Hearing God

I heard him once, and he walked with me very closely when my wife was pregnant. I have felt his presence in church many times since. And of course, I glance at the Eucharistic chalice from time to time at the moment of consecration.

But that voice, when I first heard - I can't describe it. Loud and musical like a trumpet, almost visible like shining gold, but gentle and soothing as a flat, flat surface of a still lake. That does not even begin to do His voice justice.

My city under the sea

twelve thousand years ago, my city (Ottawa) was under the sea - the Champlain Sea specifically, an inlet of the Atlantic that existed at the end of the last ice age. You don't have to look too hard to find the evidence, and I've seen some of it myself.

I saw some of the remains of this sea last year on the hiking trails in Pine Grove forest, where I like to spend time with nature in the late summer and early fall after the bugs die down. As I was walking through the forest, I found a sandy spot beside the trail, and the NCC had posted one of their explanation signs. The sign explained that the sand was from a ten thousand year old beach along the shores of the Champlain Sea. I looked over - it did look like a beach actually. I tried to picture myself staring out at horizonless water from the old beach, in the direction of my home.

Some of the other remaining traces are kind of fun, too. For instance, some of the local lakes in Ottawa/Gatineau have what they call around here "red trout." These "red trout" are in fact salmon - atlantic salmon that evolved into freshwater lake fish when the sea diminished into the rivers and lakes that abound in the area today. The fish in the Ottawa river could escape downstream to the ocean, but not the ones in the lakes. Other ocean species exist in some of our lakes - Pink Lake has stickleback, for instance.

And then there's a the fact that from time to time, someone digging a well will find whale bones. :-)

Dinosaur snack

You heard about the Jurassic Otter? He looks about bite sized, by dinosaur standards. However this beaver-like creature is much older than Tyrannosaurus Rex, a hundred million years older. He would had to have been satisfied by getting eaten by Allosaurus instead. :-)

Why I am a Christian

I can think of a lot of reasons I would NOT use. No hard-hearted rejector of the poor makes me a Christian. No self-righteous Donatist ever made me feel like I should go to church. Nobody who mocks other religions makes me feel holy, and I've never felt the presence of the Lord in the presence of a rant about gays, welfare bums, lepers, Samaritans, or whoever has become the fashionable target for the righteous. "Noone is righteous, not one," St. Paul's words echo through me as I write this.

It comes down to the figure of Jesus, for me. Jesus is a very appealing figure - the Beatitudes and the Sermon on the Mount are godly to me in a way that no other text has approached, as are the words of one of his later disciples in 1 Corinthians 13.

If I had never heard of a God, and had to make up the characteristics of a deity, I do not believe I could do better than the traits of Jesus - the kindly healer of lepers, the blind, and even the dead. The lamb that lays down, and turns an evil thing at the hands of Pilate into the gift of love. That, quite simply, is why I am a Christian. My faith is not a rejection of what others believe, or what they are. My faith is an embracing - an embracing of what I believe the beatific possibilities are.

God is a mystery. We "know now in part, but then we will know fully" even as we are fully known, as St. Paul says. St. John sums up God's very existence as "God is Love" and that resonates for me - allowing me to know the unknowable and fathom the neverending depths of majesty that are God. I can be both mystic and mystified, lost and found, poor and wealthy, humble and exalted.

God is like the flames of love at Pentecost, fire falling on every man and woman, whispering urgently that God loves each and everyone, and urging mankind to respond in kind. "A new commandment I give you," Jesus tells us, "Love one another as I have loved you."

Ultimately, can we aspire to anything better? That simple truth - God is love - is a Christian truth that leads me home to Jesus every time, all the time.

Gospel Idol? Ba-doom-boom!

My ad to put together this praise group has brought a few interesting replies. Today I heard from a trumpet player. Who would have thought? My midnight Mass group from Christmas had a trumpet player. But praise music's not the first place you'd expect to hear a trumpet.

I invited the leader of my choir to join, too. That will be an odd role-reversal. I'm used to following his lead, and he's used to me following it. Hopefully this will not be too awkward.

I am trying to put together a list of songs. I have to try and avoid using the same praise songs that will be featured Holy Thursday, which is kind of too bad. They're quite poignant and beautiful, like Paul Baloche's "Above All," which Michael W Smith made famous. But there's lots of good material out there.

One thing I'm thinking I'm going to do - at the suggestion of my other group's leader - is some gospel music. Some rambunctious gospel music should fit in and actually augment the more staid P&W music. So I'm thinking of throwing in a couple of his suggestions for gospel numbers...

My Big Fat Greek Headache

In my ambition to master Greek, I actually took on a question related to it. A person on Yahoo asked why Christians call the instruction given to Moses in Exodus the "ten commandments," when in Hebrew they are called statements, rather than commandments. My Greek, though primitive still, and my better command of Latin, actually served me to find an answer.

I wrote:

Because Christianity founded itself on the Septuagint (Greek Bible) and later the Vulgate (latin) rather than the Hebrew (bible).

The Septuagint word used in Exodus 20:6 is "prostagma" (Greek for "orders".) In the Vulgate, the word used is "praecepta" for precepts.

So because of this, there is definitely a slightly different emphasis in Christian understanding. We don't really consider ourselves wrong to use these texts, as they're actually older (by several centuries) than the Masoretic Hebrew used for modern Torah scrolls. They do offer a valid insight into how the texts were interpreted and thought of in ancient times.

Acadian Driftwood

Points ya where you're goin'
Set my compass north
I got winter in my blood

Acadian driftwood
Gypsy tail wind
They call my home the land of snow
Canadian cold front movin' in
What a way to ride
Ah, what a way to go (Robbie Robertson, Acadian Driftwood)

Funny how a place defines you. I heard someone say recently how happy he was to be British. Now I would love to visit, but I could never live there. My brother has to go to London all the time, since he owns a store there.

But I need to be in a place where the forests are never far, where the snow glimmers blue under the full moon while the pines sway overhead, or where the lake ripples underneath that same moon while the loons sing into the night. I feel no longing and drawing pull for stonehenge, though I may well have ancestors who knew the place (Welsh blood.)

But I do long for a tent, an island, a boatload of supplies, and a campfire, and a night full of shooting stars. If it ever came to it, you can take me out of the place, but you cannot take the place out of me. I can always visit it in my heart.

The perils of email

There's a right way to turn down a job offer. And then there's a wrong way.

Figuring out where E.T. comes from....

Independent Online Edition > Science & Technology

Curiously enough, I read in another article over the weekend that many of the stars targeted by Dr. Turnbull as likely candidates for life happen to be the home of many of the fictional races of Star Trek - such as the Vulcans (Epsilon Eridani) and the Andorians (Epsilon Indi.)

Adventures in P&W

So my adventures in creating a praise group at church have been like a roller coaster ride. I put an ad on a local music bulletin board on Thursday, looking for musicians. I did get a number of responses - almost all of them from drummers. I wrote three of these drummers back.

Two haven't answered me so far. I have a small suspicion one of them thought this was a paying gig. I do scratch my head at such things - at a P&W night in the sanctuary, there are no bar sales, no collection plate passed around. There's no revenue that you can use to pay a group for its participation. I honestly had not anticipated a problem here, because presumably the inspiration for participating in praise music is not typically monetary. Perhaps I have been naive to think that.

The third invited me into an existing praise group. The thought of getting this done easily led me to agree to try out tonight with these guys, who wanted a rhythm guitarist/backing vocalist.

The thing is, I'm neither. Not to try and seem too immodest - but for perspective, what I am about to say is actually true. I was once one of the city's top blues guitar players, back when I played in bars. And I've put out two CDs now in which I was the featured vocalist. I've put myself into the background in the church music ministry for years, because I knew I needed to learn how to collaborate and cooperate, without trying to take control. But I really feel like, having done that (still doing that in the Sunday night folk group) - I feel like now it is time to step up and put my skills to their full use. I know I can do this. I believe I'm called to do it, at this point in my life. I need the freedom to pick the musicians and tunes, and make something wonderful happen.

So I think I'm going to turn that particular offer to join this group down.

On the plus side, our pastor approved my idea yesterday, and said he'll try and fix dates with my friend (a volunteer coordinator who has kind of pushed me to do this) for the debut event, which will likely be a Lenten P&W night.

Wish me luck, and if you can spare a prayer for me, I'd appreciate that too! :-)

The Raid....

A fascinating post by Riverbend at Baghdad Burning...

There are a lot of blogs about Iraq, and there are even a handful of blogs in Iraq. Of these, I read River's the most. Although she writes from a specific political perspective, what I am actually more drawn in by is the quality of her writing.

She makes life in Iraq come alive. The people in her stories are real people, and they seem so much like everyday people you'd meet and know right here.

But they live in this alternate-reality world, like reality show participants stuck in the world of the Handmaid's Tale or 1984. It is hard not to feel great empathy for them, as well as some admiration...

Teaching oneself Greek

Yes, this is something I've been doing, out of books. My younger daughter is, too. Every time I worry she is growing too old to want to have anything to do with me, we find something in common.

She picked up the alphabet remarkably fast - she drew it out on the cofee table the other day.

Hopefully the end result will be to change the meaning of the phrase, "Its all Greek to me!"

anti-semitic cartoon contest

And it is not the one you may be thinking of.

Yes, there is another anti-semitic cartoon contest. This one, however, is unique. The entrants are Jewish!

http://www.boomka.org/

Praise and Worship Adventures

I put an ad in a local musician recruitment looking for musicians for my project. So far, three drummers have written me back. I might be able to make use of two.

Who could have guessed there were so many percussionists in the world? Now if I can turn up a bass player and a piano player, I'd be happy. I could play the bass if it comes to it, but I find that a difficult instrument to play and sing at the same time. Plus my bass has big intonation problems. Patience, I guess... wait for the ad to work.

If anybody knows any bass players, you let me know. :-)

Praise and Worship Night

I am trying to start a Praise and Worship "house band" for my church. I love this kind of music - a sort of fusion of gospel and Pop music. And music is already such a spiritual thing in my opinion that spirituality is a natural focus for it. That has something to do, I think, with why so many of the great composers of the Baroque and Renaissance period wrote some strictly religious works.

I used to play in a lot of bars, and it was satisfying making people happy listening to rhythm and blues. But that isn't enough for me anymore. If I am going to move people with music, I'd prefer to do it right in the soul...

Best headline on the Cheney accident

We can laugh about it fortunately, given the lucky outcome. During hunting season, when I was a boy, I never went down to the water - even though I had a red hunting jacket and rode a red ATV. With that many hunters on the lake, you never know what can happen!

This headline appeared in Canada's most conservative paper, oddly enough.

Cheney steps up war on lawyers

Hmmm - never noticed that before!

You know if somebody shot me, I'd like to think I'd be clued in to it. On the other hand, there's something to say for having a constitution as hardy as this woman's!

winnipegsun.com - Canada News - Bullet found in woman's chest

You know you've been blogging a long time...

...when you research something and stumble across something you wrote in the search results. :-)

I think my blog has gotten dumber over the years. I used to write actually interesting stuff.

Israel's other indigenous people

Israel and its capital Samaria were sacked a century and a half before Judah fell, but the people of ancient Israel persisted on - some by moving to Judah, others by preserving their culture in captivity, much as the people of Judah would a few centuries on.

This displaced population would come to be known as Samarians or Samaritans. Readers of the New Testament will know them as the people of the woman at the well in the Gospel of John.

Just six hundred of these people survive today. But you can find out all about them at this website:

The Samaritans

The T-Rex that looked like a turkey

globeandmail.com : T. rex ancestor was smaller with a crown

Up On Cripple Creek

A friend bought me a copy of "The Last Waltz" last weekend. And so I've been yodling the end of "Up On Cripple Creek" at home every night.

Why?

Because the other night, I heard my daughter yodling it in the other room. It was cute enough that I've mischievously kept that song planted in her head. The first night, it took a couple of hours for her to realize what I'd done. :-)

The separation of mosque and state

Some of the cartoon anger being lobbed the way of European countries stems from a radically different concept of the state. Take for instance Iran, which has actually cut all ties with Denmark. The angry argument is made that Denmark itself should apologize. But the question that this begs is, for what? Denmark itself has not done anything. One of its newspapers, the Jyllands-Posten did. The state of Denmark neither had any advance knowledge of this, nor any state control over what images can be published or not.

In the Islamic world, it is as though this simply cannot be comprehended. While not all Muslims states weld the religion of Islam completely to the engines of state, the idea that religion is separate from state is alien. Almost all muslim-majority countries have not only anti-blasphemy laws, but even anti-apostasy laws. Countries with large religious minorities, like Egypt, with millions of Copts, do not protect these minorities from religious harassment. It is perfectly legitimate for the state to legally enshrine Islam as the superior religion.

It is surprising however, that the muslim world appears incapable of understand our own reluctance to do so. The west has a tradition of tolerating the most uncouth of anti-religious diatribe. And while religious individuals may use their collective people power to shut down the influence of those who offend the religious (witness how the show 'Daniel' got shut down in the United States), it is inconceivable to imagine the United States or Canada cutting off diplomatic ties over a cartoon version of Moses, Vishnu, or Jesus.

Countries are not a religious collective, in our hemisphere. We are jurisdictions of people who have agreed on common judicial and governmental infrastructures, and people and businesses are left to do what they will, within the law. That does not mean all a government does is approved by the people. Nor does it mean that all the people do is somehow the work of the government. The buck stops with whoever dropped it.

In the case of the Jyllands-Posten cartoons, the buck should always have stopped with that newspaper, and the papers who reprinted it. It is unconcscionable that anyone would cut ties with France or Denmark, because of the actions of newspapers within those countries.

Cartoons

I have to admit, I don't get this one - the Danish cartoons. Now I know these cartoons were offensive - clearly. But how is the Muslim world supposed to convince us of the peacable nature of Islam when crowds burn down embassies?

I remember a cartoon in the paper I objected to once. I wrote a letter to the editor. The end.

Why should that not be enough in this instance? Even if these crowds are right, and the cartoons represent a serious blasphemy, hypothetically, shouldn't God be powerful enough to deal with smiting whatever cartoonists deserve it on judgement day, should it come to that?

TheStar.com - Harper debuts his team

When billionaire former Magna CEO Belinda Stronach crossed the floor and became a member of the Canadian Liberal government last year, the Canadian Press, particularly the odious Ottawa Sun, jumped up and down and screamed "treason!"

When the Conservatives announced their cabinet today, they revealed that they had talked a former member of the Liberal cabinet across the aisle, and made him a minister in the new government.

TheStar.com - Harper debuts his team

I have my doubts they will apply quite the same standards this time.

A girl I met when I was young

It was a cold late afternoon in early November. Outside, the light had nearly faded away.

I had been friends with this girl, K, for a long time - we were part of a large circle of friends who all worked in the same chain of delicatessen restaurants. Most of us were around the same age, because in this day and age - the Mulroney years - young Canadians did not get out of school, and then get into a job related to what they studied in school. They spent a few years in a restaurant, driving taxis, or shipping and receiving first. At any rate, I digress.

Our gang partied a lot. Going to Hull to dance until the early morning was nearly mandatory on Saturday nights. We would dance, complain about our bosses (unless they were with us), do silly things, and then go home. It was innocent - and the more sober among us always made sure everyone got home safe. This was not always easy, as getting a cab home from Hull was nearly impossible. You were competing with 10,000 other kids to hail one. Sometimes we’d go right over to Blue Line taxi’s headquarters and wait right outside the dispatcher’s office for a taxi to become available.

But most nights, we went for Shawarma after the bars closed, and then walked back to Ottawa over the bridge as the glow of the impending sunrise began to cast colour on the water. There had been one such morning when K and I had staggered back over the bridge, laughing and singing, and she broke her toe.

At work the next day, she was told by her boss she couldn’t wear sneakers - we were all required to wear black dress shoes. Because stuffing her toe into her dress shoes would have been excruciating, she made the boss feel stupid as she proceeded to take a black magic marker, and colour her shoes black.

At any rate, back to my night in November. A friend of both of ours, B, had been planning a birthday bash for me at the Talisman (a music venue in Ottawa, not Hull, for a change.) She called me up to tell me about who was going to be there.

“K’s coming,” She said. “She’s bringing a french guy I set her up with. He’s an interesting guy. I think he’s a scuba diver.”

“I am glad she’s coming,” I gulped. “It... wouldn’t seem right if she weren’t there.”

My heart sunk - K was the compassionate one in our group. She was the one who was always interested when you told your story. She was the one who was the most animated when talking to you. She paid attention to you, like you were the only person who mattered. And when she spoke to you about other people, she told their stories as if she was on their side, empathizing with their position.

I had grown to feel more than friendship for K. A year earlier, she had begun a relationship with our boss (he was not been our boss at the time.) She had broken off a long term engagement to be with this guy, and two months after doing so, he ditched her, rather cruelly.

She had put on a brave face for everyone; but unlike most of our friends, I knew that was all that it was. It was as if I could feel her heart - she was consumed by grief, and it was darkening a place inside her that I knew deserved to be sunny. So to cheer her up, I wrote her a song, and recorded it. And then in the silence of my own heart, I fell in love with her. But I kept that to myself. I was not going to take advantage of a heartbroken woman. She was my friend, liked to hang out with me, and I decided that was going to be enough for me.

So again, I take you back to the November night - the story I am purposely stalling.. She was at work, too. So I called K up at her store, and said to her, “Listen, can you come over here after you’re done closing? There is something I have to tell you.”

“Sure,”She said. Her voice told me she knew something was wrong, but she wasn’t pressing me on it. “I’m almost done, and I’ll be right over.”

When she came, she was wearing her dark coat, and had a black and grey striped scarf, and was wearing her red rimmed glasses. I remember every visual detail of it. I sat her down at one of the laminated wooden tables, and I told her.

“B told me that she set you up with some guy, for my birthday party. I don’t think I can go.”

“To your own birthday party?”

“I can’t go, because I don’t want you to go with this guy. I can’t see you there with him.”

And then I told her about everything I had come to feel, the secret I had harboured these months. I made myself as vulnerable as I ever have, and I told her everything that was important to me, and why I felt the way I did.

A week later, I kissed her, while we danced to Elton John’s “Someone Saved My Life Tonight.” She had..

The melancholy I lived in since before I was a teenager was just gone. I was finally happy without reservation, as Elton sang, “Butterflies are free to fly, fly away, high away, bye bye.” I have never gotten over the fact that someone so beautiful, inside and out, could love me - me! Not a false me, a puffed out rooster designed to be attractive to women, but the actual me! It still astonishes me.

But then, that is not hard. I look into her eyes every day, and still see that girl who always takes the side of everyone she knows. What - you thought my story would end with that date from two decades ago?

Heck no. You think I let her get away? Not a chance!

I married her.

Maybe the weather made me feel this way

Why does everyone feel oppressed?

I asked myself this the other day, when I read a yahoo question asking why people were angry so much of the time. My question, I think, is the key to understanding that anger. A lot of people are upset, distressed, angry, or despondent because they feel oppressed. What is the source of this oppression?

In some cases, it is because the individual is being personally harassed by other people. Sometimes it is the oppression of an identifiable or demographic group, not necessarily one to which my hypothetical individual even belongs. And sometimes the most oppressive circumstance is the one that doesn't involve any oppressor at all. The impersonal nature of bad fortune sometimes makes it the cruelest oppressor, for this oppressor cannot suffer our wrath in any way. The ill winds of misfortune are not even disdainful of our suffering: they are utterly ignorant of it.

In the book of Job, great misery is visited on the protagonist. God himself does not bring this misfortune, it is important to note. Within minutes, Job learns that he has lost all his possessions, and all his family. Later, he falls ill, but says, “We accept good things from God; and should we not accept evil?”

But Job does not understand why he has suffered – he is told by his friends that he must have done something wrong, but he can find no explanation in that. He searches through his memories, and cannot find an instance where he “allowed the eyes of the widow to languish while I ate my portion alone,” or “rejoiced at the destruction of my enemy or exulted when evil fell upon him.”

Why then, why? “Of all my steps I should give him an account,” Job says, wishing that his accuser would “write out his indictment.”

What did we do to deserve it? Sometimes nothing, nothing at all. Then why?

The problem of theodicy is that there really is no easy answer; our sufferings are not always a calling to account. “Who is this that obscures divine plans with words of ignorance?” God asks in Chapter 38. “Where were you when I founded the Earth? Tell me if you have understanding” pretty much sums up his response. The scope of all things is too great to grasp. Our misfortune is not always oppression, and it certainly is not divine oppression!

The Beatitudes in the gospel of Luke are almost karmic. Where Solomon says there is “A time to mourn, and a time to dance,” the Luke beatitudes rather promise, “Blessed are you who are now weeping, for you will laugh.”

Right there is the simple solution, the RX remedy for oppression. Believe that things are made right. A dark day is always a prelude to a sunny day, just as spring always follows the winter. Our days are already advancing – the sun lasts a little longer each day.

Take heart. God will set it all right. And faith, hope, and love are how we may help him do so.

"My dear sweet angel"

You are never prepared for this phone call.

“Sir, this is Janice, from the school. Is your daughter at home today?”

“Morning,” I whisper in to wake her. Normally I'm a bit mean mean in the mornings, sometimes even singing Reveille as though it were boot camp. But not today – something in me prods me to be gentle.

“No...,” I answer carefully. “No, she left this morning.”

“Well, she was marked as absent, let me check with her class,” and the woman puts the phone on hold.

I look in the cupboard, and reach for the bread. Normally I cook her sausage strips for breakfast, but we don't have those right now. She waits patiently.

Terror is rapidly spreading through me – not at school! Then where? I quickly log in to MSN Messenger for a moment, where she would be if she had come home. She is not there. Terror isn't spreading now – I am terror, a breathing, heaving body of fear, reaching critical mass.

“Oh please, God... help me!” I pray silently – no psalms or rote prayers right now, I am begging - “Please.... protect my dear sweet angel!”

“I'm going. Bye Dad,” She says. I turn slightly, and smile, then glance at the clock – it is 7:04. “Bye!,” I answer.

After five minutes of terror, Janice from the school returns to the phone. “She's there,” she says, “But I didn't get to talk to her. She was marked as absent, I'm not sure why.” Terror becomes ecstasy.

“Oh thank you, thank you! You've made my day!” I answer.

I have a lot to be thankful for. And a lot to be thankful for. And a lot more to be thankful for. And now in a special way I can appreciate in a small way the empathy I need to show for those who get a phone call like this one, since this false alarm is only the barest hint of that one worst nightmare every parent nurses a dread of. Just this hint tells me how none of us can ever really know.

I pop open the My Documents folder on the computer. In there are dozens of wacky pictures, poems, and stories that she has composed. My eyes glance at one of them – a bitmap image titled, “A moose that is cool unlike my other.bmp” and I laugh. The sunny bright sparkles of a clear morning always blind me when they lance off the waters of the river of life.