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Posts from the ‘Random Musings’ Category

Mar 24

5 Comments

I Wish Jesus Didn’t Have to Die

Last Thursday I took my kids with me to our church’s Maundy Thursday service. I wasn’t really sure how they would react.  It is, after all, a fairly somber and dark service, whose purpose is to lead its participants through the fearful events of Jesus’ final days. I had some reservations about even exposing a couple of impressionable six-year-olds to the full weight of the Easter story, but my apprehension intensified when they informed me, after watching a steady stream of volunteers moving to the front to read the selected Scripture readings, that they wanted to read one too. Read more

Mar 17

4 Comments

Signs of Life

Anyone who is a parent of small children will have first-hand experience of the sheer volume of clutter that can be accumulated by the simple presence of little people in the house. With each passing day, the mountain of “stuff” seems to get bigger and bigger and when you’re living in a limited amount of space this stuff can get, well, pretty annoying. Half-finished drawings, completed and uncompleted assignments from school, innumerable stuffed animals, little cars, hockey sticks, crayons, gum and candy wrappers, jewelry, dolls, music papers, books… on and on the list goes. And as exhausting as it is to catalogue this endless collection of items that somehow find their way into our house, it’s even more frustrating to be faced with it at the end of a long day when the kids are finally in bed. Read more

Feb 27

12 Comments

Love and Knowledge

Near the end of Christopher Hitchens’ God is not Great, tucked away in a chapter entitled “The Resistance of the Rational,” is the following definition of an educated person, approvingly attributed to Socrates: “All he really “knew,” he said, was the extent of his own ignorance.” Read more

Feb 16

Two Ways of Waiting

Lent is a time of waiting—something we are all, in various ways and to varying degrees, familiar with. During Lent our waiting is oriented towards Good Friday and Easter Sunday, the high points of the Christian calendar. But “waiting” is a theme that extends far beyond the period of Lent. Read more

Feb 8

2 Comments

The Alphabet of Grace

I’ve slowly been acquainting myself with the work of Frederick Buechner over the last couple of weeks. This is partly because it’s something I’ve been wanting to do for a while and partly because my dad had a book of his sermons and meditations lying around and I started reading it as I desperately searched for inspiration prior to speaking at my wife’s grandfather’s funeral back in Alberta this week. My brief exposure to him thus far has proven immensely rewarding (I read a lengthy passage from A Room Called Remember at the funeral) so today I went out and picked up a couple of his books. Read more

Jan 24

4 Comments

The Real Thing

I’m rather loathe to hop on two horses that have been ridden as promiscuously and enthusiastically within some Christian circles as U2 and C.S. Lewis, but coming across both in the same week is bound to be at least somewhat thought-provoking, right? I’ve been a U2 fan for quite a while now—at least since The Joshua Tree was immortalized as my first “secular” music purchase in 1987 (by “secular music purchase” I mean the first cassette tape (!) that was not selected from among the six meager offerings at the local Christian bookstore). While I’m not one of these rabid fans who think that life as we know it began with U2, or that Bono is going to save the world, I do enjoy their music immensely (and I’m not quite as cynical as some re: the perceived endless moralizing of Bono). Read more

Jan 7

1 Comment

New Possibilities

Well, the combination of a bout with the Christmas flu, a trip back to Alberta for the holidays, and a general lack of reading and reflection over the past couple of weeks have conspired to make this a rather barren forum lately. We’ve just arrived back in Vancouver over the weekend and are slowly settling back into our regular routines. For me, this means writing. A lot of writing. I aim to finish my thesis by April at which time we will begin the process of discerning what comes next for us as a family. Read more

Dec 14

3 Comments

The Adopted God

I’ve been reading John Swinton’s Raging with Compassion off and on for the last couple of weeks, and have appreciated his challenge to move past the logical problem of evil in order to focus on active resistance of evil. Swinton is less interested in a series of disembodied arguments about evil than he is in reflecting on how evil can be resisted and transformed within the life and practices of the Christian community—how we can live faithfully in the midst of an ambiguous world where unanswered questions remain as we wait God’s redemption of the whole of creation. Read more

Nov 13

2 Comments

Telling our Story Well

My parents came down for a visit last weekend and left me with some listening material for the frequent drives out to Abbotsford that I am making these days. The Massey Lectures are an annual Canadian event in which a noted scholar gives a series of addresses on some topic of current interest. Among the many notable past Massey lecturers are Noam Chomsky, Jean Vanier, Margaret Visser, John Ralston Saul, and Stephen Lewis. Read more

Sep 23

5 Comments

Noted in Traffic

A few minor irritants to get off my chest, noted in the last couple of weeks spent cycling the streets of Vancouver to and from a library nearby and driving out to Abbotsford to teach twice a week. I find the following three phenomena utterly baffling and I must vent… Read more

Aug 3

13 Comments

I Give Up! (An Utterly Ridiculous Reflection on Bathroom Technology)

I’ve done a lot of traveling over the past couple of weeks. First, it was back to southern Alberta to spend some time with my family, then up to Edmonton for a speaking engagement, then over to Hepburn, SK for a whirlwind visit with my brother and his family, then back to Lethbridge to spend a week with Naomi’s folks, and then, finally, the long trip back to Vancouver. And then, after only a brief period at home, we were off again—this time to Galiano Island to spend a delightful couple of days enjoying the laid-back island life with friends. We just returned tonight and are now going to settle down around home for the month of August (and try to get some of the work done that I have been putting off for most of the month of July!). Read more

Jul 4

5 Comments

A Necessary Lesson

It’s funny the kinds of situations that produce “teachable moments.” I spent a good chunk of today fruitlessly banging my head against the wall, trying to come up with a workable structure for the class that I will be co-teaching this fall at Columbia Bible College. It was a very frustrating day, and on the trip home my mind was filled with misgivings and anxiety about my ability to do the things that are required of me over the next couple of months. Read more

Jun 27

10 Comments

All the Good Music Comes from Across the Pond

Throughout the last week or so I have been making incremental additions to my sad excuse for a music library. One of the occupational hazards of being a student is, obviously, a lack of extra funds to explore and purchase new music. I usually get new music twice a year—July and December, when I get a bit of birthday and Christmas money. And as much as I consider Def Leppard’s greatest hits to be a greatly under-appreciated work here at the dawn of the 21st century, I can only listen to the same songs as I bang away on my keyboard for so long until something gives. Read more

Jun 13

5 Comments

The Force is With Me!

I have a confession to make. Until last week, I had never seen Star Wars.

I’ll give you a moment to get over this shocking bit of news.

How it is, you ask, that I have managed to get this far in life in complete ignorance of such a massive cultural symbol? It is a mystery, to be sure. Read more

Jun 10

12 Comments

One Book Meme

I was made aware of a pretty interesting blog (from my perspective at least) this week when Gil sent me a link to a review of a book I had recently read. It’s pretty heady stuff over there, but I’ve come across a couple of really interesting posts whilst scouring some of the archives. Here‘s one of them. I don’t know if he’s taking a bit of a dig at Richard Dawkins here (I believe he coined the term “meme” to explain how ideas survive by a process of cultural evolution; needless to say, not everyone thinks this is the most plausible way to explain how ideas are transmitted…), but this might be one “meme” that is, at the very least, entertaining, and could be an interesting way to get to know people better. Read more

Jun 7

13 Comments

Naming a Blog

Ever since I entered the weird and wonderful world of blogging I’ve been utterly vexed by my inability to come up with a good name for this site. As fascinating as my name is as a title, I couldn’t help but think that perhaps I might come up with something just a bit snappier and more compelling, a bit more indicative of the kind of stuff people might expect to find here, a bit less dull and unimaginative… Read more

May 22

2 Comments

The Faceless Consumer

Don’t ask me what we were thinking, but Naomi, the kids, and I went to the mall yesterday afternoon. I know, it’s a holiday, and in hindsight, we should have realized what an absolute nuthouse Metrotown would be, but we just wanted to return an item and pick up a few books for the kids… Alas. Read more

May 14

3 Comments

The School Play

Well, today is a big day for our kids—Nicky in particular. Today, their kindergarten class is putting on two performances of their play entitled “Celebrate You and Me.” Nicky is the emcee for this play, and has been working very hard on his lines for the past couple months. He has something like seven mini-paragraphs that he has to deliver in between each song in the play. Claire also has a speaking part, but it’s “just” the recitation of a tortured excerpt of existential poetry (I’m not kidding!) in the middle of a song about wanting to belong. Read more

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