An Arab proverb

Our pastor was away yesterday, and the priest we did have was a well-liked former associate who left us last fall. In his homily he quoted an old Arab proverb, "All sunshine makes the desert."

Perhaps this is the true worth and value of misery and suffering, rather than virtues to be sought out for their own sake, for some sort of mortification. Suffering offers us a contrast to the things that are good and joyful, and allows us to enjoy their delicate wonder with a true appreciation for these good things. Rain is what we regard as the opposite of sunshine, and yet when it rains is when things grow. And like rain, suffering is often when we do our growing, as we move into a tme of our lives when we learn what our character is, and what it yet needs to become.

Of course, people do not always recover from suffering, just as too much rain makes floods, not flowers. That is where those of us who have been properly watered come in. That is another of suffering's gifts - the wisdom, the ability, and the inclination to help others who've been through what we've been through. When we apply it, we are like streams and brooks, who can help drain the rain from people's lives, and after a time, leave only the fertile soil.

Iraq election success

You did not have to be a supporter of George Bush's way of looking at the world to hope that the election in Iraq went well. And it did, and this is very good news. For as difficult as it will be to bear the insufferable (and unwarranted) smugness of neo-conservatives about the 60% turnout rate in Iraq's election, a figure at par with Canada's, the victory of democracy is an Iraqi one.

It certainly isn't a neo-conservative victory - Iraqis snatched a victory from the hell-bent efforts of the administration to screw up their "let's rebuild Iraq" Sim City game. A country that conquers and occupies another becomes responsible for that country's security and infrastructure. The Anglo-American coalition, mobilized with Rumsfeld's invasion-lite philosophy, was simply not large enough to ensure security and prevent an insurrection. As a result they have spent a year and a half alternating between ineffective and brutal in places like Fallujah as they attempted what they did not have enough soldiers to pull off. Iraq has been transformed into a place more violent than Gaza, where bombs and chaos are a daily affair. So I've got to be impressed that 60% of the eligible population turned out, risking life and limb, in order to cast a ballot. That is real courage - how many Canadians would go to the polls if they thought there was a real risk that Quebec separatists or Alberta commune dwellers would blow them up for doing so? We only get sixty percent now, when little other than weather is ever an impediment.

Whoever wins the election, the real winner today is hope. For the first time in a long time, there might be a light at the end of the tunnel (even if an Anglo-American exit strategy is a long way away.)

Life Lesson #11

"If you keep doing what you've always been doing, then you'll keep getting what you've always been getting." - Karen Salmansohn, from How to be Happy, Dammit.

Beatitudes again

Tomorrow in church, we get to hear the beatitudes. Are there more beautiful words in the bible? I think not.

• Blessed are the poor in spirit, for theirs is the kingdom of heaven.


• Blessed are they who mourn, for they will be comforted.


• Blessed are the meek, for they will inherit the land.


• Blessed are they who hunger and thirst for righteousness,for they will be satisfied.


• Blessed are the merciful, for they will be shown mercy.


• Blessed are the clean of heart, for they will see God.


• Blessed are the peacemakers, for they will be called children of God.


• Blessed are they who are persecuted for the sake of righteousness, for theirs is the kingdom of heaven.

Each one of them is fundamentally about trust. Don't know where to turn? Trust. Are you sorrowful? Trust, and it will be taken from you in time. Are you walked all over by everyone? Trust, for it will not always be so. Tired of seeing people not get a fair shake? Trust, and you will someday see justice done.

I know I don't always get it right in my life. But the beatitudes are not a rule book, and they are not a strategy. They are a prism, a prism of trust, through which to view the world and approach it. As long as I continue to try and view the world through the beatitudes, nothing the world or anything in it does can wound me, or take away my happiness.

One week from today, we're in the air

it seemed funny to take my daughter skating today, at the rink. In a week's time, we'll be well on our way to palm trees and sand.

Staying home from the cottage has been fruitful. I've been able to do things with my music I don't normally have time for. There's one song of mine - "Among the Lilies" - that I have wanted to record properly for a long time. I wrote the song for my sister-in-law's surprise wedding two years ago, and shortly after I recorded it for my brother in law, as a keepsake. That version was one I liked, it had just the right mystique I wanted in terms of the groove. But I did not have a drum machine or a metronome, just congos to record with, and I realized after I recorded it that they went out of time in a couple of places. And as I learned more about recording, I realized there was a bit of room echo on the voice.

Two months ago, I thought I'd take another stab at it, with all I'd learned about home recording in the two years since. And I wanted to try out the bass guitar my wife got me for my birthday. The version I came up with wasn't terrible - it had this kind of cool Lenny Kravitz thing about it - but lacked the romantic mystique of the first recording I'd made.

So starting last night until about noon today (stopping to sleep four hours somewhere in there,) I re-recorded it. I nailed it exactly the way I wanted to - I added a pretty string section, took away the organ, made the guitar a little less Kravitz-like and almost Hawaian sounding, and it now has the lush texture I always wanted it to. There's an audible pop towards the end of the recording, but I may have to live with it - I got exactly the feel I wanted, and I don't know if I could do it again.

Can we learn?

I'm hopeful. Even though it has been sixty years, we still recoil in fresh horror at the discoveries Allied troops made at Auschwitz.

But we're going to have to work hard at it. Never again must we villify a race or an ethnicity. The first people to take shots at Jews did not have genocide on their minds. In no way do I imagine Shakespeare's rogueish portrayal of Shylock means that Shakespeare was of the same mind as SS guards. No, iIt took hundreds of years for a racism-accomodating culture to acclimatize people into participating in such a horrible action.

But there are many reasons to be wary as well. For not even is it that some have not learned the larger lessons of the Holocaust, there are many who refuse to learn even its specific lessons. In some parts of the Middle East, many conflate the political problem of Israel with anti-semitism, and have re-embraced anti-semitism as a result. Two tears ago, a Syrian TV series dramatized the completely fraudulent "Protocols of Zion" that the Nazis used for propaganda, and which dramatized Jewish characters drinking the blood of innocents. It was this kind of blood libel that slowly permitted a culture capable of extinguishing an entire religion possible.

It was only twelve years ago that the citizens of Rwanda went on a week long spree, hacking a million of their countrymen into pieces. Some lessons seem to need re-learning. But the shock that people still experience, the way people flinch, when Auschwitz is described to them encourages me. Not because I want people to be horrified, but because our capacity to be horrified means something - it means our ability to do these things is not bred in the bone, is not natural to us.

Despite the denials, they appear to be planning another war...

The USAF is probing Iranian defenses in the hopes that they can map air defenses. Given Dick Cheney has reignited the rhetoric machine, doing exactly what he did in advance of the Iraq war to start mobilizing support for it, this is a disturbing development.

I cannot imagine if the Bush administration opens up another war (before finishing the first one) that a draft will be able to be avoided... those who want peace will have to work harder and smarter this time to shine a spotlight on the pro-war movers and shakers, and wake others up to what is going on.

Lent is coming

Those of us who belong to the liturgical churches (Catholics, Lutherans, Anglicans, Orthodox) live not only by the seasons of the weather, but also the seasons of the liturgy. One of those seasons is almost at hand - Lent. Lent is something most people, even non-Christians, have some familiarity with. You've heard the jokes about giving stuff up, and that is probably the impression you have of it.

It is one of the oldest observations of faith in Christendom. Long ago, as catechumens (converting students) approached Easter and the time that they would be brought into the church, they observed a 40 day fast of penance as the day approached, keeping in mind Jesus' 40 days of fasting in the desert. Soon the whole church community observed this fast in solidarity with the catechumens.

It is about more than giving stuff up, although that remains a very traditional discipline. It is also about focusing more on piety, and giving more of oneself as well. It begins with Ash Wednesday (the day after Mardi Gras) and a solemn service where we are annointed with ash (burned fronds from last year's palm sunday.) As the ashes go on our heads, we are told we are ashes to ashes, dust to dust, and to that we will return. Fortunately, our parish does this at night so that we can do this without public piety (mindful of the sermon on the mount.)

I am quite fond of lent, and not just for the increased solemnity and resplendent purple in the sanctuary, but as a reminder that life itself has seasons. As Solomon says there is a time for everything, including a "time to break down and a time to build up." Lent does both, for it is like the time without the bridegroom (Mark 2:20) - a darkened season in which we no longer sing Gloria or Alleluia, but a season in which the physical hunger of a fast parallels a symbolic hunger for Easter and the grace it represents. As Easter nears, that hunger deepens, but so does the sweet anticipation.

The power of Lent is so palpable that I have noticed non-liturgical churches picking it up. I've heard of even Baptists holding Ash Wednesday services. Easter and its profound message of renewal is so incredible when it comes on the heels of Lent. I can't tell you what joy it is to sit in the dark at the Easter vigil and wait for the candles to be lit and then the church lights blaze on in glory.

Unfortunately this year, we're going to be in Florida for Ash Wednesday, and we will miss it at our church. It will feel quite strange to begin Lent while on vacation, now that I think of it. :-)

My ear, my ear!

I have a wicked earache today. Such that I took the morning off and went to the doctor. This was actually my wife's idea.

You know, I can't tell you how lucky I am. She took me to breakfast with an old friend who is dying, and then drove me to the doctor's. She then waited for me while I saw the doctor (a resident actually - I didn't even see our family doctor walking through the hall.) After I came back down, she took me to the drug store, and even offered that we go home and get me tylenol to deal with the pain. Then she drove me to work.

It was her birthday yesterday, and I tried to mask my misery. I'm not the world's greatest organizer, but that went well - everyone showed up, and we had a good time. But it seems so trivial when compared to the things she does for me, and the other people in my life.

It has made me realize how profound an intimacy being married is. Her life could have taken any course she wanted it to. She could have married anyone or noone. She could have lived anywhere, done anything. By letting me be a part of her life, as her husband, she has placed an enormous trust in me, because no longer do we have individual destinies, but shared ones. Her children would be mine - people who could not otherwise exist but through our love. The friends and families would be ours, and not simply personal. The house we would live in, the vacations we would take, the ups and downs... she put her trust in faith, faith that we would do well and that love would garnish our lives with enough happiness to make the choice a rewarding one.

This isn't easy to do, but she did it. I am in awe that she would choose to do this with me. No more am I alone. I don't look to the future, wondering what will become of me. I wonder instead what is ahead for us.

What a terrible and yet beautiful intimacy. How blessed a gift to be given.

It is my beloved's birthday today

And I am inviting a few friends to a restaurant tonight to celebrate. I will have to go by Dairy Queen first and get an ice cream cake. She loves ice cream, and I do this every year. :-)

Committee to Protect Bloggers

Now that blogging is a mainstay of Internet speech, those countries that suppress speech have begun persecuting bloggers. Here is a site devoted to shining a light on countries that persecute bloggers.

Committee to Protect Bloggers

I read in the paper yesterday...

Sunday night I went to bed saying to myself, "I have to get up at 5, I have to get up at 5." This usually works - I have an alarm clock built into my head, and it is fairly reliable. I haven't set a real alarm clock in ten years. I woke up at four AM yesterday, and then at 4:15. And then at 5:20. Yikes!

I rushed into the shower, and got myself downstairs as fast as I could. My wife had told me she would drive me to the airport. I went to wake her up, and I couldn't. Just as I started to get alarmed, she awoke with a jolt. Sleepily (with me following along guiltily) she went down to the car. It was so cold that Bob (our car) wouldn't start. She just looked at me and threw her hands up. I rushed upstairs called a cab, and drained my wife of all her change - we had enough, but barely. The cab came about five to six, and got me to the airport at about 6:10. As I struggled into the terminal building, I saw that the Rapidair desk was full up. The self-service boarding pass terminals are a quick way to get through, but as I went to go to them, I saw there was even a lineup for these. And a confusing lineup - people would be lined up behind one, and other people would lunge into the freed-up spots at other ones. I finally decided to play New Yorker, and aggressively lurched into one of them, and got my boarding pass.

Down at the airport's security screen, there was a huge, huge lineup. I looked on in annoyance as one fellow, who obviously thought he was more important than the rest of us because, well, he was flying on an airplane, decided to barge several rows into the line before someone stopped him and held him in place. He had managed to pass in front of me and a hundred other people, though. I soon found out the reason there was such a huge line, as the time available to me to catch my plane dwindled down. The rent-a-cops were being particularly fastidious this day. As I went through they made me take off my coat, my suit jacket, my tie pin, and take out my laptop. I always hate all the crap they put you through now (curse you Bin Laden, you idiot!) Then as I went through the screening device I beeped. Wonderful.

Soon some woman had me un-buckling my pants, while I tried not to blush. Mercifully, I was finally free to reassemble myself and my belongings, and scutter off with what remained of my patience and dignity. I went and grabbed a newspaper just as they called the flight to board. I got the middle seat, which is objectively the worst seat, but I was happy simply to have made it aboard. The plane passed through the de-icer, setting us back a bit, but I wasn't going to quarrel with that. Arriving alive (or at all) is preferable to the alternative. I said my customary pre-flight prayer and off we were, into the sky.

As we ascended into the sky, I got out the paper. A leader caught my eye, and I turned to the article on page A9. The article proclaimed that Monday, January 24, 2005 had been scientifically determined to be the worst day of the year. "This will make the rest of the day easier," I thought. As things progressed and awful things happened, I realized, it was just the fault of this scientifically condemned day!

Sure enough, things would happen, but I took on a certain bemused attitude about it, even as I continued, no doubt, to appear quite grumpy. A few minutes later, as the food carts were rolling down the aisle, the plane lurched downward, and the seatbelt signs came on. The flight attendants began to roll the carts to the back, and the guy in front of me says, "What about my coffee?" (which he had not yet in fact even been offered.) The attendant politely told him that the captain had signaled the seatbelt sign and that we were landing. He muttered something I didn't catch, and she said in response simply, "Short flight." The guy in front of me muttered 'short flight' repeatedly in that kind of annoying mimicry men sometimes do of women. He did this to the woman sitting beside him, whom he'd been hitting on much of the flight.

When the plane landed, the captain announced that we couldn't pull into the terminal, because, well, they hadn't finished building the terminal! There were only so many spots to deplane. So the plane sat on the tarmac for half an hour. The guy in front of me muttered 'short flight' in his ridiculous mimic voice a few more times, griping about how they could have used this time to serve him his coffee. I could have handled the wait, but listening to low quality sarcastic derision for a half hour was beginning to get insufferable, and I sighed audibly. The lady behind me smiled compassionately at me and said, "Two months ago, the plane was delayed for two days and I had to find a hotel. It can be worse than this."

Grateful for the distraction from mimicry man, I smiled and replied, "Yes, I had something like that happen to me here five years ago. The airline said that there were holes in the runway. I ended up living in the airport that night." I thought for a second, and realized it had actually been ten years - was I going senile?

She smiled and said, "See, it can be worse!"

"You're right; this is average," I said. "I fly in every two weeks. I'm late every time."

As we marched off the plane and into the arrivals area, I saw mimicry man talking to the woman and some of her friends who were expecting her. Had I been mistaken, and did he know her?

On the flight home, I was in the middle seat again. But nobody ever claimed the window. I slid over, and looked contentedly down on the glimmering lights of Trenton and Belleville, near where my parents live on Lake Ontario. I remembered how in Judaism a new day begins at sundown, and not midnight. Perhaps this worst day was done. I hadn't quite passed the test with flying colours - I had been irritable and cynical that morning. But I got through it. And it only gets better from here.

Water.... nice to have

It has been an adventurous couple of days.

It has been very cold this week. So cold, in fact, that there was no running water when we got up here Friday night. So Saturday morning, we went out onto the lake, drilled a hole with the auger and took six pails of water out of the lake. To get hot water, we lit the sauna, and filled a couple of more buckets with snow.

We put a 100 watt bulb in a wire cage down the well hole and onto the well cap. By about 4 AM this morning, the water came back on. Thank goodness, because I’m dying to brush my teeth!

A different way to blog

I run into a lot of trouble posting through a web form. Sometimes Blogger won't come up. Sometimes it will, but won't post, and you lose what you wrote. And then, there are times when I can't get on the Internet, or don't want to.

I found this popular offline blogging tool the other day - essentially a word processor for Blogs, supporting Blogger, LiveJournal, Typepad, all the biggies. It can be a little flaky to use (most of the flakiness being with the Blogger servers), but since it works from files you work in on your desktop, it doesn't really matter if it is flaky.

I love it. I've never liked using a web browser form as a word processor. :-)

We're going to the cottage again tonight, so I had to run around like a madman today, doing shopping that could not wait until the weekend. My wife's birthday is on Tuesday, and I got her a day at the spa -- massages, facials, that sort of stuff. That one's likely to collect me some brownie points, I figure. :-)

CBC News: 14 killed in car bomb in Baghdad

I won't be doing this all day, trying to depress people... but it has to be clear now, that this war simply did not work. Just as the British attempts to pick up the prizes of the fallen Ottoman empire didn't work, and they were driven out of Iraq, too.

CBC News: 14 killed in car bomb in Baghdad

We have to help them

Tears. Hers for her family, shot at a checkpoint, the blood of her parents staining her hands and clothes. Mine, for her, and for the inhumanity that can lead to this.

How can we let this be? How can this go on! We have to stop it somehow. It has to end! There are too many children being damaged too badly, at an age where they should be skipping stones at the creek, not trying to understand the crimson stains on their hands.

I feel completely powerless, completely. How do we persuade people that violence cannot give justice, and that bullets are not a synonym for liberty! How do we call for nations to conduct themselves righteously as they deal abroad?

Be angry but do not sin; do not let the sun go down on your anger, and do not leave room for the devil.

The thief must no longer steal, but rather labor, doing honest work with his own hands, so that he may have something to share with one in need. No foul language should come out of your mouths, but only such as is good for needed edification, that it may impart grace to those who hear.

And do not grieve the holy Spirit of God, with which you were sealed for the day of redemption. All bitterness, fury, anger, shouting, and reviling must be removed from you, along with all malice. And be kind to one another, compassionate, forgiving one another as God has forgiven you in Christ.

Ephesians 4:26-32

With that done...

I hope I handled that with sufficient sensitvity. Now... on to lighter matters!

My cursillo team meets for one last time today. The weekend in December was a great success, and it was very sad not to be participating in a team developing a weekend. I hope I have the opportunity to serve again. At home, we've had a friend come and stay with us. This friend used to own the house we now own, actually - we bought it from them. My wife and I got to know each other in this house, as we all worked together, and would spend weekends at the house listening to music and... listening to even more music. And talking a lot.

So invariably, when she comes down, our other old friends who still live in town descend on us as well. Funny - but it isn't nostalgia. We've all stayed close, and it is not just reminiscing. We're all big fans of sci-fi and fantasy (there's a running joke about me, my wallet, and Scotty beaming me up), so the Lord of the Rings has been on near constantly the past few days. The house smells like several exotic oils because she brings new oils with her, with which we can light lamps at night. This is fine with me - I've always had it in for the glare of fluorescent lights, which I associate with work. At home, I prefer light that is more organic and natural. Halogen lamps are fine, but candles, lamps, and our fireplace are much nicer...

Bishops, communion, politicians, part III - laity

The clergy, in Catholic faith, may be the church's emissaries to the altar, but it is the people, the laity, who are the church's emissaries to the world. We are doctors, lawyers, short order cooks, construction workers, artists, grandparents, and lifeguards. The laypeople take the faith they have in church and in private prayer, and out into their everyday lives. The gift we are given with which to do this is our conscience.

The Vatican II declaration of Religious Liberty (Dignitatis Humanae) says that in "all his activity a man is bound to order that he may come to God, the end and purpose of life. It follows that he is not to be forced to act in manner contrary to his conscience." The ultimate accountability a person has for their actions remains with his or herself. Communion is one of those areas where the believer has some decisions to make.

Catholics believe that you have to be in a state of grace to take communion. That is in part where this whole controversy comes from. We believe this because in 1 Corinthians 11:27, St. Paul says, "Therefore whoever eats the bread or drinks the cup of the Lord unworthily will have to answer for the body and blood of the Lord." He has two meanings - the first is that he is chiding the Corinthians for behaving as though communion was just some supper where one comes to get fed.

But he has another meaning, which he follows the passage above with, saying, "A person should examine himself, and so eat the bread and drink the cup. For anyone who eats and drinks without discerning the body, eats and drinks judgment on himself." We call this today the examination of conscience - we do it as we prepare for the confessional, we do it as we prepare for Mass. Nobody else can do it for us - we the believers, individually, have to make that determination. The Bible offers us the ten commandments, and that is the usual formula most people use.

Should bishops ban politicians from communion for having "wrong opinions?"

In my opinion, no.

For what is a political opinion? An opinion is just that - an opinion. Sin, especially mortal sin that a Catholic considers to interfere with grace, is an action. Just like a virtue is an action. Being "pro-family" is not a virtue. Helping a poor family make the rent is a virtue. If a politician creates something that is an evil and many people are hurt or harmed by that evil, that is an action, and a sin. However, even for that, there is always reconciliation, the sacrament of healing. The church is supposed to be generous with her sacraments so that the sacraments save, and not wield them as a weapon with which to participate in the culture wars.

Make no mistake - the believer is responsible for how they approach communion. If we believe something to be so sacred that it really is the body and blood, shed for the forgiveness of sin, we must approach it with the respect it deserves. But no bishop is in a church policing as to whether doctors, lawyers, and short order cooks are in a state of grace, and there is no guarantee that they are. It is left to each of them to make that determination. The bishops should not treat politicians differently, making examples of people in order to get newspaper headlines - people who may be guilty of nothing more than "wrong opinions." After all, there are many people with "right opinions" who are probably not in a state of grace - I've heard so many stories even in Canada of lecherous politicians having more affairs than I would think they'd have time for. No bishop is talking about banning them, because there'd be no grand statement in the act.

I approach the sacrament with reverence. I have, many times, not gone up for communion because I did not feel certain I could in good conscience. And I know my parish priest would probably roll his eyes, as he seems convinced most people's sins are quite banal, and that we're just not important enough in the scheme of things to be big league sinners. :-) But I do this anyway, as part of my own self evaluaton. Nobody can do this for me. I must. If my bishops tells me I can't, I won't, out of the humility of St. Monica. But what is truly right is that I decide - for other than God, who is likelier to know?

Luke, I am your tater!

CNN.com - Darth Tater: The dark side of Mr. Potato Head - Jan 19, 2005

Bishops, communion, politicians, part II - bishops

In my diocese, a very decent and friendly man is our bishop, archbishop actually. I've met him; he is jovial, friendly, and his homilies are gentle, funny, and insightful. There is a true sense of holiness about the man. He hails from Manitoba, one of the other spots in Canada where french-speakers who speak perfect English are common, and so is ideally suited to the dual language character of my city. I've seen him on the community TV channel speaking about his childhood there, and it is nice to see your bishop so full of life and humanity.

We are very lucky here in Ottawa to have him. Not everyone is as fortunate. I read in the news from time to time about bishops who have been involved in hit and run car crashes, who have covered up the child abuse scandals in their dioceses, and in at least one instance I've heard of, been accused of not just covering up child abuse but participating in it! I'm sure such bishops are a small minority, but it tests your faith to hear about it at times.

Since the time of the apostles, there have been bishops - the Greek word for bishop is actually in the Bible - episkopos, also translated as elder or overseer at times. In the earliest days of the church, when Christians gathered in houses in small communities, the bishop would be simply the senior clergyman or head pastor of a house church, and was often selected for this role by the Christian community, in loose elections. A bishop was consecrated, then as now, by having someone who already had episcopal status lay hands on them - in Paul's second letter to Timothy we see a hint at this practice. In 1 Peter 5, we see St. Peter already giving congregations a guideline for how elders and laity of the day should behave with one another. By the time the second century arrived, the ranks of clergy that we have today were essentially fully formed in the same roles that are there today - deacons (diakonos, also mentioned in the Bible), priests (presbyteros), and bishops (episkopos.)

As Christian communities grew from small tight-knit families of faith into larger communities, more and more bishops were not associated with running individual church gatherings, but the local "church" in the sense of a city or region's Christian community. It began to fall to the priests to actually preside over individual house churches' celebrations. But the model remained the same, with the bishop being shepherd to the flock. I remember reading of St. Ambrose (the bishop of Milan) telling St. Monica that he did not want her indulging in certain kinds of North African piety such as picnicking at the graves of saints. St. Augustine recalls her as humbly submitting.

She's my model for approaching the bishops. Bishops may be confered a grace by ordination, but that grace is for my benefit. It continues apostolic succession, the line of laying on of hands back to the apostles that gives us a priesthood that can perform the sacraments. It does not make the bishop who is ordained a more moral man, or even necessarily a decent man. There have been bad bishops, there have been bad popes - men of no apparent holiness whatsoever.

But St. Monica's submission to St. Ambrose was not a submission to a man - it was a submission to humility. And that is why I believe in it. In the modern world, we are trained in a rugged individuality. "I am my own man," men like me are taught to say. "She's a self made woman," I've often said of my trail blazing mother, who went further in her public service career than any woman before her. There really is a lot to be said for individuality, but at the same time, there's a lot to be said for acquiescence, if you offer that acquiescence up to God. Submitting to a bishop is an act of piety - not one that recognizes the bishop as a better man, but one that says to God that I will play whatever role he gives me. If God has given me the path of laity as my walk in life, then I will try and be the best church layman I can be.

That's not to say that submission to a bishop is an act of blind faith. Both the Catechism of the Catholic Church and the Second Vatican Council assert "the primacy of conscience." We owe our first sense of duty to our conscience, to do what it tells us, before anything and anyone else. We may have an obligation to form our conscience well, but once we do that, we should listen to it. I would not obey a bishop's directive to the faithful to go and shoot someone, for example, since my conscience can clearly tell me that shooting someone is wrong (not that I can imagine a bishop ever asking such a thing. :-)

Next post - Laity...

Is anyone still reading?

Just checking... no sense in pontificating about bishops if not...

Woke up, got out of bed, dragged a guitar across my head

Last night, I told my daughter about a game we could play - she would write the first line of a story, and I would write the next line, and so on and so on. We started with a story about a magic soccer ball, and ended up with a tale of a talking cat and the frightened girl who didn't want to hear talking cats. Pretty interesting what can happen, but it can be frustrating, too. For instance, she kept writing, "and then she woke up and it was a dream," to which I kept writing something to the effect of, "but then she went downstairs and happened again." I ended up winning that one when I finally wrote "but then she went downstairs, it happened again, and it wasn't a dream!"

(She won one when I had the talking cat continue to beg for the girl to open a can, which the girl never ended up doing.)

About 8 PM, I went upstairs to change, since I was still in my work clothes, lay down on the bed in my housecoat, and fell asleep. As a result, I woke up about 5 in the morning. Having two hours to kill, I went downstairs into the basement studio, and finished an instrumental song I had been working on.

Being a songwriter can be a very frustrating exercise. Sometimes you can write a part of a song, and you really like what you came up with -- but then you can't finish it. I have two on the go like that right now.

One is something I wrote on a weekend before Christmas. It is an R&B sort of number, with steel drums and this interesting choral voice thing happening. I had found this program for the computer that lets you compose a song using musical notation, and then you can assign sounds to the melody from the Microsoft GS Synthesizer (yes, your computer has a synthesizer built in to it. Bet you didn't know that!)

I vaguely suspect that this song has to become something more modern than I'm used to doing - my R&B groove is stuck in the seventies with Al Green and Tower of Power.

The other song that I've never finished is a funky song I first began in 1989. It has a great melodic chorus, and a pretty funky organ groove. But I have never been able to write words for it. One of these days, I've got to get that one done.

Bishops, communion, politicians, part I - communion

OK, this was something that Lane wanted me to get into, and it takes a bit of getting to, let me tell you! Lane wanted to know whether Catholic bishops ought to deny communion to politicians, and I'm going to try and take a run at that. But one thing I will try to do is, even though discussing politicians, avoid the political. I've never been much interested in the culture wars, as I think they are a sideshow distraction that reduces the dignity of both serious political issues and religion.

In order to understand my own feelings on this matter, it is necessary for me to explain what Catholics believe about communion. I hope you understand I'm not proselytizing as I write this. I'm sure my readers can tell I've been as ecumenical as possible in my blog, and very sensitive to the fact that there are readers from different Christian traditions here. But it is necessary for you to understand my faith for me to tell you what I think about the bishops/communion issue.

What is communion to us? First and foremost, the Eucharist (which is what we also call communion by, a Greek word meaning "thanksgiving") is absolutely central to Catholic life. It is the principal reason for the existence of the Catholic church, and all of our church life revolves around it. We are baptized and confirmed so that we are in a position to receive it. We go to church every Sunday so that we may receive it. We go to confession (we call it "reconciliation" now) so that we are in a state of grace that permits us to receive it. And often times, a deacon or other messenger of mercy delivers us the Eucharist on our death beds. It is so sacred our receiving it usually has to be prefaced by a 1900 year old liturgy tradition, where we pray for forgiveness, sing gloria, read the scriptures, sing a psalm, sing alleluia, proclaim the gospel, offer our prayers, and then recite a number of prayers of praise, thanksgiving, consecration, unity, and purification, as well as giving the kiss of peace.

Communion is as very central to our lives as it is for reasons that we can trace back to the Bible. Over and over again in John, Jesus says, "I am the bread that came down from Heaven," "I am the bread of life," "Unless you eat the flesh and drink the blood of the son of Man you have no life within you," "My flesh is true food and my blood is true drink." The others all recount the last supper in a way very similar to St. Paul, and which we repeat in our liturgy today with this portion of the Eucharistic prayer:

The night he was betrayed, Jesus took bread, broke it, gave it to his disciples and said, "Take this all of you and eat it. This is my body, which will be given up for you." When supper had ended, he took the cup, gave it to his disciples and said, "Take this all of you and drink from it. This is the cup of my blood, the blood of the new and everlasting covenant. It will be shed for you and for all so that sins may be forgiven. Do this in memory of me."

This celebration of the Eucharist is what we call the Mass. We do not call it a service, because for us, the Mass is distinguished from other religious celebrations, including our own other celebrations, by this sacred meal, which we consider the graces of the cross made present to the here and now via the Holy Spirit.

We take the troubling words of John's gospel as literally as it is possible to take them. We consider the Eucharist to really be the body and blood of Jesus, retaining the earthly shape of bread and wine as a mere accident. It is one of the beautiful mysteries of Catholic faith. Rather than having a God who remains remote to us, available to us fleetingly via stories from the Bible, or wonderful sermons – we can reach out and touch God, not just the hem of his garment, but the sacred host and cup, as often as every day of the week, and at least every Sunday.

What does the Eucharist mean to me? Many things, and it is hard to put them into words. It lets me be reminded "that I am not worthy to receive you, but only say the words and I shall be healed" - that salvation is God's power, it isn't anything I have control over. It gives me a spot in this universe to focus on the presence of God, consistently. A beautiful sunset comes only once, and one alike never comes again. But the Eucharist is the same unchanging God's "real presence", the table "set before me," cup overflowing. It is an emotional and generous experience, made possible by the cross, and revealed as surely to me as it was to those disciples in Emmaus, who, as soon as Jesus blessed and broke the bread, was immediately recognizable to them.

Most of what the Eucharist is to me I just can't tell you – there aren't words, and where there are some words, what has happened to me is too sacred to speak aloud.

Next post – bishops, what are they to us?

He comes to us, walking on the water

The title is a line in a song I wrote for my daughter. I doubt I could have helped but put this line in a song for my young child, because it is one of the images I associate with my own childhood.

Jesus walking on water was my "first impression" of Christianity, as a child. One of my first two books was one of those illustrated kids bible story books with pictures and told the story of Peter and the disciples going out in the boat, and becoming very afraid as a dark storm approached, and waves swelled up. Then they see Jesus walking out to them. At first they are frightened, but then joyful. Peter rushes out of the boat in this joy, but as he starts to doubt he is even able to walk on water, Jesus reaches out and grabs him. It seemed so reassuring - a God who stretches out his hand to save. He would save me many years later, while I was literally walking on water (well... waterskiiing. :-) But that tale is for another time.

Many years, and the strange worries of adolescence and early adulthood robbed me of this child-like faith. I didn't believe at all by the time I was twenty eight or so. What was worse was that I couldn't - I wanted to, but I could not find it inside me to step out onto the living water of faith. I was too worried about the implications of dinosaurs and neanderthals, mistakenly thinking literal creationism was a creedal requirement of Christian belief. My worry was that I would have to give up my reasoning mind in order to fill an empty heart up with faith, hope, and love.

But God never gave up. Like one of the best lines in the whole "Touched by an Angel" show (which for syrupy, sentimental me was not the pablum it was for many people), it doesn't matter if you don't believe in God. He believes in you.

God winks at you, day in and day out. Take this post - at the time I first thought it up, I was listening to this song, and I was looking up an article on Google in an idle way. My own voice piped in "He comes to us, walking on the water", while my eyes fell onto the screen and the abstract, which had an abstract about "sky gods... walking on water." What are the odds? Yet it happens all the time. I remember listening to a song called "Heaven" by Live for the first time, while driving home from the Sandbanks. When the chorus came on and the singer sang, "I don't need no proof, when it comes to God and truth, I can see the sunset and I believe." As we turned the corner we were on, we drove into the most spectacular sunset I had seen in a long while.

These little winks are not proof, nor are they a miraculous revelation or prophesy, and they are not meant to be. They are God talking to us, conversing with us, in our everyday lives, because we are dear to him and he loves us. And I cannot prove this assertion, I just know it. I cannot prove my own family loves me, for that matter.

But love is shown by deeds and kindnesses - it bursts forth from an internal disposition and becomes external acts of great charity and selflessness. This is what my family shows me, and it is what I try to show them. And all my life, I have been given great kindesses by God. True, life has difficult moments; but it is especially in these that those kindnesses have been most obvious.

He comes to me, walking on the water, and this is fitting somehow, for he has given me a love of water, and much of the joy in my life has been near the water. God loves me. I love Him. I let him down sometimes I know. But he loves me, and he never lets me down. Love is a very simple equation, even with an all powerful deity.

And He loves you too. Just in case you did not already know. :-)

Huygens sends postcards and sounds from Titan

To see the shores of a new world is a magnificent privilege. In the days of explorers such as Columbus, Leif Erickkson, and Magellan, it was a rare privilege, too.

But technology has been a great democratizer of the thrill of exploration. Now we can take these journeys together. I still remember lying on my grandfather's bed in Saskatchewan watching Neil Armstrong step, upside down, onto the surface of the moon.

And now in our age, we get to see, for the first time, the surface of another planet's moon. Spectacular!

New Scientist Breaking News - Huygens sends postcards and sounds from Titan

Posting from the cottage

...which is something new, but they have an Internet co-op up here now, which is quite cool.

On the way up here, it began to snow in a wild way. Normally, my dear wife is quite distressed to drive in it, but the snowflakes were so ludicrously large we couldn't help but laugh. It was like snowballs falling from the sky.

Later when we got here, my brother in law said he'd heard wolves. My daughter and I went down to the dock to see if we could here them. Nothing - complete silence.

Which is just as precious. And just as rare.

Churches are not bricks and stone - they are pews

I read a letter to the editor in the local paper yesterday in which some guy said that churches and mosques should donate their riches to the survivors of the Asian tsunami, instead of asking adherents to do so. Maybe sell off a cathedral, mosque, synagogue or two.

I thought that this was such a mistaken portrayal of religion that I wrote a letter to the editor myself. I said something to the effect that churches and mosques have donated their riches to the cause – their most precious riches: the money, time, hard work, prayers, and faith of their believers; because it is people who are the churches and mosques.

As to selling them off, I noted that these buildings would be needed more than ever, to be a place of sanctuary and healing, as the survivors attempt to come to grips with what has happened. No cathedral or mosque sold to Bill Gates could offer such a thing.

Sadly though, the impression people have that churches and mosques are hierarchies of flighty rich reverends, crazed imams, and capricious cardinals is all too prevalent. And yet, if you look at any magnificent church edifice in Europe, what is so incredibly awesome about it is that ordinary people – parishioners making far less than we do today – donated their time and money to make these magnificent buildings possible. I remember reading a story about the Anglicans of Liverpool and the magnificent cathedral they built there early in the twentieth century, all funded by a town plagued with chronic poverty and unemployment.

That's not to say that there are not rich reverends and capricious cardinals of course. But a church is a community of faith; you don't have a church just because you have a chapel and a cleric. Churches are places where lives are lived communally. The same faces that helped out with your wedding are the ones who were there to see your kids baptized.

We - the ordinary Jacks and Jills – we are the churches. We are the body of Christ – a pretty amazing thing, isn't it?

Flattery that I wish to preserve for posterity

The drummer in the band that I may or may not be in owns the domain for our website. Since we haven't played anywhere in years, he's planning to take down the site. But I thought, for posterity, I'd preserve what he said about me in our bios. :-)

• Influences include Albert Collins, Aretha Franklin, and Robert Cray just to name a few
• Over 20 years of playing experience
• Has a powerful, and soulful singing style and a dynamic guitar style to complement this

Well, he's right about the influences. I just love those guys (and gal. :-)

The talk I did

The talk I did went well. Really well, actually. It wasn't at all like the kind of thing I write here. It was not philosophy, theology, or anything - just a simple little talk on my faith journey, and where I am with it. I think it did me some good to speak more from the heart and less from the head. :-)

MSNBC - Indonesia orders escorts for aid workers

Politics takes over as usual - knowing how badly Indonesia was hit, it is perplexing how badly the Indonesian government seems to want to bite the feeding hand. Very sad.

MSNBC - Indonesia orders escorts for aid workers

Been there

How many times have you related a tale of woe to someone, and their response is a knowing, "Yep! Been there"? Solomon's complaint that there is "nothing new under the sun" surely applies to misfortune, too.

Well, at church this morning one of the readings was from Hebrews, 2:18: "Because he himself was tested through what he suffered, he is able to help those who are being tested." How apt. I think this above all is why I would find it difficult to be in any other religion. No religion fully explains the mystery of suffering. Not even the easy exit of atheism (where, since there is no higher purpose, there is no explanation needed) can give suffering meaning, because "life is just a random sequence of events some of which are by chance misfortunate" is not a meaning - it is a nihilist's aphorism.

But while Christianity cannot explain the mystery of suffering, it features a God who knows what suffering is. That makes him a "Do as I do" God and not a "Do as I say" God. Jesus is no Zeus looking down on suffering Greek peasants telling them to tough it out as he heads off for a night out at the heavenly pub with Bacchus. Jesus' experience of suffering is central to Christianity not just because of vicarious atonement, but because it is an important part of his "Fully human, fully divine" nature. He could not be fully human if he did not know suffering.

And that is what Christianity is. It is not a religion that explains away suffering, or makes grandiose claims about being able to end suffering through one's own works. It is a religion that grapples with suffering head on, with all of the messy implications. I think of Jesus telling his disciples of the exceeding generosity of the woman who dropped her one measly coin in the temple treasury, or the woman who wants nothing but to touch Jesus' cloak to end her years of hemorrhaging - suffering and misery are messy, but since Jesus understands it, he can give it meaning.

"Jesus wept" may be some of the most important words in scripture. Because they make of Revelation 21:4 ("He will wipe away from them every tear from their eyes. Death will be no more;neither will there be mourning, nor crying, nor pain, any more") a far less glib statement than would come from a far removed deity.

Abandon hope all ye who enter here

This is interesting, albeit old. Maybe it no longer applies.

Perseus Blog Survey: The Blogging Iceberg

Apparently most bloggers abandon their blog within four months. Most bloggers are teenagers (feel old yet?) The majority of blogs are abandoned (66% have not been updated in two months.) Most people who blog are female. Most who let their blogs go inactive are males. Apparently LiveJournal has the lowest abandonment rate.

I am more demographically typical than it might at first seem. While not a teenager or female, I actually did abandon a blog once. :-)

Big bang sound waves explain galaxy clustering

New Scientist Breaking News - Big bang sound waves explain galaxy clustering

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. John 1:1-3

But how did you make the heaven and the earth, and what was the instrument of your mighty work?....you spoke and they were made, and in your Word you made these things...You call us, therefore, to understand the Word, God with you, God, which is spoken eternally, and by it are all things spoken eternally. For what was spoken was not finished, and another spoken until all were spoken; but all things at once and for ever. (St. Augustine, Confessions, Book 11.)

Speaking tomorrow

I've been asked to give a short talk tomorrow on my spiritual journey. I have no idea what to say, I really don't. It is either too much or too little time. :-) I guess I am going to have to trust that the words will be given me. Or accept that I shall appear an idiot.

Philip, I don't know the show you refered to - "Father Ted?" A couple of films to add to the list of religious satire pieces I do like - "Life of Brian" and "The Holy Grail." When you make films as downright silly as Monty Python did, you know you are going to make people laugh. :-)

Lane, I'm going to try to answer that, but it will have to wait until I have time to do an all-out series. One thing I do not write on religious topics is op-ed style material, where I just toss a few glancing zingers at some contemporary issue. To discuss the issue of bishops blocking communion, it is important for me to discuss what I feel communion, bishops, and laity even are, and what responsibilities the latter two have. That could take a while! Will see if I can set aside time.

(I've spent the last week or so writing a story, and have not had as much time for blogworthy postings as I might otherwise have had. :-)

How I learned not to be afraid of artwork

Some thirteen hundred years ago, one of many Christian controversies arose when a movement called Iconoclasm swept the church. Iconoclasts were people who were alarmed at the proliferation of sacred art. The use of icons and statuary in religious worship worried the Iconoclasts - they saw in it the violation of the ten-commandment edict to make no "graven image."

Iconoclasm did not win out, at least not immediately. It survived in Islam, where art of any kind other than geometric patterns is haram (sinful.) And it resurfaced to an extent with the rise of Protestant movements in the 16th century (although it would later subside, as people began to realize that stained glass windows were not really all that insidious.)

But even today, some people remain wary of religious art. After all, the Old Testament is full of condemnations about worship in the "high places" and "golden calves." And I am a compulsive worrier, so the wary once included me. When I first heard of how East Orthodox Christians look more than fondly upon icons, but actually think worshipful thoughts as they gaze upon them, I worried. When I first saw people kissing crosses I worried. There was a powerful faith in these actions, but all I could see in my ever-fretful mind was God zapping and smiting people for doing it.

Is there not a risk of art becoming a golden calf? The risk may be there, but it does not hurt to look at the Bible itself, and the place and time the scriptures come from. That is what I always do when troubled by things.

The Bible was heavily revised during the age of King Josiah, king of Judah. The textual evidence is almost overwhelming (1 Kings 13:2 shows one obvious latter day interpolation.) And what was the experience of Josiah's subjects? Well, a hundred years earlier, their neighbours, the nation of Israel, had fallen to the Assyrians. Theologically, they wanted to explain how their nation had survived and their cousins next door had not. Josiah had nurtured a complex combination of religion and nationalism whose expression is still visible in Deuteronomy - a system of legal thought, prescribed festivals, humanitarianism, and in Deut 12:13, a single place of prescribed worship. Other books would make clear that this "place that the Lord will choose" was to be the Temple of Jerusalem, in Judah - the Temple of Solomon.

By doing this, the Judeans were also co-opting Hebrew religious worship. Anywhere that the Samaritans (the Israelite survivors of the Assyrian conquest, who to this day, do not recognize Jerusalem as the prescribed place of worship) worshipped is condemned in scripture. Particularly condemned is Omri, the Israelite king who had the audacity to establish a capital that was not Jerusalem (1 Kings 16:24)

So the point of all this is to keep in mind what a lot of the condemnation of Idolatry represents in the Old Testament - the Judaeans wanted a highly organized religion, unified to the state, centralized in the nation's capital. People outside this centralized religious belief were idolaters, plain and simple, whether they worshipped strange gods, worshipped idols, or just chose to make altars outside of the temple. It was a threat to the cohesion of the Jewish people to follow other practices. The sense of the Jewish people even today as a people worshipping in the direction of Jerusalem and the hope of a temple built anew has helped them to survive the many trials of history.

But Jews of Jesus' time were not iconoclasts. An archaeological dig in Capernaum, the city where Jesus' ministry was centered, has unearthed a synagogue whose walls were covered in paintings and images. It would seem that the iconography that was so present in the early Christian movement, scenes from the Bible depicted in frescoes and house churches, evolved naturally from the place and time that Jesus himself sprung from.

In Christian faith, believers are not oriented towards a temple in Jerusalem. We are oriented towards a saviour of flesh and blood. He was human. And because he was human, we can depict what he did and where he went, without making an idol.

And what a blessed thing for us - think of all the magnificent art that Christianity has produced, from Da Vinci's "Last Supper", to Michaelangelo's Cistine chapel, to even last year's "The Gospel of John" film, which I thought featured an excellent and moving performance by Henry Ian Cusick.

We don't worship these images. I certainly don't think the "Last Supper" is a deity, but it is inspiring. The beautiful yearning expressed in art (so exemplified by Michaelangelo's outstretched fingers of Adam) helps join us as a community of reverence, a reverence that hopefully lead us to the true God, the artist on whose canvas we are painted.

Blasphemy

I'm not a big admirer of religious satire. The reason is not piety, it is that I really only appreciate satire when it is funny. And for some reason, there really have not been too many popular satires of religion or religious figures that are truly funny.

The examples I can think of are either too mean-spirited and insensitive to things people cherish deeply, or conversely, tread too softly. One I did like was the BBC show "Bless Me Father", about a priest, his apprentice, and their cantankerous caretaker.

The BBC seems to have gotten a somewhat less enthusiastic response to their latest thing, a Jerry Springer number. Some outraged viewers have gone so far as to send death threats, and BBC executives have been put on alert with regards to their safety.

I can understand being upset by sacreligious art. What I cannot understand is reacting in such a, well, Old Testament-like way to it. Did Jesus not say, "Blessed are those who are persecuted for my name's sake?" To my mind, that would mean bearing patiently, as St. Peter would say, with indignity.

At any rate, it is much easier to make a point with your patronage, and with well-reasoned arguments. People think Christians are nutty enough, too often. It hurts us all when someone's over-zealousy confirms their fears.

Hands on the plow

"No one who puts his hand to the plow and looks back is fit for the kingdom of God." (Luke 9:62)

Jesus says many things that are hard to understand... they are troubling things, and it sometimes makes you stop and wonder if you even are on a Christian path. Some demands seem so hard that you have to ask yourself, would I even be a Christian by his standards?

This is one of them. He says this to a man who asks, "I will follow you, Lord; but let me first say farewell to those at my home." Seems like a reasonable enough thing, no? But God does not lower his standards. He doesn't make compromise the benchmark. If you know something is the right path for you to tread, the right change of course, you just do it.

I propose to you however that it would have been a very simple thing for this man to satisfy Jesus. If he had said, "Lord, I will follow you. I will return to my home, and teach the good news to my friends and family, and though I am not worthy to receive you, just say the word and you will be with me," how do you think Jesus would have reacted to that? I think Jesus would have said, just like he did the centurion, that he'd never seen such faith!

There are are many callings in life. This man claimed his calling was to be Christ's disciple. That is a hard calling - in his day, it meant persecution and execution by Romans or the Hasmonean temple authorities. In today's day and in many denominations, there are still monks, contemplative communities, and even ordinary folks who devote themselves so wholely that they give up any vestige of a normal life. (Did you know that there are Lutheran nuns?)

Not everyone was meant for this - as Jesus said, not everyone was meant to be "Eunuch for the kingdom." For some of us, discipleship is what I thought the man from Luke might have offered - follow him, yes, but follow him home!

Gulf of mexico, here I come!

Going to visit my folks in Panama City Beach, Fla. in Feb., yahoo!!

I'm not sick of the white stuff yet, but when you get to April, and all the weather you've seen for months is some variation on dark, cold, freezing rain, ice pellets, snow, snow, and more snow... well breaking that experience up in February will help get through it all. :-)

I teased my daughter about it yesterday. I phoned her up just after she got home from school and said, "Do you like... dolphins?"

"Yes," she answered.

"Swimming in the ocean?"
(Yes, we will - we're Canadians who've swum in Lake Ontario in April and May :-)

"Yeah..."

"Gulfworld?"

"Yeah?" (getting interested)

"Alligators? Beaches?"

Yeah??"

You get the idea. ;-)

Walking on water

I listened to a young priest (who is a friend of mine) speak yesterday with a wisdom beyond his years. He was telling us how the head of the Anglican church, the Archbishop of Canterbury, had said that the Tsunami disaster inevitably shook the faith of many people, and that this was a natural reaction.

His grace, the Very Rev. Rowan Williams, said in a homily, "Every single random, accidental death is something that should upset a faith bound up in comfort and ready answers. Faced with the paralysing magnitude of a disaster like this, we naturally feel more deeply outraged - and also more deeply helpless."

On the other hand, other leaders are saying that an event like this draws people into their faith more deeply. "I strongly believe that God is giving us this strength," said Catholic priest Nihal Nanayakkara of Sri Lanka, who has been working to provide shelter and aid day and night for survivors.

So which is the right response? Both are.

We all remember the story from Mark 6 about how the disciples were in a boat being tossed about by the elements. Jesus walked out to his disciples across the rough waters, and in his presence nature's dangers subsided. On the other hand, who can forget Jesus' response at Lazarus' tomb? His first reaction was not a display of supernatural power - it was weeping. This is the same Jesus who shouted out from the cross, Eli, Eli, lema sabachthani! (My God, My God, why have you forsaken me!)

This is the comfort of a faith who believes that God has a human nature; we are not left adrift on the sea of a completely inscrutable God who consigns us to a fate we may not deserve. This is a God who grieves with us, who knows our suffering, and comes to us to redeem us of it. He knows what it is to be us. He knows the despair of wondering whether we are next, and whether anything can stop it.

He is there for us, because he knows from his own human experience that we need him. Sometimes to save us - like the miraculous survival of a woman floating on a palm tree at sea for a week. But more importantly, he is there to give us strength - the power to go on when we haven't strength of our own to do it.

Ice on the rocks

Ice on the rocks
Posted by: leavethelighton.

I wish I could capture the way this really looks like real life - the glow on the horizon, the calmness that permeated the air that day. If we had a device that could capture a reality and not just a pale shadow of colour, we could travel without going out of doors. :-)

Reality Tales

When theologians try and understand the Old Testament (or the Tanakh, as it is called in Judaism) they have to interpret it through the many literary traditions employed. For example, the story of Jonah is a kind of Hebrew satire, and certainly a parable, of the same kind Jesus told (but longer, obviously.) It is a brilliant work meant to point out to nationalists that God might actually have regard for other peoples, such as the Ninevites. So we don't have to wonder at how a man could live inside a whale - we're not meant to hear the story that way.

But the New Testament is another story. There is no reason to believe anything other than that much of it is literally true. There are a lot of people who have tried to play the minimizing game with the New Testament - from pop authors like Dan Brown to scholars like Dominic Crossan who seem determined to doubt the veracity of anything written in the New Testament.

I've never understood this. Look at any other writings from that time period that record events - Flavius Josephus wrote "Antiquities" near the end of the first century, and wrote about the history of Judaea from the time of Herod the Great to the Judeo-Roman war in 70 AD. Historians trust "Antiquities" implicitly, relying on it with complete trust when they describe the ancient Palestinian world. And yet Josephus was a century removed from Herod's era!

Similarly, the Roman historian Tacitus described the first centuries BC and AD from the vantage-point of the second century. Incidentally, both Josephus and Tacitus mention Jesus (briefly - the former while describing the execution of Jesus' brother James, the latter while describing Nero's persecution of Christians.)

And yet incredibly, there are even people who have speculated that Jesus did not exist! Well, of course he existed - St. Peter's house in Capernaum is known, and St. Paul (whom nobody disputes) describes interacting with Jesus' family and principle disciples in Galatians 2. What silliness!

The dates of three of the gospels can now definitively be given an early date - Mark may date to the 60s (fragments of text of that gospel may be found from that time.) Matthew dates no later than the seventies, as a passage of an ancient version of the Talmud attributed to Gamaliel makes fun of the Sermon on the Mount. And a partial parchment of John from far afield is known from the early second century, meaning that the original had to have been composed significantly earlier in the first.

The implication of this is that Jesus' followers recorded his doings far closer in time to the events themselves than did Tacitus or Josephus. They were only thirty to fifty years on. Now some figures are mythologically built up when the writings that describe them are only the result of apocryphal tales passed on for hundreds of years. But at the time of these writings, there continued to be people alive who had seen him (Paul asserts this in 1 Corinthians 15:6)

Interestingly, all the gospels agree on certain things that seem odd - for instance in all gospel accounts, Mary Magdalene (sometimes accompanied) learns first about the resurrection. A movement based on an apocryphal tale would not have done this - the first appearance would have been more triumphantly made before, say, Peter, or all twelve apostles. But none of the gospel narratives attempt this - instead Jesus appears before Mary of the seven demons - a thing that might have seemed a little underwhelming to male chauvinists of the era.

No - the stories of the gospel ring true, and it is because they ring true that some have worked so hard to make mythology of them, strip them of their meaning (like Dominic Crossan, who incredibly reads into the tale that Jesus' resurrection means he was eaten by dogs.) The gospel story has such an incredible message - God came to Earth because he took pity on us, and bore the burden of our ill-doings himself. I can imagine how uncomfortable a lot of people would be if they believed the gospel to be true. They'd have to give up a lot of control over their lives.

Better to say it all a lie, than to recognize the simple, generous truth. Like the disciples of Emmaus, Jesus has walked with us, and revealed himself to us.

Will we choose to recognize him?

Let us tell tales

In Plato's Republic, Plato's characters are engaged in a dialogue that is a thinly veiled exposition of his own thoughts. He quotes the poet Aeschylus, and makes a conclusion about what poetically ought to be written about the divine.

Nor shall we admire Aeschylus when he makes Thylus say that Apollo sang at her wedding in praise of her child

Promising him long life, from sickness free
And every blessing; his triumphant praise
Rejoiced my heart. Those lips, I thought, divine,
Flowing with prophecy, must God's promise speak,
Yet he the singer, he our wedding guest,
Phoebus Apollo, prophet, slew my son.

If a poet says this sort of thing about (God) we shall be angry and and refuse to let him produce his play; nor shall we allow it to be used to educate our children - that is if our guardians are to grow up godfearing and holy, so far as that is humanly possible.


One suspects Plato would be sympathetic to some of the more iconoclastic religions of today, religious beliefs where the use of God in stories, imagery, and poetic descriptions is verboten, because of the risk it entails in misrepresenting God. But I would ask, is it not necessary to misrepresent God, at least in some degree?

For if we work from the premise that God's goodness and beauty are limitless, his wisdom without end, his mercy a bottomless well of forgiveness, then how could we use our finite language to describe anything about him and not misrepresent God?

I would even go so far as to say our scriptures misrepresent God in order to more ambitiously portray something important about God. In the Old Testament are numerous stories of God's immense power being brought to bear against sinful people - the Gilgamesh epic that the ancient Hebrews recast as the story of a vengeful God washing the Earth with the great flood, or God's plagues sent upon the Egyptians to deliver the Israelites.

In no sense do I believe God has the cruel character these stories often convince people he must have. But despite their inexactness they do tell us important things about God. In Christianity, the flood story is an epic pre-telling of our wonderful cleansing sacrament, Baptism. I sincerely believe God detests wrongdoing. Why would we have the beatitudes to tell us how to do well in life as a humble people, if God was disinterested in our behaviour? But just as God in the Genesis account of the great flood washed the Earth thoroughly of iniquity, so does the spiritual rebirth that Baptism represents for us. We would truly be lacking in theological language for the rebirth of baptism without the story of the flood. It truly needs an epic tale to tell that truth. And I can say from personal experience, it is an incredible thing to listen to the flood tale in the dark during the Easter vigil, before the candles are lit.

An author whose book, "The Quest for God", I absolutely adore, makes a good point about some writers trying to edify us about the cosmic story. He says of Milton and "Paradise Lost" that God will have difficulty judging him, "Milton, too who sought - so he said - to justify the ways of God to men and ended by writing a masterpiece whose hero was Satan."

But what Milton really does in "Paradise Lost" is give us the real story of the "fallen nature" of humanity - his "Satan" is little more than an avatar for what truly makes the human race a race in need of reconciliation with God. His Satan says, "Better to rule in hell then serve in Heaven." We have this attitude - a burning desire to be ruler of our small hills, at any cost. Our need to control, our need to dominate our world, our fellow creatures, and each other stems from this strange element of our psyche; we would rather find ways to dominate, even if it means smallness and misery, than accept a simple but joyful humility - knowing our place in the universe. Every great evil, from Nazism to Communism, is born of this "Captain of my soul" thinking that Timothy McVeigh recited from his deathbed.

But I digress. Plato is wrong to suggest that poets must not write mythologies that may not be edifying - we need our inexact stories of God, because it is only in an eloquent but flawed inexactness that we really catch a glimpse of God's perfection. Our inarticulate attempts to get near him fare all the better when we stumble in our ambition.

It all comes back to Psalm 139:

Even before a word is on my tongue,
O, Lord you know it completely.
You hem me in, behind and before,
And lay your hand upon me.
Such knowledge is too wonderful for me;
It is so high that I cannot attain it.