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Posts from the ‘Culture’ Category

Jun 6

The Hawk is an Omen of War

There was a hawk perched on top of the church sign when I drove up early Sunday morning to prepare for worship. My first thought was, “oh, cool, a hawk.” And I dutifully took out my phone to take a picture. A closer inspection, however, yielded a less photogenic image than I had hoped. There was a long stringy thread of entrails—maybe a quarter meter or so?—hanging from the hawk’s talons, swinging in front of the sign, perilously close to the words “Pastor Ryan Dueck.” I pondered the potential trauma of that sight for an unsuspecting churchgoer as they rounded the corner looking for some Sunday morning inspiration. Read more

May 30

2 Comments

God and the Devil are at War

“Can I ask a question before we even start today?” It was Monday afternoon and there were around fifteen of us sitting in a circle on plastic chairs in an airless prison chapel with bad lighting. The question came from a young man who I’ve enjoyed getting to know over the last few months. He’s thoughtful, deliberate in his speech, deeply serious (alarmingly so, at times). When he speaks, people listen. “Yeah, of course,” I replied. “What’s your question?” He furrowed his brow, took a breath, and said, “What’s the point of being good?” Well, that’s the kind of question that can uncork an opinion or two. Read more

May 24

Magnificent Worms

I attended a funeral on Sunday afternoon. No, not a “funeral.” A “memorial.” Or a “celebration of life.” Or an “open house,” of sorts. The deceased had been gone for months, but a gathering had been planned (which itself is by no means a given these days). It was held in a museum atrium, overlooking the hills and river that he had loved to explore. There were lovely tributes and memories and photos and videos shared. There was coffee and snacks. There was a beautiful view. Read more

May 3

21 Comments

Sad Dads

The National’s new album has been getting some fairly regular play in my headphones lately. It’s a great album, in my view, but then I suppose I would say that. I gather that over time the band has picked up a reputation as appealing to a certain sort of brooding, melancholy, bookish, middle-aged audience. It’s mildly embarrassing to admit that one likes precisely the sort of music that one is supposed to like, but what can one do? We can’t all be sui generis, however diligently we labour to prove otherwise. Read more

Apr 11

8 Comments

The Price of Purity

I’ve expressed admiration for the writing of Nick Cave over the last few months. His book Faith, Hope, and Carnage was among my favourites of 2022. A few people recently asked if I had listened to the interview with him on the UnHerd podcast. I had not. So, on a lovely spring-like Easter Monday morning I threw it on my phone and went for a long walk. Read more

Apr 5

5 Comments

Bleed into One

People sometimes ask me what I would have been if not a pastor. A number of options leap to mind, but I often joke that my first choice would have been “rock star.” I have always loved the energy and the emotion, the raw driving power of music, the euphoria of the crowd. It transports me. It always has. Alas, I have no real musical talent, which I’m guessing would have proved a difficult obstacle to overcome. I picked up the bass guitar a bit in my twenties and blundered uninspiringly along for a while, but that was the extent of it. Also, I probably would have needed hair to be a decent rock star. So, you know, the odds were always against me. Read more

Mar 28

37 Comments

On the Banishing of Shadows

I have had a number of conversations recently about the deep sadness that seems to have settled over many in the West, particularly the young. These conversations have been with people who would represent the full breadth of the racial, socioeconomic, political and ideological spectrum. Often, they are parents of teenagers and/or young adults. It’s a familiar litany by now. Anxiety, depression, addiction, mental illness, suicidal ideation and self-harm, deaths of despair. A general rootlessness and purposeless drifting. Listless scrolling and binging on junk entertainment rather than engaging with the world. It’s a well-worn road by now. Read more

Mar 7

5 Comments

The Rubble

Once there was a great building. Mighty with towers, spiky with spires, a-bubble with domes. Inside it opened into gallery after gallery, vault after echoing vault, so high that human beings who set off across its marble pavements sometimes mistook its roof for the sky and the building for the world itself. And though it showed signs of many styles, and had been built by many different architects over many centuries, it had been standing so long than no one could remember when it wasn’t there, or suspected that it could ever fall. But it did…

Some of the rubble was gathered up by those who had particularly loved the building and assembled back into a much smaller structure—somewhere in size, say, between a cottage and a garden shed. The rest, however, lay where it had fallen; and the grass grew over it, and creepers disguised the biggest pieces of the ruin till they looked almost like outcrops of rock; and with a speed just as astonishing as the collapse had been, those who walked there forgot there had ever been a building, and took the bumpy hill beneath them for the plain and natural ground.

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Feb 16

3 Comments

Selling Vice (and Virtue)

I doubt I’m the only one who finds NHL hockey to be virtually unwatchable these days. It’s not the quality of the on-ice product, although, I’m a Calgary Flames fan, so the product isn’t great. It’s the advertising. The decision to watch a live game these days is to decide in advance that you are willing to endure a steady torrent of gambling ads. Whether it’s regular old commercials or split-screen odds updates or intermission sponsorship of highlight packages or pretty much anything else that some marketing intern could dream up, gambling ads have taken over the game. Read more

Jan 31

13 Comments

Back-to-Back

I’ve been reading the Beatitudes for over three decades. They’re kind of like the constitution of Mennonite churches (or at least we’re often pleased to think so). The rest of the bible can be hard and confusing and bewildering and even offensive, so we’ll just double down on what Jesus actually said, thank you very much. And we’ll really zero in on Matthew 5-7, the Sermon on the Mount, the most substantive continuous block of Jesus’ teaching, where he reinterprets and transcends the Law. And we’ll be laser-focused on the first eleven verses where Jesus talks about who is “blessed” in the kingdom of heaven. We’ll leave the theologizing and harmonizing of disparate texts to others. We’re just humble Jesus people. Read more

Jan 25

Wednesday Miscellany (Nick Cave Edition)

I have a few books on my shelf that I return to often, books that I’ve read and reread and underlined and highlighted and stuck a bunch of colourful sticky notes in to draw my attention easily to memorable passages. I usually quote these people endlessly on my blog because, well, because why not? Good words need to be shared. Christian Wiman’s My Bright Abyss is one of these. Some of Marilynne Robinson’s novels would fall into this category. And now Nick Cave’s Faith, Hope and Carnage has become another. I promise I’ll give it a rest for a while after this, but a few of his quotes anchor today’s miscellany. Read more

Jan 20

14 Comments

Data Doesn’t Suffer

Apparently, ChatGPT is coming for us all.  You’ve heard of ChatGPT, yes? The artificially “intelligent” content creator that can spit out essays and website content and legal briefs and who knows what else based on a simple prompt. It’s changed how universities teach (I have several professorial type friends who say it’s become a massive problem on campus in the few short months it’s been out). And, apparently, it’s also going to do to white collar work what automation did to things like manufacturing. Robots have been able to put cars together for a while. Now, it seems, they can also churn out the content that those of us who sit behind desks buzzing importantly around on our computers produce. Who knows, perhaps, in the end the only jobs left will be to manage the intelligence that is managing us. Read more

Jan 11

2 Comments

Our Loneliness Has a Secular Shape

The topic of loneliness came up at a breakfast meeting this morning. This is the devastating norm for Western cultures these days. Anxiety, depression, addiction, bitter cynicism, yes, all these things are rampant. But loneliness and social isolation seem to be the common thread that runs through the despair of our cultural moment. I see this nearly every day in my work as a pastor and as a prison chaplain. Read more

Jan 3

3 Comments

God is Love. And We Must Love Each Other

A month or so ago, I became aware (I forget how) of Nick Cave. I had never heard of the Australian singer, songwriter, poet, and author before this, nor had I ever listened to his band (Nick Cave and the Bad Seeds). Actually, scratch that. His song Red Right Hand is the theme song for Peaky Blinders. And apparently a song called O Children made an appearance in a Harry Potter movie. So, I guess I’ve heard him before, but only accidentally. It wasn’t his music that grabbed my attention a month ago, but the title of his new book: Faith, Hope, and Carnage. Quite a title, that one. The kind of title that might incline someone to do a bit of digging around. Read more

Dec 31

6 Comments

2022 in Review

Well, 2022 has nearly expired. It was another year dominated by the pandemic in some form or another. It was a year of trucker’s protests in Canada and counter-protests, a year of fear and anxiety and self-righteousness and judgment and hysterical media and loss of trust. There were probably a few good things, too, but I am well and truly a product of the media waters in which I swim and all I can seem to remember is the stuff that made me anxious and angry. 🙂

You know the December 31 drill by now, I suppose. Here are the top posts from the last 365 days along with a brief summary of each. Four out of the five were connected either to the pandemic or to the protests against restrictions. Which says a lot about what generates clicks. And is mildly depressing. So it goes. Read more

Dec 21

1 Comment

Some Force of Love and Logic

As Christmas draws near, I am thinking, appropriately, no doubt, about awe. I happen to rather like awe and experience it regularly. I experience it in all the usual places—mountaintops, oceans, majestic cathedrals, spine-tingling music. On a perhaps less obviously inspiring note, after a third consecutive morning dragging myself out of the house in sub -30-degree temperatures I am currently experiencing awe at just how bone-crushingly cold this planet is capable of getting. But yeah, I am generally a big fan of awe. Read more

Nov 29

The Lion

You have to sign in for the weekly bible studies at the jail. Name, unit number, time. Records must be kept. And so, the clipboard dutifully makes its way around the circle. One guy always has a massive grin on his face as he writes his name. I’ll call him Adam. I know why Adam is smiling. He has a standard practice by now. He writes his name, as per the requirements. But then he always leaves a few blank lines before writing another: “Jesus.” This day, he expands a bit. “Jesus of Nazareth.” He hopes he’s spelled Nazareth right. Read more

Nov 10

8 Comments

Thick Like Honey, Sweet Like Grace

One of my abiding critiques of the more progressive church circles that I inhabit is that there often seems to be little, for lack of a better term, “existential urgency.” God is, we think, very interested in our positions on social issues and is very eager to affirm our journey through various constellations of identities. But not so much in sin or salvation or judgment or deliverance or a love that breaks in order to mend or anything that could conceivably set a soul aflame. In many progressive churches, God cares a great deal about our politics and our self-esteem, not so much about our souls. Read more

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