Jun 20
It’s June in southern Alberta, which means torrential rains, spring run-off from the mountains, and flooding. Lots of flooding. We have been back in Alberta for three years, and two of them have been characterized by miserably wet Junes. On Tuesday evening I arrived home to nearly ankle-deep water in our basement, and we have spent a good chunk of the rest of this week hauling out furniture, ripping out carpets, and trying to dry out a soggy and smelly house. Read more
I was sitting in a local Starbucks this afternoon when I saw the most absurd thing in the history of humankind: a big glossy advertisement for a product called an “Oprah Chai Tea Latte.” Alongside pictures of what I can only imagine must be very tasty delights indeed (iced or hot) was a (larger) picture of a beaming Oprah Winfrey, lending her teeth, her hair, her celebrity to this product. What does Oprah have to do with chai tea lattes, you might wonder? I certainly did. Did Oprah Winfrey make this chai tea? Did she create the recipe? Did she enjoy drinking this tea in some kind of unique way? Does she own the tea? Did she import it for our benefit? The advertisement didn’t tell us. It simply presented a picture of Oprah, a picture of tasty beverages and assumed that we would make (invent?) the connection. Read more
I had many things to write about, all jostling for space in my head as I drove home from a mid-week theology conference near Calgary. Things like the nature of Scripture and interpretation and inspiration and violence and barbarism and inter-textuality and transposition. All these things and others milled about in my head during the two-hour drive south, eager for release, to find expression on the page, to be assembled into some kind of coherent whole.
But it’s funny how a single image or experience, even of the briefest kind, can reduce all of these things to ephemera…
Every Sunday morning, men and women around the planet get up in front of other humans and presume to speak about and for God. And, I suspect, that every Sunday morning, at least some of these same men and women sit down after preaching thinking, “There are a lot things that I left unsaid out there today.” Read more
I’m downtown for a lunch meeting, standing at a street corner… I look across the street, see his huddled frame lying against the side of the building… Lying there. On the street. A bed of concrete. Just lying there. Even from across the street, I can see that he has black hair, brown skin…
Is he sleeping? Passed out? Dead? Does anyone see him?
Car after car drives by, like so many priests and Levites.
Just another drunk Indian downtown… Read more
My son has a backpack. It is an old, weather-beaten backpack that has been kicking around our house forever. I think it was my backpack once. It might be almost as old as my son.
This backpack bears a great many strange burdens over the course of a given week. Books, clothes, playing cards (he likes to do card tricks), miscellaneous scrunched up permissions forms that his parents were supposed to see two weeks ago, rocks, guitar picks, a (usually half-open) lunch container spilling out its uneaten contents, sweaty sports uniforms, dirt, and an assortment of the other inevitable accretions of a preteen, male life. Sometimes I have to open the backpack to retrieve something, but I try to do this as infrequently as possible. Sticking my hand into this backpack is a very frightening thing. Read more
So I’m meandering down a dark street in Vancouver (I’m here for a conference), taking in the old streets where we used to live and work and worship, smelling the smells of spring, enjoying the sounds of the city, when I hear footsteps behind me. I turn and see a young man approaching me. I begin to walk a bit faster but I hear his pace quicken. I turn around again, all kinds of scenarios beginning to nervously take shape in my mind. I ponder increasing my speed again, but all of a sudden he blurts out, “Are you staying at the ____ house?” “Um, yeah,” I say, hesitantly. “Come with me,” he exclaims with a wide smile. “I’ll show you the way.”
Spring seems to have finally, laboriously, tentatively, intermittently have sprung here in southern Alberta, so I spent my day off yesterday on a motorcycle ride. The glorious first ride of the year. My dad and I meandered south through the small predominantly Mormon towns that dot the landscape between Lethbridge and the American border before crossing the Milk River ridge and heading west. Then it was through the Whiskey Gap and then a tour along the brown snow-flecked foothills in the shadow of the majestic Rocky Mountains. After a quick stop for lunch we turned back north through the Blood Reserve before the final turn east to arrive back home in time for the kids to be get home from school. It was a lovely ride—clear blue skies, relatively warm temperatures and, best of all, little wind to speak of. Read more
I listened to a man on the radio this morning. He had a dignified South African accent (most English-speaking accents sound “dignified” to Canadians). He spoke in deep, measured tones. He left frequent pregnant pauses in the conversation. His words virtually dripped with gravitas and significance. I imagined him leaning back in a big black chair, hands assuredly folded, secure in the knowledge that his was a voice worth listening to, worth waiting for. He voice confidently proclaimed, “it is worth standing in the silences between what I have said and what is yet to come.” Read more
My daughter and I are driving in the slushy muddy mess of a mid-March southern Alberta thaw. We’re on our way to swimming or piano or some other busy kind of thing. “I wish it would rain,” she says, looking out the window. “Things are so dirty and brown out there right now. I remember when it rained in British Columbia, and everything would be clean and green.” We drive in silence, wishing it would rain.
It was one of those articles where I started to get a little queasy about a millisecond after reading the headline: “Why Writers Should Stop Blogging.” That the piece was written by a respected fellow pilgrim and writer only made things worse, as did the links she provided to other content echoing the same themes. I have long suspected that blogging is inherently inferior to more traditional modes of communication—kind of like the minor leagues of writing—and have reflected often on the deleterious tendencies that it tends to inculcate among it’s practitioners. Each and every one of these suspicions (and others) was confirmed in reading this post and the attendant articles. Jeff Goins’ piece called “Why You Need to Stop Blogging & Regain Your Writing Soul,” in particular, summed it up with painful precision. Read more
Hockey is Canada’s Religion! So blared the headlines yesterday after the second of our nation’s triumphs with skates and sticks on the Sochi stage. For much of yesterday, Canadian media outlets were aglow with videos and tweets and updates about brave, patriotic Canadians getting up at ungodly hours of the morning and braving frigid temperatures to heroically make their way to the pub (sometimes, without even the lure of alcohol, if you can believe it!) to watch the big game. There were even heartwarming video clips of mosques and churches that decided to show the game before morning worship. The overall mood was exultant. This is what it means to be Canadian, we rehearsed to ourselves over and over again in myriad ways. Read more
There was an hour to kill between appointments last night, so my daughter and I went to grab something to eat. It had been a day—not particularly good, not particularly bad, just, I don’t know, acceptably mediocre—and we were both a little tired. We sat mostly in silence, munching on our sandwiches, me thinking about the evening meeting ahead, she thinking… well, what was she thinking. She stared absently past me, for the most part. Neither of us seemed much in the mood for conversation.
“Does it ever make you sad that people have to eat alone?” Read more
I did one good thing today. Only one.
I did some things inadequately and halfheartedly. I mechanically responded to email, returned phone calls, chipped away at the mountain of paper on my desk. I was often bored and listless, and struggled to corral my wandering mind. I yawned a lot, and looked out the window. Read more
On the way back from a weekend conference, my wife says she wants to stop at the mall. Just for an hour or so.
I don’t like malls. Especially huge malls like this one. I don’t like the idea of the mall or the reality of the mall. I don’t like the orgy of reckless consumption that they represent. I don’t like the bright lights and the crappy pop music that bleeds incessantly through the speakers. I don’t like the labyrinthine layouts that seem designed to trap and confuse me, imprisoning me in the mall’s frightful and constricting embrace.
All of this not liking was pulsing through my brain as I (wisely, no doubt) replied, “Sure. Let’s go to the mall.” Read more
I was out driving around running errands and listening to sermon podcasts today when I was confronted by one of those religious clichés that drives me nuts. I’m not talking mild irritation here, but full-on, pull-out-your-hair (if one is fortunate enough to have hair) and scream-at-the-steering-wheel-in-self-righteous-indignation nuts. It is a term or a way of speaking that I have loathed for a very long time—a hatred that undoubtedly says more about me and my own private insecurities and neuroses than it does about the term itself or the person who is using it. But still. It is an expression/way of speaking that I really, really don’t like.
You might be wondering what term could possibly inspire such an intemperate reaction. Ok, here it is: “I just have a heart for ____.” Read more
I spent a bit of time this morning snooping around in my archives from Januarys past. This was partly down to simple curiosity. What was I thinking/writing about at the outset of previous years? How have I approached the first post of a new year in the past? It was also due to being faced with a rather uninteresting lack of inspiration in the present. Writers block isn’t something I tend to face with any degree of regularity, but it’s annoying on the occasions when it does make an appearance. Perhaps revisiting themes from New Years past would result in a eureka! moment, and I could stand back and watch the insight and creativity pour forth!
I know a girl who loves to laugh. She has a smile that can light up a room and a kind and compassionate heart that loves to seek out the sad, the lonely, the forgotten. She is also, like many kids her age, a little forgetful, a bit careless at times. Her head has been known to wander up into the clouds, far from the more terrestrial concerns that occupy the minds of her parents and other adults in her life. She doesn’t do many things quickly. She cheerfully lives life at her own pace.
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Rumblings 