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Oct 9

What If it Is Our Fault?

One of my main tasks each Sunday during worship is to pray. Some Sundays, I pray extemporaneously; other Sundays I like to have something more formal, a scaffolding upon which to hang the various things we wish to bring before God and one another during worship. Last Sunday, for example, I used a formal prayer from the back of our hymnal. It was a good prayer. It covered a lot of territory from the global to the personal. It highlighted various aspects of God’s nature and character. It contained the familiar refrain, “Lord, in your mercy… hear our prayer.” Good stuff. Read more

Oct 2

Be (More Than) Kind

My wife and I were recently out walking and passed by a woman wearing a buoyantly colourful T-shirt full of flowers and virtue that said, “Be kind” on it. I did my best to smile inoffensively at her as she walked by. I probably failed. Once she was out of earshot, I said to my wife, “What do you think shirts with messages like that actually accomplish? “Do you think people look at them and think, ‘Ah, yes, thank you for the reminder. I shall redouble my efforts to be a kinder person today’? Or do you think people resent the mini-moral lecture and mutter derision at them under their breath?” My wife may have rolled her eyes at me. Or muttered derision under her breath. Read more

Sep 24

2 Comments

Clay Maker

Woe to you who strive with your Maker,
earthen vessels with the potter!
Does the clay say to the one who fashions it, ‘What are you making?’

— Isaiah 45:9

“Do you think it’s true, what that verse from Isaiah says? That God just does with us whatever he wants?” The guy sitting across from me in the prison interview room shuffles in his seat nervously. Eye contact is sporadic at best. He has a few nasty scars on the side of his face. He seems either suspicious or really shy. I can’t quite make out which and am not quite sure which direction to steer the conversation. “Tell me a bit about your background,” I say. “You know your Bible pretty well; you must have been raised in the church.” He looks at me blankly before responding, “No, nothing, I’ve just been in here a bunch of times and when I’m in here, I read the Bible.”

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Sep 18

1 Comment

Joy Finds Us

I’ve referred to Nick Cave’s Red Hand Files often over the last few years. This is the forum where Cave responds, often quite movingly and insightfully, to the questions of his fans. He’s been doing it for six years and three hundred posts. I look forward to these arriving in my inbox every time. To mark his three hundredth post, Cave decided to flip the script. Instead of responding to the questions of his fans and readers, he decided to ask a question of his own. It was a very simple one: “Where or how do you find your joy?” Read more

Sep 12

I’ve Been a Good Boy!

Among the readings I encountered during morning prayer today was Psalm 17:1-7. It is a plea for divine vindication, protection, blessing, and favour from the pen of David. I have long had something of a complicated relationship with the Psalms. I know that the Psalms are the prayer-book of the church, that really smart and spiritual people pray them every day. And they do express the full range of human emotion. And they do contain some of the most beautiful and exalted language in all of Scripture. But sometimes the implicit theology doesn’t land. It strikes me as true-ish, but not true enough. Read more

Aug 30

Where (and How) Do We Go with our Sorrow?

The first headline that greeted me when I opened my laptop this morning was the news that NHL star Johnny Gaudreau and his brother Matthew had been killed by a (most likely) drunk driver while riding their bikes in New Jersey. The scene is heartbreaking to contemplate. Two brothers out for a late-summer bike ride, a few days ahead of their sister’s wedding. One can imagine a joyful family reunion full of laughter and kids and grand-kids and the anticipation of all the celebrations around the weekend nuptials. All shattered by a moment of madness. A young woman, widowed, two very young children who will almost certainly never remember a thing about their father. A family, gutted. It is all so very, very sad. Read more

Aug 28

2 Comments

Love for the Incorrigible

I’ve been slowly making my way through Marilynne Robinson’s beautiful commentary on Genesis. It’s called, simply, Reading Genesis, and those who know anything about Robinson or her work will not be surprised to learn that it reads rather differently than a typical biblical commentary. Her soaring prose, her seemingly effortless command of complex biblical, historical, and philosophical issues, and the ways in which she weaves all this together in conversation with an ancient text is marvellous to behold. Read more

Aug 22

8 Comments

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

Aug 20

2 Comments

Pieces of Home

Over the past few weeks, I’ve been reading James K.A. Smith’s new book How to Inhabit Time. Smith describes the book as an “exercise in spiritual timekeeping,” learning how to recognize how our histories interact with our presents and our futures, and how God might be present and active throughout it all. Read more

Aug 14

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Meaning is a Question Asked of Us

Further to the crisis of meaning discussed in my previous post…

Not only are young adults (at least in the West) not making enough babies, they’re incredibly anxious. Over the course of at least the last decade or so, a mental health crisis has washed/is washing over younger generations. According to a recent survey, “38 percent of respondents aged 12 to 26 had received a formal diagnosis of anxiety or depression” (29 percent of young men, 45 percent of young women). Further, “even among those who have not received a diagnosis, about half say they often feel anxious; a quarter say they often feel depressed.” The young, clearly, are not well. Read more

Aug 1

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What You Need to Make a Baby

There’s a book that’s been making the rounds lately. It’s called What Are Children For? On Ambivalence and Choice and is co-written by Anastasia Berg and Rachel Wiseman. I’ve encountered no fewer than five reviews or articles on it over the last three days. For many, at least in Western, wealthy, post-Christian countries, having children is by no means an obvious life path. Birth rates are plummeting to far below the replacement rate needed to sustain populations. Many young adults are simply deciding not to have kids. It’s thought to be either too expensive (hard to argue), immoral (climate change anxieties loom large here, as do reservations about how having children reinforces outdated gender norms, “reducing” women to mothers), or simply undesirable (kids can be a real drag). Read more

Jul 26

9 Comments

This is Precisely Who We Are

So, there’s this big scandal involving the Canadian women’s soccer team at the Olympics. Apparently, two Canadian staff members were caught attempting to use a drone to spy on the New Zealand team’s practice. This is obviously not a good look for Canada as the Paris Olympics begin. Canada is supposed to be squeaky clean and wholesome and peaceful and tolerant and inclusive and blah, blah, blah, all the other nice, good, neutral things that we have ever laboured to convey to the world around us. “Cheaters” doesn’t really fit the image we wish to project. Read more

Jul 24

The Art of Living

There’s a young man on the train reading a book. The bare fact of this fascinates me. Who reads books anymore? Almost everyone else is either staring at their phones or talking (loudly and obliviously) into phones held face up in front of their mouths on speaker mode as seems to be the new bewildering norm. But there he sits, reading his book, like some kind of peculiar relic from a bygone age. I glance at the cover of the book. The Art of Living by Epictetus. Well. Not just any old book—which would have been remarkable enough—but a book of ancient philosophy and virtue? My mind is well and truly blown. I want to lean over and congratulate him or give him a hug or something. Read more

Jul 16

8 Comments

Orphans

I saw a screenshot in the aftermath of the Trump assassination attempt on Sunday. Some academic somewhere saying something to the effect of, “So close!” The gleeful comments obligingly took their place below. Should have had better aim! Dammit, just an inch the other way. What a glorious day this could have been! Etc., etc. The screenshot was captured as a gotcha moment. Look at all these self-righteous “progressive” elites who claim to have the moral high ground, wallowing around in the mud of glorying in an attempted assassination. It was all so wearyingly predictable. And of course, if it had been Biden’s ear that was grazed, the same sad scenario would have been playing out in different corners of the internet that are emotionally invested in being perpetually aggrieved in other directions. We are, it has seemed to me for a very long time now, grossly and terrifyingly invested in who and how we hate. Read more

Jul 3

2 Comments

Hooked on a Feeling

When I was (much) younger, I played bass guitar in a worship band. We would play in churches, camps, youth events, etc. The band was ok even if the bass player was terrible. One of my enduring memories of that period of my life was the emotional intensity of some of the worship gatherings we participated in. There were hands raised, eyes closed, impassioned prayer, occasionally even tears. There was often an enterprising youth pastor-ish kind of speaker who would ride the wave of feelings produced or enhanced by the music (some of which, it must be said, and which I thought even at the time, was rather lyrically vapid and theologically suspect). If I’m honest, even though I had a few reservations even then, it felt kinda good to look out and see the effect that our music was having upon people! Clearly God was present. Undeniably, the Spirit was at work! We were just humble vessels. Read more

Jul 1

1 Comment

The Definition of Insanity

My heart sinks a little each time I see *Richard walk through the chapel door at the jail. He’s unsettling and more than a little awkward in group contexts, and this is saying something in a place where there are very few people who don’t struggle at least in some way with mental health issues or all the unpleasant and difficult-to-manage effects of coming off hard drugs. Read more

Jun 29

2 Comments

The Selves We Are Creating

There are a number of teenagers and young adults in my broad orbit who struggle in some way with mental health. I know of multiple parents whose kids have either attempted suicide or given some evidence of suicidal ideation. Teachers in my circles speak exhaustedly of the myriad challenges of educating children in  a world of endless mental health diagnoses and smartphone addiction. Even the most casual glance around my city provides abundant evidence of the simple fact that the kids are not ok. I doubt any of this is news to you. I’m sure you see it, too. Read more

Jun 25

“What If We Also Crave Commandments?”

I’ve been thinking about moral “progress” a lot lately. The impetus for this has come from several sources. In Nick Cave’s latest edition of the Red Hand Files, he responds to a guy who’s wondering how to “move forward with joy” when one has “outgrown” the moral norms of one’s parents. Then there was a philosophical essay called “Moral Progress is Annoying,” which circled around the unremarkable insight that our “norm psychology” and knee-jerk reactions aren’t always reliable indicators of what is right or wrong. Read more

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