCMP Regina jail. As she spoke french, she was able to disguise herself as a Roman Catholic priest with a fake beard, on the pretense of taking his confession. After another Regina Leader reporter had been turned away by the RMCP, the publisher Nicholas Flood Davin told my great grandmother to get an interview with Louis Riel or don’t come back. Through interviewing Riel, she became very sympathetic to his cause.
This confused some individuals who falsely assumed that it was the Regina Leader publisher Nicholas Flood Davin who disguised himself as a Catholic priest and did the sympathetic interviews. Davin, who wrote the tragic 1879 Davin Report creating the Canadian Residential School system, was campaigning actively for the hanging of Riel, stating that if they don’t hang Riel, they should abolish the death penalty. Articles have been written, falsely suggesting that there were two different personalities to Davin, the anti-Riel side and the sympathetic side. The University of Western Ontario changed its documentation to acknowledge that my great-grandmother Mary Mclean Allen was the reporter who interviewed Riel, disguised in a priest’s garb. Even the Regina Leader Post newspaper has acknowledged that Mary Mclean was the actual reporter in this incident. Given Davin’s involvement in producing Shakespeare plays, the Canadian Shakespeares website also made this comment:
“Davin, as discussed elsewhere on the CASP site, was at the center of a remarkable historical incident involving Louis Riel’s last interview––Riel being the Métis leader of the short-lived 1885 Rebellion, tried and executed for treason in Regina, Davin’s home town, on November 16, 1885.
In CASP’s 2010 correspondence with Ed Hird, Hird came forward with information about his great-grandmother Mary McLean, who worked as a reporter for Davin at the Regina Leader and who was also sympathetic to Riel’s cause. According to Hird, “Davin carried on the British tradition of not listing as a byline the names of the reporters who write for the Regina Leader. This was helpful for my great-grandmother Mary in protecting her from arrest by the RCMP when she snuck in disguised as a Roman Catholic priest confessor to obtain an interview with Louis Riel. Mary McLean quotes Davin [as saying] … ‘An interview must be had with Riel if you must outwit the whole police force of the North-West.’ Because Davin protected her anonymity, some writers like C.B. Koester have popularized the myth that Davin … disguised himself as that priest … I spent a week with my late Uncle Don Allen who carefully explained to me about his grandmother’s interview with Louis Riel. ‘When I first saw you [at] the trial, I loved you’ was said by Riel to Mary McLean, not to the man [Davin] calling for his hanging.” For the complete account of this incident in Mr. Hird’s own words, please click here.”
These newspaper articles came from Mary Mclean herself, via my late Uncle Don Allen, who corresponded with other Mclean relatives about our genealogical family history.
Sandy Brown and her family have just moved to Spokane, Washington where her husband, Scott, is pastoring a new church. With a fresh start, Sandy is determined to devote more time to her four children. But, within weeks of settling in their new life, the Brown family is plunged into turmoil.
To purchase any of our six books in paperback or ebook on Amazon, just click on this link.
Enjoying a peaceful early morning prayer walk at Crescent Beach. 🙂 Just click to view the relaxing video
Sandy Brown and her family have just moved to Spokane, Washington where her husband, Scott, is pastoring a new church. With a fresh start, Sandy is determined to devote more time to her four children. But, within weeks of settling in their new life, the Brown family is plunged into turmoil.To purchase any of our six books in paperback or ebook on Amazon, just click on this link.
The White Rock Promenade has been reopened. Click to view a video of my first prayer walk this early Sunday morning along the White Rock Promenade since COViD-19 shut everything down along the White Rock Beach.
Sandy Brown and her family have just moved to Spokane, Washington where her husband, Scott, is pastoring a new church. With a fresh start, Sandy is determined to devote more time to her four children. But, within weeks of settling in their new life, the Brown family is plunged into turmoil.To purchase any of our six books in paperback or ebook on Amazon, just click on this link.
Click to enjoy this delicious song.
Sandy Brown and her family have just moved to Spokane, Washington where her husband, Scott, is pastoring a new church. With a fresh start, Sandy is determined to devote more time to her four children. But, within weeks of settling in their new life, the Brown family is plunged into turmoil.To purchase any of our six books in paperback or ebook on Amazon, just click on this link.
Click to read the Light Magazine article about two of God’s essential workers.
We hear a lot about essential workers and essential services in these COVID-19 times. At 7 pm each night, many of us have been cheering for them, as we bang on our pots and pans. The late Dr. JI Packer, God’s essential worker, helps us rediscover Richard Baxter’s essential writings, not just for mortal life but more importantly for eternal life. What might it be like to cheer for God’s essential workers, including our theologians, pastors, evangelists, and missionaries?[1] Both Baxter and Packer knew from personal experience that physical death is not the worst thing that can happen to us. Both faced sickness and possible death early in life, but fixed their gaze on Jesus Christ in those difficult times. Packer, who did his Oxford doctorate on Baxter, helped us rediscover Baxter’s brilliant emphasis, derived from Rupertus Meledenius: “In Essentials, unity; in non-essentials, diversity; and in all things charity.”
Many believe that J.I. Packer, born in 1926 and passed on July 17th 2020, will be remembered as the principal theologian of the 21st Century. Packer and Baxter each had the same puritan passion for knowing truth, seeing it as our first duty.[2] Both represent the best of Puritanism without being ‘puritanical’.[3] Baxter in the 17th century commented: “I never discover a Truth in my studies, but it is as sweet to my mind as a feast to my body…I spend my time, and strength and spirits in almost nothing but studying after Truth.”[4] Many people nowadays dismiss theology as non-essential ivory-tower speculation. We live in an anti-rationalist culture that worships one’s feelings and denies any objective truth. Both men believed that the mind actually mattered, that reason and thinking were gifts from God that helped us discern truth. Their love for truth gave them a respect for the arts, sciences, history[5], as well as theology.[6] In Baxter’s day, theology was seen as the Queen of the sciences.[7]
For both men, knowing God with our head and heart was essential.[8] It is not enough to just know about God academically. Baxter held that “he is the best scholar who hath the readiest passage from the ear to the brain, but he is the best Christian who hath the readiest passage from the brain to the heart.” Dr J.I. Packer also warned against “hardness of heart and cynicism of the head.” Being heavenly-minded for Baxter and Packer was the key to making the most lasting impact on planet Earth.
Recognized by Time Magazine as one of the twenty-five most influential evangelicals, Dr Packer is best known remembered for his most popular book Knowing God. In reading Dr Packer’s doctoral thesis, I discovered that Packer’s Knowing God classic is an unpacking of the wisdom of Richard Baxter.
Jesus prayed in John 17:21 that we would be one as the Father and Son are one that the world may believe. While Baxter and Packer were both ordained Anglican clergy, they had a deep love for the wider body of Christ. That is part of the reason that Packer has served since 1979 at Regent College, a interdenominational college. Baxter called himself ‘a mere Christian’, expressing the truth that God’s people go beyond the bounds of any one denomination.[9] Both showed us that unity in the Essentials of the Gospel is essential to reach the world for Christ, such as the creed, the Lord’s Prayer, and the Ten Commandments. Are we willing to repent over our division and arguments over non-essentials? We can all agree to the full deity and humanity of Jesus, his virgin birth, his death for our sins, his physically rising from the grave. By contrast, the precise way that we baptize, celebrate communion, organize our church leadership, or sing worship songs are not essentials worth splitting over. Both men knew that not every Christian congregation has to be exactly the same, as sameness crushes creativity and spiritual intimacy.
After the heart-rending English civil war of 1647, Baxter felt called to be a peacemaker. [10] All his writings sought to promote “in all things, charity (love).” As Packer put it, Baxter “meddled much with Controversies…to end them.” It was Baxter’s respect for truth that kept him from ‘undignified wrangling’.[11] Even though he was often banned from preaching and forced out of town, Baxter stayed gracious and Christ-centered. Both Packer and Baxter were deeply charitable and humble in times of great controversy.[12] While neither liked controversy, both had the courage to take a stand for gospel truth when waves of conflict occurred. Even when recently needing to say no to false teachers, Packer spoke the truth in love. He never became vindictive and negative. At age 93, he is finishing well, staying focused on the goodness of the gospel essentials.
Our prayer is that in this COVID-19 pandemic, that we like these brave Christian men, Baxter and Packer, might rediscover what is essential, how to celebrate diversity, and the urgency of charitable love in all circumstances.
Rev. Dr. Ed and Janice Hird
Co-author, Blue Sky novel
-published in the June 2020 Light Magazine
-Readers are invited to read the first two Academia.edu articles of the JI Packer & Richard Baxter Trilogy:
1) Analyzing the Global Impact of Dr. J.I. Packer
2) An Evaluation of Richard & Margaret Baxter’s Lasting Contribution in 17th Century England
[1] The Gospel and church are deemed in our COVID culture as a nonessential service, unlike pot stores.
Peace Arch News April 23rd 2020, Tom Zillich, A33 “…now would be the worst time to curtail people’s access to those substances which have helped them deal with their anxiety.”
[2] JI Packer, The Restoration and Redemption of Man in the Thought of Richard Baxter, Oxford Doctoral Thesis 1954 (Regent College Publishing, Vancouver, 2002), 96, Packer commented regarding Baxter, “To the end of his life, he could never understand how his fellow Christians could love truth do little and seek it so half-heartedly.”
[3] Packer, Thesis, 95 (Baxter)…was anima naturaliter Puritana, the incarnation of Puritanism at its purest.”; Thesis, 98 Packer “…a Puritan thoroughbred…Baxter was the most consistent Puritan of them all.”
[4] Packer, Thesis, 95.
[5] Thesis, 68 Baxter “History is a very profitable study, if it be used for the right ends, and be rightly chosen. It is a very great help to understand the Scriptures, and to know the former and present state of the church; and to see the wonderful works of Providence, that otherwise would be lost to us.” XI:213
[6] Thesis, 95 (Baxter) “…to take all arts and sciences for his province so that he might himself construct the hierarchy of truth and show, according to the Puritan blueprint, how all this comes from God and leads to God.”
[7] Thesis,64 Packer: “Fundamental to all Puritan thought was the seventeenth-century version of the Medieval doctrine that all knowledge is a unity and all sciences, physical and moral, form a hierarchy at the head of which stands theology.”
[8] Packer, Thesis, 86, ‘Baxter never tired of reminding his readers that “Heaven-work and Heart-work are the chiefest parts of Christian duty”; “true religion…consists in heaven-work and heart-work, in the love of God and man…” Cure of Christian Divisions (1670) 209, 408, et al.
[9] The title of CS Lewis’ best-selling book Mere Christianity is taken directly from Richard Baxter.
[10] Thesis, 96.
[11] Thesis, 97 Packer: “He was exact in definition and accurate in usage; and his respect for truth and sense of responsibility for it kept him from undignified wrangling.”
[12] “What a gracious man”, I (Ed) thought as Dr J.I. Packer spoke. In the midst of a raging North Carolina snowstorm, he was giving a morning devotion at the Anglican Mission Winter Conference on John 21, in which he identified with Simon Peter’s growing through failure. The first time we ever spent time with Dr Packer was in 1979 in a student residence on the University of BC campus where we literally chased noises in the heating system. Dr Packer came across so humbly and natural, despite his worldwide reputation.
Sandy Brown and her family have just moved to Spokane, Washington where her husband, Scott, is pastoring a new church. With a fresh start, Sandy is determined to devote more time to her four children. But, within weeks of settling in their new life, the Brown family is plunged into turmoil.To purchase any of our six books in paperback or ebook on Amazon, just click on this link.
Thanking God for Dr Helen Huston’s life who served as a medical missionary in Nepal for many years. Click to view a video about her amazing life.
We were co-speakers at the Alberta Christian Ashram.
Sandy Brown and her family have just moved to Spokane, Washington where her husband, Scott, is pastoring a new church. With a fresh start, Sandy is determined to devote more time to her four children. But, within weeks of settling in their new life, the Brown family is plunged into turmoil.Many of our books include references to and stories about E. Stanley Jones. To purchase any of our six books in paperback or ebook on Amazon, just click on this link.
To receive a personally signed copy of any of our books within North America, just etransfer at ed_hird@telus.net, giving your address. Cheques are also acceptable.
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