Valentines articles to prepare your hearts for Feb 14th
February 7, 2011
Note: Thanks to your ‘dialing in’, there was over 900 people today reading these articles, the most ever in one day.
By Rev Ed Hird I will always remember Valentine’s Day, February 14th 1967 back in Grade 7. My best friends celebrated Valentine’s Day by having each of us name the 10 girls we liked best in order (1-10).
By Reverend Ed Hird On New Year’s Eve in 1976, the well-known author Michael Harper was sailing solo on Lake Taupo in New Zealand. Suddenly his boat capsized in a particularly violent squall about a mile offshore.
The famous Vancouver based author Dr. J.I. Packer once commented that “marriage, being the most delicate and demanding of relationships, as well as potentially the most delightful, is a terribly difficult topic on which to write wisely and well.”
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By Rev Ed Hird Is it okay to suggest in 2011 that we as men and women are equal but often different? Too often equality becomes reduced to a sterile sameness. True equality between the sexes involves a joyous celebrating of our very real differences…
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By Reverend Ed Hird My wife Janice and I will soon be celebrating our 34th Wedding Anniversary. Over three decades later, I can say without reservation that I love her more deeply with each passing year.
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By Reverend Ed Hird Valentine’s Day rolls around every year without fail. Husbands forget Feb 14th at their peril. Somehow our wives interpret our forgetting Valentine’s Day as a sign that we don’t care, that we may be putting other priorities ahead of them.
How about working on your anger as a Valentine’s Day gift?
edhird.wordpress.com
Dr John Gottman has much to teach us that will help us prepare for Valentine’s Day 2011
edhird.wordpress.com
Note: Thanks to your ‘dialing in’, there was over 900 people today reading these articles, the most ever in one day.
By Rev Ed Hird I will always remember Valentine’s Day, February 14th 1967 back in Grade 7. My best friends celebrated Valentine’s Day by having each of us name the 10 girls we liked best in order (1-10).
By Reverend Ed Hird On New Year’s Eve in 1976, the well-known author Michael Harper was sailing solo on Lake Taupo in New Zealand. Suddenly his boat capsized in a particularly violent squall about a mile offshore.
The famous Vancouver based author Dr. J.I. Packer once commented that “marriage, being the most delicate and demanding of relationships, as well as potentially the most delightful, is a terribly difficult topic on which to write wisely and well.”
edhird.wordpress.com
By Rev Ed Hird Is it okay to suggest in 2011 that we as men and women are equal but often different? Too often equality becomes reduced to a sterile sameness. True equality between the sexes involves a joyous celebrating of our very real differences…
edhird.wordpress.com
edhird.wordpress.com
edhird.wordpress.com
By Reverend Ed Hird My wife Janice and I will soon be celebrating our 34th Wedding Anniversary. Over three decades later, I can say without reservation that I love her more deeply with each passing year.
edhird.wordpress.com
edhird.wordpress.com
edhird.wordpress.com
By Reverend Ed Hird Valentine’s Day rolls around every year without fail. Husbands forget Feb 14th at their peril. Somehow our wives interpret our forgetting Valentine’s Day as a sign that we don’t care, that we may be putting other priorities ahead of them.
How about working on your anger as a Valentine’s Day gift?
edhird.wordpress.com
Dr John Gottman has much to teach us that will help us prepare for Valentine’s Day 2011
edhird.wordpress.com
Twenty-four North Shore Valentines
February 7, 2011
By Reverend Ed Hird
Valentine’s Day rolls around every year without fail. Husbands forget Feb 14th at their peril. Somehow our wives interpret our forgetting Valentine’s Day as a sign that we don’t care, that we may be putting other priorities like work and sports above them. So, husbands, be warned. Flowers are much cheaper than lawyers.
My wife and I moved to the North Shore twenty-four years ago as of Feb 1st 2011. Before that we celebrated four Valentines in Abbotsford, and six in Vancouver. As of May 21st 2011, we are celebrating our thirtieth-fourth wedding anniversary. I can tell you without any hesitation that I love my wife more now than I have ever loved her. To celebrate our 30th Anniversary, we flew to England to visit with our youngest son, serving then as a youth missionary in Newcastle. It is an amazing gift to be married to someone whom you really like to be with. My wife has been that gift to me. She has been so loyal in supporting our ministry at St. Simon’s North Vancouver in the past two+ decades. That is why I dedicated my book ‘Battle for the Soul of Canada’ “with gratitude to my dear wife who has been married to me for almost thirty years, for better for worse, for richer for poorer, in sickness and in health, till death do us part.” You can imagine that it is not easy to be married to a clergyman, especially with the challenges that orthodox Anglicans have been facing in North America.
My wife serves as our St. Simon’s NV Music Director, co-ordinating several different choirs and contemporary worship bands. Archbishop David Somerville, who first ordained me, once said that if the devil ever gets into the church, he will come in through the choir. Because music is so closely connected to worship, it makes sense why music can easily be contentious. Sometimes people have worship wars over contemporary songs vs. traditional hymns. At St. Simon’s NV, we decided fifteen years ago to honour both expressions by offering both a traditional 9am BCP service and a contemporary 10:30am service. Because my dear wife is musically bilingual, she is able to encourage both expressions with integrity. Unlike many church choir directors who are always quitting and creating havoc, my dear wife has been a source of musical stability for the past two decades. Dynamic music is a key to a vibrant, healthy Church.
My wife and I went to Winston Churchill High School in Vancouver, both graduating thirty-nine years ago in 1972. But we only really noticed each other from a distance. We became friends while taking the bus home from the University of British Columbia. She was in Music naturally, and I was in Social Work, dreaming about becoming an Anglican priest. For around a year, we were only good friends. But eventually the penny dropped and I saw the light. My wife really impressed me with her great listening skills, her good sense of humour, and her hard work.
Finally one day in 1975, I invited her to go bike-riding to Little Mountain in Vancouver. The rest is history. Coming back from our second bike ride, I said to her, “Don’t take me too seriously, but relative to two days, I would like to spend the rest of my life with you.” For some reason, this shocked her. But she got over it, and we quickly moved to become engaged. When I introduced her to my mother, my mom said something that she had never said before: “The woman who marries Ed will need to have quarters for the bus”. What she meant is that while I have strong leadership giftings, I work best when I am complimented by someone with strong administrative giftings, who pays attention to the details.
In my first Valentine’s Day article for the Deep Cove Crier twenty-three years ago, I wrote: “Why do I still enjoy Valentines Day? It’s because all of us have a need to feel loved, even when you’re married. So often romantic love can fade imperceptibly from a marriage. In the busyness of children, work, school and sports, our marriage can easily get lost in the shuffle. Marriage Counselors tell us that romantic love is one of the greatest lacks in modern marriages. The bible reminds each husband to love his wife as his own body, to love his wife as he loves himself, to love his wife just as Christ loved the church and gave himself up for her (Ephesians 5).
Husbands, let’s surprise our wives on February 14th and make our family homes the most romantic spot on Planet Earth!” Thank God for twenty-four wonderful North Shore Valentines.
The Reverend Ed Hird, Rector
St. Simon’s Church North Vancouver
Anglican Mission in the Americas (Canada)
http://stsimonschurch.ca
-award-winning author of the book ‘Battle for the Soul of Canada’
-previously published in the Deep Cove Crier
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 $9.99CDN/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
The Heart of Valentine’s Day
February 7, 2011
By Reverend Ed Hird
My wife Janice and I will soon be celebrating our 34th Wedding Anniversary. Over three decades later, I can say without reservation that I love her more deeply with each passing year. It is too easy to take one’s marriage partner for granted in our extremely busy world. Yet each of us want to feel special and appreciated. Valentine’s Day is a wonderful opportunity to go to the very heart of what marriage is really all about. Valentine’s Day was birthed in a time, much like 2011, when people were encouraged to look down on marriage as an interference with their personal freedoms and careers.
Through attending a Marriage Encounter weekend, I have learned that one of the most romantic things that one can do on Valentine’s Day (and every day) is to write a personal letter to one’s sweetheart.
Despite Napoleon Bonaparte’s extreme busyness in leading France, he took time to write as many as 75,000 letters in his lifetime, many of them to his beautiful wife, Josephine, both before and during their marriage. This letter, written just prior to their 1796 wedding, shows surprising tenderness and emotion from the future emperor.
“I wake filled with thoughts of you. Your portrait and the intoxicating evening which we spent yesterday have left my senses in turmoil. Sweet, incomparable Josephine, what a strange effect you have on my heart! Are you angry? Do I see you looking sad? Are you worried? My soul aches with sorrow, and there can be no rest for you lover; but is there still more in store for me when, yielding to the profound feelings which overwhelm me, I draw from your lips, from your heart a love which consumes me with fire? Ah! it was last night that I fully realized how false an image of you your portrait gives!
You are leaving at noon; I shall see you in three hours.
Until then, mio dolce amor, a thousand kisses; but give me none in return, for they set my blood on fire.”
Each Valentine’s Day, approximately 1 billion letters and cards are sent each year to loved ones. So where does this remarkably popular Saint Valentine’s Day come from anyway? In the city of Rome around 270AD, there lived an Emperor known as Claudius the Cruel. Claudius was having problems recruiting men to serve in his armies, because the men selfishly wanted to stay home with their wives and children. Angry that his men were more loyal to their wives than to himself, Claudius decided to outlaw marriage!
Couples who were in love searched for someone who would help them get married, even in secret. A priest named Valentine performed wedding ceremonies for these desperate young lovers. When a young couple came to the temple, he secretly united them in marriage in front of the sacred altar. Another pair sought his aid and in secret he wed them. Others came and quietly were married. Valentine quickly became the friend of lovers in every district of Rome.
But, such secrets could not be kept for long in Rome. At last word of Valentine’s acts reached the palace and Claudius the Cruel was angry, exceedingly angry. On the orders of Claudius, Valentine was dragged from the temple, away from the altar where a young maiden and a Roman youth stood, ready to be married, and taken off to jail.
Valentine’s jailer had a daughter, Augustine. She was so kind to Valentine during his brutal imprisonment, that Valentine sent a ‘Valentine’s Card’ with a grateful “thank you” message for all that she had done.
Many asked Claudius to release Valentine but Claudius refused to do so. As a punishment for supporting marriage, Valentine was beaten to death with clubs and then beheaded. Valentine laid down his life for others because he passionately believed in the sanctity of marriage. His devoted friends buried him in the church of St. Praxedes. The date of his tragic murder was February 14th AD 270. .
History tells us the first modern valentines’ ‘card’ date from the early years of the fifteenth century. The young French Duke of Orleans, captured at the battle of Agincourt, was kept a prisoner in the Tower of London for many years. He wrote poem after poem to his wife, real valentines, of which about sixty of them remain. These can be seen among the royal papers in the British Museum.
All of my Valentine’s Day Cards to my wife over the past 34 years have been marked with a string of “X”s to represent kisses. The practice of using an “X” for a kiss grew out of the medieval practice of letting illiterate people sign documents with an “X” to represent their name. This was done in the presence of witnesses and a kiss was given upon the “X” to show sincerity. The “X” then became synonymous with a kiss in the minds of most people. Why did they sign with an “X”? One reason was because the “X” shape represented St. Andrew’s cross which is also used in the Scottish and British flags. But most importantly for our ancestors, the “X” represented the first Greek letter (Chi) in the name ‘Christ’. (That’s why Xmas stands for the ‘Christ’ in CHRIST-mas.)
For our forebears, “X” = Kisses=Love=the Cross=Christ.
As my wife and I will be celebrating thirty-four years of a loving committed marriage, I am reminded that ‘X’ marks the spot in our grateful marriage. ‘X’ has been the open secret to our perseverance through good times and bad times. ‘X’ has been the key to our hanging in there through sickness and health. ‘X’ will be the key to our having and holding till death do us part. My prayer for those reading this article is that each of us, like Saint Valentine, may be open to a personal encounter with the eternal ‘X’, Jesus Christ.
The Reverend Ed Hird, Rector
St. Simon’s Church North Vancouver
Anglican Mission in the Americas (Canada)
http://stsimonschurch.ca
-award-winning author of the book ‘Battle for the Soul of Canada’
-previously published in the Deep Cove Crier
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 $9.99CDN/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 
Is it okay to suggest in this post-modern culture that we as men and women are equal but often different? Too often equality becomes reduced to a sterile sameness. True equality between the sexes involves a joyous celebrating of our very real differences. Men and women are so wonderfully different that many authors have been writing books exploring this unique key to marital and relational satisfaction. We really do come from different ‘worlds’ as men and women.
Gary Smalley, the best-selling author on relationships, has put enormous research in exploring just how male/female differences actually affect us. Smalley comments that “most marital difficulties center around one fact – men and women are TOTALLY different…virtually every cell in a man’s body has a chromosome makeup entirely different from those in a woman’s body.” Dr. James Dobson says that there is strong evidence indicating that the ‘seat’ of the emotions in a man’s brain is wired differently than in a woman’s.
Greater understanding of our differences can bring greater acceptance and love between men and women. Dr. Paul Popenoe, founder of the American Institute of Family Relations in Los Angeles, dedicated most of his working life to the research of biological differences between the sexes. He found that females outlive males by four to eight years because of their greater constitutional vitality and perhaps because of their unique chromosome makeup. Women’s thyroid is larger and more active than that of men, giving them a greater resistance to cold. Women’s blood contains more water and 20 percent fewer red cells. Since the red cells supply oxygen to the body cells, women in general tire more easily. An illustration of this is that when the working day in British factories was increased from ten to twelve hours during wartime conditions, accidents increased 150 percent among women but not at all among men. Women can withstand high temperatures better than men because their metabolism slows down less.
Another important difference is in the area of women’s intuitive gifting. Smalley holds that each woman has a built-in marriage manual within her. She intuitively knows what she needs, what the relationship needs, and what, if anything, is wrong with the marriage. All she needs is a husband who is courageous enough to ask her to share her marriage manual with him.
Neuropsychologists McGuinness and Tribran led a Stanford University research team investigating this unique intuitive capacity. They discovered that women do in fact catch subliminal messages faster and more accurately than men. Someone has observed that women often use logic more as a tool, while men tend to treat logic as the bottom line. In my own life, I have had to retrain myself over the years to stop shutting down my intuitive impressions, in favour of what seemed to be the obvious logical course of action. I have found that when I close down and ignore my intuitive perceptions, they become weaker and much fainter.
Gary Smalley admits that generalizations about gender differences are probably only true 70 or 80 percent of the time. Every individual is indeed an individual. Even so it is amazing how many couples are finding a new lease on their marriage through learning to rejoice in gender differences. Smalley noted how often men tend to be focused on gathering and sharing facts. Facts can far too easily swallow up feelings in marriage. This can lead us as men to be “Mr. Fix-it’s” in our intimate relationships. Yet there is no better way to destroy a healthy marriage than to attempt to fix our wives and solve their problems. Smalley and others remind us that our addiction to fixing our wives must be replaced by a radical commitment to just being there and listening, no matter how helpless and painful that makes us feel. When our wives keep talking about their problems, we often fall into the trap of defensiveness, somehow feeling that we’re to blame. Yet in fact the most healing thing that we can do is to not run, and not defend ourselves, but rather hang in there with our total attention on our wives.
John Gray observes that when a woman gives advice to another woman, it is most often seen as an act of kindness and generosity. Women firmly believe that when something is working, it can always work better. Their nature is to want to improve things. Gray observes however that this “Home Improvement” tendency often backfires when applied across the gender divide. Offering help and advice to a man can make him feel incompetent, weak, and even unloved. Advice in the male world is usually only received well when asked for in the first place. Gray holds that one of the best gifts a wife can give her husband is to abstain from giving him advice, and instead give him acceptance and approval. A man’s deepest fear, says Gray, is that he is not good enough or that he is incompetent. Accordingly one of the best gifts a woman can give her man is to believe in him, and to stand with him, when he begins to doubts his own abilities.
The Good Book calls men to love their wives as themselves and for wives to honour their husbands. Why does it say this? Because as men we are often crippled in expressing romantic love. Why do romance novels sell by the hundreds of millions? Primarily because we men are missing out on this very deep need of our wives to be cared for and romantically loved. Too often our marriages become predictable and stale as a result. Why then does the Good Book call wives to honour their husbands? Because in this dog-eat-dog competitive world, if our wives won’t honour us and believe in us, then no one likely will. When my wife honours me, I feel like a million dollars. My prayer is that many husbands and wives reading this message may learn to rejoice in their glorious God-given gender differences.
Reverend Ed Hird, Rector
St. Simon’s Church North Vancouver
Anglican Mission in the Americas (Canada)
http://stsimonschurch.ca
-award-winning author of the book ‘Battle for the Soul of Canada’
-previously published in the Deep Cove Crier
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 $9.99CDN/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
The Love Affair
February 7, 2011
By Reverend Ed Hird
On New Year’s Eve in 1976, the well-known author Michael Harper was sailing solo on Lake Taupo in New Zealand. Suddenly his boat capsized in a particularly violent squall about a mile offshore. Clinging to the side of the boat and unable to right it, Michael was rescued after an hour in the chilly glacial waters. He nearly died of hypothermia.
When Michael recovered, he asked God why He had saved him and what God wanted him to do. The reply came something like this: “I want you to learn how to love people the same way as I do.” Michael learned that very day that life is meant to be a Love Affair, that life is meant to be dedicated to learning how to really love each other in a genuine way. The famous ethicist Joseph Fletcher wrote that the opposite of love is not “hate” but rather “indifference”. Fletcher writes, “… There is one thing worse than evil itself, and that is indifference to it.” The lowest point to which our society often seems to sink is when it says, I couldn’t care less.’
As Michael Harper struggled with learning how to really love people, he became aware that there are few words in the English language that are more open to abuse than the word “love”. “Love is swampy” is how Joseph Fletcher describes the problem. Much of what is called love today is little more than making sure that our needs are met. Need-centered love, however, is self-centered and narcissistic. True love, said Karl Barth, is when a person gives them self to another with no expectation of a return, in a pure venture, even at the risk of ingratitude, and of that other person’s refusal to make a response of love. That kind of love is very scary because it involves the possibility of being rejected and hurt. That is why we so often prefer self-centered love to other-centered love.
Harper comments that “the widespread identification of the word love with sex indicates that most people think that sex ought to be an experience of love … and that is where the frustration comes in. People feel cheated because sex has not delivered the goods.” A good marriage, says Harper, in which both husband and wife delight to give each others pleasure, and thereby reassure one another of the love that they have for each other, does more for the reestablishment of true love than almost anything else. The bible calls this kind of true love “AGAPE LOVE”. Most of us have been to weddings where a passage is read from the bible telling us about true love: “Love is patient, love is kind. It does not envy, it does not boast, it is not proud it is not rude, it is not self seeking, it is not easily angered, it keeps no record of wrongs. Love does not delight in evil but rejoices in the truth. It always protects, always trusts, always hopes, always perseveres. Love never fails (1 Corinthians 13).” it would be helpful for all of us, whether churchgoers or not, to regularly measure our marriage relationships against that standard of Christian love.
I am more convinced than ever that love is what it is all about. That is why the bible even says that God is love … not self centered love, but rather other centered love. Harper reminds us that “Jesus did not come to present a new set of ideas to us. He came to show us the meaning of love. He revealed what love is. He manifested love. The 
secret of Jesus’ revolution was not the love of power but the power of love.” When Jesus, hung on the cross, he stretched out his arms and said, in effect, “this is how much I love you.” And most amazingly when the Roman soldiers were torturing him and humiliating him, Jesus cried out, “Father, forgive them for they ‘don’t know what they are doing.” Jesus has taught me that the finest quality of true love is its power to forgive. As the late Michael Harper puts it, love without forgiveness is meaningless.
My prayer for those reading this article is that true love may so invade our lives that costly forgiveness will become normal for us in our daily lives.
The Rev. Ed Hird, Rector
St. Simon’s Church North Vancouver
Anglican Mission in the Americas (Canada)
http://stsimonschurch.ca
-award-winning author of the book ‘Battle for the Soul of Canada’
-previously published in the Deep Cove Crier
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 $9.99CDN/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
Happy Valentine’s Day
February 7, 2011
By Rev Ed Hird
I will always remember Valentine’s Day, February 14th 1967 back in Grade 7. My best friends celebrated Valentine’s Day by having each of us name the 10 girls we liked best in order (1-10). Having only recently recovered from the “girl avoiding” phase, I felt rather hard pressed to name 10 girls I liked best, (especially as there were only 15 girls in our class). So by the time I’d named the 10th girl, I was really scraping the barrel. I figured that the girl that got No. 1 position really deserved something special on Valentines Day. So I bought her a big heart shaped box of chocolates. She was in shock, also delighted. I also invited her to our June Grade 7 graduation dance, which she accepted. Love however can be fickle, so by the time of our dance, one of my “best friends” had taken my girlfriend and squeezed me out of the picture. It was a disappointing end to Valentine’s day 1967!
Where does Valentine’s Day come from anyway? Its official title is Saint Valentine’s Day. The celebration of February 14th appears to refer not to one but two Valentines. The first Saint called Valentine was a Roman Priest martyred on the Flaminian Way under the Emperor Claudius around 269 A.D. The second St. Valentine was a Bishop of Terni in Interamna, who was taken to Rome and martyred, and whose remains were later conveyed back to Terni.
Why do I still enjoy Valentines Day many years later? It’s because all of us have a need to feel loved, even when you’re married. So often romantic love can fade imperceptibly from a marriage. In the busyness of children, work, school and sports, our marriage can easily get lost in the shuffle. Marriage counsellors tell us that romantic love is one of the greatest lacks in modern marriages. The bible reminds each husband to love his wife as his own body, to love his wife as he loves himself, to love his wife just as Christ loved the church and gave himself up for her (Ephesians 5).
Husbands, let’s surprise our wives on February 14th and make our family homes the most romantic spot on Planet Earth!
Reverend Ed Hird
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 $9.99CDN/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
My Beloved on Valentine’s Day
January 15, 2011
by Rev Ed Hird
Valentine’s Day’s full title is St. Valentine’s Day, because it was named after two St Valentines. They were both Italian clergy martyred in the 3rd century AD for their Christian faith. Because of their sacrificial love, it has become one of the most popular annual events celebrated by hundred of millions around the world. It has become a traditional date night where a wise husband remembers to take his wife out for dinner, followed perhaps by a movie or theatre production. (Husbands, please note that such dates are much less expensive than divorce lawyer’s fee; so put Feb 14th in your IPhone or Blackberry).
Nineteen years ago in a Deep Cove Crier article about marriage, I wrote the following words: “Inside the heart of each and every one of us there is a longing to be understood by someone who really cares. When a person is understood, he or she can put up with almost anything in the world.” After being posted (unbeknown to me) on hundreds of Romance websites, I was approached to write a chapter for the upcoming Canadian anthology “Hot Apple Cider 2’ about this romantic quote. In Hot Apple Cider 2, I commented that my beloved wife “Janice and I are learning afresh the joy of ordinary pleasures: taking regular time together for peaceful walks, chatting over a cup of tea, listening to each other’s daily experiences, watching a video together, going out for dinner, and even reading together.”
Recently I picked up the North Shore News, read Martin Millerchip’s article about Presentation House, and on a whim said to Janice: “Let’s go out on a date night to see Antony Holland’s St Mark’s Gospel.” Being remarkably adaptable, Janice agreed. What a wonderful evening. Unplanned, unexpected, and totally memorable. Happy marriages need to have that sense of adventure, of the unexpected. Boredom in marriage is the devil’s best tool.
Sadly many husbands stop dating their wives after they marry them. “What happened to the man I married?”, many wives wonder. Why was he so attentive before marriage, and now he would rather hang out on the golf course or stay late at work? Our wives deeply need to be romanced, pursued, won over every week. That is one reason why the romance novels are a Billionaire dollar industry, because we husbands are not always putting our wives first. My wife Janice needs to know that she is more important than my work, my hobbies, my writing, my sports. She needs to be Number One under God in my life.
I love to hold my beloved Janice’s hand when we are out on a date. Sitting there in Presentation House, watching Antony Holland perform St Mark’s Gospel, I often reached out to her and gently squeezed her hand when something was really moving. Many people don’t know that Mark’s Gospel is high drama, and when done by a gifted artist, can bring you to tears. Antony Holland, at age 91, is literally North America’s oldest leading actor. If I have half as much energy when I am in my nineties, I will be deeply grateful. As Martin Millerchip of the North Shore News put it, Holland’s ‘hard to resist, perhaps like Jesus’. Holland directed plays throughout the Middle East for the WWII Allied forces, and founded Studio 58 at Langara College where my parents attended his plays for many years. (My mother tells me that Studio 58 initially rehearsed its play in our St. Matthias Oakridge church basement.)
I first became aware of Antony Holland from watching his phenomenal acting in ‘Tuesdays with Morrie’. No one dances quite like Holland in the final ‘Morrie’ scene. Antony Holland is the quintessential actor. He loves what he does. At age 91, he has just started. Love is what motivates him. Love of acting and love of people. In both St Mark’s Gospel and Tuesdays with Morrie, the love of God overflows through Holland.
This Valentine’s Day, may I love my wife even more deeply than Holland loves acting and loves his audience. May my beloved wife know that she means everything to me, that she must never come second, that my heart is still aflame with tenderness for her, thirty-three years after I said ‘I do’. May this gift of tender romance be real and life-changing this Feb 14th for your marriage, for your family, for your community.
Rev Ed Hird, Rector
St. Simon’s Church North Vancouver
Anglican Mission in the Americas (Canada)
http://stsimonschurch.ca
-award-winning author of the book ‘Battle for the Soul of Canada’
-published in the February 2011 Deep Cove Crier
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 $9.99CDN/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
Romancing the Heart of Stone
August 22, 2009
By Rev Ed Hird
What is Love, said one anonymous blogger? “It is a wildly misunderstood although highly desirable malfunction of the heart which weakens the brain, causes eyes to sparkle, cheeks to glow, blood pressure to rise and the 
lips to pucker.”
Shakespeare wrote: “Love is a smoke made with the fume of sighs. Being purged, a fire sparkling in lovers’ eyes. Being vexed, a sea nourished with lovers tears. What is it else? A madness most discreet, a choking gall and a preserving sweet.”
The famous Pirate Captain Blackbeard was a firm believer in marriage. Some say that he had fourteen wives in different ports. Howard Hughes as a modern-day pirate 
reportedly had over 250 partners/girlfriends stashed in different locations, many which falsely believed that they were married to Hughes. Perhaps this is why Marilyn Monroe sadly commented: “A wise girl kisses but doesn’t love, listens but doesn’t believe, and leaves before she is left.”
Despite all the cynicism and marital meltdown, North Americans still spend $13 billion on Valentines Day gifts, including 200 million roses, 40 million heart-shaped candy boxes, and $3 billion on jewelry.
We live in an age when many couples wake up with each other, and then try to figure out whether or not they want a commitment. Given the ambivalent procrastination of our post-modern culture, it is not surprising that some couples are still stuck on the way to the altar even after their second child. Some want to be completely financially secure first, even to the point of having all the money for their dream Hawaii honeymoon. Without that, they say, marital commitment is just unthinkable.
The biblical position is that ‘true love waits’. The confusion of our culture does make true love wait, not for sex, but for marriage. When God’s standards for intimacy are disregarded, the look-alike solutions become more and more ambivalent. Even living together is now seen as too committed by some young couples. All this leaves many young people jaded and detached, with ever higher standards of who might ever qualify as their future marital partner.
In the movie
Romancing the Stone, Joan Wilder a romance writer meets Jack Colton who violates every one of her imaginary ideas of what a real man will act like. Romancing the Stone reminds us that real romance involves the messiness and disappointments of everyday life. Dr Karl Menninger, the famous psychiatrist, said: “Love cures people, both the ones who give it and the ones who receive it.”
Eighteen years ago, I wrote a Deep Cove Crier article about Marriage Encounter in which I wrote the following words: “Inside the heart of each and every one of us there is a longing to be understood by someone who really cares. When a person is understood, he or she can put up with almost anything in the world.” Recently I discovered that those words have now been posted on hundreds of Romance websites http://bit.ly/35E4or Why would so many Romance websites be posting my words?
My hunch, as Dr Gil Stieglitz puts it, is that one of the deepest needs of wives is to be truly understood by their husbands. Many men mistakenly think that this is impossible. It is our job as husbands to carefully study our wives that we know them even better than they may know themselves.
Dr Gil Stieglitz tells us in his video series ‘The Five Problems of Marriage’ that one of the top needs of wives is for romance, to be nurtured and pursued. Some husbands don’t realize that they still need to date their wives, even after they are finally married to them. To some men, dating their wives is unthinkable. It would be like trying to get on a bus that they are already on.
Alfred Lord Tennyson romantically wrote: “If I had a flower for every time I thought of you, I could walk in my garden forever.” Romance is not an option. It is fundamental in any healthy marriage. If we have not been romancing our wife lately, she may be suspicious of our initial efforts. It may feel like we are romancing a stone, a stony heart. That is where perseverance and gentleness are so vital in the pursuit.
My wife finds it very romantic when I take out the garbage and do the dishes. Your wife needs to know that she is the most beautiful woman on earth, that she is a precious gift of God to you. Romance is saying, like Robert Browning, to your wife: “Grow old along with me; the best is yet to be.”
The Great Physician of our souls said: “This is my commandment that you love one another. No greater love has anyone than to lay your life down for your friends. 
The Good Book says that he that does not love doesn’t know God, because God is love. Pearl Buck the famous novelist wrote: “Love alone could waken love.”
Why are women spending so many billions of dollars each year on romance novels? Largely because there is an unmet need in their life that only you as their husband can fully meet. Your wife is waiting for you to romance her, to win her, to woo her. What are you waiting for?
edhird
