Dec 1
A friend recently told me that one of her goals in this middle stage of life is to learn how to live with an “undefended heart.” That struck me as an interesting and somehow essential way of putting it. It was term that I resolved to ponder more deeply. An undefended heart. What a thing to be able to say one has amid all the pain we endure and inflict upon each other. What a ballast for a world so riven by division and chaos, deceit and manipulation. Read more
The gospel reading for this past Sunday (Thanksgiving Sunday, here in Canada) was Luke 17:11-19. In it, Jesus heals ten lepers who cry out to him for mercy. Only one returns to give thanks (a Samaritan), and Jesus commends him for it. Connections between lectionary texts and the secular calendar don’t really come much more obvious than this, I suppose. Don’t be like the nine ungrateful lepers who pranced off into their more hopeful futures with scarcely a thought for their Healer. Be like the Samaritan. Make sure you give thanks because this makes Jesus happy. Read more
I recently read the gospel of Matthew over the course of a few mornings on a patio overlooking the Pacific Ocean while on a holiday on the Sunshine Coast. Like many who preach regularly, I have grown accustomed to approaching Scripture in bite-sized, preachable sections. A story from the gospels here, a passage from Paul there, a Psalm, an inspiring (or at least inoffensive) OT narrative, etc. Preaching necessarily involves taking Scripture in smaller chunks and one can get in the habit of kind of raiding the bible for homiletical content. It had been a while since I had just read a book of the bible from start to finish. I decided that a few quiet mornings in idyllic surroundings were as good a time as any to rectify this deficiency. Read more
The last thing I did before heading out on sabbatical was spend a few days at a Roman Catholic retreat centre in the foothills of the Rocky Mountains. I was there for a retreat with a group of pastors from our denomination. The setting was idyllic, the hospitality warm, and the sessions meaningful. We were led by a Catholic spiritual director who invited us to consider our various journey, vocations, and lives through the lens of “pilgrimage.” My ears obviously perked up at that as I will be heading off on a very non-metaphorical pilgrimage in a few days (walking the Camino de Santiago, Portuguese Way). In one of the sessions, she used a phrase that has stuck with me: “Sometimes our pilgrimages are not chosen; sometimes we are conscripted.” Read more
I felt a touch of weariness as I stared at the request form on my desk at the jail recently. A woman had seemingly requested every item that could conceivably come from the chaplaincy department. A bible, correspondence courses, bookmarks, address book, diary, notebook, colouring sheets, word searches, a rosary, calendar, inspirational verses, pencil crayons, stamped envelopes… She almost ran out of room on the form. Near the end, almost as an afterthought, she wrote, “Oh yeah, and I would also like to talk to a chaplain. I’ve been going through some hard things I want someone to pray for me.” I grabbed as many of the items as we had and trudged off to the women’s unit. Read more
To say that the library at the jail has an eclectic mix of reading material would be to put it mildly. Relying on donations, as we do, we get everything from Joyce Meyer books on the habits of a godly woman to decades-old biblical commentaries to Nick Vujicic’s biography to Paul Tillich. Throw in a smattering of stray Buddhist and Muslim resources and the inmates have a rather bewildering array of options. Read more
So, another Trump presidency. Today, I have very conservative Christian friends and acquaintances who are exultant and triumphant. I have very progressive Christian friends and acquaintances who are utterly crestfallen and/or enraged. As anyone who has read this blog for more than a minute likely knows, I have a deep and abiding suspicion of politics on both the right and the left, a disdain for the way in which politics has become little more than tawdry entertainment and has hollowed out our social discourse, and a profound concern that for too many Christians, politics has become their religion. But I’ve written about at least some of these matters before, so I won’t go there today. Read more
Woe to you who strive with your Maker,
earthen vessels with the potter!
Does the clay say to the one who fashions it, ‘What are you making?’
— Isaiah 45:9
“Do you think it’s true, what that verse from Isaiah says? That God just does with us whatever he wants?” The guy sitting across from me in the prison interview room shuffles in his seat nervously. Eye contact is sporadic at best. He has a few nasty scars on the side of his face. He seems either suspicious or really shy. I can’t quite make out which and am not quite sure which direction to steer the conversation. “Tell me a bit about your background,” I say. “You know your Bible pretty well; you must have been raised in the church.” He looks at me blankly before responding, “No, nothing, I’ve just been in here a bunch of times and when I’m in here, I read the Bible.”
The first headline that greeted me when I opened my laptop this morning was the news that NHL star Johnny Gaudreau and his brother Matthew had been killed by a (most likely) drunk driver while riding their bikes in New Jersey. The scene is heartbreaking to contemplate. Two brothers out for a late-summer bike ride, a few days ahead of their sister’s wedding. One can imagine a joyful family reunion full of laughter and kids and grand-kids and the anticipation of all the celebrations around the weekend nuptials. All shattered by a moment of madness. A young woman, widowed, two very young children who will almost certainly never remember a thing about their father. A family, gutted. It is all so very, very sad. Read more
Over the past few weeks, I’ve been reading James K.A. Smith’s new book How to Inhabit Time. Smith describes the book as an “exercise in spiritual timekeeping,” learning how to recognize how our histories interact with our presents and our futures, and how God might be present and active throughout it all. Read more
Comfort, O comfort my people,
says your God (Isaiah 40:1)
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A friend recently passed along a dialogue between Richard Dawkins, perhaps the world’s most famous atheist (at least at the moment) and Ayaan Hirsi Ali, perhaps the world’ most famous former atheist and Christian convert (at least at the moment). I’ve written about her story a bit here and here. The interview provides a fascinating window into some of the dynamics that appear when someone “leaves the team.” Hirsi Ali was an enthusiastic supporter of the New Atheism back in the early part of the twenty-first century, but for a variety of reasons, from the political to the intensely personal, recently defected and joined “Team Christian.” Dawkins does his (cringily awkward, at times) best to be supportive of Hirsi Ali as a friend but remains utterly incredulous that she could have turned to such “nonsense.” Read more
What kind of selves do we need to be to live in harmony with others?
I came across this question in a recent interview with Yale theologian Miroslav Volf. The context for the question was the endlessly discussed and analyzed “polarization” that defines our cultural moment. But the question extends far beyond the culture wars or the toxicity of social media or the relentless politicizing of everyday life. It’s the kind of question we should always be asking, I think. And yet so few of us give even a passing thought to the “kinds of selves” we are becoming through the habits and disciplines (or not) that we are daily cultivating. Read more
I had barely walked through the door of my office at the jail when a guard showed up. “There’s an inmate who’s been trying to get a hold of a chaplain since Saturday. His kid is in on life support at the hospital. He wants to talk to someone. We suggested “Health Care,” but he wasn’t interested, so…” I gulped. Said I would “take care of it,” whatever that could possibly mean. I leafed quickly through some of the requests that had trickled in over the weekend and noticed two from this poor guy. I’ll call him Terry. Could someone please come see me… pray for me… pray for my son? My heart heaved a little. Read more
I sat down in my study this morning in a bit of a state, a bunch of things belligerently crashing around in my head. So, I decided to try to give them some shape. Or at least to let them out. It gets crowded and unruly in there.
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Paul Kingsnorth is quickly taking up residence in my category of “people who I’ll read anything they write and listen to anything they say.” I’m sure he’ll be delighted to learn this—it’s a very exclusive category. His 2021 article “The Cross and the Machine” is one of my favourite conversion stories ever. His path has wound through the bored religious apathy of childhood, a more determined atheism in young adulthood, a deep love of ecology and environmental activism, Zen Buddhism, Wiccan paganism, and pretty much anything else he could take for a spin. Read more
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
Last year, I wrote a post called “Thick Like Honey, Sweet Like Grace.” The title came from a quote in Matthew Perry’s recent biography. It was Perry’s own description of encountering God in the pit of his despair and addiction. The post was a reflection on the lack of this kind of “existential urgency” in some (not all) “progressive” Christian circles. It was a plea not to swap out a political agenda for an existential one. To not forget, in all our important talk and work for social justice, that there is an irreducibly personal and affective dimension to Christian faith. To speak urgently of both justice and mercy. There is room for both. We need both. Desperately so, it would seem, given the barrage of articles these days outlining how sad and lonely and anxious and hopeless so many people feel, particularly the young. Read more
“I’ve had a bunch of revelations in my life.” The words came from an inmate sitting across the table at the jail recently. He looked impossibly young, was skeletally skinny, indigenous. His face somehow managed to look deadly serious and impishly goofy at the same time, a hint of a smile always threatening to break out into the real thing. He was a big fan of rap music, poetry, anime. He knew his bible well, rattling off passages and references by memory. Read more
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
Rumblings 