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Jan 29

11 Comments

If You Believe…

As I’m trying to get the kids lunches packed, homework in backpacks, shoes, jackets, gloves, toques, and who knows what else ready to go by 8:35 this morning, I noticed one of my daughter’s math worksheets lying on the kitchen counter.  Normally, my eyes are not particularly drawn to anything math-related (I think my kids are already pretty much bumping up against the ceiling of their father’s mathematical competence in grade two!), but for some reason I spied the following question and answer: Read more

Jan 28

42 Comments

What Life Asks of Us

I just got back from a very enjoyable trip to Saskatchewan (I heard it was nice this time of year) to visit my brother and his family and play some hockey. Among other things, it gave me the opportunity to do something that I’ve never had the chance to do before: observe my brother in a classroom context. I sat in on his Intro to Theology class Monday morning and left with much to think about. Read more

Jan 20

1 Comment

What’s on the Other Side?

Last Friday a pastor from the mainland phoned me up and asked if I would be willing to do a graveside ceremony for a family who was returning the body of their loved one to Nanaimo for burial. I still find it very strange to be entrusted, in however minimal a fashion, with these significant events in people’s lives, but I also find it very difficult to to say no to a friend. So, today I was off to say a few words at the burial of a stranger, hoping and praying that something I said would be of some comfort to those present. Read more

Jan 15

9 Comments

At Home

I had an interesting conversation this morning where I was asked the following questions: “When people look at Christians, what should they see that sets us apart?  Are we just a club of “nice people?”  There are lots of nice people in the world, after all—Buddhists, atheists, Hindus, and many more.  Why become a Christian rather than some other option?”  It was one of those moments where you think you should have something profoundly insightful to say based on your years of study and unusual sagacity and clarity of thought, but where what comes out of your mouth doesn’t exactly qualify. Read more

Jan 12

8 Comments

Reading Project: The Resurrection of the Son of God

If you’re anything like me, you tend to accumulate books far beyond your capacity to read them.  In my case, these books tend to migrate from the nice brown Chapters box (always so exciting to see these boxes arrive!) to the coffee table in our living room (where they are daily in plain view, crying out: “read me”) to a pile of books on another table in the living room (a pile in which they steadily descend to the bottom over a period of weeks), to my office where they sit on the side of my desk where my “really should have a look at this” file is located, to the top shelf of my desk (in order to make room for other things I really should have a look at), and finally to my bookshelf, their final resting place, where they sit side by side with any number of other books which have undertaken the same sad journey.  It’s kind of pathetic. Read more

Jan 5

5 Comments

The Epic of the Universe

One of the more beautiful quotes I’ve come across in quite some time—from Marilynne Robinson’s Gilead:

I feel sometimes as if I were a child who opens its eyes on the world once and sees amazing things it will never know any names for and then has to close its eyes again. I know this is all mere apparition compared to what awaits us, but it is only lovelier for that. There is a human beauty in it. And I can’t believe that, when we have been changed and put on incorruptibility, we will forget our fantastic condition of mortality and impermanence, the great bright dream of procreating and perishing that meant the whole world to us. In eternity this world will be Troy, I believe, and all that has passed here will be the epic of the universe, the ballad they sing in the streets. Because I don’t imagine any reality putting this one in the shade entirely, and I think piety forbids me to try.

Jan 1

7 Comments

Chaos and Grace

I finally finished Wally Lamb’s The Hour I First Believed last week. It’s a heart-wrenching and tragic story. One reviewer compared it to Dostoevsky’s novels and while I’m not sure I would go quite that far, it certainly does share similar pathos-inducing qualities. In the story, a normal, reasonably happy life for a normal, reasonably happy couple is slowly and steadily reduced to a tale of pain, depression, post-traumatic stress disorder, addiction, and anger. There is hope, as well, but in very measured and cautious doses. Read more

Dec 30

1 Comment

New Year’s Prayer

I’m not one for breathlessly optimistic pronouncements and predictions at the outset of a new year—a pessimism realism born out of too many unrealistic and unrealized ideas and intentions over the years, I suppose. Nonetheless, another spin around the sun does represent a good time for reflection, a good time to pause and think about the year to come. Read more

Dec 19

5 Comments

Santa is the Man

Well, the city is blanketed in an unusual amount of snow, and Christmas is certainly in the air. This morning I was off to see the always interesting children’s school Christmas concert. I tend to approach these events with a high degree of curiosity—especially in our post-Christian context. What organizational gymnastics, I wonder, will the organizers have to go through to present a non-offensive, politically correct program for the many and varied attendees that will be present yet at the same time say something remotely significant that honours the season? I genuinely feel for those who have to organize these things. It can’t be easy. Read more

Dec 16

16 Comments

Musings on Universalism

From the category of “interesting pastoral experiences” comes the following email I received last week:

Hi,

I am seeking a universalist belief church where people believe that Jesus came to earth to tell people about universal salvation, not eternal damnation? Is this such a church? I have gone to yours before, but never did understand what the belief system is at this church?

Thank you for your time—God bless,

———— Read more

Dec 15

Christmas Giving Redux

Well, it’s now a mere ten days until Christmas so I thought I would thrown out a brief reminder of the challenge I issued last month.  I won’t go through the whole spiel again, but I would like to once again encourage you to find creative ways to give ethically this Christmas season and to let the rest of us know about it as a comment on this post if you are so inclined. Read more

Dec 9

2 Comments

Happiness

I’ve come across references to this study twice in the last week, and have thus interpreted this as a divine sign that I am to blog about it (just kidding, in case you’re wondering!). Last week, the Boston Globe ran an article entitled “New Reason to be Happy: It May Go a Long Way” citing the work of Nicholas Christakis (Harvard) and James Fowler (University of California, San Diego). The researchers have, apparently “discovered” through social network analysis that people tend to be happier when those around them are happier. Happiness, as it turns out, is kind of contagious. Read more

Dec 6

8 Comments

Text Message

After a period in the technological wilderness, I recently got a cell-phone. Needless to say (at least for those who know me) a large percentage of this device’s marvelous technology is utterly wasted on me. Last week I managed, after 20 minutes and no small amount of frustration, to send a six-word text message to a co-worker. As you can imagine, my euphoria was virtually unbridled. Perhaps my text-messaging incompetence is turning me into a curmudgeonly old killjoy, but I just cannot seem to get excited about these little bursts of grammatically-challenged communication.

Given the preceding, I got more than a chuckle out of this:

Dec 2

5 Comments

Change

I stopped chewing my fingernails a few months ago.  This might sound like a rather unremarkable detail to be broadcasting into cyberspace but those who have known me for a while will know how significant this is.  I’ve been chewing my nails for pretty much as long as I can remember. Read more

Nov 24

8 Comments

The Perils of Television

Turns out, it’s even worse than your parents led you to believe.  Not only does watching television make you stupider, but it makes you unhappier as well—at least, if the experts in this article are to be believed.  Here’s a quote: Read more

Nov 17

6 Comments

You Are All One

Yesterday was another one of those interesting days for one new to the pastoral guild. In the morning I was down in Victoria preaching and leading a discipleship class at a church in Victoria.  It is a very interesting church comprised, I was told, mainly of well educated white-collar types. The worship service was formal and highly-structured; there was a strong sense of reverence and propriety. There was beautiful artwork throughout the sanctuary and a high degree of musical skill evident in the singing time. Read more

Nov 15

5 Comments

Love

You’re going to think that this is the only book I ever read, but Buechner put it memorably again this morning…

The  love for equals is a human thing—of friend for friend, brother for brother. It is to love what is loving and lovely. The world smiles.

The love for the less fortunate is a beautiful thing—the love for those who suffer, for those who are poor, the the sick, the failures, the unlovely. This is compassion and it touches the heart of the world.

The love for the more fortunate is a rare thing—to love those who succeed where we fail, to rejoice without envy with those who rejoice, the love  of the poor for the rich, of the black man for the white man. The world is always bewildered by its saints.

And then there is love for the enemy—love for the one who does not love you but mocks, threatens, and inflicts pain. The tortured’s love for the torturer. This is God’s love.  It conquers the world.

Nov 10

4 Comments

Used Up All the Words?

A while back a film/book came across my desk via the MB Herald called “Lord Save us From Your Followers” (my review for the Herald can be found here).  It’s the brainchild of Oregon film-maker Dan Merchant, and asks the question, “Why don’t Christians in America look more like Jesus?”  Merchant travels around the USA in a bumper-sticker/Jesus-fish clad set of coveralls in order to generate dialogue with people who don’t think like him—to challenge the confrontational, antagonistic, and polarizing nature of religious discourse in America. Read more

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