250,000 visitors later

October 16, 2011

As of today, the http://edhird.wordpress.com  blog has had 250,000 visitors in just over two years.  These are the more widely read of the blog articles:

Home page

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63,585

Florence Nightingale: Mother of Nursing

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24,444

Motherhood and Apple Pie

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18,289

Queen Victoria and Sir James Simpson

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17,724

The Unforgettable Benjamin Franklin

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15,781

Winston Churchill the British Bulldog

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9,406

Alexander Graham Bell: Inventing the future

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7,990

Laura Secord: more than just chocolates

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4,460

Jesus Loves me, This I know…

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4,216

Samuel de Champlain and Sieur de Monts: Canadian heroes

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3,682

Dr. James Naismith: Father of Basketball

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3,649

Pain: Useless intrusion or gift of God?

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3,611

Thomas Edison: Let There Be Light….

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3,124

Carl Jung, Neo-gnosticism, and the MBTI

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2,918

Alfred Nobel: Lord of Dynamite, Servant of Peace

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2,863

Sir Alexander Mackenzie the Scottish Bulldog

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2,627

Taekwondo and the Martial Arts: Mere Exercise or Trojan Horse??

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2,045

Simon Fraser: Canada’s most successful failure

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1,978

Louis Riel: Canadian Patriot?

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1,964

Carl Jung and the Gnostic Reconciliation of Gender Opposites

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1,919

Don Quixote: Chasing After Marriage’s Windmills

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1,859

James Watt: Creative Genius

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1,679

Good King Wenceslas last looked out…

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1,660

My Fair Lady

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1,530

The Gift of Courage Can Be Imparted

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1,510

Sir Alexander Fleming: Countless Millions Saved

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1,435

When the Saints Come Marching In

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1,433

The Birth of the Book

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1,395

Captain James Cook: World Explorer

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1,392

Lord and Lady Baden-Powell: Character Builders

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1,200

David Thompson: “Star-Gazer”

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1,088

The Reverend Ed Hird, Rector

St. Simon’s Church North Vancouver

Anglican Mission in the Americas (Canada)

http://stsimonschurch.ca 

-previously published in the North Shore News & the Deep Cove Crier

-award-winning author of the book ‘Battle for the Soul of Canada’

http://www.battleforthesoulofcanada.blogspot.com

p.s. In order to obtain a copy of the book ‘Battle for the Soul of Canada’, please send a $18.50 cheque to ‘Ed Hird’, #1008-555 West 28th Street, North Vancouver, BC V7N 2J7. For mailing the book to the USA, please send $20.00 USD.  This can also be done by PAYPAL using the e-mail ed_hird@telus.net . Be sure to list your mailing address. The Battle for the Soul of Canada e-book can be obtained for $9.99 CDN/USD.

-Click to download a complimentary PDF copy of the Battle for the Soul study guide :  Seeking God’s Solution for a Spirit-Filled Canada 

You can also download the complimentary Leader’s Guide PDF: Battle for the Soul Leaders Guide

200,000 visitors…

July 13, 2011

Within the next 24 or so hours, we will have had 200,000 visitors to this blog (100,000 new visitors since Jan 2011 http://edhird.wordpress.com

 

Through your dialing in today, you will help us reach that number of people .

 

This blog started on August 2009, less than two years ago.  The next goal will be to have a total of 500,000 visitors which we will hopefully see within the next two years.

 

There are now 353 articles on the blog that you can check out. Thanks for your support and interest. The most popular articles are as follows:

Home page

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48,091

Florence Nightingale: Mother of Nursing

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18,844

Queen Victoria and Sir James Simpson

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16,619

The Unforgettable Benjamin Franklin

More stats

15,684

Winston Churchill the British Bulldog

More stats

9,288

Alexander Graham Bell: Inventing the future

More stats

7,216

Motherhood and Apple Pie

More stats

4,939

Laura Secord: more than just chocolates

More stats

4,081

Jesus Loves me, This I know…

More stats

3,851

Pain: Useless intrusion or gift of God?

More stats

3,592

Samuel de Champlain and Sieur de Monts: Canadian heroes

More stats

3,320

Dr. James Naismith: Father of Basketball

More stats

3,058

Alfred Nobel: Lord of Dynamite, Servant of Peace

More stats

2,719

Carl Jung, Neo-gnosticism, and the MBTI

More stats

2,668

Sir Alexander Mackenzie the Scottish Bulldog

More stats

2,545

Louis Riel: Canadian Patriot?

More stats

1,927

Don Quixote: Chasing After Marriage’s Windmills

More stats

1,831

Good King Wenceslas last looked out…

More stats

1,609

Taekwondo and the Martial Arts: Mere Exercise or Trojan Horse??

More stats

1,582

James Watt: Creative Genius

More stats

1,542

The Gift of Courage Can Be Imparted

More stats

1,502

Thomas Edison: Let There Be Light….

More stats

1,463

When the Saints Come Marching In

More stats

1,358

Carl Jung and the Gnostic Reconciliation of Gender Opposites

More stats

1,335

Captain James Cook: World Explorer

More stats

1,257

Sir Alexander Fleming: Countless Millions Saved

More stats

1,216

Lord and Lady Baden-Powell: Character Builders

More stats

1,138

Simon Fraser: Canada’s most successful failure

More stats

1,052

David Thompson: “Star-Gazer”

More stats

1,038

Doing Christmas on Purpose

December 9, 2010

By Reverend Ed Hird 

 

I love Christmas Carols. Even when I feel dead to everything else about Christmas, Christmas Carols seem to wake me up from within.  Music has an amazing way to slip past even the most hardened heart. 

 

Christmas is one of those traditions that won’t go away, and yet so often seems off kilter.  It so often seems to lack purpose and focus.  The John Grisham movie “Christmas with the Kranks” symbolizes the angst of people swallowed by Christmas-related paraphernalia.  Christmas Carols are ideal for helping us regain focus at Christmas. 

 

Randy Stonehill poignantly sang: “I wonder if this Christmas they’ll begin to understand that the Jesus that they celebrate is much more than a man…”  The first purpose of Christmas is to bring pleasure to God, otherwise called Worship.  That is why at Christmas so many of us love to sing: “O Come let us adore him, Christ the Lord”.  For many years, Christmas to me was just about eating turkey and getting presents.  Being dragged to church on Christmas Eve or even worse Christmas morning seemed like a serious intrusion into an otherwise good festival.  As I have refocused on the real meaning of Christmas,  I hear afresh the Christmas Carol singing: “O Come, all ye faithful, joyful and triumphant, O come ye, o come ye to Bethehem”.

 

Year after year, Christmas miraculously brings friends and families back together.  When I was younger, I enjoyed spending Christmas with my grandparents and family, but didn’t fully realize what a wonderful gift this was.  The second purpose of Christmas, I have discovered, is fellowship.  At the heart of lasting fellowship is great food, lots of fun, and deep listening.  God put us here on earth to learn how to love each other.  Christmas is a great time to do that.  Christmas is a time when like shepherds summoned to his cradle, we leave our flocks and then flock together.

 

I never realized when I was young that Christmas was meant to transform me.  Years later I discovered that all that joy at Christmas had a third purpose: to make me more like Christ, which is Discipleship.  As that great Christmas Carol puts it, “Good Christian men, rejoice, with heart and soul and voice! Now you need not fear the grave: Peace! Peace! Jesus Christ was born to save!”  There is a joy released at Christmas that can radically transform anyone’s life if we will let it.  That is why the Good Book says that the Joy of the Lord is our strength.

 

Christmas for me as a young person was about getting bigger and better presents.  Years later I have discovered that Christmas is really about giving.  Giving is not just about presents, but mostly about our hearts.  The fourth purpose of Christmas is about serving others, especially the poor.  Good old Scrooge learnt this lesson the hard way at Christmas.  As Good King Wenceslas put it, “Therefore Christian men be sure, wealth and rank possessing, ye who now will bless the poor, shall yourselves find blessing.”  We may not like the three wise men have gold, frankincense, and myrrh to give, but when we give from our heart, Christmas becomes real to another hurting person. 

 

When I was younger, I thought that Christmas was about me.  In fact, I have discovered that Christmas is about others.  That is why the fifth purpose of Christmas is “Go tell it on the mountain, over the hills and everywhere; go tell it on the mountain that Jesus Christ is born”.  Christmas is too good to keep it to ourselves.  Christmas is the kind of fun and laughter and joy that everyone needs more of.  Do you know anyone who needs cheering up?  Do you know anyone who has lost direction?  If you do, I encourage you to reach out and bring others this Christmas to a joyful Christmas Eve service near you.

 

The Reverend Ed Hird

Rector, St. Simon’s Church North Vancouver 

Anglican Mission in the Americas (Canada)

http://stsimonschurch.ca 

-previously published in the Deep Cove Crier

-award-winning author of the book ‘Battle for the Soul of Canada’

http://www.battleforthesoulofcanada.blogspot.com

p.s. In order to obtain a copy of the book ‘Battle for the Soul of Canada’, please send a $18.50 cheque to ‘Ed Hird’, #1008-555 West 28th Street, North Vancouver, BC V7N 2J7. For mailing the book to the USA, please send $20.00 USD.  This can also be done by PAYPAL using the e-mail ed_hird@telus.net . Be sure to list your mailing address. The Battle for the Soul of Canada e-book can be obtained for $9.99 CDN/USD.

-Click to download a complimentary PDF copy of the Battle for the Soul study guide :  Seeking God’s Solution for a Spirit-Filled Canada 

You can also download the complimentary Leader’s Guide PDF: Battle for the Soul Leaders Guide

 By Rev Ed Hird

One of the best loved Christmas Carols is the 158-year-old carol: Good King Wenceslas.  In 1853, John Mason Neale chose Wenceslas as the subject for a children’s song to exemplify generosity.  It quickly became a Christmas favorite, even though its words clearly indicate that Wenceslas ‘looked out’ on St. Stephen’s Day, the day after Christmas.  So Good King Wenceslas is actually a Boxing Day carol!  For a tune, Neale picked up a spring carol, originally sung with the Latin text ‘Tempus adest floridum’ or ‘Spring has unwrapped her flowers’.  This original spring tune was first published in 1582 in a collection of Swedish church and school songs.

 

Who was King Wenceslas anyway?

Wenceslas was the Duke of Bohemia who was murdered in 929 AD by his wicked younger brother, Boleslav.  As the song indicates, he was a good, honest, and strongly principled man.  The song expresses his high moral character in describing King Wenceslas braving a fierce storm in order to help feed a poor neighbour.  Wenceslas believed that his Christian faith needed to be put into action in practical ways.  Wenceslas was brought up with a strong Christian faith by his grandmother St. Ludmila. Wenceslas’ own mother Drahomira, however, joined forces with an anti-Christian group that murdered Wenceslas’ grandmother, and seized power in Bohemia.  Two years later in 922 AD, the evil Drahomira was deposed, and Good King Wenceslas became the ruler.  He became Bohemia’s most famous martyr and patron saint.  His picture appeared on Bohemian coins, and the Crown of Wenceslas became the symbol of Czech independence.

 

Intergenerational Appeal

Even as a young child, I remember feeling moved as I sung this unusual carol.  Why does Good King Wenceslas have such a deep and lasting impact on its hearers?  Perhaps it is because there are so many levels of meaning to this carol.  A child may hear one thing, an adult may hear another.  I find that I can sing it again and again, and new meaning continues to pour forth from the carol.  Recently the phrase ‘Fails my heart, I know not how, I can go no longer’ really spoke to me.  It reminded me that sometimes there are times in our lives when life and its stresses seem to overwhelm us, and we feel that ‘we can go no longer.’  The response of Good King Wenceslas was most interesting.  He said: ‘Mark my footsteps, my good page, Tread thou in them boldly: Thou shalt find the winter’s rage freeze thy blood less coldly.’  Wenceslas reminds us that when we are all alone, life can feel very bleak.  It is at such times that solidarity with another human being can help ‘our blood freeze less coldly’.  Wenceslas affirms that we are not alone, and subtly points to the basic Christmas message that Jesus our Master will never leave us in the cold.

 

In His Master’s Steps

In the last verse are the memorable words: ‘In his master’s steps he trod, where the snow lay dinted.’  The author John Neale, an Anglican priest, shows us here that the essence of true living is learning to walk in our Master’s steps.  All of us need a Higher Power to help guide us along our journey.  Jesus said: “If anyone would come after me (and tread in my steps), he must deny himself and take up his cross and follow me.”  Our challenge each Christmas is to look beyond the toys and tinsel, to see ‘the Master’s steps.’

The Reverend Ed Hird, Rector

St. Simon’s Church, North Vancouver

Anglican Mission in the Americas (Canada)

http://stsimonschurch.ca

-author of the award-winning book Battle for the Soul of Canada

http://www.battleforthesoulofcanada.blogspot.com

p.s. In order to obtain a copy of the book ‘Battle for the Soul of Canada’, please send a $18.50 cheque to ‘Ed Hird’, #1008-555 West 28th Street, North Vancouver, BC V7N 2J7. For mailing the book to the USA, please send $20.00 USD.  This can also be done by PAYPAL using the e-mail ed_hird@telus.net . Be sure to list your mailing address. The Battle for the Soul of Canada e-book can be obtained for $9.99 CDN/USD.

-Click to download a complimentary PDF copy of the Battle for the Soul study guide :  Seeking God’s Solution for a Spirit-Filled Canada

You can also download the complimentary Leader’s Guide PDF: Battle for the Soul Leaders Guide

-previously published in the Deep Cove Crier

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