Karen Mains Blog

In Mexico, Mother’s Day is a big day for honoring the matriarch. Any daughters throw a big fiesta, the family gathers, gifts are given and mother is highly honored. Cirilo has concluded that my family—and since I only have one daughter, so particularly Melissa—do not do enough to make me feel special. “Why you not have fiesta?” he asked Melissa once. “Your mother a good lady.”

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For years, since we started the initial phases of the Global Bag Project in 2008, I’ve heard the name Barbara Harrison, a business gal from Canada who had trained some of the HIV/AIDS widows in Kibera Slums how to put a business plan together (selling swaths of fabric, dried fish—small enterprises). Through the years since, I’ve heard Barbara this, Barbara that; you know, the Barbara from Canada. http://bit.ly/JrhajO

The name of our driver for the two weeks we are in Kenya is Farage (I believe it is Faragi but Kenyans often give you a name they think Westerners can understand and pronounce).

“I am your driver, Farage,” he says. “I am here for you.” This saying was repeated many times, gaining more meaning with each repetition. http://bit.ly/L00s6m

Friends and Strangers chronicles the beginning of the journey into self-knowledge, a painful odyssey particular to the work of the middle years. This narrative focuses on the ages from 38-45. Each of us has hidden areas, lies we tell to ourselves that we don’t know we are telling. The work of the Holy Spirit is to continually bring us into truth. In this book I begin to look at truth through encounters with strangers, people I meet along the way, brought to me by God, who have rich gifts to give that shake my smug thinking. I am convinced that no encounter is casual, as each has the potential to move the ground beneath our feet, which is never as solid as we like to think. http://bit.ly/eRu0qK

If you are into physics (yes, some people really, really are), don’t miss the opportunity to expose yourself to the elegant thinking of John Polkinghorne. I will admit that I had to work at this some, but even then, I kept taking deep breaths and thinking, I am being exposed to a true mastermind. What a privilege! http://bit.ly/JNUuH1

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The moment I write the title “Wouldn’t You Like to Do Something Good for the Women of the World,” I am afraid I will lose my male readers. So before continuing, let me make the point that in all of history one of the greatest advocates for the empowerment and the advancement of women was our Lord, Jesus Christ. Read Luke, the whole book, and ask why the beloved physician included so many stories of Christ’s interaction with old women, young women, healthy and unhealthy women. I have concluded and have often taught that Jesus was the Healer of Women. He believed in them, sustained them, often commended them, traveled with them, looked on them as among His chief boosters. http://bit.ly/HjaK0E

Every day I try to read a little from literature that is richly written and that stirs my soul. These last months I’ve been slowly perusing and underlining the book How to Read a Poem by Edward Hirsch. Poetry has always been a difficult genre for me to understand, but the author is a master teacher and suddenly, as I study his writing and the samples he includes, this world of literature is opening to me. Poems are becoming comprehensible, astounding, soul-shaking and renewing. http://bit.ly/IjFyDL

In Open Heart, Open Home (over 500,000 copies in print) award-winning Karen Mains steps far beyond how-to-entertain you hints to explore the deeper concepts of Christian hospitality-the Biblical way to use your home and an open heart to care for others like God wants us to. Countless pastors have recommended this classic resource as the meaningful example of how the Holy Spirit ministers to and through us to make other people feel truly welcome and deeply wanted. http://bit.ly/ID2f34

David and I have gone up to the Shakespeare Festival in Stratford, Ontario for some 39 years. Rather than have a cabin on a lake, or a vacation getaway, we have returned to this little stone town with its four theatres and amazing cultural life, inviting friends and family and acquaintances to come with us. Theatre in this environment, with the finest repertory company on the North American continent, has enriched our souls. Will Shakespeare is part of our family history. http://bit.ly/IWhq8H