Feb 11
“We do not know how to pray” (Romans 8:26). The whole uniqueness of Jesus of Nazareth lies in this: that he knows how to pray, because he knows to whom he is speaking. His greatest miracle was not healing or walking on water or driving out devils, but teaching his followers to say our Father.
— Benjamin Myers, Salvation in My Pocket
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This afternoon I did a bit of an inventory of recent encounters with the Lord’s Prayer. Read more
Our church has spent two hours over the past few Sundays wading into the potentially stormy waters of dialogue about human sexuality as part of our national church’s ongoing discernment process. Among the many interesting things that came up over the course of a very stimulating (although far too brief) conversation was the question of the boundaries of sin. “Why are we so hesitant to use ‘sin’ language?” was one question. Why indeed. It’s a good question. Read more
“Would you be interested in coming to give a short talk to a group of high school/university students?” The question came a few weeks ago and, as is my customary practice, I enthusiastically agreed without giving so much a passing glance at my calendar. How hard could it be, right? “What would you like me to talk about?” I asked. “Well, we’re wondering if you can speak on the topic, ‘What is the meaning of life?’” The meaning of life. Right.
This was followed by period of awkward laughter and dumb silence on my part. Not terribly inspirational, I wouldn’t think. Read more
Yesterday was one of those delightful brown-parcel-in-the-mail days—one of those days when the good and kind people of Canada Post come bearing glorious gifts from afar, gifts of crisp, unblemished pages, gifts brimming with fresh insights and exciting tales, gifts of possibility, hope, and promise, gifts of delight and discovery… Gifts of words.
Or, to put things a bit less dramatically, “I got a new book yesterday.” Read more
In order to relieve the tedium of trudging aimlessly around the house in a fog of sinus-clogged misery, I spent part of yesterday watching Mitch Miyagawa’s 2012 documentary, “Sorry State.” Miyagawa figures that his family might just be the most apologized-to family in history, at least when it comes to official government apologies. His Japanese father was apologized to by the Canadian government for being shipped off to southern Alberta during World War II. His Chinese step-father was apologized to in 2006 for the head tax in the early twentieth century. And, finally, his Cree step-mother was on the receiving end of PM Stephen Harper’s 2008 apology for government run residential schools. That’s a lot of apologizing. Read more
I deleted my Twitter account today. I had been a Twitter-er or a tweet-er or whatever the right term is for just under two months during which I produced a grand total of fifty-five tweets.
I apologize to both of my followers. Read more
On the way back from a weekend conference, my wife says she wants to stop at the mall. Just for an hour or so.
I don’t like malls. Especially huge malls like this one. I don’t like the idea of the mall or the reality of the mall. I don’t like the orgy of reckless consumption that they represent. I don’t like the bright lights and the crappy pop music that bleeds incessantly through the speakers. I don’t like the labyrinthine layouts that seem designed to trap and confuse me, imprisoning me in the mall’s frightful and constricting embrace.
All of this not liking was pulsing through my brain as I (wisely, no doubt) replied, “Sure. Let’s go to the mall.” Read more
I’ve spent a good chunk of the past day and a half or so in a hotel room while my wife attends a conference. This has afforded me the delightful privilege of uninterrupted time for catching up on a bit of reading, napping, going for short walks. And for watching sports.
I love sports. I have always loved sports, whether this meant playing or watching. As with many Canadian kids, when I was younger it was mostly about hockey, but I could watch pretty much anything—football, basketball, skiing, tennis, track and field…. Even baseball, if I was particularly desperate. Not curling or golf, though. Never those. And not boxing (we had mercifully not yet been presented with the disgusting abomination that is UFC at that point). Even as a child, I understood that one must have standards. Read more
Among the reasons that I chose to attend Regent College in Vancouver, BC from 2005-2008 was the reputation of their faculty. Eugene Peterson, Gordon Fee, John Stackhouse, Sarah Williams, Rikk Watts, Loren Wilkinson… The list could go on an on. I was not disappointed in my choice, even if I was mildly surprised by how Reformed the theology often was (and how dismissive the conversations could sometimes be of Mennonites and the Radical Reformation in general). My experience at Regent was overwhelmingly good and profoundly life-giving in a wide variety of ways. Read more
Part of this past weekend was spent in Medicine Hat, AB where my son had a basketball tournament. Medicine Hat would probably not be thought by many to be a remarkable place. The city’s main claim to fame is probably the world’s largest teepee (the “Saamis” teepee, the Blackfoot word for the eagle feather headdress which was translated “Medicine Hat”) that sits just off the Trans-Canada highway near a historical buffalo jump. But aside from that, Medicine Hat is a lot like so many other windswept prairie towns. There are pockets of beauty, to be sure, but it’s mostly brown, flat, nondescript. There is the now familiar exodus of business and commerce from the downtown area, to the outskirts of town where there is plenty of cheap land for the innumerable fast-food joints and big box stores that pop with alarming speed and regularity, and the vast oceans of asphalt parking lots for the jacked up pick up trucks, SUVs and mini vans that rumble down its streets. Medicine Hat is an ordinary prairie town. Somewhere most people are passing through on their way to somewhere else. Calgary, Vancouver, Winnipeg, wherever. Forgettable.
But Medicine Hat is not forgettable for me. Read more
It is the middle of January and I wish it was colder than this. I wish it was brilliantly white and crisp and clear. I wish I could see my breath and that the snow crunched under my feet as I walked. I would prefer an idyllic winter scene.
But it’s well above zero here, these days. There’s a 100 km/hr chinook wind ferociously screaming daily in my face, relentlessly wearing down optimism and good will. All around there are shades of grey and brown. The barren trees bend and shake, wearied by the wind, plastic bags and garbage clinging to their lonely branches. The roads are choked with gravel and salt and the last dirty remnants of snow. The world seems grimy and plain. Read more
I was out driving around running errands and listening to sermon podcasts today when I was confronted by one of those religious clichés that drives me nuts. I’m not talking mild irritation here, but full-on, pull-out-your-hair (if one is fortunate enough to have hair) and scream-at-the-steering-wheel-in-self-righteous-indignation nuts. It is a term or a way of speaking that I have loathed for a very long time—a hatred that undoubtedly says more about me and my own private insecurities and neuroses than it does about the term itself or the person who is using it. But still. It is an expression/way of speaking that I really, really don’t like.
You might be wondering what term could possibly inspire such an intemperate reaction. Ok, here it is: “I just have a heart for ____.” Read more
I get a lot of books in the mail, but there are few that I can recall anticipating as keenly as the one that came in a little brown box today. Christian Wiman’s My Bright Abyss has been on my radar for a while now, whether due to the almost unanimously affirming reviews it has received, or simply to the nature of the story behind the book: poet/writer/scholar gets cancer in his thirties and begins (begins again? continues?) to chart the rocky terrain from secularism to religious belief. The story and the subject matter both compel me, but it is the writing that is blowing me away. This man is, truly, at home with words. I am reading, and rereading, and reading more slowly than I have in quite some time. Occasionally, very rarely, I come across a writer whose words leave me thinking, “Yes, I have found a friend.” One chapter into My Bright Abyss, and I am convinced that Christian Wiman is one of them.
A few days after Nelson Mandela’s December 5 passing, I checked out his autobiography, Long Walk to Freedom from the local library. This morning, I turned the last page. The book was, of course, inspiring, illuminating, heartbreaking, stunning, rage inducing, hopeful, profound and a whole host of other superlatives. Given the subject matter and the nature of the story, how could it not be? Read more
So, this one is generating a bit of discussion online today. Apparently Ryan Bell, an American pastor (or former pastor), is going to give atheism a try for a year. He has found himself, over the last number of years, following the well-worn ecclesial trail from orthodoxy to heterodoxy and has arrived at the point where he’s just not sure he can do the whole God thing any longer. He’s not sure what he believes any more, so he’s going to play the field.
Starting with atheism: Read more
I’ve written here before about delightful “holy moments” that I have experienced in the church I serve (see here and here, for example). These are often moments when something unexpected happens, something that spills out of our careful containers of planning and order, something that points simply, poignantly, and powerfully to the hope of the gospel in a way that no eloquent sermon or finely crafted liturgy ever could. I love these moments. Even when I don’t notice them. Read more
I spent a bit of time this morning snooping around in my archives from Januarys past. This was partly down to simple curiosity. What was I thinking/writing about at the outset of previous years? How have I approached the first post of a new year in the past? It was also due to being faced with a rather uninteresting lack of inspiration in the present. Writers block isn’t something I tend to face with any degree of regularity, but it’s annoying on the occasions when it does make an appearance. Perhaps revisiting themes from New Years past would result in a eureka! moment, and I could stand back and watch the insight and creativity pour forth!
So, 2013 is drawing to a close, which means it’s time to take a peek in the rearview mirror and reflect a bit on the year that has nearly passed. In the blogging world, this means—what else?!—highlighting the most read posts on this blog over the past 365 days or so. It’s an imperfect tool of evaluation, obviously—a cursory count of clicks and page views hardly provides an accurate assessment of meaningful or substantive engagement—but I suppose it give some sense of the themes that drew people here over the year. Whenever I look at statistical summaries on this blog, I find myself scratching my head. That was my most-read post?! I don’t even like that one! Why didn’t ____ make the list? Posts that I am convinced are the best thing the internet has seen since, well, two hours or so ago languish in obscurity while others that I dashed off in twenty minutes generate more traffic than I would ever have expected. I suppose such is the nature of blogging. Read more
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