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May 1

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People of the Heart

Every so often, the accumulation of paper and books and coffee cups and unopened correspondence on my desk crosses a threshold of clutter and despair that even I am no longer able to tolerate, and I begin take halting, tremulous steps to beat back the beast. This often happens on Fridays on weeks when I am not scheduled to preach. Like today, for example.

Among my discoveries as I tried to wrest order out of chaos this morning was a monthly newsletter from our local L’Arche community.   Read more

Apr 30

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Our Refuge and Strength

Last week’s earthquake in Nepal has, at last count, resulted in well over five thousand deaths and has crippled the nation in all the devastating ways that “natural disasters” do. We see these images and read these reports on our screens and we feel numb. We have few categories for such suffering. The weight of the pain seems too much to contemplate. We don’t know what to do or say or how to pray. For a while, at least. Read more

Apr 28

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What Do You Want Me to Do For You?”

When I was younger, I would often hear or imagine some version of the “If you could ask God any question in the world, what would it be?” I had a long list. What’s the point of angels? What’s with all the killing in the OT? How old will I be in heaven? Did Methuselah really live for almost a millennium? What was the point of the flood if wickedness has remained on the earth ever since? How did Jesus walk through the door after his resurrection, yet Thomas could still touch him? How did you make something from nothing? Why should we pray if you already know everything? How can you be everywhere at the same time?  Why did Eve take the fruit…  My list could have filled a book. Or a blog.  Read more

Apr 27

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I Am Not a Rational Human

The day started promisingly enough. I opened my eyes and the sun was trickling through the blinds. I remembered that it was Monday, and that Monday was my day off, and that I like Mondays. I thought about a leisurely morning spent in the front porch sun with a good book and a cup of coffee. I sighed contentedly. Yes, very promising indeed. And then I got out of bed. Read more

Apr 22

15 Comments

This World Is (Not) My Home

Judging from the content pouring through my various social media feeds (and from my wife’s enthusiastic exhortation to go get a free Starbucks coffee!), today is Earth Day. Another day devoted to building awareness, promoting responsibility, and broadening horizons. I wonder if we are soon going to run out of calendar space for all of the special “days” that join the fray each year, but I am of course happy to affirm Earth Day and all it represents. Read more

Apr 16

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Nothing Can Separate       

I’ve been thinking often over the last few days and weeks about the last three verses of the magnificent eight chapter of Paul’s letter to the church in Rome:

No, in all these things we are more than conquerors through him who loved us. For I am convinced that neither death nor life, neither angels nor demons, neither the present nor the future, nor any powers, neither height nor depth, nor anything else in all creation, will be able to separate us from the love of God that is in Christ Jesus our Lord.

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Apr 10

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“Some More Skilled Future Self”

Unlike animals that live in the moment and merely cope with the world (however smoothly), we are… drawn out of our present selves toward some more skilled future self that we emulate…. [W]e are never fully at home in the world. We are always “on our way.” Or perhaps we should say that this state of being on our way to somewhere else is our peculiar human way of being here in the world.

— Matthew Crawford, The World Beyond Your Head

Most therapists will say that a key to finding any kind of viable and lasting happiness in the world requires coming to peace with who you are. Not some future self that you wish you could be, not the person that you imagine yourself to be in your best moments, not the person that you will undoubtedly be 2, 5, 10 years from now. No, the person staring back at you in the mirror. Unless you can believe that you are enough as you are—that you matter and have value even prior to all of the well-intentioned character modifications that inevitably loom over the next ridge of your life—you will never be at peace. Your striving will always be borne out of restlessness and dissatisfaction, rather than a desire for goodness. Read more

Apr 8

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Wednesday Miscellany

At any given moment, I have around half a dozen half-written blog-posts and/or fragmentary ideas lying around collecting dust in my “drafts” folder. Sometimes these turn into full-length pieces. Sometimes they just forlornly sit there for months on end until I either get sick of looking at them OR forcibly wrench them into a “Miscellany” post. Today, it’s the latter. 🙂

Here, then, my latest assemblage of ideas about totally unrelated topics… Read more

Apr 7

2 Comments

The Jesus Lizard

After one of the warmest winters I can recall in southern Alberta, we were greeted on Easter Sunday with snow. So much for the springtime resurrection metaphors, I suppose.

Which is fine. I’ve never had much use for the resurrection of Jesus as a metaphor anyway. At least not as just a metaphor. As I read through the four gospel accounts of the resurrection last week, again and again I was struck by how utterly unprepared and bewildered and terrified the first witnesses were by this turn in the story. The early church was literally shocked into existence, dragged reluctantly and confusedly from an empty tomb into the landscape of new creation. I think those first witnesses would find all of our enlightened “resurrection as hopeful metaphor” language rather amusing. At best.  Hope was something they had pretty much abandoned, until it showed up, wounds and all, and stared them in the face. Read more

Apr 3

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O Lamb of God, Forgive Thy Butchers.

And so, this is the day.

The day when the angry mob baying for blood gets their way, the day when they trade the Messiah sent to them for the Messiah they wanted, welcoming the insurrectionist Barabbas back from the dead, and sending the Lamb of God off to slaughter.   Read more

Mar 31

26 Comments

Phone Call

I have learned, over the course of nearly four years being a solo pastor in a small church with no office staff to handle phones, to be wary of answering calls with unfamiliar area codes. At best, these tend to be automated telemarketing calls or faxes (there are people out there who still fax, apparently) and I can easily hang up the phone and move on with my day. At worst, they are eager representatives (frequently relentlessly cheerful young women with southern drawls—unless it’s Promise Keepers calling) from large, usually American, religious organizations who are seeking my/our support for some upcoming event or initiative or massive multi-site networked “experience” that will revolutionize my ministry. These calls are much more difficult to extract myself from. I am never rude, but I’m afraid I don’t give them much by way of encouragement. Usually by around the second minute of our phone call, I can sense the exasperation bleeding through the line all the way from Tennessee.  Read more

Mar 27

Hiding

Like many, I’ve been following the story of the Andreas Lubitz, the Germanwings pilot who deliberately crashed the plane he was co-piloting from Barcelona to Dusseldorf into the French Alps this week, killing himself and 149 other precious human beings. It is a disturbing story, on so many levels. We read, we watch, we listen with mouths open, aghast. What could possibly drive someone to do such a thing? We struggle to make sense out of the senseless. We sift around in the wreckage, as it were, trying to find something—anything—that might allow us to place this event into intelligible moral categories.  Read more

Mar 17

7 Comments

The Enemy at the Gate

People like to give pastors things to read, I am discovering. Hardly a week goes by without an article or a book appearing on my desk or church mailbox, or a link in my inbox. You should really read this, pastor!  A quick survey of the accumulated suggestions of the past week or so reveals an article on the history of Mennonites in southern Alberta, a book about the “battle” against same-sex marriage, a review of a book about dying well, promotional material for an educational institution, and an expose of the Alberta tar sands. Oh, and a drawing of Sponge Bob with “Happy Early Easter!” written beside it that showed up after church on Sunday.  It’s not just the grown ups who like to leave things in my office, evidently. Read more

Mar 12

8 Comments

Pain Management

Two recent conversations about pain…

My daughter has lately been coming to terms with the horrors of World War 2. They’ve been studying this period of history in school, and last night she watched a movie that told the story of war through the lens of a couple of young children. She was distraught and more than a little belligerent at the end. How could God possibly allow people to make things like gas chambers?! she demanded to know. I thought God was supposed to help people! What about all the promises that God makes to deliver people?! Why wouldn’t God stop people from doing that to each other?! I totally get why some people say there’s no God! Why doesn’t God do something?!  Read more

Mar 11

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Free Booze: A Lenten Reflection on Customer Satisfaction

I heard an advertisement on the radio while driving around today. A restaurant was offering one free glass of wine per person for every visit over a certain period of time. After frantically altering my lunch plans and stampeding down to this restaurant for an 11:00 lunch snorting derisively at the moral decay and transparent desperation evident in such a marketing campaign, I got to making a few (mostly unflattering) comparisons in my head between restaurants and churches as I meandered along the errand trail for the rest of the morning. Read more

Mar 5

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“A Love That Never Shudders at the State We’re In”

Of all the stories that Jesus tells, there are few that break and remake us, that lay our souls bare, that fire our hearts us with the hope of mercy like the parable of the prodigal son (Luke 15:11-32). It is a story for broken sons and weary daughters, for love-sick fathers and grumbling exemplars of grim-faced duty. It is a story that describes the homecoming we all, I suspect, hunger for, even when we are only dimly aware of it. It is the story of what God looks like and how God loves, no matter what we look like, no matter how poorly we love. Read more

Mar 3

6 Comments

Unlearning

Last night, our family went to see a drama performance called “New Blood” that was held at the local university as part of their “Native Awareness Week” celebrations. The show was put together by high school students from Strathmore, AB, a small town near Calgary and bordering the Siksika Nation, a member of the Blackfoot Confederacy. Through music, drama, drumming, and dance, the students told the life story of Vincent Yellow Old Woman (the current chief of the Siksika Nation), including his time spent in residential school as a boy, and the later recovery of his Blackfoot culture. It was a moving portrayal of the many losses experienced by indigenous people as a result of colonialism, as well as a stirring call to hope, forgiveness, and love. Read more

Mar 2

14 Comments

Some Sundays

Some Sundays are better than others. Every pastor knows this. Every parishioner surely knows this. Some Sundays the seats are filled, the music is glorious, the prayers and the stories and the sermons are crammed full of inspiration and provocation. Some Sundays there are unexpected divine surprises that catch you off guard and move you to tears. Some Sundays are incredible, and I am pleased with whatever contributions I have made to the worship of Christ.

And other Sundays? Well, not so much. Read more

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