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Posts from the ‘The Lighter Side’ Category

Dec 5

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On Friction

I’m not particularly proud of the story I’m about to tell but here goes. I recently asked ChatGPT to create an image for me. I provided what I thought were clear instructions, but the image that came back was nothing like what I had in mind. After a few more back and forths, the image did not improve. I began to get exasperated. I recalled someone telling me that one of the most annoying things about these chatbots is how unfailingly nice and affirming they are. Every question you ask, no matter how dumb, is a “great question.” They’re always “delighted” to help and eager to provide far more than what you asked. It’s like having an obsequious butler following you around. Read more

Oct 30

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Take a Swing for Jesus (Straining a Metaphor)

Most Canadians are laser-focused on the Toronto Blue Jays these days. And understandably so. They Jays are on quite a run, and they are an easy team to like. I’ve never been a huge baseball fan, but even I am enjoying watching them give the gazillionaire Dodgers all they can handle. When the Jays aren’t on, though, I’ve been keeping an eye on the Rolex Paris Masters, the world’s biggest indoor tennis tournament (here, too, a Canadian is doing well—Felix Auger-Aliassime is into the quarterfinals). Tennis is a sport that I’ve come to really enjoy in the last five years or so, both the viewing and the playing. And it’s given me a new window into some aspects of the Christian life. Read more

Nov 14

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“I Only Love to Be So”

I often tease my wife that she is the least Japanese Japanese person I know. Mostly because she hates seafood and because… um, well, mostly it’s just because she hates seafood. Buried within this playful banter is a whole set of assumptions about what a real Japanese person would do. Sit cross-legged on the floor in a kimono, I suppose. Eat sushi and squid with perfectly poised chopsticks in a general Zen state of tranquility. Be really into kintgsugi. Something like that. My wife usually reminds me, with no small amount of exasperation, that she’s just as German as she is Japanese (her father is Japanese, her mother is German). To which I helpfully respond, “that makes you two thirds of the axis of evil.” After which she usually leaves the room. It’s all very edifying and enlightening, as you can no doubt imagine. Read more

Nov 13

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Crime and Punishment

My morning has been punctuated with a handful of giggly messages linking to an article published in the London Free Press today. Apparently, a junior hockey player with the OHL’s London Knights was ejected from a game on November 6 and subsequently slapped with a hefty five game suspension. What was his crime, you might be wondering? Did he take out a few teeth with a vicious cross check? Leave the bench to get involved in a melee? Concuss someone with an elbow to the head or a hit from behind? No, none of these things. His transgression was to call a player on the opposing team a “Mennonite.” Read more

Aug 22

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Rocky Road

I occasionally remark somewhat playfully (but only somewhat) to my congregation that they are saddled with quite possibly the least “Mennonite” pastor in our denomination. They usually laugh politely and hope I’ll move on. Why do I say this, you may be wondering? Well, let me count the ways. Read more

May 14

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Leave Your Phone in the Locker

Sunday morning, 10:17 am. I scan my digital wristband across the sensor of the locker assigned to me by a beaming Nordic Spa staff member. I have a Sunday off, so my wife and I have made the short trek to the Rocky Mountains for a bit of time away. I examine my surroundings. The locker room is immaculate. There are private showers, complimentary bathroom amenities, unlimited towels, earnest staff members everywhere, all eager to help me relax, restore, refocus, reclaim, rejuvenate, re-everything. Before heading out for a day of “hydrotherapy” (which will include exotic steam cabins with names like “Alchemist” and “Eucalyptus,” Finnish saunas, “reflection pools” (as in, “pools in which to reflect” not “pools that you can see your reflection in”), and “exfoliation cabins,” I am exhorted to leave my phone in the locker. Read more

Aug 11

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Friday Miscellany

A few stray threads to pick at as another week winds down…

***

I spent the August long weekend with a few long-time friends in Seattle. Guys always need a reason beyond just getting together to get together, and in this case, it was a concert. Greta Van Fleet was in town and this seemed like a pretty good excuse to make the trek. I’m likely a bigger fan than a few of the other guys, but I think everyone enjoyed the spectacle. Read more

May 10

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Through the Fire

My wife and I have different interests and philosophies when it comes to things like fitness and staying active. She likes hiking and running for excruciatingly long distances over hills and mountains. I like chasing balls and pucks with racquets and sticks. Thus it has been forever and ever. Every once in a while, one of us will venture over into the other’s world—I’ll go on a hike (and hardly complain); she’ll swing a tennis racquet for an afternoon—but for the most part we stay in our lanes. You need your own thing in a marriage, right? Read more

Sep 29

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Who Am I? (A Drive-Thru Existential Crisis)

What have I become? The thought occurred to me as I was pulling out of the McDonald’s drive-thru clutching my $1 medium black coffee on the way to work this morning. This was the fourth time in the last week that I have found myself in this shameful position. My daughter recently began a new job, and she and my wife have been emptying the coffee pot on the way out the door. I could have made a fresh pot but, well, you know that takes time, and I was running late, and McDonald’s has $1 coffee, so…. Read more

Oct 27

On Razors and Reasons for Being

I’m bald. Have been for roughly two decades. Perversely, I spent the previous two or three years before losing my hair shaving my head and bleaching the stubble that remained platinum blonde. I’m not at all filled with self-loathing for my poor choices on this score or bitter about going bald early or filled with jealousy for men my age who have full heads of hair. The fact that I pleaded with my son for most of his teenage years to grow his hair long so I could live vicariously through him has nothing to do with unresolved early-onset balding trauma. My proclivity to wear a hat anytime I’m not sleeping or preaching has nothing to do with vain contempt for my bald head. I like being bald and am fully at peace with it. Really. Read more

Sep 8

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ABBA Essentials and the Perils of Unlimited Choice

“What do you wanna listen to now?” My wife asked me this question a handful of times from the passenger seat as we made our way over the Rockies and back to help our kids settle into college last weekend. Twenty-five hours in transit gives you plenty of time for listening to stuff, whether it’s podcasts, audio books, or music. Each time the question came, I would half-heartedly ponder the request for a few seconds and then respond with something along the lines of, “Um, I don’t know, nothing’s really coming to mind… I kinda need to see my options.” My wife would then furrow her brow at me, scroll through Apple Music on one of our phones, and then usually end up picking either something that one of us had downloaded recently and was thus near the top of our screens or something we had listened to in the past. Read more

Jun 18

On the Occasion of Your Nineteenth Birthday

Hi kids,

Remember how last year I said I was done writing these rambling birthday letters to you now that you are adults? Well, I lied. You can add this latest transgression to the sad list that I’ve accumulated over nearly two decades as your father. Each year on this day I tend to dissolve into a puddle of sentimental nostalgia mixed in with a generous dose of neurotic longing for your futures and, naturally, this garbled mess has to find expression somewhere, right? You’ll thank me for this later, no doubt. Ahem. Read more

Feb 19

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On Unique Souls

Among my wife’s many laudable attributes (patience, longsuffering, etc.) is her keen sense of style. She has a unique sense of fashion and will routinely emerge out of long and laborious hours spent excavating thrift store racks with some quite striking ensembles. Where I see “ugly old crap” my wife sees boundless potential. There’s probably a metaphor or a theological lesson lurking around in that previous sentence, but I don’t think it would be convenient or flattering for me to pursue it. So I won’t. Read more

Dec 17

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Tuesday Miscellany (On Going to the Gym, Pillow Forts, Trust and Change)

Last June, I decided that I had reached that stage of life where some changes to my routine were going to be necessary. I had injured my knee a few years ago, and due to a perfectly calibrated combination of apprehension, apathy, and procrastination, I had not gone the surgery route. One day, a friend who had been through a similar knee-injury gloriously vindicated my indecision by saying, “Forget surgery, just hit the weights. You’ll be fine.” I very much liked the “forget surgery” part of this injunction. The “hit the weights” part? Well, not so much. But, you know, mid-life and all. I figured that I had reached a point in proceedings where some maintenance was going to be required to stay active and reasonably healthy. So, off to the gym I went. Read more

Dec 3

7 Comments

Are You Looking at Me?

A strange thing happened on the way to work this morning. A blue minivan came flying up beside me on the highway and then abruptly slammed on the brakes to match my speed. I glanced over, puzzled. Was it a friend trying to get my attention? Had I cut this person off? Was my fuel cap open and flapping in the wind? My gaze was met by a woman and (I assumed) her young son in the passenger seat. She was leaning across him, gesturing wildly at me, pointing at me with two fingers, seeming to indicate that she was watching me. Or something. I really don’t know. I stared at her, more bewildered than before. Before I knew it, she had raced off ahead of me. Read more

Jun 17

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On the Occasion of Your Eighteenth Birthday

Dear kids adults,

So, you’re eighteen years old tomorrow. Adults. Wow. That’s weird and awesome and terrifying and unbelievable and how-on-earth-did-two-little-babies-I-could-fit-in-the-palm-of-each-hand-ever-end-up-as-adults?! It sort of makes me feel like a quivering blob of nostalgia. It also makes me feel old. Rather insensitive of you to become adults so quickly, if you don’t mind me saying.  At any rate, I’ve written you a rambling letter on each of the last three birthdays, so I figured I’d add one last one to the collection. And this will be the last one. After this, you’ll have to fend for yourselves without dad’s treasured wisdom which I know you cherish so deeply. Er… Read more

Sep 21

12 Comments

How to Be a Bad Theologian

I’ve been thinking this morning about, of all things, hockey pools. For those unfamiliar with this phenomenon, a group of friends get together before the season and pick which NHL players they think will score the most points in the upcoming season. You assemble your roster and then watch to see how they perform against other people’s rosters in the year ahead. I’ve been doing this with a bunch of guys over the past few days. I tend to be pretty terrible at hockey pools, but it’s all good fun. Read more

Jun 18

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On the Occasion of Your Seventeenth Birthday

Hi kids,

It’s your seventeenth birthday today, so I suspect you know what’s coming by now. That’s right, another long-ish and perhaps not altogether welcome letter from your dad. This is the third year in a row that I’ve subjected you to something like this (see here and here). I apologize. Kind of. Well, not really. I suppose next year these letters will have to stop, what with you officially reaching adulthood and all that. So I’d better take advantage of these last two birthdays to dump all of my wisdom (or at least nostalgia) on you before you launch out into the grown up world. Read more

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