GROWING UP IN WW2 ENGLAND by Ann Norford

The years that Germany attempted to subjugate Britain by air bombardment was not the ideal time to expend our childhood. But as children, both my husband Bryan and I survived those years with all our arms, legs, and other appurtenances intact.

The German air force needed air superiority before invading Britain, but the thin ranks of British fighter pilots eventually denied the Germans that advantage. As a result, the German invasion was abandoned, but intimidation of the nation by aerial bombing continued for the next four years.

Both born in the late 1930s, we spent our elementary school years watching the skies as naturally as we watched for traffic before crossing the street. Indiscriminate bombing of residential as well as industrial areas meant we were all targets.

Bryan grew up in a stable home, so the war had a greater impact on him than on me. Although I had to contend with the threatened dangers of war, my impaired home was a more immediate threat to me and my brothers.

I was more concerned with maintaining life in a hazardous home environment, and shepherding three younger brothers during the most critical times. We spent many periods in children’s homes during the worst of our mother’s sick rampages both in and after the war.

Bryan, on the other hand, found his pleasures in the incidental things of the war: “toys” dropped by the overhead combatants, or exploring air-raid shelters and bombed buildings. Fascination with war machines and the often strange but absorbing maintenance of public transportation kept his attention.

Now in our older years, we are intrigued to find so many children and adults who were born after the war interested in the stories of that turbulent time. Thus we decided to write up some of our war time experiences and the aftermath.

The resulting book, War Kids: Growing Up in World War Two England, is one of several books comprising a legacy we plan for our expanding family. The stories in this book are all based on actual events of the years from about 1940 until Bryan and I met in our early teens in 1950.

Maintaining faith and resolve during the war, gratitude for the sacrifices made for our freedom, and our renewed appreciation of it, contributed to the people we became, the marriage we made, and the children we raised.

Books are available from www.pebblepress.ca, or directly from us for $15.00 plus shipping at 403-328-3745.

"I Hate You"

 With these words, a six year old boy joined the “I hate  you” brigade. But his words are not unusual, most kids try it at some point. Of course, it is a form of childish blackmail at being denied something he wants. Important not to let him know it works by capitulation!

There are a number of things to remember with this attack, distressing though it may be. First, it’s the only opposite he knows to both “I love you” and “I like you.” That can be explained to him by the reply: “I don’t like you sometimes either, but I will always love you!”

Second, with some exceptions, you have to work very hard to destroy a boy’s love for his parents. Even in the rebellious teen years, that bond is only buried, not lost, behind his bellicose behaviour. It may take a teen a while to rediscover it.

Third, that six year old’s mood generally passes. Life at that age is too varied and absorbing to remain in that mood for long. And a “sorry Mom,” if it is verbalized, is an added bonus. But even without that, the boy’s affection will reassert itself.

My father held that children were the proof of original sin. Evil comes naturally to them; they have to be taught to be good! Parents have to wrestle and train against the fallen state, and should expect flashes of the old nature.

Today is Mother’s Day. Knowing that youngster, I’m sure the relationship will be reaffirmed today!

Is the tide turning in the American culture war?

I don't usually post other messages on my blog site, but thought this was sufficiently significant to warrant this post. Go to thechristians.com for daily updates on contemporary Christianity. This piece was posted in their daily email, May 6, 2013

A sequence of surprising recent reversals have knocked the pro-choice cause

By Link Byfield May 6, 2013

When the most militantly pro-abortion president in American history cruised to his re-election victory last November, rueful pro-life Christians had no comfort beyond Paul’s advice to the Galatians: “Let us not become weary in doing good, for at the proper time we will reap a harvest if we do not give up.” Pro-lifers did not give up, and today, a mere six months later, the situation is starting to look quite different.

Somehow the pro-choice steamroller – juggernaut – call it what you will – has lost momentum. They expected Obama’s victory to mark their final triumph in the culture war. It has proved to be far from that.

Unforeseen problem one for pro-choicers is Obama himself. He has stalled. He is not exactly unpopular, but even his Congressional allies now admit he can’t seem to get anything done right or done at all. As veteran pundit Peggy Noonan put it, it’s too soon to say he’s a lame duck; he’s just lame.

He did manage to push through his “Obamacare” health care insurance plan, forcing Americans to pay for abortions through their health insurance premiums. However, the massive public insurance initiative is turning out to be such a costly and complex legal and administrative fiasco that it may have to be in large measure dismantled.

Unforeseen problem two for pro-choicers two is Kermit Gosnell, the now-notorious Philadelphia abortionist. Bad enough, from the pro-choice perspective, that the friendly mainstream media were shamed into belatedly covering the Gosnell trial. (Update: after three days of deliberation the jury was sent home for the weekend.) Now pro-lifers are showing that Gosnell’s alleged infanticidal activities may not be all that rare.

Unforeseen problem three for pro-choice is Lila Rose and her group Live Action. Since Gosnell hit the headlines, Live Action has released three video interviews secretly recorded by women in their third trimester asking workers at Planned Parenthood-affiliated clinics whether they provide late-term abortions (the clear response is yes), and if the child is born alive, will they try to save its life (the clear answer is no, even though it would then be a legal person under U.S. law).

Rose, a UCLA history graduate from San Jose who is now age 24, founded Live Action when she was 15 and is seen by many as the most effective new voice in the culture war. Adept at bypassing mainstream media through social media, Live Action has amassed considerable evidence that abortion clinics, especially those affiliated with or belonging to Planned Parenthood, are flagrantly tolerant of sexual abuse, racism, gender selection, sex trafficking, deliberate disinformation, infanticide, and medical incompetence and malpractice.

Rose has reduced abortion industry spokesmen and their media allies to spluttering incoherency – as for instance the lawyer for an exposed abortionist in D.C. protesting that Live Action’s video-sting constituted an “outrageous intrusion” on doctor-patient privacy.

Unforeseen pro-choice problem four is their slow defeat at the U.N. As far back as the Cairo Conference in 1994 pro-choice activists have invested massive covert funding and political capital in making legalized abortion the centre-piece of “women’s health” world-wide. Their strategy was to link “overpopulation” to global recognition of “reproductive rights.”

But as Wendy Wright reported last week from New York, U.N. depopulation officials are now admitting that in two decades they have made no political progress. Babatunde Osotimehin, U.N. population fund director, told an on-site Planned Parenthood gathering on May 2 that his organization still “gets push-back from just about every part of the world: Africa, Asia, Central America, Latin America and Europe.” In short, all attempts of the past generation to make abortion a universal human right tied to health care have failed so often that member nations are reaching the point of refusing to debate it.

Just as the Live Action videos were hitting the Internet last month, Planned Parenthood trumpeted on Tuesday, April 23, that two evenings hence, on Thursday, April 25, President Obama would deliver the keynote to their annual gala. He would be the first U.S. president ever to address the organization. Payback time, apparently: non-profit Planned Parenthood contributed $15 million to his last campaign. But on Wednesday, April 24, the White House announced that the president would not be delivering the keynote address. Due to a scheduling conflict he would deliver a brief message on Friday, April 25 instead. Opinion was divided as to which side looked more foolish from this snafu.

Obama spoke for 12 minutes, never mentioned the word “abortion,” told them he was on their side, and asked God to bless them.

What's Beyond the Universe?

On Saturday, I watched a portion of Bob McDonald, CBC’s science expert answering questions from viewers put to him by Peter Mansbridge. One question concerned the continued expansion of the universe since the “big bang”: Where is it expanding into?

It’s a good question, for if there was something for it to expand into, there would be space or some other form of creation to provide for it to expand! Bob’s answer was non-commital: We are inside the expanding universe—that’s all there is.

I was reminded of Carl Sagan’s words opening his video series on the universe: “The universe is all there is, all there was, and all there ever will be.” Reminiscent of the Bible’s affirmation about the Lord: “Who is, and who was, and who is to come.”

And deliberately so. It affirms the view that science can know all there is to know, and Sagan’s declaration is an atheist’s attempt to replace the living God with His creation—to worship created things instead of the Creator.

Of course, the cause of the Big Bang—which presumably started the expansion of the universe—presupposes the existence of something—or Someone—to explode it, and, as usual, unbelieving scientists are trying to find their way around that one!

It reminded me again of a remark by Robert Jastrow, and astronomer. He likened the search for the origins of the universe to climbing a mountain. When the scientists reached the top, he thought the theologians would be probably sitting there waiting for them!

To be fair to Bob McDonald, he is speaking purely from a scientists’ point of view. They can only comment on what they can see. Science cannot comment on what can’t be seen. But that is the Bible’s specialty:

“We fix our eyes not on what is seen, but on what is unseen. For what is seen is temporary, but what is unseen is eternal” (2 Cor. 4:18).