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Aug 22

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Thursday Miscellany: On Resilience

Some fragmentary thoughts and observations on resilience accumulated over the course of the summer…

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I spent last weekend in Vancouver, BC where my wife was running a half marathon. She inexplicably enjoys running long distances on purpose and I enjoy drinking coffee and reading in between seeing her off and waiting for her at the finish line, so it’s a decent enough arrangement. Last weekend, however, things took an unexpected turn. Just under two miles in, she had a fall and landed hard on her shoulder. The pain, she said, was excruciating. No doubt. So, she naturally did what most normal people would do in such a situation, which is to say, she ran eleven miles with a grade three separation of her shoulder. Err… Read more

Aug 8

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On Walking Long Distances

I went on a long walk last Friday. Seventeen kms or so, according to a map I consulted this afternoon, up and down a mountain. Not being a terribly proficient hiker and, consequently, not possessing a decent pair of hiking boots, I used someone else’s. Which (unsurprisingly) turned out to be a mistake. Halfway along my long walk, one heel had been rubbed pretty much raw. My hiking companion generously patched together a combination of gauze and duct tape to tamp down alongside the heel of my boot which enabled me to hobble the rest of the way up and back down on a hot summer’s day. Six days later, the heel is still a rather unsightly red. But the spectacular views of the Canadian Rockies were more than adequate compensation for the accumulated discomforts of my long walk. Read more

Aug 6

It’s This, But It’s Also That

Last weekend, I read a remarkable piece of journalism. It was about an issue that I knew little about and it described a reality with which I have no personal experience. It was about a city I have never visited in a country not my own whose social conditions are difficult for me to personally imagine. It discussed a material reality has very little bearing on my everyday life in a small city on the Canadian prairies. And yet, the article modeled a way of approaching a difficult issue that I think we can (must) all learn from if we are going to inhabit our cultural moment in honest and hopeful ways. Read more

Jul 31

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How Long?

I periodically listen to the popular podcast This American Life, hosted by Ira Glass. It’s hit and miss, for me, like most podcasts, but very often it will at least leave me with a lingering thought, an itch or two worth scratching. In this week’s episode, “The Weight of Words,” it was the prologue that provided the aforementioned itch. Read more

Jul 25

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More, Better, Faster!

Occasionally, if I’m feeling a least mildly provocative (or if I want to see if someone is actually paying attention), I will respond to the query, “So, how’s it going” with “Good enough.” Sometimes my conversation partner will steamroll on, assuming that I have answered with one of the expected responses (“good,” “well,” “busy,” etc.). But occasionally, they’ll pause and give me a sideways glance. That one word—”enough”—throws a bit of uncertainty into what’s supposed to be a relatively thoughtless bit of social lubrication. Enough? What does that mean? Is that code for “I’m not doing well?” Is it a joke? Good enough for what? Read more

Jul 24

On Liberating Desire

Further to yesterday’s post on the inevitably social nature of human desire, I was fascinated to read the following passage this afternoon in Danish psychologist Svend Brinkmann’s book, The Joy of Missing Out. The quote comes in the broad context of an argument that living well requires being willing to settle for less, to not constantly be chasing after the latest experience, product, or achievement, and, specifically, at the end of a discussion of Søren Kierkegaard’s assertion that “purity of heart is to will one thing”: Read more

Jul 23

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Desire Infection

Most of us are at least dimly aware that our thinking and behaviour is influenced in important ways by our social circumstances. We tend, in general terms, to think and act like those we surround ourselves with, those we rub shoulders with daily, those we hang out with on the weekend, those we worship with, those we sit in coffee shops or book clubs with, etc. Over time, our thinking tends to come to resemble the thinking of our social groups. Not in every way, of course. It’s not like every social group is comprised of mindless automatons all regurgitating identical content (although social media might offer a depressing counterexample here…). But most of us would acknowledge that our beliefs about the world are profoundly social both in their origins and in their ongoing maintenance. Read more

Jul 10

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Love Loses

I’ve had some interesting conversations (online and face to face) recently with people about psychology professor and blogger Richard Beck’s ongoing series on the need for a “post-progressive Christianity.” He’s covered some interesting terrain in the series thus far, everything from how progressives approach the Bible to the phenomenon of deconstruction to how they understand the role of the church and others. In each case, Beck describes how he has found progressive Christianity’s approach to faith insightful in important ways, but also lacking in others. Hence the need for a “post-progressive Christianity,” however much some of us might cringe at the introduction of yet another “post” into our cultural lexicon. Read more

Jul 8

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Everyone Who Asks

Give to everyone who asks you, and if anyone takes what belongs to you, do not demand it back. — Luke 6:30

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“Were you expecting two Muslim women at church this morning?” The question came from a curious church member yesterday morning about forty-five minutes before worship. I looked at her blankly. “Um, no, no I was not.” I had been just settling in to do the usual last-minute editing and printing of sermons and worship resources. It had been a full week in all kinds of ways and I was tired. I had been anticipating (i.e., desperately hoping for) a pretty straightforward Sunday morning. Alas, it seemed that a straightforward Sunday morning was not in the cards. Read more

Jun 25

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Be True to Yourself (Or, Perhaps, Don’t)

Late June is graduation season which, of course, means graduation ceremonies. I’ve attended one of these already and I’m looking forward to another later this week. These can be long, grinding affairs, it’s true, and, yes, rhetoric quite often cheerfully stampedes ahead of reality, but these ceremonies are also occasions for joyous celebration. It is delightful to see wide smiles and to hear stories of obstacles overcome, challenges met, and finish-lines crossed. 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

Jun 13

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There, But for the Grace of God…

Over the past few months, I’ve had a number of people, close to home and from afar, comment that they’ve appreciated my reflections and stories that emerge out of Monday mornings spent at the jail. I’ve obviously appreciated the affirmation, even as I sometimes privately wonder if I’m dancing a little too close to the line of voyeuristically exploiting the pain of hard stories to make a bit of theological hay. In my more optimistic moments, I believe these stories need to be told to bring a bit of humanity into a place where stereotypes and casual dismissiveness abound, to shine a light on the glimmers of hope, to bear witness to the sadness, etc. At other times, I wonder if I’m doing little more than wordily rubbernecking as I pass the scene of a car wreck. Read more

Jun 11

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Jesus and the Invalids

Jesus makes his way from the Sheep Gate in Jerusalem around 33 AD to our city in 2019. Jesus can do this because Jesus is alive and because Jesus shows up behind locked doors and along roads to Emmaus and over breakfast with confused disciples. Also, because, well, Jesus is God. He walks around our city streets to see what he will see. Read more

Jun 7

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And Yet, Once More

To be a pastor is to regularly encounter people who find faith difficult. (It’s also to regularly encounter people who you suspect might find faith too easy, but that’s another post). There are all kinds of people in the post-Christian West whose faith kind of hangs by a thread. It retains a bit of nostalgic affection for Christian ethics, perhaps, and it craves the community embodied and offered, however imperfectly, by the church. It might even have an appreciation for mystery and a dim recognition that this life can’t be all there is. But it can often seem like not much more than a kind of half-hearted and undemanding openness to possibility. It’s a long way from deep conviction and bold faith in the great creeds of orthodox Christian faith. All that talk of virgin births and resurrection from the dead and judgment is too much to stomach. And so, faith often coasts along on the fumes of memory and vague longing, coughing and sputtering until it stalls on the side of the road. Read more

Jun 5

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Wednesday Miscellany: Proselytism, Parasitic Morality, and a Punch in the Mouth

I sat in on an attempted proselytism the other day. It was in the chapel at the jail. One of the young women had been pontificating about how she didn’t really believe in God, but she figured there was probably a higher power that was orchestrating things down here. Life was mostly about merging with the energy of the universe and nature and discovering how everything’s connected and all religions basically say the same thing and that it’s all about love and peace (she said this after introducing the word “perping” to my lexicon and talking about how sometimes it’s just so much fun!). She was, in other words, a well-tutored member of the burgeoning SBNR (spiritual but not religious) category of the post-Christian West. Read more

May 31

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You Give Them Something to Eat

I spent part of this morning packaging and delivering bread. Every three years, the Mennonite-ish churches in our area pool their time, talent, and resources to organize a relief sale for MCC (the relief and development arm of our denominations). And every three years, a friend in our church uses our church kitchen to bake bread for the sale. Like, a lot of bread. Like, three hundred and fifty loaves of bread. He arrives at 4:30 in the morning, turns on CBC radio, and works until late afternoon. Sourdough, whole wheat, muesli, raisin, white… The list goes on and on. He told me that this year he’s been doing push ups for three months to prepare for the physical toll of kneading and rolling dough. It had never occurred to me that you might need to train to bake bread. But then it would never occur to me to bake three hundred and fifty loaves, either. Read more

May 29

6 Comments

The Filthy and Excessive Gospel

In a world where deep reading is becoming the exception to the rule of skimming and grazing our way through the endless media that comes at us every day and from every angle, headlines are becoming increasingly important. If the headline doesn’t grab us, we won’t read on. There are just too many words out there and not enough time or attention to bother with them all. Poor headlines! They have to do a disproportionate amount of the work for a piece to even get a hearing! This is more of a confession than an indictment (although I suppose it could be both). I am the chief of sinners on this score. Read more

May 27

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Death of a Simple Narrative

I am learning that the jail is very often a place where simple narratives go to die.

This morning’s lesson was ostensibly about learning how to stop blaming parents and take responsibility for our own actions but, as is usually the case, the conversation tends to meander off in all kinds of loosely-related or unrelated territory. There was a younger indigenous woman who was sitting quietly while the lesson was read. She had spiky jet black hair streaked with blond, a few tattoos on her face, one that looked like a tear drop of blood. I wouldn’t have been surprised if she sat in stony silence throughout our time together. She didn’t look like she had much to say. Read more

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