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
Hope builds a bridge across the abyss into which reason cannot look. It can hear an undertone to which reason is deaf. Reason does not recognize the signs of what is coming, what is not yet born.
— Byung-Chul Han, The Spirit of Hope
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We were talking about hope out at the jail yesterday. A few guys had shared about how they desperately needed hope, to believe that there could be something different in their future, something besides the same old habits, the endless tired returning to the same endlessly tired dead-ends. One guy looked up with a half-grin that was somewhere between cynical, mischievous, and dejected. “I don’t got no hope anymore. I stole forty chickens and there’s no future for me.” 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
What do a young man in prison, a senior struggling with cognitive decline, and a global superstar athlete have in common? All three struggle with feeling like they are “enough.” And all three, to varying degrees, feel like the solution to this feeling of “not enoughness” is to work harder, do better, be better. Which is to say that all three—again, to varying degrees—have a hard time with grace. Read more
It’s a shame we have to die, my dear. No one’s getting out of here alive.
— Foo Fighters, DOA
I spent part of yesterday watching the “Gentlemen’s Final” at Wimbledon. Like many things about this old tournament, the vocabulary speaks to a bygone age. Who uses words like “gentlemen” anymore? Although this year’s finalists refreshingly seem to actually fit the term. Jannik Sinner and Carlos Alcaraz seem to be something of a rarity in professional sports in that they are genuinely decent young men in addition to being spectacular tennis players. It was a good match, and it was nice to see Sinner prevail after a crushing loss to Alcaraz in a five-hour marathon a month or so in the French Open final. Read more
I attended the funeral of my childhood pastor yesterday. He was well into his nineties, had lived a good, long life whose shape was defined by faith and family. I didn’t know him well. I’m not sure that knowing the pastor well would have even been on my childhood radar as something desirable or even possible. The pastor was kind of like the librarian or the Zamboni driver at the ice rink—someone who was just always there. His sermons were not particularly riveting, nor did he exude charisma from the pulpit. He was just this stable given in my life. Actually, I should check that pernicious word “just.” In a world where so many lives are characterized by instability, chaos and confusion, where so much communication is reduced to marketing and manipulation, where so many relationships are temporary and self-serving, we could probably all use a few more stable unspectacular givens in our lives. Read more
Around a month ago, I was in Zürich, Switzerland to participate in events celebrating the 500th anniversary of the Anabaptist movement. It’s difficult, of course, to pin a precise date to a movement as amorphous as “Anabaptism” (the word itself was only embraced much later, and with varying degrees of enthusiasm). But something significant began around 1525. For the purposes of this celebration, the beginnings of our movement were tied to the first believers’ baptisms (or “rebaptisms,” according to their opponents) which took place in a little apartment in Zürich. George Blaurock, Felix Manz, and Conrad Grebel had embraced the teachings of reformers like Ulrich Zwingli but increasingly felt they didn’t go far enough, specifically (but not exclusively) when it came to baptism. They found no warrant in Scripture for infant baptism and so in defiance of local regulations, they baptized one another January 17, 1525. Read more
Many Mondays as I make the short drive to the jail, I listen to a song by Jon Guerra called “The Kingdom of God.” It’s a beautiful song by a gifted songwriter (Guerra’s most recent album, “Jesus,” has been a mainstay in my headphones since it was released during Lent). The song is basically a creative version of the Beatitudes set to music (with a bit of Psalm 23 mixed in). I listen on Mondays primarily because of one line that hit me like a freight train the first time I heard it and almost never fails to leave me with a lump in my throat: “Blessed are the guilty who have nowhere to go.” Read more
I think it was around day ten or eleven of the Camino when we found ourselves talking to two Estonian women on a sun-baked terrazza near Pontevedra, Spain. It had been a long hot day of walking, and the patio appeared like an oasis as we emerged from a heavily treed, hilly section that seemed to go on and on. Rarely had the sound of laughing voices and clinking glasses sounded so welcome! Read more
It’s been a while since I’ve written anything here. As you may know, I’m on a three-month sabbatical and I’ve spent roughly the last two weeks walking the Camino de Santiago (Portuguese Way). On May 27, we reached the Cathedral in Santiago! I even received the Latin documents to prove it. I may have a few more reflections on this experience at a later date. It was a rich and rewarding one in many ways and I’m still sifting through a few stories along the way. What follows is a bit unpolished as it is gleaned from some handwritten journal reflections over the last few days.
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
I was asked to give a last-minute presentation at a regional denominational gathering last weekend. The guest speaker was ill, so a bunch of pastors were tapped to plug the gaps. 2025 has been designated as the 500th anniversary of the Anabaptist movement so this was a focus throughout the weekend. How we mark these things is, of course, at least somewhat arbitrary. The people who make such decisions have designated the beginnings of our branch of the Christian tree as the date of the first believer’s baptism in Zurich in 1525. But of course, threads of Anabaptist thought run throughout Christian history. And to whatever extent “Anabaptism” can be spoken of as a monolithic movement, the 2025 version looks very different than whatever was bubbling up in 1525. History is poorly behaved and stubbornly resists our desire for clean lines and unambiguous markers. Thus, has it ever been, I suppose. Read more
Around the circle at the jail recently we were talking about the God who meets us at our lowest point. It’s not particularly difficult for the guys to think about their lowest point. It’s not exactly a remote hypothetical for many for them. They’re living it. They’re at the bottom. They know precisely what most people think of them—they often think it of themselves. They are well aware of their weaknesses and proclivities, their addictions and destructive habits, their character flaws and worst impulses. They know who they are, they know where they are, and they know why. Read more
One of my main tasks each Sunday during worship is to pray. Some Sundays, I pray extemporaneously; other Sundays I like to have something more formal, a scaffolding upon which to hang the various things we wish to bring before God and one another during worship. Last Sunday, for example, I used a formal prayer from the back of our hymnal. It was a good prayer. It covered a lot of territory from the global to the personal. It highlighted various aspects of God’s nature and character. It contained the familiar refrain, “Lord, in your mercy… hear our prayer.” Good stuff. Read more
Among the readings I encountered during morning prayer today was Psalm 17:1-7. It is a plea for divine vindication, protection, blessing, and favour from the pen of David. I have long had something of a complicated relationship with the Psalms. I know that the Psalms are the prayer-book of the church, that really smart and spiritual people pray them every day. And they do express the full range of human emotion. And they do contain some of the most beautiful and exalted language in all of Scripture. But sometimes the implicit theology doesn’t land. It strikes me as true-ish, but not true enough. Read more
I’ve been slowly making my way through Marilynne Robinson’s beautiful commentary on Genesis. It’s called, simply, Reading Genesis, and those who know anything about Robinson or her work will not be surprised to learn that it reads rather differently than a typical biblical commentary. Her soaring prose, her seemingly effortless command of complex biblical, historical, and philosophical issues, and the ways in which she weaves all this together in conversation with an ancient text is marvellous to behold. 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
When I was (much) younger, I played bass guitar in a worship band. We would play in churches, camps, youth events, etc. The band was ok even if the bass player was terrible. One of my enduring memories of that period of my life was the emotional intensity of some of the worship gatherings we participated in. There were hands raised, eyes closed, impassioned prayer, occasionally even tears. There was often an enterprising youth pastor-ish kind of speaker who would ride the wave of feelings produced or enhanced by the music (some of which, it must be said, and which I thought even at the time, was rather lyrically vapid and theologically suspect). If I’m honest, even though I had a few reservations even then, it felt kinda good to look out and see the effect that our music was having upon people! Clearly God was present. Undeniably, the Spirit was at work! We were just humble vessels. Read more
Rumblings 