Hi Kimmio,

It does.  How that represents an improvement over WonderCafe.ca is beyond my ability to fathom.  Would like to have the knob who thought that try and explain though possibly he is busy being Mayor of Toronto for the moment.

Yeah but am I gesticulating wildly or leaning over the pulpit manner of factly?  Try it both ways to see which is most effective.

To the best of my memory I have not used the phrase, "blow chunks" from the pulpit.

My wife still torments me about making announcements as a student minister when I used the line "belly up to the trough" about a Church dinner.  It was unfortunate that I didn't notice I was painting myself into a corner while trying to be all folksy and charming.

Most recently I let slip how much I hated Jazz while announcing a Jazz Coffeehouse.  Did the congregation ever have a lot of fun at my expense over that.

anyhoo

It would have been nice.

Grace and peace to you.

John

Hi Folks,

WonderCafe isn't scheduled to go off line until June 2014 - 8 months from now. A decision has been made based on the circumstances, but I am sure your input would be appreciated. Please contact Dan Benson, head of Communications at the General Council Office. Message me if you would like his email address.

Thanks,
Aaron

I was out of town for a few days . . . came home . . . decided to check out Wondercafe . . . !  And find out that it is closing in June.

I'm not angry . . . but I am sad.  Perhaps I will work my way from sadness to anger.

Wondercafe over the years since I've been here has had an impact on my life . . . an impact in a positive way.

If it weren't for Wondercafe, my understanding of others, my faith and where I am at in it, and my love and acceptance for those different from myself, would be back in a place that I would never want it to be.  Wondercafe, and the wonderful posters on it have enabled me to learn, grow, develop, and change in my understanding - about myself, other persons, life, and God. 

I will miss it.

I am going to make the best of it, and enjoy it to the bitter end!

Like others, I'm probably not going to join the Facebook Wondercafe, and I will miss this place immensely.

Hope, peace, joy, love . . .

Thanks DKS. I'm not proposing a vote. As I said, a decision has already been made, but I think it would be good for those involved in the decision making process to hear from those affected. And yes, that was part of the idea, to give people a chance to "vote with their feet" and figure out where and how we can stay connected in the future.

Thanks,

Aaron

I appreciated getting far advance notice!  Thanks for that Aaron!

I agree regarding advance notice.

I also appreciate that people will vote with their feet regardless....i am generally for transparency.

Crazyheart ( or whoever...?)

I believe you are or you were in touch with GRR i.e. David Keating. I chanced upon an old thread of yours in 2009 in which GRR responded as below. On his website he is fine and healthy  being a cancer survivor for the past 4 years. I wonder if he would be interested in offering anything to further the WC cause down the road. Possibly you could contact him...?.... its just an idea or suggestion.

Matter of factly. Lol! Definately works better.

Aaron, thanks for the reply, but is it possible to be more specific with the dollar amounts?

How much approximately would it cost to upgrade the site? How many years would it be before the next upgrade would be needed if we did upgrade? Once the site has been upgraded how much does it cost to run the site and how many people do that?

I'm asking so we know what the actual costs are that are involved to keep this place going.

Thanks!

I'm wondering, when the Wondercafe closes - we won't be able to post any more.  But will we be able go back and find old threads.  Sometimes I like to go back to some of the supportive threads from the past and reread them and feel the comfort or courage they gave me.  Will they simply disappear?  Is there some way I can save some of the threads or posts that were special for me.

Print them off?

seeler, having an old operating system running old software is not a good idea.  I would be surprised if it stayed up in its current state, but, I will defer to aaron and others on it.

If the server is hosted anywhere, or if it is a virtual machine, the old software will be an opening for malware to find their way to other software and compromise.  No one wants to be in that position.

Seeler - my suggestion would be to copy and past the threads that you love into a word document on your computer.

Admin - like others here, I really appreciate the advance notice. It gives us time to both organize and grieve. Thank you for that and for all that you do here.

Aaron,

I came across this post  I  wrote when I had been with Wondercafe for a year....

Please feel free to let those who are closing this site know how far-reaching their site was.....

 

 

 

 

  

 

 

 

 

Social

 

 

 

 

Pilgrims Progress

Wondercafe Gratitude

Posted on: 11/28/2009 10:00

My one year anniversary with Wondercafe happens next week, and to quote an old lady on her death-bed, "I must say, it's all been very interesting".

As some of you know, at the time I joined Wondercafe, I was working through the grief of my husband's death. Living on my own was difficult. Friends and family were wonderful, but naturally they weren't always available.

Whether it was by chance or by the Spirit, I discovered Wondercafe. It was just what I needed. People to "talk" with when I wanted company - and the ability to "walk away" when I needed to be alone. (Looking back, I recall some mornings when the only thing that got me out of bed was the thought, "I wonder what's happening in Canada today?")

First, there were the many technical issues to face. Thank you to all those patient people who wondermailed me on how to quote others in my posts. Thank you, Sharon (admin) who emailed me that the reason I couldn't  see flag as offensive on my own posts was that " I was hardly likely to be offended at what I wrote myself". (Duh, there are times when I'm amazed at my own stupidity!)

As the months rolled by my energy increased, and my spirit grew lighter. One morning, I awoke and looked out across the bay, and knew that I would always feel close to my husband - and that there was no need to be sad to keep him in my memory.

On Wondercafe I was soon bantering with my friend crazyheart about the roofer. Yep, my old pal humour was back in harness!

I have never believed in standing still. In life, One is always moving forward or going backwards. It was time to move forward. Whether you call it the unconscious or the Spirit, have you noticed that there is a force propelling you forward? I choose to believe that the Spirit gives us a gentle nudge from time to time.

First there was that Anais Nin quote from LBmuskoka, "There comes a time when the risk to remain tight in the bud was more painful than the risk it took to blossom".

Next, I read of Tiger Lily's trip to meet myst and family. Slowly the thought formed, why not visit Canada? In the past year I've learnt so much about your country and it's people - why not go and see for myself?

Then there was the thread I started on "extending your comfort zone". (the Spirit at work again?) Why not undertake the trip on my own to try and increase my confidence? The old enemy fear was soon making it's presence felt. Then Jesouhaite 777 unwittingly came to the rescue, "you must have at least minded the bags while your husband was at the desk?" This made me laugh, surely I wasn't that useless?

So folks, this is just to let you know that I'll be in Toronto the first week-end in July next year. I would love to meet you for coffee or a meal, if it's at all possible. I'll then be going on a trip to eastern Canada - ending up in Halifax, Nova Scotia.

Thank you again, possums, for walking this part of life's journey with me. May God smile on you, as He has on me.  

OMG!

Bugger!

What a mess - er, can some techie "fix" this????

The copied post might be displaying upside-down because you're in Australia. Stand on your head, or turn your computer upside-down to compensate. It displays just fine up here in the correct hemisphere.

M'dear, - if I could  stand on my head at my age, I'd be in the circus.....

Aaron did say the site would be archived. He didn't give any details of how that would actually work out ...

lol, chansen & PP...thank-you

WARNING: There is a reason why we walk on our feet and not our hands. That reason is God. God, Creator of the Universe, created this planet, created gravity, created us... God knew we, as his creations, would age and that as we age gravity causes things to sag downward. Walking on our hands would smother us under saggy bellies and breasts (manboobs included). This is IMO proof of God. It is, at least, proof of Intelligent Design. Chansen will debate this. He is all for science. So, he can be the one to do the experiment and have naked old folks standing on their heads for his observation. For me and my house, we believe in God.

Ahhh....the old "Intelligent Sagging" debate. I thought we put that to bed long ago.

You may have put it to bed.

Intellignet design is an unconscious process ...

For wisdom of such evolution is beyond those that didn't wish to know (esse in tuol 've denial) how this came about for those not of the flesh (AirClean) ... just a bad dream in my experience of life and flesh which he believes just isn't (good means for learning how not to mess up anything in myth)? That'd be like abstract or imaginary, complexly one step beyond simple as you're KISS'd off as without thoughts of physical degree of order! various states beyond unreal?

Things stoics are unable to envision ...

Exchanges like those between Pilgrim, chansen and SG make my day. We get similar on FB but not this kind. I will miss this.

*walks away wiping tears of laughter and sadness off my face.

SHE LOOKED WAY YOUNGER THAN SEVENTY!

Chansen, I am hearing you sing Hedley's "Don't Talk to Strangers" in my head now.

You sag in bed?

They make little blue pills for that, chansen.

seeler

I think the fastest way for me  to save  certain material as a start is to put names in search i.e. seeler. Then find posts I like and copy/paste them, send them to my email.

From there I can do whatever I like with them, post to Word, document ...?....print them etc...?  My puter knowledge is very slim. I learned it myself in sort of an  upside down fashion...lol. I'm slow and topsy turvy, I  waste a lot of time. I wonder if Aaron can archive or save it all, the whole forum? There's so much on it? 

You would be a wonderful candidate to write a book based on findings from the WC. I'd love that. It would be a best seller. I suppose you would need copyright permission but that shouldn't be a problem. I've been asking somebody, anybody to write a book since the WC opened after a few months already. Very interesting material...!!!!

@P.P....Your copied post is fine, no problem!

@SG....Yes, there definitely is a God.....:)

I AM WAY YOUNGER THAN SEVENTY. (Well, a little way).....

It was that tongue kiss that did it - for a moment I thought I was still in the plane from Oz, and being upgraded to first class.

hoot

CRAZYHEART says; hoot ...

Now is that not levity, or Levite in the words of a sagging god ... the negative side of the positive synoidal wave in the quantum areas of light right out of the darkness of in-anima'ð hues ... purely in-humane as dropped here as Lucifer Prin.? Such are bedeviling thoughts to gods that choose not to ...

Thats enough to ignite the coal carrier into a watery blast, why they perhaps call the gas from there; blackdamp! Has a sort of morphis*pedia  (etomology, or d' rivation twit) it if you can get into large words ... devil of a thing to the simple Romans (pede prin) and the juda'n that felt entitled to the inspirational intellecti .. without learning Hebrew. That's a vast word they referred to as everything condensed, or rendered down ... came to be known as NERDi ... why we lost it as it went subtle ... below the emotional horizon?

In Christian Circe's often they leave behind the processing portions of sects that are intangible until gotten right into as a dark smear on the page ... them odd words considered alien by those that don't know what they mean ... a sort of subtle understanding of incarnate thoughts in dark form as ascribed to by E B Browning:

• And I smiled to think ...
• God's greatness flowed ...
• Around our incompleteness (abstract?) ...
• Round our restlessness, his rest!

Such unconscienable cognizance would bring a sobre man to his knees in tears of levity ... and cause him to loose his ability to render a myth as aboriginal's pelt it !

Such dark humur in myth causes one to rise to incomprehensible challenge of: "how did this scion come to be?" The satyr-like problem in human scient*ante's was thus born as a duality .. an infinite enigma in a mortal spot? And who's on that damed spot?

When this happen ... twas a beginning of odd things in spatial character ... quite Eire in some projections (perspective) ... and the concept became imbedded with metaphor about the birth of sol' !

PilgrimsProgress making out with chansen or was that chansen making out with PilgrimsProgress? Nevermind, it doesn't matter. I have this image in my head now. And for some reason it also includes chansen chastizing PilgrimsProgress for calling on a deity during it.

OK, for the record, the "SEVENTY" crack was not about you.

Cephen tiye ... six and the undeniable central issue of that humble subtle character ... Ba'th' chi Ba ... the washer woman of sol'!

Listen up, WaterBuoy, them's fightin' words!

In Oz, we defend our mates - so don't refer to my mate Crazyheart as "a sagging god", or else!

Gotta say, I'll miss you WaterBuoy, but, then again, I enjoy doing cryptic crosswords,.....

Okay, that's enough silliness from me......

Just one last serious comment - Facebook is a good resource in many ways, but somehow it's lacking the banter element that I do enjoy here.......

"Listen up, WaterBuoy, them's fightin' words!

In Oz, we defend our mates  ..."

Such is b'n terre like a hole in the ground ... a subtle arguement that isn't serious, but skye built ceries ... was that a sagging god or a Sagan idealism ... like latent, ot hermuenetic Scies ... that cut through to the in sentient soul!

Is the defense mechanism subtle in the real world? Ain't that the pits ... like where the brothers put Joey ... so it comes from lo'regents ... the legend of the fall ...

Come to recall didn't Alice in Wonderland strike up with that Eire ...?

Seas thro' a waterborn soul? A metaphor to bring a dumbÉ as is to heis knees ...

When the time comes PP we shall see one another clearly moor than ClearAir ... a hazy projection of truth to say least of the lessor man thinking heis greater than all other creation ...

All literary rules tossed to the breazes, or breast of wind ... ru'agh in LGK's mode ... one must cling to the abstract ... that which isn't complete ... in-complete by convention?

God isn't finished yet ...

you know who i miss, golden rule

Let me pass hellos from GoldenRule. I was in touch a few weeks ago. His health is stable and he is the same gentle person who left here. I miss him too.

Thank-you Crazy. That is so good to hear. A good person. A gift to have shared a thread with

sorry I couldn't pull up the GrassRoots thread from 2009. There were testimonies about WonderCafe that I sent one by one to the Observer. They were not interested. If the Official Magazine of thechurch is not interested, who do we suppose is?

That's sad CH.

Crazyheart- that's an idea. Lets all write to the Observer , the Moderator and this other guy. If they get lots of letters/emails- they might just pick up a story...

Crazy, the Observer is not the church mouthpiece.

Since 1986, The Observer has been independently incorporated, which makes it unique among major North American denominational publications. The magazine sets its own editorial policies and program and is overseen by its own board of directors. While it maintains a healthy relationship with The United Church of Canada, it does not speak as the denomination’s official voice, receiving only about 7 percent of its funding from the United Church’s General Council. Other funding comes from individual subscriptions, newsstand purchases, the Friends of the Observer Fund and government grants. The Observer’s financial and legal independence permits the publication to comment freely on matters within and outside The United Church of Canada.   Says editor Wilson: “In the same way that The United Church of Canada is part of the Canadian identity, an independent Observer is inextricably part of the United Church identity — one of those unique features of the United Church that Canadians admire, whether they’re in the pews or on the sidelines.”

I knew that but it still ticked me off, Pinga.

Yep, that sounds like something that the magazine's editor would say. Truth is, not all Canadians admire his publication. Even when my family was in the UCCanada we would usually each briefly glance through the Observer before throwing it in the trash (we didn't have recycling back then).