Flew home tonight from Toronto...

The security when I flew to Toronto this morning was insane. They even scanned my tie clip! (I'm trying to imagine the nefarious uses for a tie clip, but I haven't thought one up yet.)

The flight home tonight was easier. President Bush was having dinner with 700 dignitaries at the Museum of Civilization in Hull, but there was little security to speak of when we went to board our plane in Toronto, even though we were flying to Ottawa.

When our plane landed, it rolled right past Air Force One on the tarmac. What a magnificent looking plane - the most dignified-looking aircraft I have seen. It was all lit up, and looked just like it did in the Harrison Ford movie (well, before the bad stuff happened anyway.)

With my biggest work stuff out of the way, my focus now turns to the Cursillo weekend coming. We have two dozen candidates to turn our attention to, and I know that God will show His love for them this weekend. I hope He lets me be a vessel of His love.

Starting Thursday, I will be living in a convent for a few days. With nuns who don't speak a word of English.

C'est heureux que je sais comment parler français!

The convent is near where I grew up. It is very comforting to look out at a snowy Orleans hill, place of much skiing and tobogganing in my youth, as I try to do God's things. :-)

Tommy Douglas, George Bush

There is a show that has been running on CBC for a couple of months now, a contest of sorts, to determine who is the greatest Canadian, a thing which was to be decided by vote at the end of the show's run. The man they ended up voting for was (a) Kiefer Sutherland's grandfather, (b) the man who invented universal health care (Medicare), and (c) my grandfather's best friend.

Tommy Douglas was a United Church minister who believed that society should embody the gospel - visiting the poor in prison, feeding the hungry, clothing the naked, as though they were all Jesus himself. He rose to prominence in the CCF movement founded by J.S. Woodworth, and became premier of my birth province, Saskatchewan, where he introduced Medicare, which doctors support today, but fought tooth and nail against then. He later became leader of the New Democratic Party. He and his wife Irma remained close to my grandparents all their lives.

My Dad took me to visit Mr. & Mrs. Douglas at their apartment in Ottawa when I was little. I remember him giving me all kinds of brochures about parliament, and explaining to me how it worked.

A very different kind of politician is visiting Ottawa today - President George W Bush. It seems sometimes as though our two sister countries are growing apart, as few Canadians agree with Mr. Bush's economic or international policies. Still, I hope he is given a warm welcome, and that the protests are few or muted. Many Americans will take protests against Mr. Bush as a protest against America itself. With America so alone in the world right now, she needs some assurance that her friends are still her friends. And Canada is still that - the other America, where we share the love of wide open spaces, freedom, and the dream of making the world a better place. In a sense, that is what Tommy Douglas worked all his life for.

Father's Love Letter

Our pastor replaced yesterday's Advent homily with this:

http://www.fathersloveletter.com/English/fllposter.pdf

(You need Adobe Acrobat to view it.)

Put on the Armour of Light

Those words from today's lectionary could not be more true.

I went to two church related parties last night. It is amazing how the good and decent things - camaraderie, friendship, fellowship - work so well to dispel the bad and harmful things, such as stress and worry.

It has been a weekend of parties. My daughter had a birthday sleepover Friday night. I keep January as a touchstone - life will be less busy in January. If we can just make it to January, everything will be fine. :-)

I think I am ready for winter

You know, I really was not ready to see snow when I posted about it earlier. Every winter, it helps to be mentally prepared for what is coming, and I just had not gotten there yet.

But I think finally I am. Last night, it began snowing as I headed home late at night. And it really didn't bother me! Neither did the crisp -6 celsius this morning. The snow was gone by the time morning had advanced much, but it will snow tomorrow, and it will probably stay for good this time. But I am ready! I know I will have to remove salt from my boots, but I can get my ski boots out! Yes, I have to wear a heavier coat, but it will come in handy making a snowman! And the thick gloves I will be forced to wear will keep my hands warm while I am making snowballs. Yes, let it snow, let it snow - just not while we're driving, please. :-)

My cursillo situation is starting to improve itself. I wrote out a big to-do list of things I have to get done, so now I have a fixed scope of hurdles, and not a vague and ambiguous list of uncounted chores. I have some musicians lined up now (not as many as I'd like, but it beats where I was two days ago!) And I've been invited to the thing where I had been overlooked. These things do start to work out. There's a certain almost magical quality with cursillo that is hard for me to fathom, but those graces are there in abundance. Such as your poem, Lane. Did you write that yourself? Well done, if so.

I highly recommend, if you have never done it, that you see if your church is involved in cursillo, Walk-to-Emmaus, Via-De-Cristo, Kairos or whatever it may be called in your denomination. Ask your pastor about it. It is worth looking into - the movement has been a life changing experience for me!

Exhausted... and demoralized

I have a million things to organize for this upcoming Cursillo weekend, and a lot of it is not working out as planned. One event I need musicians for, I can't find any, and have been turned down three times by, well, the only three I could find.

At another event, tradition normally would have me leading the music. I just discovered they invited somebody else. Very, very discouraging...

Worst of all, I feel like I am all alone in this. None of the roles of the other team members really converge with mine, and as a result, I think the music person is the loneliest person on the team in some respects. I know it will all work out somehow, it always does. But I am really down in the dumps about it today...

I'm exhausted

Wow. Work is kicking my butt - just have tons to do. This is a good thing, as I hate being bored or underemployed. I have to fly every two weeks now, which removes an evening from the calendar for me.

But extracurricular activities have me going, too. The Cursillo team I am on is putting on the weekend in two weeks, and I have lots of last minute organizing to do. We go away every weekend, which cuts into the time I can do things. Christmas is coming, there are social functions people need us to go to, and I have to find time to rehearse the music for the Cursillo weekend. The demands on my time seem without bounds, and are growing. The amount of time available to me is not growing with it.

Perhaps if I just sleep less! :-)

Is it having an impact on my spiritual life? You bet. But I have to work God into the schedule; in fact, He comes first. Because if life does begin to strain my body and spirit, how can I even hope to get through a day without Him?

Empty cottages

In late fall, cottages are empty. Winter cottagers take the late fall off, probably to get their Christmas shopping done, and summer cottagers are long gone.

My daughter took me wandering down the beaches of Gull Lake, to show me all the interesting things she and her uncle had found (including a half eaten crayfish a raccoon had left.) We wandered through rows of empty cottages to a sand beach.

The beach was gloriously lit in a fiery and furious orange, as it directly opposed the sunset. We sat on a rock and watched the sun go down. The sky was wearing fall colours, a dark and strange purplish-blue, and the clouds were speckled with many shades between orange and this unusual blue. The pine trees all looked as though they were transformed into Tamarack, as the sun coloured them in orange.

We had to get up, go back to the cottage and get ready to leave. But I did not want to. I longed to sit there and watch the master artist at work.

Happy Ever After

An aquaintance of mine wants his life to be ideal. He has an image of the perfect life, and he is reluctant to settle for less. I truly feel sorry for him. With such high expectations, how can life fail to disappoint? And even more sadly, if by some rare chance he achieves his goal and attains the perfect life, what a dreadfully dull life it will be, for I can imagine nothing more dull and monotonous than perfection.

Meditation III

The other technique I use is called "contemplative prayer." It is a different way to read scripture.

As you read a passage of the Bible, close your eyes, and try to place yourself at the scene. Imagine the terrain - desert? A Galilean wadi? The streets of Jerusalem? What do you see - what do you smell? The dates for sale in the market? Smoke from a nearby fire? Lilies?

Focus on the speaker - what message are they trying to get across? Are people listening? If it is Jesus talking, are you listening? What question would you ask?

Meditation II

I learned this technique a couple of years ago. I would give credit where credit is due, but I haven't been naming names in my blog. :-)

Find a nice quiet room. Make sure there are no distractions, turn the cell phone off, unplug your house phone. There's no fixed time for this, and you don't want to hurry it.

When you're settled in, turn out the lights and close your eyes. Start to breathe deeply - in, then out. Keep doing it. Take notice of the darkness. Your eyes are closed, and you can't see anything. But you are aware of yourself - you are controlling your breathing. Feel the air enter and leave your lungs. Feel your heart beating in your chest.

Now, without opening your eyes, start to visualize yourself. Leave the rest of the picture black - don't conjure in the room. When you breathe, see your self breathing in. See something everywhere you feel yourself existing, as though your eyes were open. Don't rush it - just work on the image of yourself in the dark until you have it.

When you have it, start to feel yourself falling. If you need to rationalize it, understand that you already are - gravity is tugging the Earth around the sun, a kind of falling that is taking you at breakneck speeds.

As I said, feel yourself falling. As you fall, your image is joined in the darkness by blue - picture blue around your image, and not just the dark.

The blue is sky and water. Take control of your fall - you aren't falling now, you are gliding under the sky, over the water. Let the water take form. On the water, now, there are waves and foam - you are out over the ocean. You are gliding over it, like a Petrel or an Albatross - you don't have to invest any effort. Instead, you skilfully ride the wind, using your imagination as wings.

Out ahead of you, there is a ship. You are headed towards it. It is a tall ship, with rigging and billowing sails, riding the wind just like you. Slowly, you are overtaking the ship.

On the side of the ship, you see large letters. They spell J... E... S... U... S.

Now you are on the ship, not flying, but the wind is still carrying you. And He is in front of you. Let yourself fall. But this time, he picks you up. Jesus grabs you in his arms, and he does not let go.

Instead he keeps repeating, "I love you" as he holds you up. He is love. He said so. And he keeps telling you.

All the moments of your life you thought you were alone.

"I love you."

All the times luck has saved you from somewhere or something you'd rather not endure.

"I love you."

All the times you've fallen down, not knowing how you're ever going to get through your turmoil.

"I love you."

All the times you were sure God fled you, all the times you assumed were barren and that you were alone.

"I love you."

All the times that you thought you saw only a single set of footprints behind you.

"I love you."

All the times a stranger intervened to help you.

"I love you."

All the times grief seemed to overwhelm you, but never quite did it.

"I love you."

He touches your forehead, giving himself freely to you without reserve. You realize he has always been there, even when you didn't feel it. Stay with him as long as you need to. The meditation ends when you want it to.

Meditation I

I've got a few thoughts that I've been wanting to express on the topic of meditation for a while now. But it has been a hard topic to get to, because I have gotten so busy at work (I'm sure the declining quality and quantity of my little essays here has been noticeable. :-)

All meditation systems I have ever seen - Eastern or Western - have one thing in common: breathing. Controlling breathing, usually taking deep breaths, is the way most meditation starts. The reason for this is simple: breathing is an autonomous function, but one we can easily take off auto-pilot and control. By breathing deeply you are sending your body a very clear signal that your higher mental functions are now taking complete control.

Meditation traditions tend to focus on three things to varying degrees, even centering on one element to the exclusion of the others: intellectual, emotional, or physical sensation. Traditional Christianity shares with Buddhism and Judaism a belief that the physical and spiritual aspects of ourselves are completely united. Soul is not something apart from body - where Buddhism might consider their separateness an illusion, Christianity simply declines to acknowledge there is a separateness - our afterlife beliefs cling stubbornly to the notion our ultimate destiny is a body & soul ressurection, as unlikely as the physical universe may make that seem.

As such, Christ-focused meditation, where we go within to find God, is not the same kind of self-divinizing quest some new age practices hint at. It simply acknowledges that if God wishes to communicate and commune with us, our physical bodies are where he's got to do it; this is why we can look inside for the paraclete, the comforter - its the only place we can be reached by the divine. The recent discovery of a "spirituality gene" lends support to this idea.

The first meditation technique I learned that really worked for me is an emotional one. I find it very valuable in developing a sense of my relationship with God, but it has to be used with caution. It is a form of visualization, and as St. John of the Cross warned, what we see can be deceptive. Nonetheless, I am convinced this technique shows us an aspect of Jesus as he really feels about us. And I will try and post the method of this technique in my next posting...

Seek and you will find

I am reading a fascinating philosophical work by Edith Stein, the controversial once-Jewish nun who was made a saint for her death at Auschwitz. The book is called the “Science of the Cross”, and the work does not mean what the title implies to a 21st century audience – the title refers not to “CSI: Golgotha,” but rather to forming an authentic intellectual discipline to frame Christian mysticism with.

I am not far into it, but she is already challenging me in some fascinating ways. One of those ways is a bold new phrase that turns my conceptions on their ear – what she calls “Holy Objectivity”, which she describes as “the original receptivity of a soul re-born by the Holy Spirit. Such a soul reacts to all events in the proper way and at the right depth; it has in itself a living, moving power joyfully ready to let itself be formed, unhampered by false inhibitions and rigidity.”

She calls this objectivity, because she truly and genuinely believes the natural state of our interaction with God (and also our environment) is emphatic. We are not naturally indifferent – it is the cares of life that wear away at our hearts, making us feel joyless, or unmoved. And where God is concerned, our benchmark is that first joyful moment of conversion – that moment when God says, “And I will give them one heart, and I will put a new spirit within you; and I will take the stony heart out of their flesh, and will give them a heart of flesh.” (Ezekiel 11:19) That is who, as Christians, we naturally are – the freshly born soul with a heart that can feel terrible grief, incredible joy, but never the grey middle.

I so often hear of people who search longingly to regain the vaguely remembered feeling of unity with God – trying to find the spark of the Holy Spirit. They will switch churches, switch denominations, even switch religions if necessary, to regain the feeling they once felt. Mother Theresa herself was such a person – after a beatific year surrounded by the presence of God, she felt an emptiness for many of the years of her work that she struggled to keep in check. It is certainly not unusual to not only feel without the Holy Spirit, but to be on a quest to reignite it within.

The problem we have, however, if Edith Stein is right, is that we’re often looking in the wrong place. “Holy Objectivity” suggests that the “heart of flesh” is our natural state – our benchmark. Instead of asking where the Holy Spirit is, what we really need to ask is rather what is impeding it?

Think back to your last certain experience of the Holy Spirit. What has come since? Doubt? Have you looked back and attempted to rationalize a scientific way that might explain it away – neuro-chemical reactions? Anxiety? Worry that God has left you? Despair? Something you’ve done that you are sure precludes God’s mercy? Distraction? Things in your worship environment that have taken the focus off the divine and onto people, church activities, or even the church itself?

If you look carefully, the Holy Spirit never left you, and God certainly never lost the capacity to forgive you. You took your own road work, stop signs, traffic jams and inserted them directly into the path of the Holy Spirit. God’s spirit is gentle and uninsistent enough that yes, it may seem like it has even left you. But it never did.

St. John of the cross, in the Spiritual Canticle, writes of this affliction of the senses:

Where have You hidden Yourself,
And abandoned me to my sorrow, O my Beloved!
You have fled like the hart,
Having wounded me.
I ran after You, crying; but You were gone.

He tells us that we cannot look outside for the resolution of this sensual deprivation. No building can fix this for us. Only contemplation opens up the fruits of the church for us, “God is therefore hidden within the soul, and the true contemplative will seek Him there in love, saying, ‘Where have you hidden yourself?’”

As Jesus himself said, “Seek first the kingdom of God and His righteousness, and all these things shall be added to you.” When you were baptized, you joined God, and God joined you, to dwell within. He has never left.

If you don’t see him, you don’t need to go looking – just remove the obstruction.

An old employee of mine came by...

...and everyone promptly left for lunch, leaving me to mind the phones. Do I have permission to be petulant about that? ;-)

Last Letters

A poignant story about some soldiers' last letters home from Iraq.

Humanitarian crisis in Fallujah

In the environs of Fallujah, people denied access to medical treatment by the war and blockade are dying. So much for a "values based" election.

How I've enjoyed my life

On my desk are pictures my youngest daughter drew. They were here a couple of nights ago, and brought me dinner at work. One picture is of "Harry the Monkey", an office drone with a "15 years service" badge on a Dilbert-style shirt whose computer says, "It is now safe to turn off your computer." I know enough to know that I am "Harry the Monkey." :-)

Another picture shows the sun shining on clouds dropping rain onto a small Earth. Yet another shows a hamburger being dissected into its constituent components (lettuce, ketchup, pickles, lettuce, tomato, a patty.) And another shows things my daughter fancies - card games, horses, a saddle, fashion accessories, books, water polo. How fascinating and wonderful a privilege it is to watch a person form as a small child and then slowly gel as the woman she is going to become.

My older daughter is in college and has a job. She has finally found that elusive thing that everyone puzzles on from primary to high school - what "I want to do when I grow up." And how flattering in some ways it is that what she wants to do is so close to what I did for a living, before it devolved into me being a computer programmer.

My wife bought my favourite fruits and croissants and put them in the fridge for me to take for lunch. How fortunate I am to be blessed with a partner who knows me so well, and whose selfless love is so abundantly given. And how blessed I am that my brother-in-law left me a song on my answering machine this morning.

My sister in law once said that a family's riches are not measured in dollars - they are measured in love. I am as wealthy as Bill Gates today, and I know I've done nothing to deserve it. Above all, I am eternally grateful to a God whose rain and sun fall on the just and unjust equally. Thank you for my life.

My day so far (as of 6 AM)

How I have spent my birthday so far - I woke up two hours ago from a frightening nightmare. Then I lay there awake for two hours. My wife groggily wished me a happy birthday as she went to bed, and then I got up, and came downstairs. Nothing worthy of a blog entry really. I just want to remember it.

Weakness is strength

I listened to a speaker today talk about how the world of today is designed around strength. We want to be strong, we want our weapons to be potent, our countries to be powerful, our armies to be overwhelming. Only by being strong are we strong, goes this very martial form of thinking.

But he quoted a book by Jean Vanier, who asserts, "Weakness is strength." What a thing to say! What strength is there in weakness? It turns out all the strength in the world. All I can think of as I consider this is how young David, the ruddy faced young boy of Jesse, was the only one brave enough to stand up to the big and boastful Philistine named Goliath. Everyone knows how that turned out.

In humility, we demonstrate our trust in God. In gentleness, we show our love, which comes from God. In vulnerability, we show our faith, a witness to the might of God. This last is what David did. And finally, in age, we acquire wisdom, fruit of the Word of God. All of these virtues, all the virtues of the Beatitudes, are the virtues of those who dare to be small, meek, and powerless. Big deeds of strength and war are the ways of the Roman gods of long ago, or the Greek heroes - ones like Achilles, whose weaknesses were not their strength, but their soft underbelly. Not so Christian saints and heroes. Our God was the one who came not to be served, but to serve. Our martyrs were not warriors dying in battle, but ordinary people rising to greatness by peacefully refusing to give up their faith at sword-point.

Weakness is strength. Sounds a little like 1984 to say it, but relying on God's strength, and not our own, allows us to tap into the universe's only real power. Save for that, we are only reeds blowing in the wind.

Prayer

I have been struggling lately. I have a crippling workload at work (a good thing, don't get me wrong!) I have a half dozen extra-curricular activities. And Christmas, an always busy season, is coming.

It occurred to me today that my stress from all of this probably results from a lack of prayer. Oh sure, I pray regularly at certain times of day. But I have not prayed for help in getting through this, and why wouldn't I? If God can help and wants to, why would I not ask for it?

My wife wrote some handouts for a presentation on prayer she gave the other day. She quotes the Catholic encyclopedia:


Love is the source of prayer and we wish to express our great Love for Him.

Besides obtaining the gifts and graces we need, the very process
elevates our minds and hearts to a knowledge and love of Divine things, greater confidence in God, and other precious sentiments.

Trust, in otherwords, is the great reward of prayer. Confidence and trust that the world (and my day) will unfold the way it should is something I have this morning, thanks to praying about it. And it comes as something of a relief - navigating my day on serenity instead of adrenaline just sounds a lot smoother. :-)

Hark the Herald Angels Sing

That and choral backgrounds for "O Holy Night" were last night's work in the studio. I brought my youngest daughter with me, because it was easier for me to bring her where I was going than for her to go where my wife had to go (she was giving a presentation.) There are two white cats that live at the studio - a good one and an evil one. My daughter kept asking me which was which. I told her that I cannot tell white cats apart.

We once had a white cat named Crystal, who was a mean kitty. But she was a good mother, because she escaped one time and we had not yet taken her to the vets to take care of potential reproductive issues, ahem. One of her kittens stayed in the family - we brought her to Hamilton as a gift to my mother in law. My ma-in-law was lonely, I think, and she sure loved that cat when she got her. To me, the cat was mean like her mother. But she seemed to have genuine affection for my ma-in-law. When she passed away, the cat was adapted by the family vet, and she apparently thrives as the resident veterinary kitty. She probably keeps the dogs in line.

Joy to the World

My singing group from church went into the studio to record this number last night. We ended up sounding pretty awesome, if I do say so myself, but it took a while. We had to play with the placement of mikes for a while. Then we had trouble hearing the monitors well enough to stay on the beat. And then a couple of people (myself as one of the guilty parties) flubbed lines, losing part of a take. But it ended up sounding really good.

For most of the people in the group, this was a new experience. So a half dozen cameras surfaced, and everyone was taking pictures of everyone else. We were done in just over an hour. Not a bad go, I'd say.

Snow is coming

Blech. Snow is coming. I'm not ready for it yet. The thought of having to wear big heavy boots to work and having salt splashed all over them every day is... unappealing. Funny - I enjoy the snow at the cottage. We ice fish, get wood, go snowmobiling, make an ice rink, and play ice golf. If only it could just snow there...

Trailing Clouds of Glory do we Come

At one in the morning, after working on a song I need to know for choir, I went outside to see if the northern lights were still doing their thing. And of course, they were - but they had changed. Instead of shafts of light, they were organized in clouds and filaments. Electrical flashes would pulse along their lengths, like the shadow of a fish below the frozen ice on the lake in the winter.

I went back in to find my wife, who was organizing some stuff in the garage that we are storing for a friend. I told her she had to come out and see. She came out and stared up. We both just stood there, craning our necks, oohing and ahing for a while. I got cold, and I had to get to bed, so off I went. When I settled in bed, with the cat at my feet, I looked out the window. She was still standing there, staring up like a little girl watching fireworks for the first time. We are all like little children at the feet of such splendour. The world is truly nothing more than a footstool at times. When she finally came back in, she said that she felt like waking up all the neighbours, and getting them to come out and stare. Sadly, I think a very many people are too worn with the cares of life to take enough joy to be anything but irritated by such a thing. :-)

The night before, sitting on the dock, I had in prayer asked God why he never used words. Sure enough, we had the scriptures, but two millenia later, the people who read them still debate what they mean. As I stared at the lights in all their unsubtle glory, I knew the answer beyond any doubt. Much of what God has to tell us is so beautiful and so full of love that there really aren't any words that can give voice to what he wants to tell us. So instead, he shows us - with all the lights in the heavens, if need be.

In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God.
He was in the beginning with God;
all things were made through him, and without him was not anything made that was made.
In him was life, and the life was the light of men.
The light shines in the darkness, and the darkness has not overcome it.
(John 1:1-5)

Rays of Light

Chopping wood today, my brother in law and I got on the topic, I'm not sure how, of the Northern Lights. He said, "I haven't seen them in a long while." I told him, as I reached into my memory, that I had last seen them in the sky the November before we were married, standing in the park near where our future house was. He figured out what year that was and realized that that was the last year that he had seen them as well.

On the way home, my daughter said, "Dad, what are those lines in the sky?" I looked out, and saw dark lines on some bright clouds in the distance, figuring that was what she was talking about. I said, "I don't know, maybe jet contrails?" A few minutes later, I leaned forward, wondering why there was so much glowing in the sky. As a I looked out, I could not believe my eyes. A long chain of glimmering green shafts of light danced across the sky in front of us. "Look!" I said, and we all gazed in awe. My wife had a hard time keeping her eyes on the road. I phoned up my brother in law, and told him to go outside, let his eyes adjust, and look up. He did, and was blown away by yet another one of the strange coincidences in our lives. He told me he was going to stay up at the cottage that night, and stare up at the stars.

I told my wife we should pull off. She said, "We'll be late for church."

"My dear," I replied, "We are already at church."

We pulled off, and stared until they faded. There were pinks, and purples, and a shimmering green. It was little short of spectacular. When we got back in the car, the three of us all started singing that song...

Here I am to worship
Here I am to bow down
Here I am to say that you're my God
You're altogether lovely
Altogether worthy
Altogether wonderful to me.

Doing, not believing

The way of the world is conflict, and competition. It seems to be almost a natural turn of things, as if our society is doing some bizarre parody of Darwin's natural selection. What do I mean?

Well, we compete for jobs when we see an ad in the paper. Politicians compete with other politicians in their own parties, and then before the electorate against the candidate of an opposing party. Trial lawyers compete with prosecuting attorneys. Sports teams run each other ragged in order to get a shot at triumph.

But where competition may be the way of the world, it is not the way of the Christian. Our history originated in a fellowship of disciples, and ever since Jesus left us for the Father, our way of interacting has been Communion - gathering every Sunday, reading scripture, encouraging and exhorting one another, and the breaking and sharing of bread as a community united to one another, and with God. In varied denominations, we have done this for two thousand years, every Sunday without fail.

The way has not always been harmonious. We have often been divided not because of what we do, but because of what we are. Wars were fought all over Europe because one group of Christians did not consider another group to believe correctly.

But do you know why this is so wrong? It is because Christianity is not a believing religion. Anyone can believe. James the Just tells us "Even the demons believe - and shudder." (James 2:19b) No, Christianity is more than a believer's religion. It is a doer's religion, for as James the Just says, "But be doers of the word, and not merely hearers who deceive themselves." (James 2:22)

And simply saying, "Lord Lord" is not enough, for Jesus tells us that to many such people He will say, "I never knew you." Proclaiming for all to see, "I am a Bible believing Christian" is worse than idling, because Jesus has a lot to say about anyone who trumpets their own righteousness - "Truly, I tell you, they have received their reward." (Matthew 6:5)

So what am I saying? I'm saying, in a very roundabout way, what St. Paul says, "Do not let the sun go down on your anger." But the kind of anger he talks about is not the confrontational anger that fuels our society. What I mean, when I reiterate St. Paul's "Don't let the sun go down on your anger" is do not grow apathetic. If you know something to be unjust, work for it to be undone! Don't be angry at the people who bring the injustice - to them we turn the other cheek, with them we walk two miles when they demand only one. But never cease to be angry at injustice; never cease to be angry at hypocrisy; and most of all, above all, never cease to have hope that God will one day right all wrongs, in this world and the next. You can have peace, and be at peace - but never grow into despair at the state of the world. It can be fixed, and someday it will be. That is the supernatural virtue, HOPE.

As I said, Christianity is a doer's faith. And for every doer, there is much to do. As Mother Theresa once said, "Yesterday is gone, and tomorrow is not yet here. Let us begin."

Laughter really is good medicine

We went to dinner at my brother in law's last night, as he was barbequeuing pork chops. I picked up a Cabernet/Merlot at the wine store, and when we walked in the door, my brother in law said, "This family does lots of strange things" to a young fellow who boards with him. There on the dining room table was the wine he'd picked up - the same Cabernet/Merlot.

After dinner, he told me his computer was running really slow. He went up and showed me what was running slow - a joke website he went to. As he pulled up some of the gag movies, they worked fine - he could not get them to do what they did earlier. But we both started laughing at the silly gags. This attracted my wife and daughter, who wondered just what mischief we were getting up to. They got sucked in while we were there.

My daughter told her uncle about a funny site she went to so, I typed it in. On the site, we ran into this animation called the Insanity Test. We ran it, trying to keep a straight face. But within seconds we were all laughing uproariously, desperately trying to find enough time to stop laughing so we could get air. The test, in theory anyway, just should not be that funny. I guess that means we're certifiable.

Anyway, it felt really good to laugh. If you can, find something good to laugh about. Mirth has a healing balm. :-)

Give Unto Caesar

Jesus is famous for saying, "Render unto Caesar what is Caesar's and give unto God what is God's." But do you realize how hard it must have been to say it, and how hard to hear it?

Roughly two hundred years earlier, the Jewish people had been struggling to survive the rule of Antiochus, one of the kings who inherited the remnants of Alexander the Great's tremendous kingdom. Antiochus thought that he could solidify his rule over Syria, Judaea, and other mid-eastern provinces if he could blend all the various cultures into one. So he ordered everyone to follow the same religious practices. Considering that most people of the age practiced primitive sacrificial forms of polytheism, the Jews were completely unwilling to surrender their religion to this kind of forced ecumenism. In order to resist being drawn into this Greek super-state Antiochus had envisioned, Judaea put itself under the protection of the Romans.

Between this and Jesus' time, the Romans had switched from being benevolent benefactors to imperial overlords. It would grow even worse after Jesus. The Romans had installed kings and tetrarchs who aside from being brutal despots were not faithful to Jewish law, and were not men of good character, which Jews considered a prerequisite of leaders. Adding insult to injury, the Emperor in Rome sent a Latin-speaking foreigner, Pontius Pilate, to govern Judaea not from Jerusalem, but from Caesaria, throwing even more salt to the wound.

That in some measure is why the New Testament always seems to frown upon "tax collectors." Nobody was prepared to think fondly of anyone who worked for such disreputable governors. But when confronted with whether it was even legal to give money to tax collectors, Jesus asked those asking him to look at the currency. Whose face was on it? Caesar's, they answered him - the very symbol of the government the people felt had nothing to do with who they were. So knowing the context I've given above, Jesus' answer to them appears to tell them, "this money is a token of their world, their government. If it is theirs, let them have it."

This is the same respect we can give to our governments in our world. Our politicians often seem to be from another world from us, as well. Here in Canada, Prime Ministers are always lawyers, always seem to have some connection to the incredibly powerful hydro company Power Corp., and always seem to belong to an incestuous circle of lobbyists, a tier of connected businessmen, and political bagmen. As much as we're told that "anyone can grow up to be Prime Minister," nobody I grew up with ever will be, even though I grew up in Ottawa. You've got to be wealthy, connected, and a member of the Bar to have a hope.

But whose faces are on the money? The Queen who represents the Head of State, she who Prime Ministers minister to. And the Prime Ministers themselves are there, too - Laurier, MacDonald, Mackenzie-King - the predecessors of today's leaders. Sometimes that leader is someone I quite like - today's Prime Minister, Paul Martin, is someone I find to be earnest, likable, and dedicated to doing good. On the other hand, his predecessors, Jean Chretien and Brian Mulroney (I skipped over Kim Campbell), appeared to me to want the job because there was so much patronage to be handed out.

There are always going to be leaders I don't like, and leaders I do. But they govern over a lot less than they think. Does Paul Martin really govern over Lake Louise? It has been there for thousands of years, and will remain there a thousand more. Does he govern the storms of Lake Superior, or the endless forests of the Queen Charlotte Islands?

Jesus is right to emphasize, "Give unto God what is God's", because God governs so much more that human leaders. Let politicians govern over the wording of tax forms, UN resolutions, and pieces of paper with the faces of long dead leaders. God governs the stars, the seas, the galaxies, the comets, the quasars, the eagles, the whales... it is all His, and the praise and thanks we owe for witnessing it are due Him and Him alone. Someday every knee will bow, every tongue will confess - and the knees of even the proudest self-made leaders will be every bit as bent as yours, before the King of Heaven.

Moon rising over Lake Ontario

photo by: leavethelighton

I took this out an airplane window

Flying

Yesterday, I began a new regimen of flying to Toronto for meetings every second Tuesday. I don't really like to fly. I am not afraid of flying, really, but there is a lot of incovenience - getting from the airport to where you are going, getting back to the airport in time to get your boarding pass, and how early you've got to get up in the morning in order to go.

The last time I flew, the plane took off from Toronto with a sunset over Lake Simcoe, and with the moon rising over Lake Ontario. It was an incredible sight. In contrast, this time, I flew in the dark, with fog and clouds surrounding the plane from take off to landing. If not for the bumpy tailwind, I would not have been able to prove I was ever actually in the air!

Perhaps I'll post photos to my photoblog - that flight I was telling you about with the moon and sun? Yes, shutterbug that I am, I took photos of it. :-)

Loneliness

Everyone is lonely. I have come to that conclusion.

Human beings have an overarching need to be in community and communion with one another, and yet the means we have been provided to do so - verbal and body language - are very imprecise. We cannot really know what other people are thinking or feeling. We can make some guesses. In the case of a spouse, we may be intimate enough with him or her that our guesses are right more often than not. But we never really know.

I learned about all this in school, as I majored in Communications. But I think I first really noticed this when my daughter was a baby. I realized I did not have a way to reach her - not really. And she did not have a way to reach me, other than crying when she needed to be fed, changed, or put to bed. It gets better as we learn the signals and sounds that tip us off as to what other people want to communicate with us (consciously or not.) But the fog never fully clears.

That leaves us with a certain loneliness. I think of Hamlet, who just has no way to communicate the ache and hurt. And even though he says, "but break, my heart; for I must hold my tongue," he spends much of his play fighting to find words for his grief at the death of his father, his anger that his father was taken from him. Hamlet tries to communicate his rage I suppose the way many of us do - in frustration at getting ourselves heard, we turn to art. Hamlet puts on a play, "to trap the conscience of the King" All he succeeds at is making the King defensive. The King's reaction is entirely internal to himself - it is not the reaction Hamlet seeks at all. All Hamlet finds is a tacit admission of guilt, not the "purgation" he would really like.

But none of us can fully say, and none can fully hear, for as Hamlet says, he cannot "Make you a wholesome answer, for my wit's diseased."

There is one who understands. God, who made us, is aware of all the neurons sending electrons, all the chemicals swirling around in our minds. And while the idea of God as someone who can "spy" on you at any time may seem uncomfortable, I find it comforting. I am not completely alone in my mind, if my Creator is present to everything I am and think. And someday, on the last day, perhaps we will all be joined with each other, and all the noise and interference, all the crossed wires, will be gone. One day, I will fully know, even as I am fully known.