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Aug 29

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Covenant Prayer

I was  cleaning out and organizing old files this afternoon because, a) my “filing system” is a haphazard and chaotic mess that is often hopelessly difficult to navigate and locate anything in; and b) because it provided me with the illusion of usefulness and productivity as I avoided the sermon that seems not to want to come.

Among my more pleasant discoveries this afternoon, amidst innumerable useless documents and files and folders that I haven’t opened in years, was this “covenant prayer.”  I have no idea where it comes from or how I happen to be in possession of it, but it is a good prayer, a good challenge, a good aspiration for me on this day.  Perhaps for you, too. Read more

Aug 27

7 Comments

Life Eternal

It’s late August. Another summer is dwindling away at an alarming pace. I should be busy preparing for the inevitable crush of fall activities or finalizing worship themes or getting my head around what our family’s schedule might look like come September 2 or tackling some writing deadlines or readying myself for planning meetings or “networking” (such a loathsome word) or getting together with important people or praying or studying or some other virtuous activity.

There are so many things that I should be doing as the last grains of summer slip through the glass. But I find it difficult to do any of them. Because a little girl has died. A little girl has died, don’t you see? There is this ugly fracture in the cosmos that wasn’t there a few days ago, and everything else seems small and trivial. Read more

Aug 19

13 Comments

His Sorrow is Splendor

A little girl in our community has died. Suddenly. Unexpectedly. Shatteringly. Ten years old, Christ have mercy.

And this is the part where those who call themselves “pastors” are supposed to provide words of comfort or meaning or hope or something, right? Right? But what if these are hard words to find during times like this? What if they are difficult words to spit out? What if they all seem hollow and forced, and I hate them even as they bounce around in my brain, even as they are tumbling out of my mouth? What could words ever do, when a little girl who once filled the worlds of those who loved her with sunshine and light is dead? Read more

Aug 14

16 Comments

Riding the Storm (Or, What to Do When the Internet Explodes in Righteous Fury)

In what is now becoming something like a sacred ritual of the digital age, the following scenario unfolded this week. 1) Something bad happened—in this case, the suicide of a famous celebrity who had long struggled with addictions and depression; 2) People flooded to the Internet to give voice to their opinions about what (if anything) this bad thing meant and what (if anything) we ought to learn from it; 3) Someone wrote something that was perceived to be inflammatory, controversial, insensitive, and wrong about the nature of this bad thing (in this case, conservative Christian blogger Matt Walsh, who wrote a post called “Robin Williams Didn’t Die From a Disease, He Died From His Choice” which has generated well over three million views and over four thousand comments at the time of this writing); 4) The Internet heaved and lurched in a maelstrom of fury and passion, whether in opposition to or defense of said article/writer (in this case it seems to be mostly the former; Walsh has apparently even received death threats over this post); 5) After collectively marinating in this unedifying, soupy mess for a few days, we all moved on to other more fertile pastures in which to expend our self-righteous energies. Read more

Aug 13

3 Comments

Brain States

Religious fanaticism is, regrettably, front and center in our collective consciousness again in this the summer of bad news. Whether it is Iraq or Israel/Palestine or other places around the globe, many people are quick to point to the role that religion plays in stoking the flames of violence and hatred.

And whenever there is violence associated with religion in the news, we can expect to see articles like “The God Effect” over at Aeon Magazine.  The piece, written by Patrick McNamara, seeks to locate the religious impulse in dopamine levels in the brain. There is, according to McNamara, a fine line between “benevolent saints” and “murderous fanatics.” And dopamine, apparently, is one of the main triggers for when this line is crossed.  Read more

Aug 7

4 Comments

The World Remains Divided

I have spent much of this afternoon trying to write a sermon about 2 Corinthians 5:14-20 and the love of God while keeping abreast of news reports about the unspeakable atrocities currently taking place in Iraq. The absurdity of this task has, however, proven to be unbearable, and I have simply given up.

How can one speak of the love of God after reading about human beings starving and dying on a mountain, fleeing the awful choice of conversion or death? How can one write about beauty and goodness after reading about—Christ have mercy!—children being executed or thrown from mountaintops to avoid it. How can one craft a sermon about the “new creation where the old has passed away” and “everything has become new” after seeing images of such gruesome violence that words well and truly fail?

The incongruity of the task is too much. Perhaps tomorrow I will want to write about the love of God. Today I only want to weep for the brutality that our species is abundantly capable of.

Read more

Aug 6

4 Comments

Burdens

I was picking up a book at the library yesterday when I saw a run down black car pull up. A woman began to painfully extricate herself from the drivers seat. Her clothes were shabby, hair dishevelled, posture bent. Her overall appearance gave the strong impression that the world had kicked her around a bit. She looked up and, seeing me walking toward her, began to wave at me and called out in a raspy voice, “Hey, can you come over here and help me?” Read more

Aug 1

4 Comments

“Is it Okay If I Really Like Life?”

 A few observations and reflections as a summer holiday draws to a close…

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My son is convinced that he has discovered gold in the sand. We are at a beach and he sees little flecks of shiny sediment as he digs and builds on a hot summer afternoon. He tries to imagine ways that he might extract this “gold” from the piles he has collected. He asks about how the gold miners panned for gold back in the olden days. He takes a Frisbee and swishes the sand around. He fills up an old discarded coffee cup with his sand, wanting to bring it home. He is convinced there is gold in there—treasure that he, alone of the thousands who have tramped up and down this beach, he alone of the innumerable kids who have built sand castles in this exact spot—has managed to discover.

“There’s no gold in this sand,” I tell him flatly. He is not dissuaded.  He sighs and looks at me with something like pity or exasperation.  You just don’t understand…  Read more

Jul 29

5 Comments

Things That Make For Peace

Like many over the last few weeks, I’ve been following with a mixture of interest, despair, anger, hopelessness, confusion, and weariness the latest round of conflict in Israel and Palestine. Like many, I have read countless articles and op-ed pieces trying to explain, advocate, condemn or make some kind of sense of a senseless situation. I have read impassioned justifications for the actions of Israelis and Palestinians. What would your nation do if it was surrounded by hostile nations dedicated to the elimination of your people?! What would you do if you were penned up and locked into a tiny space and deprived of dignity and brutalized at every turn?! I have read many words and words about words, but it all seems so futile, as I sit here on vacation, a world away from the unspeakable reality that so many are currently facing.

Words, words, words… And still the killing goes on. Read more

Jul 23

11 Comments

When Bad Things Happen

We’re house sitting for friends in North Vancouver so the mornings have been long and lazy, full of novels and coffee and games with the kids and sunshine on the patio overlooking Indian Arm, and more coffee… It’s been wonderful.

Yesterday, my morning reverie was interrupted by a few soft knocks on the door. At first I didn’t even hear them, so faint was the sound they made, but they were persistent. Eventually I clued in that those faint sounds at the door meant that, you know, someone was there and that this someone who was there probably wanted me to come to the door to see what they wanted. Read more

Jul 15

21 Comments

On the Necessity of Equivocation

A few days ago, the Prime Minster of Canada had this to say in an official statement about the latest eruption of violence in Israel/Palestine:

Canada is unequivocally behind Israel. We support its right to defend itself, by itself, against these terror attacks, and urge Hamas to immediately cease their indiscriminate attacks on innocent Israeli civilians.

There is much that could be said about this statement. Read more

Jul 10

3 Comments

Ruts and Ruins

I often hear some version or other of the well-worn argument that faith in God is for the weak, the intellectually deficient, the cowardly, the lonely, the marginalized and disenfranchised, or those staring down the prospect of death and grasping at something—anything!—to make their pain more bearable. The healthy, the strong, the educated and influential, the sane—these are imagined to have no need for such supernatural aids.  Religion is a crutch for those who can’t (or won’t) face life as it really is, in all of its starkness. Read more

Jul 7

3 Comments

A Quiver in the Dirt

I spent a good chunk of last week in Winnipeg for our church’s national Assembly. So a quiet Monday morning back home would be an ideal time to begin sifting through four days of lectures, workshops, and conversation, coming up with some kind of a coherent “takeaway” from the variously inspiring, moving, frustrating, exhausting, and rewarding time spent with Mennonites from across Canada, right? Not really, as I turns out. Maybe that synthesis will come later. Today, my thoughts are running along different lines. Read more

Jul 2

13 Comments

Wednesday Miscellany

A few completely disconnected thoughts on an early summer Wednesday…

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I went to see the latest Transformers movie last night. I wish I was joking, but, alas, it’s true. My kids are at the age where they have evidently graduated from little kid Hollywood crap to big kid Hollywood crap, so off we went. I was expecting very little and my expectations were barely met. Lots of explosions and digitally generated creatures and explosions and lame dialogue and explosions and tired old Americana and explosions and—oh, look! The robot trucks have discovered some robot dinosaurs and they will together vanquish the other robot things!—and mass destruction and chaos and explosions and a lame teen love story and a lot of very bad acting. And very loud impressive explosions. Did I mention those? Read more

Jun 27

9 Comments

Possibilities

In Jesus Christ God has promised to every human being a new horizon of possibilities— new life into which each of us is called to grow in our own way and ultimately a new world freed from all enmity, a world of love. To be a Christian means that new possibilities are defined by that promise, not by any past experience, however devastating.

— Miroslav Volf, The End of Memory

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I have many conversations with people who find it difficult to believe or people who barely believe or people who want to believe but can’t or people who are embarrassed to believe or people who look down in condescension at those who believe or people who are just bewildered that anyone could believe in something like God or resurrection or hope or any kind of future that is radically dissimilar to the present. This is the shape of our life and imagination in the post-Christian west. Read more

Jun 24

6 Comments

“No, I’M Gonna Pray!”

It’s the last Tuesday of the month, which means it’s our church’s turn at the local soup kitchen. It’s so easy for “the soup kitchen” to become a kind of generic placeholder for ooey-gooey charitable goodness, like “the short-term missions trip or “the Christmas food drive.” It’s all too easy to forget that there are real human beings on the other end of our shiny good deeds—real human beings with faces and names and stories, real human beings with real sadness, sin, and and struggle, real pain and distress, and, yes, real humour, insight, and wisdom.

A few snapshots, then, of one Tuesday, in particular… Read more

Jun 20

8 Comments

A Battle of Wills

It’s June in southern Alberta, which means torrential rains, spring run-off from the mountains, and flooding. Lots of flooding. We have been back in Alberta for three years, and two of them have been characterized by miserably wet Junes. On Tuesday evening I arrived home to nearly ankle-deep water in our basement, and we have spent a good chunk of the rest of this week hauling out furniture, ripping out carpets, and trying to dry out a soggy and smelly house. Read more

Jun 16

36 Comments

On Oprah’s Tea and Other Flood-Worthy Inanities

I was sitting in a local Starbucks this afternoon when I saw the most absurd thing in the history of humankind: a big glossy advertisement for a product called an “Oprah Chai Tea Latte.” Alongside pictures of what I can only imagine must be very tasty delights indeed (iced or hot) was a (larger) picture of a beaming Oprah Winfrey, lending her teeth, her hair, her celebrity to this product. What does Oprah have to do with chai tea lattes, you might wonder? I certainly did. Did Oprah Winfrey make this chai tea? Did she create the recipe? Did she enjoy drinking this tea in some kind of unique way? Does she own the tea? Did she import it for our benefit? The advertisement didn’t tell us. It simply presented a picture of Oprah, a picture of tasty beverages and assumed that we would make (invent?) the connection. Read more

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