I love being moved to tears at movies, especially when they celebrate the triumph of the human spirit. Tonight my buddy Roni and I saw Eddie the Eagle, which recounts the story of Michael “Eddie the Eagle” Edwards who fulfills a lifelong ambition of becoming an Olympian.

It’s a very good feel-good movie. Some of my favourites sure to open the tear ducts include The Shawshank Redemption, The Lunchbox, The Full Monty, Chef, Sister Act and so many more.

Eddie was a fair English skier who switched to ski jumping because Great Britain had never competed in the Olympics in that sport and it was easier to qualify for the 1988 Calgary Winter Games. He faced many obstacles but won a place on the British team and became the darling of the Games for his unorthodox style and boundless joy at being there. History records that he came dead last.

Taron Egerton plays Eddie and Hugh Jackman his fictinal American coach Bronson Peary. Jim Broadbent plays a British broadcaster who coins the nickname “Eddie the Eagle” for the way Eddie flapped his arms in celebration, and Christopher Walken has a cameo as the coach for Bronson back when he was a troubled golden boy.

I remember working on the newsdesk at Vancouver’s Province daily newspaper during the 1988 Games. Eddie was the human interest story of the Olympics and transcended the sports pages.

Ironically, while Canadian locations often stand in for places in the U.S. and elsewhere in movie shoots, in this British production Oberstdorf, in Bavaria, Germany, stands in for Calgary’s ski jumping centre.

The real Eddie at the 1988 Calgary Winter Olympics.

This evening I rushed to the parkade to head downtown for a talk and book signing by Natalie Goldberg, Zen teacher, writing coach and author of her 14th book, The Great Spring. But as soon as I got to my car, I turned around. I realized I was going largely to have something to blog about, but what I really wanted to do was concentrate on setting up our shared office space in the common house. Kind of mundane, but that’s what I’m writing about.

This morning, I rode with Cam – whose lovely courtyard night scene is today’s featured photo – in his van to Mark L’s place, where we had stored table tops and legs donated by Taryn’s company when they moved offices last year. When we got back to Vancouver Cohousing, Mark B., a heavy-lifter who regularly hauls around his double bass, helped us move the tables up stairs to the second floor.

While Cam trimmed some sawhorse legs, I ran off to Ikea for a height-adjustable leg we needed for the bar-height counter by the skylights where we have a view of the North Shore mountains. Brenda helped me put together some of the tables and place them around the room.

This afternoon, I met with Tom Esakin, an interfaith spiritual director who comes to my chant evenings and wanted to discuss some interspiritual retreats he’s helping spearhead. We had planned to meet at Chau Veggie Express on Victoria Drive, but it’s closed Mondays. So we went a few doors down the street at 5022 to a new place, Panzveggie, run by Sheila Panz, and the latest example of the changing face of Victoria Drive. We sipped on double roasted coffee and munched delicious homemade Taiwanese vegetarian dumplings.

Once I turned back from my car this evening, I asked Fabrice, also in our office room group, to help arrange where the tables should go. He came up with the bright idea of forming an L with the big tables on sawhorses, which now work in the space. Then I installed the adjustable legs on the bar-height counter and moved in the swivel bar stools I bought off Craigslist. I like the look of the room now, but it’s a work in progress and I’m asking the rest of the office group to check it out and see what they think.

Today we enjoyed our first all-community sitdown potluck in the common house, marking the birthdays of both Vesanto and J-M, as well as exactly three years since Vancouver City Council approved our rezoning, a major milestone in the progress of Vancouver Cohousing. That called for serious cake – three of them, in fact.

J-M and Vesanto cut the cake that she and Cam baked (J-M’s cake-loving son Xavier is right at eye level with the cake), while Stacey slices the gluten-free cake she baked while partner Noah and son Dash look on in eager anticipation. There was a yummy chocolate cake too. (Cam Dore photo)

During the dinner, I got to know Wade and Barry better. In cohousing it seems to me we seldom talk about our work lives. I learned more about Wade as a minister at a North Shore United church, and found out that Barry does surveys for private clubs from the command centre with three computer monitors in his studio apartment.

Barry told me he wants to join our new external relations committee, which met at midday and planned some initiatives. I’m also on the recycling committee, and common house groups for the yoga studio and shared office space. We all participate in committee work, as well as the future preparation of community meals that haven’t begun yet.

Chatting with Wade, Joanne and Barry. (Becks photo)

Or Shalom ready to receive four refugee families

Earlier this afternoon I attended a meeting at Or Shalom where we are sponsoring three Syrian Kurdish families and a gay couple from Iraq. About 75 people from the synagogue and other communities came out on a stormy, wet day to get an update. We are ready to receive the refugees but they are being held up by the lack of processing resources. Two families fled to Iraqi Kurdish territory and are unable to get to processing centres in Lebanon and Turkey.

We heard from Kurdish Canadians and others involved in helping bring and resettle refugees.

Vancouver East MP Jenny Kwan, the NDP critic for immigration, refugees and citizenship, reported on meeting last week with the federal minister, John McCallum. She was disappointed to learn that no additional personnel will be sent to speed things up. But she was heartened to hear McCallum respond with an open mind to her suggestions: let the UN’s International Organization for Migration process the refugees’ applications from their office in Iraqi Kurdistan, and in the case of family reunification, let the relatives here apply on behalf on their family members and send the papers to the refugees to sign. We’ll be writing to MPs and the minister urging these changes.

Sunday’s meeting on refugees at Or Shalom.

After missing three weeks of Saturday morning services due to the move, today I was back in the bosom of Or Shalom, my spiritual community at 10th and Fraser, much closer to my new East Side home. It was such a joy to walk into the sanctuary and hear Rabbi Hannah Dresner singing a lovely niggun (wordless melody). The photo here, showing Hannah in the foreground, was taken on a Sunday because we don’t use cameras in the synagogue on Shabbat.

After Hannah guided us through Pesukei d’Zimra (verses of praise), Rabbi Laura Duhan Kaplan and Charles Kaplan led Shacharit (morning prayers) – all very beautiful and soulful. It was so good to be in my spiritual home once again. Here are some of the faces of Or Shalom.

I lingered on at the potluck lunch catching up with friends, and making a time on Tuesday to get together with Pat, who I’m teaming up with to produce the Passover issue of Keren Or, Or Shalom’s newsletter. Kind of déjà vu all over again – I edited the newsletter for eight years from 1994-2002.

This past week’s Torah portion is particularly relevant to me because it recounts the completion of construction and the dedication of the sanctuary in the desert where the freed Israelites wandered for 40 years. A perfect week to have dedicated my own newly constructed home. It got me searching my photo archive for mezuzah hangings from the past.

This goes back to the mid-’80s when Rabbi Hillel Goelman helped us dedicate the home we built in Vancouver’s Point Grey.

Hanging a mezuzah on the doorpost of my home in Kampala, Uganda.

Using all three hands to put up a mezuzah at my home in the Vancouver neighbourhood of Kerrisdale.

As I wrote earlier this week, art makes a home. And hanging a mezuzah makes a Jewish home. Today the guests for my monthly 2nd Friday Shabbat Dinner honoured me by helping me bless my new home at Vancouver Cohousing with a Chanukat Bayit – dedication of the home, kind of a Jewish housewarming.

A mezuzah is a parchment scroll containing Torah verses declaring the oneness of the Divine. The roots of the ritual go back to the Biblical story of the struggle by Moses to free the Israelite slaves in Egypt. To persuade Pharaoh to let the Israelites go, the Egyptians suffered a series of plagues, culminating in the death of the first born. As the story goes, God told Moses to tell the Israelites to dab sheep’s blood on their doorposts so the angel of death would pass over their homes (the origin of the name Passover).

These scrolls are hung in their ceremonial cases generally within 30 days of moving into a home, and frequently a party is held in order to accomplish this ritual task. My mezuzah case was made by a very creative close family member at the age of 12 or 13.

After reciting the appropriate Hebrew blessing, we trooped over to another cohousing member’s unit. Now middle-aged, she said she has had her mezuzah since she was 21 and never felt safe enough to put it up on her doorpost; but now she was ready to have it on her home. She put her mezuzah up with great feeling.

And then we enjoyed the first sit-down dinner in the common house since we moved in two weeks ago. It was a potluck with a great variety, including two eggplant dishes and I love eggplant. The group was a lovely combo of cohousers and folks who have previously come to my Shabbat dinners at my Kerrisdale home. We sang the Shabbat blessings before the meal, and afterwards I brought out my drum for some sacred chanting.

The mezuzah is a very positive symbol. While my home was under construction, I experienced a very negative symbol – one of the workers drew a swastika on a stud in the framing. Fortunately, I saw it before the drywall was installed and had the stud replaced. I reported it to Vancouver Police as a possible hate crime. Unsettling to be sure, but I doubt the jerk had any idea it was the home of a Jew.

Today was a pleasure. I began putting some art up on the walls, including the masks, family portrait and kimono that you can see in the photo. Certainly not fine art, but they all have meaning for me. Like beauty, art is in the eye of the beholder. They give my place personality and character, helping to make it a home.

This morning I touched up the finish on a pine bookcase from Craigslist, so that tomorrow I can haul my books out of boxes and onto the shelves. Packing up for the move I selected about 50 books to donate to the Isaac Waldman Library at the Jewish Community Centre. But there are still plenty for a large and a small bookcase, with Japanese vases interspersed here and there.

I recently heard an interview on CBC Radio 1 with a man who had eliminated all his books and had gone totally digital. I have much fewer volumes than when I owned houses, but I still like to go to physical texts, as well as Dr. Google, for information and inspiration.

At midday I got a call from friends Charles and Sandra who were in the neighbourhood and dropped by to see my place and the complex. They’ve been hearing from me about the progress and challenges of Vancouver Cohousing for almost four years. I was proud to show them around.

I was delighted to find in my mail box my weekly Economist magazine and a letter from the Canada Revenue Agency (for my American friends, that’s our IRS) that they had recalculated my 2014 tax return and were refunding $411.29!

This is hard to write about. During the day I eat moderately. But I have a tendency to binge eat late at night. I really let loose on the weekend, consuming a large carton of ice cream on Saturday night and six Chinese coconut buns on Sunday – both pretty much at one sitting.

I know it’s filling an emotional need. When I’m going to bed alone, there’s something comforting about a full belly. But when my mouth is full of kisses, I don’t overeat.

I remember first becoming aware that I was out of control when as a jogger I registered for a 10Km run in the 1980s and saw that at 197 pounds I was eligible for the “Clydesdale Class”. Yikes. That sent me to Weight Watchers where I slimmed down to 165 and became a lifetime member. I eventually gained it back.

In 2002 a girlfriend urged me to do something about my body. I joined Overeaters Anonymous and lost weight. But I haven’t been to OA or Weight Watchers for decades. I’ve continued to gain and lose over the years with 175 pounds as my new target, which I reached last year in time for two family weddings.

Lugging all those boxes and moving furniture in the move into Vancouver Cohousing has shaved off a couple pounds. I weighed in at home yesterday at 187.8. Those decimal places matter to me; no way would I round that off to 188. For my six-foot frame, 183 is a healthy BMI.

This evening my buddy Roni and I saw Michael Moore’s insightful and funny documentary, “Where to Invade Next.” Turning 62 next month, Moore too has struggled with his weight. Morbidly obese, he spent a week last month in ICU at a hospital with pneumonia.

Weight is a challenge for many of us. Over coffee after the movie, Roni says he’s fighting a daily battle to stay away from sweets. He’s now gone two weeks without refined sugars while still enjoying fresh and dried fruits. He said he feels lighter and healthier. Good for you, Roni!

Michael Moore at a Q&A for “Where to Invade Next” at the New York Film Festival.

I do miss the view of the waters of Georgia Strait from my Kerrisdale apartment, but I am coming to appreciate the vista of the Coast Mountains from Vancouver Cohousing. The photo is from the common-area walkway where I’ve parked a patio bistro set a few feet from my unit for me and anyone else to sit and enjoy. The view is more expansive from the rooftop garden on the common house that you can see at the end of the courtyard.

The common house is already buzzing. The shared office is being used, folks are doing yoga in the studio, kids are revelling in their play area, the guest rooms have guests and a hard-working team has organized the community kitchen. The pantry/canning and crafts rooms are taking shape. The weekend “free store” where we offered our excess items was a success. I managed to give away stuff without acquiring anything.

This Friday, I’ll be hosting my Second Friday Shabbat Dinner here, a great opportunity for friends to join me and get a look at the first cohousing community in the city of Vancouver. On Sunday we’ll have a party to mark exactly three years since City Council approved rezoning our property.

Donnie has taken the lead on our recycling committee to guide us in carefully sorting our trash. As a result, massive amounts of stuff have been diverted from landfill. I’m on the committee too and want to help make our community a model for what can happen when people recycle consciously.

Strolling along at 1.2 mph, I’m writing this post on my trusty treadmill desk that I’ve just hooked up. It feels great to be using it again. I’ll find out from Nic below me this evening how much noise it makes for him, especially when I bump it up to 3.6 mph when I’m streaming something.

There are still boxes to unpack but the end is in sight.

One of so many scenes of being neighbourly.

A view of the front along East 33rd Avenue.

Even though I spent a lot of time and energy arranging to sublet my Kerrisdale apartment so I’d have an escape hatch, Vancouver Cohousing pretty much had me at the move-in. I’m feeling the love.

These are the people who have agreed by 100 percent consensus to every decision we’ve made since the project started in 2012. Many of those decisions have been tough but we’ve learned to listen to each other and work through any divisions. That’s true consensus in a community of like-minded individuals.

Like Barb and Vesanto in the photo above, we’re so happy to be hanging out together. There are no awkward silences in the elevator, just opportunities to connect.

We’re already enjoying the fruits of sharing. For example, Frannie is sharing her vacuum cleaner with me and another household, so the new one I bought is going back to the store. Our camping and outdoor gear is going into the bike room for everyone to share. We’ll have a spice library where people can get what they need without having to buy every spice for their own kitchen. The workshop will have tools we can borrow.

My neighbours are very kind. Saje lent me cutlery before mine emerged from boxes. Fabrice lent me eggs when I needed to bake brownies in a hurry. Cam spent this evening driving us in his van to haul a mistake – assembled the wrong size wardrobe! – to Ikea and then pick up a bookcase I bought off Craigslist. This afternoon, Ian installed several things in my place in an hour that would have taken me all day. As a contractor, he does this for a living, so I paid him, but he is very generous with his time and advice.

Before we moved in, I was adamant that if I couldn’t have quiet enjoyment of my own home, it would be a deal breaker. We were told that the floor to ceiling soundproofing would be excellent. But it turns out I can hear the pitter patter of the toddler’s feet in the unit above me – it’s a little annoying and because he’s such a delightful kid I’m surprised to find it somewhat endearing. Imagine that.

The courtyard glistens in the rain.

This morning, I picked up plants from my balcony in Kerrisdale.