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Posts by Ryan

Apr 28

2 Comments

Cheap Words

Well, they’re native, so….

Over the last few weeks, I’ve had half a dozen or so conversations where some version of the phrase above was used to “explain” or set the table for an explanation of some undesirable situation or turn of events. Often, the conversations have been with Christians. Always, the comment was presented as if it were utterly uncontroversial and unproblematic. As if that one word—“native”—said all that needed to be said. As if it were self-evident that the topic under discussion could quickly be summed up by whatever cluster of negative associations they happened to be able to squeeze into those six little letters. N-a-t-i-v-e. Read more

Apr 27

5 Comments

Frozen: A (Whiny) History of Suffering

I spent part of yesterday morning in the dentist’s chair. Now, I know that nobody enjoys going to the dentist. But I really, really, really don’t like it. I am, undoubtedly, the worst of scaredy-cats and neurotically frightened of pain, but in my (meager) defense, my cowardice has a back-story. Read more

Apr 21

3 Comments

The Shape of Our Caring

On September 2, 2015, the body of a five-year-old Syrian boy named Alan Kurdi was photographed face down on a Turkish beach. This one image seemed to capture the world’s attention and galvanize efforts to respond to the Syrian refugee crisis. The crisis itself wasn’t new—it had been a growing reality for at least three years prior to that photo. Alan Kurdi wasn’t the only five-year-old boy to die in an attempt to cross the Mediterranean—he was and is, sadly, one of many. In many ways, Alan Kurdi’s story was tragically ordinary in a world where tragedy is ordinary. But it became extraordinary in the response to that one image. Read more

Apr 20

16 Comments

On Not Being a Jerk

A few years ago, I spent a week at Canadian Mennonite University in Winnipeg as “pastor in residence.” It was an interesting week full of informal conversation, public lectures, worship services, and question and answer sessions. Toward the end of the week, I attended a lunch with a group of students who were considering pastoral ministry. Near the end of our time together, I was asked a simple and entirely reasonable question: “If you could offer one piece of advice to those either considering pastoral ministry or those taking their first steps toward it, what would it be?”  Read more

Apr 14

12 Comments

A Good Christian

Most of us who fall into the “Christian” category of humanity walk around with at least some conception of a “good Christian” in our heads. It might not be a very good conception. It might not be very clear or coherent or compelling in any way. It might even be downright repellent to many, inside or outside of the Christian camp. It might be a fire-breathing, red-faced white Republican for whom Christian faith seems to mean a long list of things to be against, sprinkled with a generous dose of syrupy personal piety, muscular Americana, and unbridled capitalism. Or something else. Lets hope.  Read more

Apr 7

3 Comments

Pardon is Your Name

I come across many people who have difficulty forgiving. Sometimes, the challenge is to forgive others. Parents, children, spouses, siblings, friends. Sometimes it’s institutions, structures, powers and principalities, the weight of history with its myriad injustices. Sometimes it’s a ghost, an illusory entity created to bear the burden of real and imagined grievances. Sometimes it’s God. At least as often the problem is forgiving ourselves—the people we were, the people we are, the people we are daily failing to become. We live in a world where wrong is so often done, a world where forgiveness is not easily mined out of the mountains of wrongdoing that build up over time. Read more

Apr 5

2 Comments

Give Me a Moral Disease

This morning I started reading an(other) article about how the Internet is destroying our brains and rendering us incapable of paying sustained attention to anything for longer than forty-five seconds, but I ended up musing about the honour of being called a sinner. An unlikely trajectory of reflection, perhaps, but I’ll try to explain myself… Read more

Mar 29

7 Comments

This Ridiculous Story

Easter is a ridiculous thing. Come to think of it, there is a ridiculous quality to so much of what we as Christians claim.

Christmas—God-in-flesh, born in a feed trough to a teenaged peasant girl. Ridiculous.

The Sermon on the Mount—an idealistic approach to life if ever there was one, a recipe for little more than getting taken advantage of and abused. Naively ridiculous.

Palm Sunday—the “triumphal entry” of a king… on a pitiful little donkey… talking about peace. Laughably ridiculous.

Maundy Thursday—a master who washes feet. Weirdly ridiculous.

Good Friday—a self-proclaimed Messiah, executed like a common criminal, going out with hardly a whimper. Pitifully ridiculous

And now, Easter— the defeat of death, as Paul says in 1 Corinthians 15:19-26? Well, “ridiculous” barely seems to cover it. Read more

Mar 25

3 Comments

The Things Jesus Doesn’t Do For Us

We often hear a steady stream of words about what Jesus “did for us” around this time of year, around this stage of Holy Week. Last night, at our church’s Maundy Thursday service, we shared a simple meal together and walked through the familiar story from Jesus’ arrest to crucifixion. We do the same thing each year, and each year something new stands out to me. This year, I was struck the things that Jesus didn’t do for us as he walked the tortuous path to Calvary. Read more

Mar 23

9 Comments

Girl

Ever since I returned from Palestine and Israel a few weeks ago, I’ve been trying to come up with some kind of a summary post or report or analysis or something to kind of tie a nice little bow on my experience, to have some finished product to point to that summarizes the things I saw and experienced while over there. Read more

Mar 21

12 Comments

Set the Table

Why do we eat soup during Lent? The question from a church member caught me a bit off guard as I was scrambling to get a few things together for a soup and bread Lenten lunch that our church was hosting last week. I don’t remember exactly how I responded. I think I vaguely gestured toward Lent being a season for embracing self-discipline and simplicity. “The general idea,” I said, “is that we choose not to eat as much or the same as we might during other times of the year as a way of remembering that we do not live on bread alone—to acknowledge, even in the context of abundance, that our deepest hunger is for God.” I pointed to the idea that fasting is a way of acknowledging that there is an unfinished quality to our world and to our human experience—that things are not yet as they should be, that we are not yet as we should be.  Read more

Mar 4

18 Comments

A Stone’s Throw

Another restless sleep in Bethlehem interrupted by the 4 am call to prayer… In lieu of tossing and turning frustratedly for the next hour, I thought recording a few stories lodged in my brain from yesterday might be a more profitable use of my time.  Read more

Mar 2

5 Comments

Call to Prayer

My first night in the West Bank came to a rather abrupt, if expected end with the Islamic call to prayer (adhan) outside my window at 4:00 am. The song from the muezzin was haunting and beautiful. And rather longer than I expected. Given that I had collapsed into bed around 9 pm the previous evening after a long (and sleepless) few days of travel, and given that going back to sleep in the circumstances would prove spectacularly unlikely for me (I have a hard time sleeping well at the best of times, never mind when traveling), I decided I might as well do what I was told and get up to pray. Read more

Feb 29

8 Comments

Holy Land 

Tomorrow morning, dark and early, I will be heading up to the Calgary airport for the first leg of a journey that will end in Israel a day and a half or so later. A few months ago, I was fortunate to be invited to participate in a learning tour to Israel/Palestine put together by MCC Alberta. The departure date has kind of snuck up on me in the midst of what has been a full first few months of 2016, but now that it’s here, I’m very excited to go. Read more

Feb 22

14 Comments

The Sacred Art of Departing

“You know, in Germany there are hordes of young Syrian men raping German women.” The statement hovered in the air menacingly. I suspected that I was in for an interesting encounter as I watched him stride determinedly toward me after I gave a presentation on the Syrian refugee crisis at a local church recently. His jaw was set and his brow was furrowed. I was not expecting congratulations or affirmation for the work that I had spent the last half hour or so describing, but I wasn’t expecting anything quite this stark either. It wasn’t a question or even a potential opening to a conversation. It was a crude challenge thrown down. Or a dare. Or a provocation. You have all your nice words about Jesus and love and welcoming the stranger… Well, what do you say about this?! Read more

Feb 18

1 Comment

On Erring

To err is human, Alexander Pope famously said in his Essay on Criticism. Yes, it certainly is. And the more experience I have with this being human business, the more evidence I am afforded of this unpleasant truth. Read more

Feb 9

9 Comments

When No One is Watching

Often when people find out that I’m a pastor for the first time, they will gradually, at some point in the conversation, summon the requisite courage or boldness or curiosity to ask some version of the question, So what do you actually do all day? I will usually “um” and “ah” and “well, you see” for a while, before settling on things like sermons, worship preparation, writing, visiting folks, various administrative tasks, and whittling away at the ever-present mountain of email that is the bane of twenty-first century existence among the joyful privileges of participating in the Lord’s work. [Ahem] I don’t very often get to say things like, Well, this week, I’m actually spending a bit of time with an international journalist who is in town working on a story about our community’s responses to the Syrian refugee crisis. Like, roughly never. Read more

Feb 3

9 Comments

Faces

I dropped in on our local English training centre for newcomers to Canada today. It wasn’t a planned visit, but I was having a conversation at a downtown coffee shop about how the Syrian families we sponsored are doing, and I said something to the effect of, “Well, they’re across the street right now in English classes. Wanna wander over there and see?”  Off we went. Read more

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