Stories on the Way

Jun 24

“No, I’M Gonna Pray!”

It’s the last Tuesday of the month, which means it’s our church’s turn at the local soup kitchen. It’s so easy for “the soup kitchen” to become a kind of generic placeholder for ooey-gooey charitable goodness, like “the short-term missions trip or “the Christmas food drive.” It’s all too easy to forget that there are real human beings on the other end of our shiny good deeds—real human beings with faces and names and stories, real human beings with real sadness, sin, and and struggle, real pain and distress, and, yes, real humour, insight, and wisdom.

A few snapshots, then, of one Tuesday, in particular… Read more

May 28

41 Comments

Demons

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

May 27

7 Comments

These Things

It’s been a day of sifting and sorting through the pain that shoots up and out like a geyser from the cracks in the ground of our lives together. The hospital, the seniors’ home, the coffee shop, the parking lot, the playground, the living room… Sometimes it seems that wherever I turn, there is only pain, only confusion, only sadness, longing, anger, regret. Outside the sun shines and the birds sing and all is bright and beautiful, but this is only the surface of things. Inside, just beneath the surface, so much is amiss. So many ugly things, always threatening to bubble up and spill out into the bright and beautiful things.

“We Dance the Same”

They’re sitting there in our church parking lot, staring out at the rain from inside their run down green Chevy Astro van. They showed up after church yesterday. Martin was looking for conversation, for help, for gas money to Calgary for a medical procedure, the usual. He’s aboriginal, around 55, dark glasses, long black hair, cowboy boots. The conversation meanders here, there, everywhere. “Am I late for the service?” he says. “I wanted to get here for the service.” It’s 12:10 pm.

You Don’t Know What It’s Like

One day, three conversations.

1. I’m at a function where my job is to give a short devotional and prayer before the meal. Pastor-y stuff. You know. I’m trying to be witty, disarming, light. I make some throwaway comment about how I know we’re all hungry and that the soup smells good, but please won’t you just spare 5 minutes or so for the presence to descend? I do my thing. Appreciative smiles, all around. Let’s eat. Read more

Mar 19

2 Comments

Two Hands

I notice her standing in line at the café. She’s young, attractive, and has an easy smile. Everything about her appearance screams confidence and self-assurance. She’s dressed stylishly, I suppose, a little bit provocative or edgy or something (as if I knew a thing about style). She turns toward me and I notice her shirt. It’s tight and black and it has what looks like a Jack Daniels logo on the front. But it doesn’t say “Jack Daniels.” It says, rather, in bold, bracing white letters, “100% PURE ATHEIST.” Underneath, in smaller letters, “Two hands at work for good in the world are more useful than a thousand folded in prayer.” I sigh, almost audibly. I would have preferred Jack Daniels. Read more

Jan 27

12 Comments

An Hour at the Mall

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

Nov 12

16 Comments

“You’re Just a Dirty Indian”

There are horrible stories set loose in our world, stories that should not be, stories that should never have been, stories that make the eyes burn and the ears bleed simply to read or to hear them. Stories that can make one embarrassed to be a human being. Read more

Oct 21

6 Comments

“A Loser Like Me”

I was talking to a boy the other day who was trying to put together an intramural team at school. The team had to have a mixture of both boys and girls on the roster, regardless of whether or not they actually played. “I went and asked a few girls that I knew would never play if I could use their names for my team,” the boy said. “Why did you do that?” I asked. He looked at me with a kind of resigned look on this face. “Well, what girl would ever want to play with a loser like me?”

A loser like me. Read more

Oct 10

16 Comments

“If We Pray, Dad Will Come For Us”

I’ve written a fair amount here about Canada’s Truth and Reconciliation Commission and the work being done to address our nation’s history of Indian Residential Schools. Most of this writing took place in or around a trip I took to Montreal last spring to attend one of the seven national events taking place across the country (see here, here, and here). Today, however, the TRC came much closer to home. For the past two days, the TRC has been holding hearings right here in Lethbridge, AB. So, this morning I trudged off to the local hotel armed with my notebook and a stiff cup of coffee, and prepared to hear more difficult stories.

The Sadness

The following likely reads a bit raggedy or raw. It comes from a journal entry scratched out in a notebook beside the lake after a difficult day of listening.

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A conversation at a bookstore: “Oh, this one looks interesting… She’s that famous author of ______.” “Yeah, but the story looks like such a sad one…. Why are all the good stories full of so much sadness?”

I don’t know… Art imitates life? We write what we know. Read more

Jul 2

18 Comments

“We’re Gonna Be Surrounded by Angels”

As far as Canada Day holidays go, it was a bit of a strange one yesterday. I got a message that there was someone who needed to speak with me. Let’s call him Darren. He had shown up at a local L’Arche residence because it was a former nunnery that had still had a cross prominently displayed out front and he thought it was a church. He was looking for help. A place to stay, mainly. They gave him some sandwiches, some conversation, and a ride to the park but weren’t exactly sure where to go after that. Read more

May 30

8 Comments

Be Kind to Each Other

I listened to the story of a gay man yesterday. It was a story both tragic and tragically typical. It was a story of knowing he was “different” from his very earliest memories, of being mocked and ridiculed throughout his school years, a story of confusion, anger, and pain, a story of desperately trying to come to terms with an identity that just didn’t fit, a story of a string of unsatisfying relationships, a story of isolation and deep loneliness that persists to the present day.

It was also, of course, a story in which the church played a role. I wish I could say that it was a positive role—that the community that bears the name of the Friend of Sinners had provided a place of refuge and peace for this person… I wish I could say that. But I can’t. We all know that this isn’t how the story usually goes. We know that “rejection” and “guilt” and “judgment” and “fear” and “misunderstanding” are among the words that appear at this point in the story. Read more

May 8

2 Comments

“You’re Gonna Pray for Leroy, Right?”

The following comes out of an experience I had yesterday. I try to be very careful in deciding if/how to share about stuff that I encounter in my daily work. There are issues of privacy, of course, in addition to the simple fact that not every experience I find meaningful necessarily needs to be shared—especially in an online/cultural context where over-sharing is reaching almost epidemic proportions.

Having said that, I think it is important to hear the stories of our world and our communities—perhaps especially the unsettling ones. Stories move and change us. At the very least, it’s important for me to hear/tell them. There are so many things that I cannot do in light of the many problems in our world, but one thing I can do is simply to write, to tell stories like this one. It is especially relevant, I think, in light of my recent posts on the Truth and Reconciliation Commission (here, here, and here) and yesterday’s post on “Normal Unhappiness.” All the names below have, of course, been changed. Read more

Apr 25

7 Comments

“We’re Not Strangers Anymore”

I’ve spent the last two days in Montreal attending the Truth and Reconciliation of Canada’s Québec National Event. This is one of seven national events held across Canada to provide a space for listening and truth-telling about the history of residential schools in our country. Events have already been held in Halifax, Winnipeg, Inuvik, and Saskatoon, and there will be future events in Edmonton and Vancouver. It has been a sobering few days. So many stories of abuse, neglect, and prejudice. So many stories of families torn apart, of addiction and violence and dysfunctional relationships. It was a hard, but good day of listening. Read more

Feb 20

20 Comments

A Boy on the Street

I saw a boy today. Ten or eleven years old probably—about the age of my own son. He was walking alone along the side of a busy road. He was skinny. His jaw protruded out, an under bite full of crooked yellowish teeth, and his greasy hair was sticking out in all kinds of different directions. His eyes looked vacant. He had a thin, tattered summer jacket on, zipper wide open revealing a lime green stretched out t-shirt that hung almost down to his knees. His pants were too big for him, his shoes hardly up to the task of navigating the slushy dirty city streets. He looked cold. Read more

Jan 26

Waiting Room

Among the unexpected pleasures of a full weekend at home alone with the kids, which included the usual worship service preparation, our church’s AGM, as well as basketball games and swimming trials, and hosting a friend for night who was stopping in on his way back to British Columbia, was a 3 am trip to the local Emergency Room to deal with a dislocated toe that my son sustained at an all-nighter at the church. Great. Just what the, ahem, doctor ordered. Read more

Aug 10

“Just Tell Them Our Stories”

From a journal entry, written after a recent visit with a politician to discuss Canada’s role in the nation of Colombia—a country I visited this past April as part of a Mennonite Central Committee Learning Tour.

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So this is what they look like, these “official” buildings. A flag in front of the building. A cheery reception area with sun pouring through large windows. A bright, attractive receptionist who steers me toward a comfortable chair and brings weak coffee in a paper cup. We make polite conversation. I go over my notes. Read more

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