it feels great to be back on the road. we’re travelling the 1500km to guelph, ontario for the wedding of alli’s great aunt pearl to ted. pearl is in her 80s (never tell a lady’s exact age!) and has more energy than i do. pearl’s life hasn’t been the easiest and now she’s fallen in love with a guy who treats her like she’s a princess. it’s a little fairy tale and we’re going to help her celebrate.
the reids (alli’s vast clan) need little excuse for a get-together and a party and so the wedding will be hiving with cousins, uncles, nieces and the like who have flown in from all over the place. we’re most excited about seeing alli’s dad and his wife noreen who are coming to stay with us for a couple of weeks after the party dies down - there could well be snow on the ground by then!
so we decided to make an event of the trip and are taking about 5 days to cover the ground. we traveled for a day and then spent a beautiful day sitting by a one of the million lakes quebec has to boast of (that’s literal, not hyperbolic! again: canada is quite big!) we chilled out completely, swimming when we got too hot and reading our books in the sun - something i haven’t done in too long. it feels like our cares, stresses and practical problems are a galaxy away.
after a brief detour to ikea (who can ever resist?!) we arrived in montreal in 38 degree heat and the kind of humidity which makes you think you might just be leaking. we’re staying with our friends, ‘matte the irrepressible’ and the wonderful (but sadly sick - in a literal, not metaphorical way) dean. they live in a beautiful condo right in the heart of the city and have treated us like family - not even the family you really, really can’t stand either!
it feels weird being back in a proper, real-live, all grown-up city - the hustle, the bustle, the trample and the squish. everyone is so chic, so debonaire, so rushed and so rude. the traffic is horrendous, the air stinks; everything is 57% louder, 63% brighter and juts at least 23% more into the future. it’s wonderful. at least for a while.
we needed a quick fix of city life. we miss fashion, the arts, the cutting edge. but a few days is really enough. maybe we could stretch it out to a couple of months. max. maybe. but then we’d be drawn inexorably back to our little patch of paradise overlooking a sleepy slice of the kennebacasis river. as we press on to guelph and the big smoke of toronto we’re keeping the hunger for the simple life at bay.
it's incredible to watch this short film and see how much some people are prepared to risk for rights we take completely for granted. as joni mitchel put it, you don't knwo what you've got till it's gone. i wonder if we'll look back with regret as fascism becomes the norm in the uk, the us and even here in canada? as i wrote before, we actually debate whether torture is wrong now! (maybe rape isn't such a bad thing after all - discuss!) habeas corpus (latin we should have tattooed on our hearts) is no longer simply a given (as i've said).
we here in the west are not so different - mugabe lurks at the not-too-distant end of the slope down which we have allowed ourselves to slide!
wonderful little article about the preternaturally talented, canadian pianist/composer/madman, glenn gould. a caveat must follow though: the article will whet your appetite and soon you'll be craving gould recordings (especially his incredible "idea of north")!
so i'm fifteen years old (the year is somewhere around the 1830s!) and i'm sitting on the floor in ardaluin house in newcastle, county down on a scripture union weekend retreat. there are around 80 14-17 year olds from the one school (belfast high school) who are there to learn more about being dedicated followers of jesus - it has become something of an annual tradition by that stage. the speaker is concluding the session with a call to repentance before we share communion together. he alludes to matthew's words (in chapter 18) about the value of unity in fellowship coupled with his exhortation to leave your offering at the altar if you remember your brother or sister has something against you. jesus tells us to repair that relationship and only then return to worship god (matthew 5:21-26). the speaker then invites us to examine our hearts, be reconciled to one another and repair broken friendships before we continue with the session.
i can remember like it was yesterday wracking my brain to think of someone who would have something against me, someone who i had hurt or treated unfairly, a genuine enemy with whom i needed to make up. it is a fruitless exercise. try as i might, no name comes to mind.
i feel almost despondent.
now, over twenty years later when i repeat the exercise the effect is very different. names spring effortlessly to mind: broken friendships; torn relationships; people with whom i was once close who no longer call me friend. as i think about it, i am at a complete loss to know what exactly i did to cause some of the friendship to end - this is just sad. but with others, i am only too aware.
i have enemies. not many. but there they are.
and with the remembrance comes regret; and with the regret comes shame. and this is something which warrants shame.
sometimes i am desperately homesick for my former despondent days.
as a teenager keith green was a huge influence on me. one of my youth leaders in church recorded some of his albums on tape for me when i was about 14. his was the first contemporary christian music i had ever heard. i listened to those tapes until they literally wore out. then when i was about 17, melody green's account of her husband's life "no compromise" came out. i tore through the book in one sitting and am still reeling from the impact all these years later. i don't think any other book has affected my life quite as much as that one.
this morning i sat down and watched this documentary about keith's life. it's strange that i had never actually seen him on video before. i cried the whole way through. i'm not totally sure why. something to do with my own times in the spotlight, my own sin and struggle, the desire to simply speak about jesus and not waste time doing anything else at all. i reckon that now, he and i would have some passionate disagreements theologically, but there's something about his story i identify with: the struggle, the zeal, the passion, the desire to serve god first and foremost, to tell everyone about the incredible good news there is in jesus christ and the continual doubt that god had chosen a worthy instrument.
often in church we are reminded that at heart we are miserable wretches - sinners. the thought is that were we to be stripped bare, right to the core, what would be left would be this solid kernel of wrong. i think very differently: i feel that in my very heart-of-hearts i am a good man, one who loves god desperately and wants nothing more than to love and serve the people around me. the other shit - the failings, the fallen-ness, the brokenness and sin which is all-too-apparent to anyone who looks at me for more than a second - isn't who i am at all. at my core i am a child of god. i want to love god and the people around me and (as brennan manning put it) to want to want nothing else. i really do.
watch this video and be inspired. there are enough people living the average life; mediocrity is overpopulated; grab hold of god as he has grabbed hold of you and go change the world!
i’m a music snob. i like things done my way and don’t bend easily to other people’s preferences. corporate worship for me (is that an oxymoron already?) often seems loud, hollow, brash, repetitive, devoid of theology, grace, reverence, awe and fodder for my mind to feed on.
and so i sit - the silent one in the noise; the monk at the rock concert. i appreciate the music - the skill of the musicians; the wonder of syncopation - and so i’m somehow able to worship; but indirectly - in spite of, rather than because of, the style adopted.
there has to be more!
i’m hungry for silence, liturgy, reflection, chanting, incense, meditation, not as an end in itself, or even a permanent alternative, but simply as a counter-balance to all this incessant, insipid jangling.
when we are stuck within the tight confines of our own tradition, when we fail to look outside for inspiration and guidance, i am convinced this is the inevitable result. for those reared in high church circles drums, guitars, spontaneity, hands-in-the-air-for-the-rousing-last-chorus type praise can be an overwhelmingly liberative experience. to hear someone pray straight from their heart, out loud, can be as fresh as a kiss. but likewise, for those of us all-too-familiar with incoherent, rambling prayers, culminating in sentences such as “so anyway, happy birthday jesus” it can be profoundly moving to be part of a community orating together :
“we do not presume to come to this thy table, o merciful lord, trusting in our own righteousness, but in thy manifold and great mercies. we are not worthy so much as to gather up the crumbs under thy table. but thou art the same lord whose property is always to have mercy. grant us therefore, gracious lord, so to eat the flesh of thy dear son jesus christ, and to drink his blood, that we may evermore dwell in him, and he in us.”
we need to humble ourselves and look to our ancient (common) history and to each other - catholics need the anabaptists, who need the methodists, who need the presbyterians, who need the charismatics, who need the orthodox, who need the evangelicals, who need the liberals…
after a while, even my favourite flavour of ice-cream becomes completely sickening.
john 9 is one of the (if not the) most tightly woven naratives in the entire new testament. the chapter shows off john's utter brilliance in story-telling as he not only seamlessly illustrates his ongoing themes of light and darkness, but also clearly shows that jesus' signs do in fact illustrate that he is sent from god. the pharisees have utterly failed in their role as israel's watchmen, not because they are skeptical, but because they don't even question their assumptions. the tale is both hilarious and heart-breaking, ultimately transforming the nature of disability itself and showing jesus' tender concern for the ostracised.
and again, for the obsessive compulsives out there who JUST CAN'T WAIT, click on the link below to listen right here.
i've been enjoying your generous comments and emails. please keep them coming. hope this scratches an itch (or better yet, creates an itch where there wasn't one before!) and encourages you to pick up the texts for yourself and maybe even share your learning with other people.
there are days when the entire theological project seems utterly ridiculous to me. i read so many blogs where the conversation revolves endlessly around issues like exactly how christ’s death on a cross applies to our life today; adherents to the vicarious atonement theory battle it out passionately with those “heretics” who dare to question or suggest that the governmental theory, the ransom theory, or even the moral-influence theory may have something to offer.
in other places, i see bloggers genuinely attempting to wrestle with the myriad mysteries of life and faith in god, only to be either denounced wholeheartedly in the comments section, or, worse still, quiesced with vague, meaningless god-talk which adds nothing whatsoever to the conversation. this drivel would be utterly incomprehensible to any chance reader who had not been reared in exclusively churchy circles. it is unintelligible not because it uses technical christian language, but, rather, because it is quintessentially weak, woolly and utterly devoid of discernible meaning! bromides such as “god bless” and “all things work together for good” are tossed out without thought or care in the face of human tragedy and great suffering - on and on it goes.
welcome to christianville!
in this execrable, alien space, the ancient practice of spending time in quiet reflection, study, meditation and prayer becomes the anathema that is the ‘quiet-time™’. the heart-felt prayer of the penitent sinner is patented as ‘the sinner’s prayer™’, the replete glories of the gospel are squeezed, pruned, abridged and tamed into ‘the four spiritual laws™’, ‘four things god wants you to know™’ and ‘the romans road™’. do you see the difference? freedom is prescribed, delineated, dissected, formulated and packaged and in the process is twisted and warped into law, regulation, death. when a partial truth is sold as the whole truth, it becomes an insidious lie!
only the mixed-up, contorted, twisted logic of christianville could vandalise doing good to such an extent that it becomes ‘good-works™’ - apparently a bad thing? do good, people! just do good! stop letting “theology” stand in the way. praise the many people around you - professing christians, hindhus, buddhists; atheists and agnostics; the dogmatic and the unsure - who are doing good; take a look at what they are doing and join in!! analysis can lead to paralysis as they say and all-too-often we let our own internal struggle over mixed motivation stop us from acting right now. do good. just do it. then analyse your motivation and, if necessary, confess.
so much of what happens inside the rarified confines of the church is simply irrelevant to the real world at best and would be farsical if it weren’t so entirely disturbing.
am i alone in this, or does anyone else have a problem with christianville?
john 8 is one of my favourite chapters in this gospel. it leaves absolutely no room for thinking that jesus was simply a good teacher as many have claimed. these are emphatically not the words of a good man!
ok so we started into chapter eight with good intentions an then the discussion began to wander. we meandered through what happens to you when you die; predestination versus free will; can you lose your salvation; what about people who have never heard of jesus and a load of other sticky issues (so hope that's cleared it all up for those of you who were there - questions? no. then i'll continue) everyone else was delighted, but the control freak in me was jittery!
as the conversation was even more waffly and ramble-y than usual i've only included the actual john stuff we did - the (misplaced) account of jesus' dealings with the woman caught in adultery.
john 7 continues the ominous theme begun in chapter 5. jesus refuses to back down or soften his tone in spite of increasing opposition. is it just me, or is this getting exciting?
as we go through john 6 we notice how much jesus pushes the boundaries of what is acceptable. it is almost as if he is deliberately going out of his way to offend people, willfully treading on what they hold sacred.
this is not the jesus we are normally presented with in the church!
fortunately or unfortunately for you, the batteries ran out halfway through our john study this week. hope you still get something from our discussion on the bread of life.
as always for those of you who tap your fingers at the microwave and would rather rush down 20 flights of stairs than wait 30 seconds for an elevator, simply click on the link below to listen to this instalment instantly on the site.
comments on the commentary are always welcome and appreciated. :o)
the next john fix. in this session we discuss the eucharist/the lord's supper/communion/the bread and the wine and after we've unpacked some of the rich theological tradition which has built up round this simple practice we spend some time sharing the symbols together. as you listen i'd invite you to get some bread and wine yourself and join with us in celebrating the communion of saints which transcends time and place.
for those of you who just can't wait for all that downloading nonsense, simply click on the link below to listen to this instalment right here on the site.
as always please keep letting me know what you're getting out of the study.
ok, it's been a loooooooong time since i posted any of our study on john's gospel. this is partly down to my own laziness and partly simple time management issues. it takes a long time to encode these properly and get them up on the site and there really hasn't been that much interest in them. but for the few of you who've been kind enough to email to say you've been missing your john fix, here's the first half of chapter five in which jesus has the audacity to heal a man on the sabbath!
for those of you who just can't wait for all that downloading nonsense, simply click on the link below to listen to this instalment right here on the site.
as always please keep letting me know what you're getting out of the study.
i’m sitting here bathed in summer sun feeling the wash of summer break over me. new light shines in dusty corners and i can breath this healing deeply.
alli and i spent the weekend at a vineyard conference (kindly paid for by our friends in the community) and i have come away with a renewed sense that things may actually be working out. as i’ve said too many times to count now, we arrived in canada 15 months ago filled with possibilities and options, fully determined to change the world in which the lord god had placed us. but here we are, totally broke and still not doing what we came here to do.
and then this weekend happens.
the formal sessions held little appeal for me this time. it was the in-between times that fed me, fueled me, fired me up and excited me. i got to meet matte the irrepressible and her super-smiley husband, dean, who’d done the 10 hour trek from montreal. i already felt they were friends just from matte and i commenting on each other’s blogs over the months. it was excellent to put real live faces to the familiar names and have some great craic with them. kurt and hannah had come an equal ways from the east, traveling all the way from st john’s newfoundland to be in sunnier climes. we think we have had a long, grim winter (and we have - the worst in over thirty years!) but they still have snow lying! then there was rik who pastors a church out by the acadian valley in nova scotia, brian and donna from prince edward island, izzy and her family from halifax and sundry other randoms (or random other sundries).
i had a great little chat with bob cheatley who’s the principal down at st. stephen’s university and we’re going to be meeting up in the next couple of weeks to talk about ways i may be able to be involved in life down there and, and,and…
the formal stuff just gets in the way half the time!
friends and community really are where it’s at. we feel so privileged to have landed among the guys at rothesay vineyard. we arrived in canada utterly sick of church and pretty much determined to have as little to do with a local congregation as humanly possible and now here we sit, utterly embedded, rooted, built up, encouraged, blessed by an amazing bunch of people - a church which is as suspicious of church as we are!
whoda thunk it?
over the past couple of weeks so many kind, thoughtful and encouraging things have been said to me; so many things prayed over me. it seems we are not the forgotten of god; that we did hear rightly when we followed his call here; that we have something important to contribute; that there is a role for us here in canada. so the next two weeks are going to be spent in an all-out push by alli and i to follow through on these leads. david’s on the case as well, emailing friends far and wide on our behalf (who knew he had any!?)
so watch this space and please pray for us: that opportunities to teach would indeed transpire from all this and that somehow enough financial support would materialise to persuade the authorities not to deport us in a few months time. if you feel you can help in any way, by prayer, inviting us to teach in your church/community/prison/workplace/university and/or financially please get in touch asap. we're on a momentum roll!
could this be the end of the beginning at long last?
i was just facebooking a friend about shows alli and i have enjoyed over the last couple of years and thought i'd share a few with you. (well it makes a bit of change from the big screen reviews i normally write). apart from the number one spot, the others are in no particular order. many of them bring issues of ethics and morality into the public debate better than the church has been able to do for many, many decades. hope you enjoy.
west wing - especially the first 4 seasons - so good, i've written about it before. i still cry at almost ever episode no matter how many times ive seen it before. it's the only show that has ever made me think i could be an american and i almost salute the stars and stripes every time the theme tune plays in some sort of pavlovian response! aaron sorkin is a legend!! there's never been anything better written than this on our tv screens. witty, intelligent, expecting and demanding something from the audience.
deadwood - lots of cussin'. lots of sex. lots of violence. and if that doesn't sell it to you straight away, it also has excellent scripting and is chocked full of great characters (including buffalo bill) trying to set up life outside the law in the truly wild west. the shows writers make an honest attempt at examining how a truly anarchist society might survive. ethics with no law. wonderful stuff.
the wire - with the only writing for the small screen which rivals west wing at its very best. if season 3 doesn't break your heart, you have no soul! woody allen has new york, these writers have baltimore. they bring the city to life to such an extent that it is almost another character in the plot. by the end of the run we feel like we have actually lived there. the cast of main characters becomes so wide it is almost impossible to say who the stars are. if there was ever one criticism of west wing and aaron sorkin's writing in general (almost sacrilegious to even suggest) it would be that all the characters speak alike - every single person has the same witty, fast-paced, sarcastic, erudite manner. in the wire the action moves from the hardest drug dealers on the streets, to prison, to city hall, to the dockworkers' union, to the schools, to the courts, to the echelons of power within the police service - and it gives the character such entirely different lexicons and mannerisms that all these different intertangled worlds spring to life. almost impssible to say at the end who the good guys and the bad guys really are.
big love - clever, intelligent (and other synonyms) and sympathetic look at a polygamous mormon family living in utah. bill paxton does a great turn as the noble, righteous patriarch trying to head up the family in a god honouring way. captures the family bonding and tensions really well. great acting.
the riches - eddie izzard and minnie driver are irish gypsies who try to pass themselves off as well-to-do middle-class suburbanites!
30 rock - after becomming saturday night live's first lead writer of the female persuasion tina fey has moved on to create this little postmodern wonder. with a wonderfully ott alec baldwin - it's just funny!
battlestar galactica - don't laugh, just watch. a heady mix of sci-fi, religion and politics. survivors and perpetrators of the genocide of the entire human race battle with ethics, democracy, torture, treatment of prisoners, creating a government from scratch. the writers cleverly raise present day issues surrounding the 'war on terror' into a really engaging show. you'll be pleasantly surprised and addicted in no time!
carnivale - inexplicably cancelled after season 2 but still well worth the watch. set in a travelling carnival (thus the title) during the depression and filled with a dwarf, a bearded lady, a blind clairvoyant, the mysterious "management", ben hawkins, enigma and sundry supernatural goings-on.
weeds - funny, clever and affecting at times. sarah louise parker is a (lovely) suburban mum who turn to marijuana dealing to make a living after her husband dies. a real fish-out-of-water story that will keep you laughing and crying all the way through the seasons.
fawlty towers - can you believe that only twelve episodes were ever made - considering the fact that basil and sybil are almost hard-wired into the consciousness of every single person in the uk and many millions of others worldwide? although it first aired in 1975 every single episode still stands up and will have you laughing till you cry. if you think your life is hard, have a little peek into basil's - played so utterly perfectly by john cleese.
the office (the uk one of course!) - the funniest thing out of the uk since fawlty towers. when i caught the first episode half way through on bbc2 the first time it aired i honestly thought i was watching the worst, most cringe-inducing documentary that had ever been produced! it actually wasn't until the next day when i read about this "new, ground-breaking comedy" that all the pieces clicked into place. unlike it's much more obvious american spin-off, this show is clever and so very subtle. in david brent, ricky gervais has created the perfect mix of an utterly pathetic and sad middle manager, while still keeping audience sympathies with him (anyone who isn't moved to tears when he is begging not to be made redundant is probably a psychopath!) i also love that gervais and merchant cut the show at its very prime, rather than milking it endlessly until it was old and tired.
extras - ricky gervais and steve merchant follow up the success of 'the office' with another winner! any comedy show which attracts cameo appearances by the likes of robert de niro, cate winslow, george michael, orlando bloom must be something special, especially when it makes them do and say such utterly horrific things - jokes about the holocaust, mental and physical disability, homosexuality, sexism, racism, masturbation and a host of other taboos in the cringe-worthy "office" way that means you're never actually laughing at these issues per se but rather at how awkwardly we ourselves deal with them.
pushing daisies - although suspended halfway through the first season due to the hollywood writers' strike, i still think it's worth a mention. i mean who doesn't love the pie-man who can bring people back to life but will kill them if he ever touches them a second time? unique and infectiously smile-inducing.
lost - the master of the cliff-hanger and the unseen menace, j.j. abrams really hit the mark with this show. a small band of survivors of a plane crash try to survive on a desert island long enough to find a way home - but the island is a pretty strange place and it turns out they are not alone. although there are quite a few episodes where the story flags (much of season 2 and the first half of season 4) abrams manages to pull the rabbit out of the hat enough times to keep us gripped. one more season to go and the promise is that all loose ends will be tied up and all questions answered.
there that'll do for now. go download, rent or buy all these box sets, sequester yourself for a month in a locked room with an enormous screen (and dolby surround if you can manage it) and eat bucketfulsof popcorn - the best thirty days of your life!!!
any suggestions as to what should be added or (heaven forfend) subtracted? do share.
