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Posts from the ‘Blogging’ Category

Aug 20

12 Comments

Finding Our Place

If you’ve been around this blog for any length of time, you will know that I am a big fan of Frederick Buechner. I admire the way he writes, the way he pries open a space for faith in a cultural context often characterized by skepticism, doubt, and even hostility to God. His book of sermons, Secrets in the Dark, is often one of the first places I turn when I am feeling like the well is dry and the inspiration just isn’t coming.

Having said that, I have always had a bit of an ambiguous relationship with what is perhaps one of Buechner’s most famous quotes: Read more

Jul 11

4 Comments

Me, Myself, and I

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

Jun 23

9 Comments

Keep Writing

At a church campout this weekend I had been absent from the larger group for a few minutes. When I returned, someone jokingly asked me if I had ditched them to write a blog post on my phone. Apparently, I am developing something of a reputation. It was all in good fun, of course. I have received nothing but support and encouragement to write from people in the churches I have served—a gift for which I am profoundly grateful. Read more

May 28

8 Comments

For Sale

I spent part of this past weekend reading Eli Pariser’s The Filter Bubble. The book is about the personalization of the Internet—about how companies like Google and Facebook and Amazon (to name just a few) are buying and selling information about us in order to “customize” search engine results, provide “recommendations” based on past purchases and assumed preferences, to suggest links and articles, to “connect” us with like-minded people or potential romantic partners, etc. Pretty thoughtful of them, right? I thought so too. Read more

May 20

5 Comments

Take Words With You

This morning’s Bible reading was a bit of an unexpected one.  Hosea 14. I suspect I am not alone in saying that I don’t tend to spend a lot of time in Hosea for devotional reading. It’s a fascinating book and a remarkable story about the fidelity of God to his people, but Hosea, like most of the minor prophets is a bit off the beaten path. At least for me. It’s like that interesting little town that you drove through once upon a time but haven’t visited in quite a while. You’re glad to know it’s there, but you don’t tend to treat it as one of the important stops on the Bible highway. Read more

Dec 29

2012 in Review (And a Thank You!)

A new year looms just around the corner and as I scan some of the blogs out there that I follow and highly respect, I notice that apparently the thing to do at the end of a year is something like  a “year in review” for your blog. Usually, this involves highlighting some of the most memorable posts of the last year, or the most interesting conversations or something like that.   Read more

Nov 19

8 Comments

Trending

It’s been the usual quiet Monday morning routine of easing into a day off with a pot of coffee and a tour through a handful of blogs and news sites. But for whatever reason, today is a day when I have been struck by the uncomfortable absurdity of life in the digital age. Across the top of one major newspaper’s site is a large red arrow with an ever-rotating banner that informs me of what is “Trending” today. Conveniently arrayed for me are the stories and photo galleries and surveys and videos and articles that are being the most greedily devoured by the denizens of the twenty-first century with our insatiable appetites, always in search of the next interesting cyber-morsel to pin or share or tweet. This is what the cool kids are looking at today and, presumably, this is what I should be interested in and clicking on as well. Read more

Sep 17

10 Comments

God Loves Human Beings—Start with That

Just over three years ago, I threw up a post about a conversation with my son about the word “amen” and whether the “men” part of the word meant that God was only interested in men and not women. It was a rather quick post about the nature of the words we use, how our relationship to them changes over time, and what these words communicate about our views on gender. I didn’t think much of the post at the time. There are some posts on this blog that I spend a fair amount of time writing, but this was not one of them. It was an interesting conversation with my son, a few reflections of my own, and not much more.

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Jul 17

8 Comments

Back to the Bible?

Well, it’s been a whirlwind couple of weeks of travel and holidays back in British Colombia which has, obviously, meant less time for writing here. I plan on posting a bit more in the coming weeks, but things will likely remain a bit slower than usual over the next little while as I try to get caught up and settle back into a regular routine. I am also planning on tackling the intimidating stack of unopened/half-read books that I have accumulated over the last year or so. I spent much less time reading than usual during the last year as I stepped into a new job, and I am beginning to think this needs to change. I plan on reading more and, perhaps, writing a bit less over the rest of the summer.  Read more

Jun 19

9 Comments

Words About Words

This past weekend was spent camping, hiking, relaxing, playing, and worshiping in the stunning beauty of the Rocky Mountains.  Time away is good for many things—to clear the head, to unplug, to read, reflect, refocus.  It’s also a wonderful time for un-agenda’d conversation around the fire, along the trail, and over meals. Read more

Jun 1

3 Comments

Friday Miscellany

Over the last few months, I’ve noticed an increase in the phenomenon of bloggers putting up something like a weekend roundup of links, videos, or whatever else they found interesting over the past week. I’m not sure what I think of the “weekly link dump” genre of blog posting yet—I confess that I almost always just ignore these posts in my reader—but today I find myself with a handful of interesting and completely unrelated ideas and links bouncing around in my skull, so I will unload them where I unload so much of my disorganized mental freight: here.

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Apr 12

5 Comments

Colombia!

Late last year, someone involved with Mennonite Central Committee (MCC) here in Alberta approached me about the possibility of taking part in a “pastors learning tour” to Colombia in the spring of 2012.  Initially, I was a little hesitant.  I didn’t really have the resources to consider international travel and I wasn’t sure about the security situation in Colombia.  I was, of course, very interested in the opportunity to travel and learn more about a country I know little about, but still, the trip seemed like a bit of a longshot to me when I was first made aware of it. Read more

Jan 23

5 Comments

Monday Miscellany

A few miscellaneous thoughts on a quiet Monday off…

Our local library recently acquired a bunch of stock from a movie rental store that went out of business, so my wife and I have been watching movies a bit more often than usual lately. I still feel pretty out of touch with what is good and/or popular out there, but being able to watch movies for free is giving me a chance to do a bit of risk-free exploration :). Read more

Nov 12

9 Comments

Reading and the Encroaching Buzz

Last night, I finished a book. Not a particularly momentous occasion, you might think—and certainly not worth celebrating online. But it was significant to me for the simple reason that  I haven’t been doing much of this lately. Finishing books, that is. I’m very good at starting books—I must have fifteen or so on the go at any given moment—but lately I’ve noticed that making it to the last page is an increasingly rare occurrence. Read more

Oct 17

3 Comments

500

Mondays are my Sabbath day, and they represent a chance to relax, do some recreational reading, tidy up some loose ends around the house, and often spend some time blogging.  Today, as I was reading some comments, I noticed on my dashboard that my most recent post was number 500 in the history of this blog!  I don’t post nearly as frequently as many bloggers do, but 500 still seems like a lot to me!  It’s hard to believe that I’ve been doing this for that long. Read more

Sep 8

2 Comments

Good Words

Blogging can be a bit of a strange animal in that you hurl your words out into the wide (and wild) world of the web, where they can be read (or not) by a virtually limitless variety of people who come to them from a virtually limitless assortment of links, searches, recommendations, “likes,” etc.  Of course, on one level this is no different from the publishing of books and articles.  But the sheer volume of words out there in cyberspace makes it easy to imagine one’s own words just getting lost in the noise and clutter of the online world. Read more

Aug 29

3 Comments

Wondering at the Fair

I’ve been tracking the evolution of the blog Wondering Fair over the past year with great interest, not least because of the excellent writing and theological engagement with culture that it contains. I have appreciated the diversity of voices, the spectrums of issues raised, and the overall vision of a safe and interesting place to talk about the things that matter most to us.  René has really done a great job in articulating and implementing a vision for constructive and stimulating conversation about faith, God, and truth in a post-Christian world that is often suspicious about these very  things.

Not surprisingly, when I was asked to be a regular contributor to WF, I leaped at the opportunity. Read more

Aug 1

(Not So) New Beginnings

It’s a holiday Monday here in most parts of Canada (“Heritage Day,” in Alberta), so I’m enjoying one last leisurely morning of getting up whenever the urge strikes, nursing a pot of coffee for half the morning, and reading/writing while the rest of the family sleeps late.  Tomorrow morning, it’s a new start as I’m officially back to work.  Unsurprisingly, I’m thinking of “newness” today—new church, new people, new rhythms of life and worship, new expectations, new challenges, and the list goes on.  “New” is often a combination of exciting and terrifying for me, and I suppose that’s kind of how I’m feeling today. Read more

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