May 13
I seen the body, you know.
She’s maybe ten years old, a beautiful little girl with a blonde hair and a black dress. She has tears in her eyes and her face looks tired from crying. Her uncle is gone. There was a head on collision and a fire and then the descent of all kinds of family from all kinds of places and then the shedding of rivers of tears and now a church and a service and the long goodbye begins… Read more
I have had some version of the same conversation a number of times over the past few weeks (over the years, I’ve learned to pay attention to this phenomenon—it seems to be God’s preferred means of provoking me). The conversations have all been, in some form or another, about the question of how a life is measured. Sometimes the issue has been named explicitly, other times we have danced around it more peripherally. But each conversation, in its own way, whether through an anxiety saturated with loss or with the exhilarated joy of hard-won wisdom, has been probing this question of questions: How do we measure a human life? How do I measure my life? Read more
I read an article a few days ago… one of those articles that asked people what they liked or didn’t like about the church… what they expected or didn’t expect from their pastors… what they wished for more of… or less of…. Some of the words that came up frequently were words like “honesty” and “authenticity.” Ok, then. Well, in that light…
When I was younger, I imagined that people who inhabited the “pastor” role had some specific set of skills that made them uniquely suited to sift through the wreckage of human pain that they encountered. I imagined that they strode confidently into rooms where people were coping with tragedy and death and doubt and loss and grief and crushing pain and anger and fear armed with just the right words for the job, just the right bible verses, just the right insight into when to give someone a hug and when to give them space, just the right prayers, just the right ability to project just the right combination of warmth and decisiveness and spiritual authority (whatever that might mean), just the right combination of attitudes and attributes to make bad situations somehow better.
And then I became a pastor. Read more
One day I will probably need to offer to pay for my kids’ therapy given the number of times that I have used them and the stories and conversations they inhabit as fodder for my writing and speaking. I can imagine the script already: It was literally like we could barely open our mouths about anything God-ish without dad pouncing all over it and subjecting it to tortuous analysis in some sermon or on his blog or something. It was like he was always waiting for us to produce some “moment” that he could exploit for his own ends. It was kinda pathetic, really. And they would be right. Mostly. In my meager defense, I would say that I have always tried to look at everyday life as the raw material through which God speaks and, well, my kids just happen be involved in most of the days of my everyday life. Not much of an excuse, I know. It’s all I got. Read more
I spent a good chunk of this morning in an online discussion about the future of Mennonite Church Canada with a handful of other young-ish pastors from across the nation. It was interesting to be invited as I tend to be less suited to thinking on my feet at meetings or committees or focus groups than I am to writing blog posts where I can hedge my bets and endlessly qualify every statement and default to lame attempts at self-protective humour. I mostly agreed to participate in this converstation because I was frankly giddy at the prospect of being located in the “young-ish” category of something. Read more
Well, they’re native, so….
Over the last few weeks, I’ve had half a dozen or so conversations where some version of the phrase above was used to “explain” or set the table for an explanation of some undesirable situation or turn of events. Often, the conversations have been with Christians. Always, the comment was presented as if it were utterly uncontroversial and unproblematic. As if that one word—“native”—said all that needed to be said. As if it were self-evident that the topic under discussion could quickly be summed up by whatever cluster of negative associations they happened to be able to squeeze into those six little letters. N-a-t-i-v-e. Read more
I spent part of yesterday morning in the dentist’s chair. Now, I know that nobody enjoys going to the dentist. But I really, really, really don’t like it. I am, undoubtedly, the worst of scaredy-cats and neurotically frightened of pain, but in my (meager) defense, my cowardice has a back-story. Read more
On September 2, 2015, the body of a five-year-old Syrian boy named Alan Kurdi was photographed face down on a Turkish beach. This one image seemed to capture the world’s attention and galvanize efforts to respond to the Syrian refugee crisis. The crisis itself wasn’t new—it had been a growing reality for at least three years prior to that photo. Alan Kurdi wasn’t the only five-year-old boy to die in an attempt to cross the Mediterranean—he was and is, sadly, one of many. In many ways, Alan Kurdi’s story was tragically ordinary in a world where tragedy is ordinary. But it became extraordinary in the response to that one image. Read more
A few years ago, I spent a week at Canadian Mennonite University in Winnipeg as “pastor in residence.” It was an interesting week full of informal conversation, public lectures, worship services, and question and answer sessions. Toward the end of the week, I attended a lunch with a group of students who were considering pastoral ministry. Near the end of our time together, I was asked a simple and entirely reasonable question: “If you could offer one piece of advice to those either considering pastoral ministry or those taking their first steps toward it, what would it be?” Read more
Most of us who fall into the “Christian” category of humanity walk around with at least some conception of a “good Christian” in our heads. It might not be a very good conception. It might not be very clear or coherent or compelling in any way. It might even be downright repellent to many, inside or outside of the Christian camp. It might be a fire-breathing, red-faced white Republican for whom Christian faith seems to mean a long list of things to be against, sprinkled with a generous dose of syrupy personal piety, muscular Americana, and unbridled capitalism. Or something else. Lets hope. Read more
I come across many people who have difficulty forgiving. Sometimes, the challenge is to forgive others. Parents, children, spouses, siblings, friends. Sometimes it’s institutions, structures, powers and principalities, the weight of history with its myriad injustices. Sometimes it’s a ghost, an illusory entity created to bear the burden of real and imagined grievances. Sometimes it’s God. At least as often the problem is forgiving ourselves—the people we were, the people we are, the people we are daily failing to become. We live in a world where wrong is so often done, a world where forgiveness is not easily mined out of the mountains of wrongdoing that build up over time. Read more
This morning I started reading an(other) article about how the Internet is destroying our brains and rendering us incapable of paying sustained attention to anything for longer than forty-five seconds, but I ended up musing about the honour of being called a sinner. An unlikely trajectory of reflection, perhaps, but I’ll try to explain myself… Read more
Easter is a ridiculous thing. Come to think of it, there is a ridiculous quality to so much of what we as Christians claim.
Christmas—God-in-flesh, born in a feed trough to a teenaged peasant girl. Ridiculous.
The Sermon on the Mount—an idealistic approach to life if ever there was one, a recipe for little more than getting taken advantage of and abused. Naively ridiculous.
Palm Sunday—the “triumphal entry” of a king… on a pitiful little donkey… talking about peace. Laughably ridiculous.
Maundy Thursday—a master who washes feet. Weirdly ridiculous.
Good Friday—a self-proclaimed Messiah, executed like a common criminal, going out with hardly a whimper. Pitifully ridiculous
And now, Easter— the defeat of death, as Paul says in 1 Corinthians 15:19-26? Well, “ridiculous” barely seems to cover it. Read more
We often hear a steady stream of words about what Jesus “did for us” around this time of year, around this stage of Holy Week. Last night, at our church’s Maundy Thursday service, we shared a simple meal together and walked through the familiar story from Jesus’ arrest to crucifixion. We do the same thing each year, and each year something new stands out to me. This year, I was struck the things that Jesus didn’t do for us as he walked the tortuous path to Calvary. Read more
Ever since I returned from Palestine and Israel a few weeks ago, I’ve been trying to come up with some kind of a summary post or report or analysis or something to kind of tie a nice little bow on my experience, to have some finished product to point to that summarizes the things I saw and experienced while over there. Read more
Why do we eat soup during Lent? The question from a church member caught me a bit off guard as I was scrambling to get a few things together for a soup and bread Lenten lunch that our church was hosting last week. I don’t remember exactly how I responded. I think I vaguely gestured toward Lent being a season for embracing self-discipline and simplicity. “The general idea,” I said, “is that we choose not to eat as much or the same as we might during other times of the year as a way of remembering that we do not live on bread alone—to acknowledge, even in the context of abundance, that our deepest hunger is for God.” I pointed to the idea that fasting is a way of acknowledging that there is an unfinished quality to our world and to our human experience—that things are not yet as they should be, that we are not yet as we should be. Read more
Another restless sleep in Bethlehem interrupted by the 4 am call to prayer… In lieu of tossing and turning frustratedly for the next hour, I thought recording a few stories lodged in my brain from yesterday might be a more profitable use of my time. Read more
My first night in the West Bank came to a rather abrupt, if expected end with the Islamic call to prayer (adhan) outside my window at 4:00 am. The song from the muezzin was haunting and beautiful. And rather longer than I expected. Given that I had collapsed into bed around 9 pm the previous evening after a long (and sleepless) few days of travel, and given that going back to sleep in the circumstances would prove spectacularly unlikely for me (I have a hard time sleeping well at the best of times, never mind when traveling), I decided I might as well do what I was told and get up to pray. Read more
 | inquisitivelypinkcd4… on Joy on the Line |
 | Ryan on Joy on the Line |
 | Marie on Joy on the Line |
| Marie on Joy on the Line |
| inquisitivelypinkcd4… on Precious Gift |
Rumblings 