Aug 5
Among my discoveries on two long days spent on my recently acquired motorcycle was that I am now part of a club. I’m not sure if it qualifies as an “elite” club yet or not, but we have our own equivalent of a handshake and everything. Every time you pass a motorcyclist on the highway you will be greeted by “the wave” from your fellow “two-wheeler.” Well, most of the time. More on that later.
For the better part of the last two weeks, my vacation morning routine has looked roughly the same. Wake up (usually at least two hours before the rest of my family), make a pot of coffee, proceed to the patio overlooking the ocean at our friends’ place in North Vancouver, and begin to leisurely sift through the newspaper or a novel while basking in the sun-drenched early morning silence. It’s been delightful. The patio, the sun, the coffee (mmm… Kicking Horse), the gorgeous ocean view…. But especially the silence. Read more
One of the best parts of spending a bit of time in British Columbia each summer is the opportunity to reconnect with the many dear people whose lives we were once embedded in—at least in a more concrete way. It is so often a delight to discover the twists and turns people’s lives have taken, how their kids have grown, the new opportunities they are exploring, etc. It is a privilege to see how the goodness of God traces its way through the many stories we have been privileged to be a part of.
But, as always, there are other stories, too. Stories of relational breakdown, job difficulties, children who have gotten themselves into a bad place. And death. Always stories of death. Read more
If a tree falls in a forest and no one is around to hear it, does it make a sound?
If we have a memorable experience in the age of smart phones and social media and don’t digitally capture and share it, did it really happen? Read more
My previous post was critical of our cultural obsession with celebrity and entertainment. I was a bit surprised by the amount of push back I received in various forums, specifically when it came to my views on the monarchy and its dubious (in my view) merits. But it’s relatively easy to be critical of institutions and entertainment options that I care very little for. I spend precisely zero time wondering about the ins and outs of the Royal Family, and I have never watched Glee. It’s not terribly difficult to be critical of people who obsess about things that don’t matter to me. But what about when the argument hits a bit closer to home? When it comes to the world of sport, for example? Read more
I have a birth and a death on my mind today, and the madness it reveals about who we are and what we value as a culture.
Kate Middleton will have her baby today if the frantic newspaper headlines are to be believed. The “royal baby watch” has been ongoing for a while now, with armies of reporters and tweeters and live bloggers standing at the ready to be the first to break the news to our greedy eyes and ears. The time has now come, apparently. The world waits in voracious expectancy. The long-awaited child draws near, and we can barely contain our excitement. Read more
We’re hanging out in North Vancouver over the next few weeks (house sitting for some friends who are off to Europe) so I’ve been straining to acclimatize myself to lazy mornings on a sun-drenched patio overlooking the ocean with good books and strong coffee, leisurely strolls through lush mountain forests, meandering through breathtakingly manicured multi-million dollar neighbourhoods on the way to pick up some bread for supper, etc., etc. It’s been challenging, but I will do my best to bravely soldier on. Read more
A few reflections on unrelated themes for a Wednesday morning…
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I was having a conversation with a person this morning who has been navigating the murky waters of trying to discern the best treatment options for a health concern. One doctor recommends this, one recommends that, one tries to push pills, one recommends “natural” treatments, one article says this, another article says that. Often, the opinions are wildly contradictory. How do you make a good decision in the face of such divergent viewpoints—especially when the purveyors of this or that position almost invariably stand to profit, directly or indirectly, from your agreeing with them?
Who do you trust when everyone has a vested interest in convincing you that they are right? Read more
This post is part of a MennoNerds Synchro-Blog on the topic of Death, Loss, Pain and Grief, July 14-30, 2013. Check out our page on MennoNerds.com to see all the other posts in this series.
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As I was reflecting upon what and how I might contribute to this Synchro-Blog, it occurred to me to do some snooping around in my own archives. I discovered that I have actually written a fair amount on death over the years. What follows is a compilation of three posts from the past. The first was written after the death of a friend and is a personal expression of the pain of loss. The second is a reflection on death in the context of the pastoral vocation, written after being called upon to do a memorial service at the outset of my new role. The third is simply a quote about death that I have grown to love and deeply appreciate over the years. Read more
I’ve written a number of times here before about some the difficulties I have with prayer (here, for example). I am convinced that prayer is a crucial part of how God works in and through us for the salvation of the world. And yet the questions abound. How does prayer work? Does prayer work? How can we tell? Is God influence-able? Is God reactive? Does God need prayer? How can God “listen” to so many different (often wildly contradictory) prayers at once? What does it even mean to say that the God of the universe “listens?” Read more
This afternoon, I was browsing around The Pessimist website and briefly flirted with the idea of actually buying something. What, you might ask, was I doing on this site? Well, aside from the fact that it’s a great website (see “The Pessimist’s Guide to Working From Home” which, in addition to being flat-out hilarious, pretty much exactly matches parts of my experience), it’s mostly a sad and predictable story of bouncing around from link to link and then, fifteen minutes later thinking, “Um, how did I get here and what am I doing?!” I didn’t buy anything (although I still kinda want to), but I did get to the “checkout” stage where I was greeted by the following delightful message:
Your shopping cart, like your impoverished soul, is empty.
How can you not appreciate such humour? Read more
To the astonishment of precisely no one, the latest round of surveys from the Pew Research Center’s Forum on Religion and Public Life have painted a picture of an increasingly irreligious America. A full one-third of Americans under the age of thirty have no religious affiliation, apparently. And given that America is still more “religious” than most other parts of the Western world, I think we can safely assume that the situation would be even bleaker elsewhere.
What is at least mildly surprising is that when asked whether having “more people who are not religious” is a good thing, a bad thing, or doesn’t matter, a majority of people said it was bad. So, I suppose if one were to somewhat cynically summarize this latest round of findings, it might go something like this: “We don’t really have much use for religion ourselves, but gosh we sure wish more of the people we have to live with did.” Read more
What if we just made God up?
The question came not from a despairing parishioner or a reader of my blog or an inquisitive university student at a trendy coffee shop. No, the question came from my twelve-year-old son at a sushi joint last weekend while drumming on the table with his chopsticks in between green tea and California rolls. Read more
So, today is the Fourth of July and, given that many of the news sources and blogs that regularly track originate south of the border, I expect to be inundated with patriotic media today. Or media criticizing, redescribing, and reimagining patriotism. Or anti-American media. Whatever. I expect to see a lot that has to do with America. Read more
As far as Canada Day holidays go, it was a bit of a strange one yesterday. I got a message that there was someone who needed to speak with me. Let’s call him Darren. He had shown up at a local L’Arche residence because it was a former nunnery that had still had a cross prominently displayed out front and he thought it was a church. He was looking for help. A place to stay, mainly. They gave him some sandwiches, some conversation, and a ride to the park but weren’t exactly sure where to go after that. Read more
I have always been a lousy sleeper and I lay awake at night a lot. This proves to be fertile space for all manner of thoughts to flit in and out of my brain, some good and useful, many not so much. I think about my kids and their future. I think about philosophy. I think about soccer. I think about people who are suffering. I think about the meaning of life. I think about the many people who I have been blessed to know and who are a part of my life. I think how we end up in the places we do, doing the things we do and about what the point of it all is. Read more
I’ve been spending some time in the first two chapters of Genesis over the last few weeks as we make our way into a summer worship series on creation. And one cannot read very far in the literature about the first two chapters of the bible without at some point encountering the predictable, tendentious battles between evolutionary naturalism and creation, science and religion, etc. It seems to me that those who get the most excited about these issues often quite badly misunderstand either the nature of science or the nature of religion. Or both. And this tends to lead to a considerable amount of heat and not a great deal of light being generated in public discourse on this issue. Read more
Along with a dozen or so other books, Jamie Smith’s Desiring the Kingdom has been languishing unopened on a dusty, lonely corner of my desk for the past few months. I decided to finally carve out a bit of time for reading this morning and was very glad that I did. Based on the first fifty or so odd pages of this first volume in Smith’s “Cultural Liturgies” project, I would say that this is a book that every Christian educator and pastor ought to read. The fundamental question that Smith places before us is this: Are human beings defined by what we think and believe or by what we love and desire? And, perhaps even more importantly, how ought our answer to this question inform our practices of worship and education? Read more
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