John’s Opportunity for You

I was listening to car horns honking yesterday.  There were a whole lot of them, and I figured that meant that there was a wedding going on, and sure enough, I watched out the window and caught a glimpse of a car covered with pompoms driving down the hill and honking merrily as it went.

That’s not a custom I’m used to hearing in December, probably because I tend to think that it’s just too cold to have much fun getting married with snow on the ground.  Yet I have family members who did just that, and I bet that their horns honked merrily too.

Can you imagine if your life right now amidst all the bustle and hustle of Christmas preparations would have you so filled with joy that you just had to honk your horn?  Imagine driving all the way back from Edmonton or Westlock or Fort MacMurray honking as you went to celebrate getting that last Christmas present or jumping into your car to drive around the block to let your neighbors know that the Christmas Cake was done, or the tree was trimmed.  No?

All too often we live timid lives that are afraid to let go, bust loose, shake a bell, bang on a pot or pan.  And I can’t say that John’s speech to his people is one that I would feel happy to hear.  I can just imagine the complaint if I stood here, shook my finger and called you a bunch of dirty rattlesnakes. Somehow, I can’t imagine it going down well.  Good thing it’s not my style!

John pulled no punches and yet his teaching was described as ‘good news’.  Go figure!  I think it was because he recognized that everyone had a feeling that something was not quite right with their lives.  That they were living with secret shames or guilts or burdens that weighed them down.  They knew that they were not living honest healthy lives, they had difficult relationships with others, and that they were caught up in the fear that they would go hungry if they didn’t hoard what they could at every opportunity.

John told them that there was no need to fear.  There was only the need to reconnect with God.  The sense of shame or brokenness was what they saw as sin, a word we find challenging in today’s society of positive thinking.  Yet hear what our Song of Faith says around sin:

Made in the image of God,

we yearn for the fulfillment that is life in God.

Yet we choose to turn away from God.

We surrender ourselves to sin,

    a disposition revealed in selfishness, cowardice, or apathy.

Becoming bound and complacent

    in a web of false desires and wrong choices,

    we bring harm to ourselves and others.

This brokenness in human life and community

    is an outcome of sin.

 

Yet evil does not—cannot—

    undermine or overcome the love of God.

We are all imperfect humans.  The good news as John saw it, was that there was an opportunity for us all to reconnect with God, to let go of our guilt and shame, and come into a dance with our creator.  The good news is that John saw it as an easy situation to remedy, and something that everyone could do.  Everyone, not just the religious people who know all the right answers and have memorized a bible verse for every occasion, or the people who are always doing great things for the world, like Mother Theresa or Ghandi.  The average people.  The people that no one expected.  The greedy misers who were accumulating stuff.  The hated collaborators who were seen as despicable traitors to their own people, and even the soldiers who were not part of the community, but part of the system that was oppressing people in daily annoyances and bullying.  The outsiders, the poor, the ones who had given up hope that they could ever measure up. 

The solution was simple:  Share what extra you have, even when it may seem insignificant.  Even if you only have two coats, that is something to rejoice about, and something you can be generous with.  Share that you need extra if you don’t have any coat at all.  If you don’t tell someone you need a coat, how will they know who to share that coat with?  Sharing who you are, what you need and what you have extra of.  Simple.  Don’t share if you don’t have abundance.  The person with one coat is not told to give it away.

Care.  Care about what your neighbor is going through.  Listen to their challenges, and don’t shame them for not having the ‘right’ faith or the ‘right’ solution to their problems.  Give them a prayer shawl, perhaps, or at least pray for them, but shovel their walks and bring them soup if that’s a need.  Be the shoulder they can cry on without judgement or advice.

Last but not least, be fair.  Don’t cheat your neighbor, your friend, or your community.  This seems easy at first but what about those of us who cheat on our income tax, for example, or the speed limit?  Maybe we aren’t all employees at Money Mart, but it could very well be that some of those extra rolls of tape follow us home from the office on a regular basis.  Or if someone undercharges us for groceries, we pocket the extra and sneer at the person who miscalculated.

Rejoice and be glad, for it is a very simple thing to let go of our shame and recognize God loves us even with our flaws.  That is certainly news worth honking our horns for!

How to Pet A Porcupine

Phillipians 1: 3-11 I thank my God every time I remember you, constantly praying with joy in every one of my prayers for all of you, because of your sharing in the gospel from the first day until now. I am confident of this, that the one who began a good work among you will bring it to completion by the day of Jesus Christ.

It is right for me to think this way about all of you, because you hold me in your heart, for all of you share in God's grace with me, both in my imprisonment and in the defense and confirmation of the gospel. For God is my witness, how I long for all of you with the compassion of Christ Jesus.

And this is my prayer, that your love may overflow more and more with knowledge and full insight to help you to determine what is best, so that in the day of Christ you may be pure and blameless, having produced the harvest of righteousness that comes through Jesus Christ for the glory and praise of God.

One of my friends posted a video on Facebook the other day that I found just fascinating.  It was a woman petting a porcupine.  A real live porcupine, the prickly kind that we usually see as road kill in the spring and that if we do happen to meet up with them on a hike, we will back away from slowly and carefully.  The kind of animal that if your dog ever met, you would end up taking a trip to the vet to get a muzzle full of quills removed from your poor pooch.

I thought about porcupines being all prickly, and how they are a good animal to reflect on for Peace Sunday.  Truth be told, I bet on any one given day, people will meet up with someone who will make them feel like they’ve been hit with a facefull of quills.  A neighbor, a friend, a co-worker, who throws out barbed comments, or takes a swack at you emotionally, or takes the simplest comment and see it as an attack.  They are prickly.  And we wish we could avoid them or de-barb them or do something, anything, to keep them from hurting us.

Such is the stuff of warfare.  Whenever we take another human being and assume that we know they are less than us, less friendly, less righteous, less blameless or pure than us, whenever we label them as a porcupine or a terrorist or a, well, you fill in the blank, somehow that dehumanizes them enough that it is okay to discriminate against them.  “He’s a bully, she’s a communist, that’s a porcupine” and we use the label to determine how we will treat them.  Take the Syrians in France and Lebanon and Greece and Turkey.  Are they refugees or are they terrorists?  The political pundits are busy trying to convince us to label human beings that will help determine our policies, our politics and our personal reactions to the newcomers who will be coming to Athabasca.

I know what it’s like to be labelled.  In 1981, I went to the University of Alberta to learn how to become an engineer.  While I was there, people would react in several different ways to my course of study.  Sometimes they would assume that I was a butch tomboy, someone that Robin Williams in “Good Morning Vietnam” referred to as ‘women in comfortable shoes’.  Sometimes they would assume that I was just looking for my ‘MRS’ degree, only there to catch a husband.  But generally when people found out that I was in that faculty, they talked to me like I actually had intelligence, and really saw me for a human being and not just a cute young female.  Although people scoff that I had experienced such labelling, it was only eight years later that a man walked into a Canadian school for engineers, separated the men from the women, and executed 14 women for their audacity.  The label he applied to all the women he found was ‘feminist’, and he used that label to scapegoat and kill them.

The latest shooting in the states is only one of many.  According to one newspaper, there have been over 12 thousand deaths in 2015 in the US to date due to gun violence, 309 were from mass shootings like the one this week. 2 ½%.  In 2012, the most recent report on gun violence, Stats Can reported that our rate of gun murders was 7 times lower than that of Americans and had been steadily dropping over all since 1972. 

When we label others, it gives us permission to think that they are less than human.  Oh, those violent Americans who can’t control their guns.  Oh those terrorists or those mentally ill people or whatever label we use.  Those who we don’t like, those bullies, those immigrants, those other people that look or sound or smell different than us. Oh those porcupines

This is not the way to peace.  Labels and blaming don’t work.  Martin Luther King, Jr., a champion for Christian non-violence, wrote,

The ultimate weakness of violence is that it is a descending spiral, begetting the very thing it seeks to destroy.

Instead of diminishing evil, it multiplies it. Through violence you may murder the liar, but you cannot murder the lie, nor establish the truth. Through violence you may murder the hater, but you do not murder hate. In fact, violence merely increases hate. So it goes. Returning violence for violence multiplies violence, adding deeper darkness to a night already devoid of stars. Darkness cannot drive out darkness: only light can do that. Hate cannot drive out hate: only love can do that.

Paul met the Philippians with love.  He remembered them with love.  He encouraged them with love, and he hoped they would do the same with the people they met.  They were different than him, but that didn’t stop him sharing the good news that there is an alternative to the cycle of violence.  “It is right for me to think of you in this way, because you reflect back the love to me.” If you get a chance to see the video of someone petting the porcupine, you will see that they do it with love.  Protection, so they won’t get the point the hard way, but love.  Even porcupines can respond to love.  The reality is that we all have moments when we are anything but pure and blameless, without offence.  We are all porcupines.

I’ll never forget the day that a young man said to me, “did you know that once a month, we have a fight and it coincides with your hormonal cycle?” I instantly transformed into a vicious porcupine, spewing angry denials. It takes a lot of patience and honesty to learn to function without spewing blame as fast as porcupines spread quills when feeling scared or angry.  And interestingly, the word Paul uses for ‘blameless’ can be translated as ‘without bumps’.  Without quills, perhaps.  And what if we rethought blameless to not be the picture of innocence and perfection but instead thought of it as someone who chooses not to blame others.  How do you pet a porcupine? By treating them with love, by being trustworthy and patient, and by being well-protected with thick leather clothing just in case.  When we do that, porcupines tend to react to being petted like this:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=U5I5H7EeC8k

 

Don’t take their barbs personally, remember that some porcupines need professional handling, and be honest with yourself when you are feeling prickly to remember that none of us will be perfect, at least not until the Day of Christ comes and will make all blameless.  Thanks be to God that the Day of Christ will be a day of great love, and that Christ will love us regardless of how much like a porcupine we might be.  Then we too will dance like a happy, petted and loved porcupine!

Hope? What is that?

"Now when these things begin to take place, stand up and raise your heads, because your redemption is drawing near." Luke 21:28

Rather odd words for the start of our Christian new year.  Disaster, the second coming of Christ, signs and portents in the sky, doomsday is coming.  Hardly the way to get things going unless you want to start things off with a bang.  People are fainting with fear and foreboding, according to one translation, which does not sound like a comforting thought. And this is how we start looking for a baby in a manger who has been given as a present to us as hope for the future of all the world? Yikes!  I’d rather go watch the Eskimos!

This doomsday scenario is a reminder to us all that terrible times do happen to everyone, and that finding hope in the middle of such dreadful situations is hard. And what is hope anyway?

I think that in some people’s minds hope stands for happy optimistic positive energy, and that if only we think the right thoughts and eat the right foods and live the right lifestyle, we will have a wonderful life untouched by trauma of any kind.  They can be very annoying when you complain of your latest crisis, because they will lecture you that you need positive thoughts, and that if you would change your thinking, all your problems will be solved.  There are others who think that hope is a fool’s game, and that it means hedonistically outrageous primitive emotions, and that there is no such thing as hope for life is a terrible game of winner takes it all, and the looser is an insignificant individual to be stepped on because they did not have the strength of character to risk everything to come out on top.  There is only success, the one thing to which all may be risked and gambled.  No cost is too great, no sacrifice too small to pay for success.  In money we trust, and Heaven help the fool that disbelieves that.  It is a dog eat dog world, survival of the fittest and hope is something that is a waste of time and money.

Others think that hope is having oodles of possessions for eternity.  Christmas is a glimpse of hope for them when they will finally have enough stuff or enough money or enough house or enough car or whatever it is that they think will mean that they have enough for security.  According to a Reader’s Digest article, 70% of lottery winners lose or spend all their money within 5 years, and some even end up bankrupt afterwards.  One lady from England who won a large amount at the age of 16 blew her money on plastic surgery and drugs, became suicidal and ended up living with her parents again working as a maid.  As the Beatles said long ago, “Can’t buy me love.” To which Jesus might say, can’t buy me security, safety and happiness either.

So many different schemes for hope seem to be, well, fluffy and hopeless.  We look at life and ask, “is that all there is?”  We might as well do the ‘eat drink and be merry for tomorrow will be a disaster, and medicate ourselves into numbness.  Many do just that.  As Jesus said, “Be on guard so that your spirits do not get bloated with indulgence and drunkenness and the worries of this life, and that day does not catch you unexpectedly, like a trap. For it will come upon all who live on the face of the whole earth.”

And we think of hope primarily as an emotion that will come and give us an adrenalin boost, which will help us maintain the lie that everything is going to be fine.  Sometimes the reality is that life is really tough, and it’s hard to stay happy and positive.  But hope is not a feeling.  I think it’s a commitment to action.  Big ideas.  Big goals, big dreams.  It can be taught and it can be contagious.

Winston Churchill made a speech to the British people on the brink of war that inspired them with contagious hope.  He finished it by saying, “If at last the story is to end, it were better it should end, not through surrender, but only when we are rolling senseless on the ground.”

He didn’t talk of victory in that speech, but he did remind them of their story, the importance of their way of life, and the need to protect it at all cost.

We Christians have a long story too.  I remember reading somewhere that the first refugee camp was started by Augustine of Hippo.  Rome had been sacked three times by Visigoths who took slaves and gold from the city and destroyed what they wanted.  The church of St. Peter and Paul became a sanctuary for many people, and was respected by the invaders.  The Romans turned away from Christianity, accusing the Christians of corrupting the Empire with their faith, and called on fellow citizens to repent and follow the old Gods, Jupiter, Mars, Juno and Minerva.  Christians left Rome in droves and fled to Hippo in Africa where Augustine took them in and began writing his massive book, the City of God, as a way of finding hope for Christian people.

Even in our times, we can find signs of hope when people turn misfortunes into the courage to make a difference for many.  I was struck with the interview this week on CBC with the Kurdi family, some of whom will be coming to Canada soon.  They are doing their best to rebuild after their losses. Abdullah, the father who lost his family, talked about building a school and hospital in their memory.  We, by allowing them in, are choosing to give them something to hope for, a safer life.

In some ways Hope is like feeding 250 people spaghetti like we did on Friday.  It’s messy, and it takes time, energy and co-operation.  It can be taught, and it can be nourishing.  It focuses on the people it is serving.  It needs many people with many different gifts working as they can however they can. It remembers to feed its own people and flourishes with encouragement. In the end, Hope is a commitment to a story that will make the world a better place. Hope sees that Jesus may be just around the corner in ways we don’t expect.

 Hope is the action of “standing up and raising our heads” as Jesus taught, and as Paul and Augustine did.  Hope is providing love to all humans as Paul hoped we would, practising radical hospitality.  And Hope is an action, maybe it can be “Hear and Obey the Priority of Equality.”

A Rant about Christians

There’s a song that was on the radio last week and it has some lyrics that go “shot through the heart and you’re to blame, you give love a bad name.”  That got me to thinking about all the media we have been inundated with about Paris and those terrible Syrian refugees that the government has been threatening to inundate us with.  And some of the rhetoric in the States has been truly horrific.  Some people, claiming to be Christian, have said that we should only allow Christian Syrians into North America, others have said that every Syrian is dangerous and a terrorist.  Wow.  They conveniently forget that the Paris terrorists only had one Syrian passport in the bunch found in the raid, and that Syrians are getting robbed for their passports and Isis doesn’t like Syrians leaving in the first place as it wants to act like a country and have people make more babies for its caliphate.  No, refugees like the little three year old who drowned, were running away from terrorists, not trying to be terrorists.  Alayn Kurdi, that sad little boy, had no home left.  If you see photos of his home town, there are many houses without roofs and the streets are rubble.  Sad how one day we are clamoring to our government to let his people come to Canada, and the next we are clamoring to keep them out.  But it’s bigger than that.  I am tired of American Christians who talk about judging and criticising all kinds of people, the negativity that they express and especially the close-mindedness they depict to the public.  Build walls around Mexico, criticise anyone who doesn’t look like us, talk like us or believe like us.  Enough already.  Jesus said that our first commandment is to Love God.  And the second commandment is to love our neighbor as ourselves.  The second commandment is not to judge our neighbor or criticise our neighbor or convert our neighbor or tell them that they are full of the devil or are not good enough to get into heaven or any of that.  No!  Jesus said love your neighbor.  Your neighbor next door who maybe plays the radio or tv too loud first thing in the morning or last thing at night, who cheats at cards or takes the last cookie at supper.  Your neighbor who pops her knuckles loudly at the dinner table or thinks it’s funny to play tricks on people or fiddle with their dentures or gossips behind our backs.  You see, I don’t think being a Christian is easy, Jesus never said it would be.  And being a Christian isn’t about being nice either, and letting people walk all over you.  Sometimes we have to speak up and say that God doesn’t want three year olds drowning in the sea because their houses are destroyed.  But being Christian is seeing beyond black and white situations, “I’m good and my neighbor is bad” or even black white yellow and red like the old hymn we used to sing about Jesus loving all the children of the world.  But instead Jesus calls us to be loving towards our neighbors, especially when we are afraid of them.  Our Christian beliefs must be shaped by the remembrance that Jesus lived and died in the Middle East, and was living in a country full of violence and on the verge of civil war.  Even then, he called his people to love, and we are still called to love.  That should be the hallmark of who we are as followers of Christ.  Love of God, love of neighbor.  It's time to remember to sing "They'll know we are Christians by our Love" and then to go do it.  Love God, Love your neighbor, love yourself.  The rest is commentary.  May it be so for us all.

Skating on Thin Ice

Mark 13:5 Jesus began to say to them, "Beware that no one leads you astray."

 

I’ve been thinking a lot about hockey recently, and now that the Oilers have won a few games it reminds me of the days of Messier, Gretzky, and the rest.  The glory days when the Oilers were unstoppable.  Did you know that Gretzky retired at the age of 38 after 20 years as a pro?  Did you know that the average NHL hockey player is 28 years old?  Over half of NHL players play less than 100 games, and 5% only ever play one game.  There are about 5600 players in the NHL, and most of them play for 5 years.  So a kid who turns pro at 18 will likely be out of a job by the time they are 23.  And the chance of a kid in Athabasca bringing home the Stanley Cup is about the same chance as his parent winning the lottery.  It makes me wonder what we are doing to our children.  This came home to me when I heard a sports reporter talking about Connor McDavid’s shoulder injury.  He said “you’ll never see him play with the same abandon and passion again.  It happens every time a new NHL player gets an injury.  He’ll always be looking over his shoulder for the next hit.”

I’m biased, I guess.  One of my classmates in the maritimes had a brain injured son.  He had gone to her covenanting service instead of his hockey game and was kicked off his team because according to his coach, his priorities weren’t right.  Hockey before everything, even God and your mother becoming a minister.  Since he was 16 and a very good player, he quickly found another team.  But he happened to be playing his former team when some NHL scouts were in the stands, and one of his former team mates hit him so hard in the head that he had to learn how to walk and talk again.   I came home horrified by this story, and mentioned it to a friend.  “Oh yes,” she said, “that happened in Alberta, only it was my relative that did the hitting.  The scouts told him that he was not the kind of person they wanted on a pro team and he spent the next few years playing video games in the basement waiting for the phone to ring with his NHL offer.  He was sure they would see him as a potential Dave Semenko.  They didn’t.

We treat our young men like war heroes when they win, and failures when they lose.  This starts early. When my son was nine, he was terribly upset when his floor hockey team lost.  He saw himself as the good guy, and the other team had the bully on it.  Surely, he would win against the bully, just like all those Disney shows.  What upset my son the most was not just the bursting of his Disney sports bubble, but the fact that many cheered on the bully who was a good player.  It wasn’t fair, he said.

Life is not fair.  We don’t win the Stanley Cup or the 649.  We hit a moose, we find ourselves addicted to gambling or porn or alcohol or pain meds or gossip or anger.  We see ourselves as the wonderful hero, and don’t understand the bully’s point of view.  We put our trust in political parties or systems or pension plans or insurance policies.  When things go wrong as they so often do, we look for someone to point the finger at.  In short, we are human.

We are fragile, we are temporary and we are sensitive to anything that might be seen as a threat.  Jesus saw the Jewish love of the Temple as a crutch and a danger.  Some thirty years after his death, the Temple was destroyed by Romans, and that was a tremendous shock to every God-fearing Jew, including those self-same disciples and the Hebrew followers of Jesus who our letter was written to.  It was such a shock that Jews today still go to the only part of the Temple that is standing, something we know as the Wailing Wall.  What are we to depend on if the Temple itself is destroyed?

The Author of Hebrews wrote to the people to have confidence in Jesus and each other.  To continue to come together and remember Jesus who could have chosen violence to destroy the Roman Empire, and war over peace, but chose water, wine and bread as symbols of a new way of facing down bullies and terrorists.  Jesus knew he was living in a corrupt society which did not value every human as worthy of dignity and respect.  Jesus knew he could be executed on the flimsiest charges at the whim of a bored Roman diplomat.  Indeed, he had no rights under the Roman Empire. Unlike Paul, who was a Roman Citizen by birth so could appeal to Caesar for justice, Jesus had no lawyers, no law for that matter that would give him justice.  Jesus only had his stories, his wit, his tremendous faith in God, and his commitment to not choose violence to end oppression and fear.  And yet, when you think about it, Jesus and his followers were able to undermine and survive the collapse of not one but two systems of oppression; the overuse of ritual which had forgotten what its purpose was, to remind people of God’s presence in the everyday activities of their lives, and the Roman Empire which dictated that the strongest man had all the rights and the powers, and weaker men could only have what they could defend.  There is no emperor in Rome today, after all, although other empires have risen and fallen since then. 

Still, more and more we hear of peace being a hallmark of healthy societies.  When was the last time we heard of the Tamil Tigers, or the last USSR communist threat, or IRA bombing?  And 1.6 billion folks are Muslim, and much less than 10,000 are at war.  If the CIA claims that Isis has at max 30,000 fighters; that leaves us with 99.81% of Muslims who want to live in peace.  Isis is a psychopathic bully that wants to scare us into playing a game of violence that will only cause more bloodshed.  And like any bully, we can either choose to become a bigger bully or find some other way to deal with the issues at hand.  Jesus chose not to be a part of the system of bullying priests in the temple who felt justified in accepting a widow’s last coins.  Jesus chose to live a life contrary to that kind of systemic violence. 

 Jesus wasn’t just condemning the temple, or predicting doomsday.  He was pointing to the human tendency to crave security, to protect oneself, to look at things as that which will keep us safe from danger.  And whether he was speaking to his disciples or speaking to us modern disciples, the message is the same.  What we put our hopes on to protect us from life will not work.  Only our faith will help us. 

Stop thinking that life is some giant hockey game with bad guys and good guys.  God is not some goalie in the sky who will protect the team from losing, or that God is the referee who will force everyone to follow the rules and send people to the penalty box, or even that God is the coach who will come up with the training schedule and the game plan and the motivational speeches.  No, life is a great skating party and God is the ice under our feet, that supports us as we play, that helps us glide and spin, that is firm when we feel like we are on thin ice, and is always there whether we fall or fight.  God is found in the hot chocolate that warms us from the inside and in the community that builds a bonfire for roasting marshmallows despite the cold and frosty weather. Let us pray for courage to choose the road to peace, the courageous choice that Jesus made even though it cost his life.  The choice he made out of love for us all.

Worrywarts unite!

When I hear today’s scripture, I don’t know if I’m the best person to preach on this or the worst!  I am a first class worrywart of the strongest kind.  This was a part of me even before I became a mom, a job that is almost inherently worry-filled.  When Tim and I were travelling on our honeymoon, I worried if we would have a roof over our heads in the next town or if we would run out of money, or whether we would have jobs when we got back to Alberta and so on.  You name it, I would worry about it.  Once I had little ones, I read as much as I could on how to be the perfect parent.  You know you are a world-class worrying mom when you obsess about peer pressure and drug habits in high schools when your child is still in diapers! It’s a wonder my kids turned out as well as they did.  Thank goodness their dad was more relaxed.

This scripture, our Thanksgiving reading of Matthew, "be like the birds of the air or the flowers" was one I had a hard time with.  Did Jesus want us all to become flower children of the sixties, going around and telling everyone to chill out, or as someone said to me the other day, ‘chillax’?  Go with the flow man, everything is far out, dude.  Well, I was not a teen ager in the sixties, I was more like Michael J. Fox’s character Alex Keaton in Family Ties, who carried a briefcase and was very different than his hippie parents. But I would have been very sceptical of anyone telling me, the way Jesus seems to be, that worrying is not the way to live life.  Try telling that to Syrian refugees or protestors in Turkey or people with disabilities trying to make it on a small pension.  But it is one thing to plan for the future and another thing to obsess about it.

Neuroscientists would side Jesus.  Worrying has a negative impact on brain chemistry, especially obsessive fretting about things we can’t control.  Trying to be thankful can actually help promote healthier brains than worrying will.  And so many times in my life, the stuff I spent hours fussing about were in the long run not worth the time and trouble I gave them.  Do the kids remember if I ran out of bandages on our camping trip in 2005? Heck, even I don’t remember if we went camping in 2005.  It has not added to my enjoyment of my life, my family or even my spiritual growth. 

I think I would agree with Jesus that worrying does not improve my spiritual life one little iota!  What it does do is focus my mind on things I cannot control, in the hopes that I can somehow prevent or change them.  Isn’t that a definition of insanity, trying to control those things we can’t control?  Worrying also says to me that I do not and cannot trust myself to deal with reality.  The future will always be terrifying and I will fall to pieces when that terrible future finally arrives.

So when I worry, I am focussing on fear and control.  Jesus says that I cannot do that, I cannot have two masters.  I can have God as my focus, or I can have the future as my focus, but I can’t have both.  My worry is actually a barrier between myself and God.  Being a worrywart is incompatible with being a pilgrim follower of Jesus. 

Now, I dare say Jesus would not want us to throw our lot with people who don’t think about the future at all.  There is certainly the story of Jesus telling his disciples to get him a donkey to ride into Jerusalem that sounds like he had arranged it ahead of time and gave them the password to use if the owners had any questions.  And he did prepare his disciples for the fact that he would be executed as a traitor to the state before they ever arrived in Jerusalem.  As one mentor of mine said, “Trust in God but tie up your camel”. 

Even so, we can say to ourselves that we are not going to let this habit of worrying spoil our lives.  It is a habit that can be transformed in simple ways.  One powerful tool is to recite the Serenity Prayer to ourselves when we are fretting.  Written by one of the most important American theologians as a way to cope with life during the dirty 30’s, his prayer to accept the things that we cannot change, the courage to change the things we can, and the wisdom to know the difference, is a spiritual practise that can help us to be more thankful.  Taking time to discern if the thing we are worrying about is something we can change or not is the first step towards letting go of our anxiety.

Writing things down helps.  When I read my old diaries, I can see how the things I worried about resolved in surprising ways.  Find a prayer practise that helps you get calm, as simple as singing your favorite hymn or walking the labyrinth or some other calming practise.  Give your worries to God.  Say, “God, this is too big for me, please deal with it how you think best.” And join together in community to share stories of thanksgiving, of resiliency, of prayers answered or worries unfounded.  When we join with our brothers and sisters of faith, we can rise above our fears and worries to live in the memory of Jesus.  After all, he faced the worst that humanity can experience without it ending his dream and purpose for a new kind of world where all can practise thanksgiving prayers and kindness to one another.  In the end it’s not about what we can do, it’s remembering to ask God for the gifts of serenity, courage and wisdom. God will give us what we need to get through another day. May it be so for us all.

What’s Prayer Got To Do With It?

What’s Prayer Got To Do With It?

You know, there are a lot of dead souls out there, wandering through life living with obsessions and fears and grudges and resentments and depression.  They do not know how to feel joy, but boy, they are good at keeping a grudge going.  Ask them if they are nice friendly people, they would probably agree they were, but if you let them talk, you may find they are fixated with the horrible person who stabbed them in the back or who is a terrible neighbor or just rubs them the wrong way.

They are in the habit of criticising their neighbors, usually behind the neighbors’ backs, and it is not nice to hear them go after someone.  And yet it is so easy to do.  Just ask me about the last time we replaced the fence between our house and the neighbor’s house, and how we ended up solving our dispute about what kind of paint to use.  I’m no saint, and I can still foam at the mouth at the thought of the ‘latex vs oil’ debate that never did get resolved.

So when I hear the disciples grousing about the guy down the road from them who is casting out demons in Jesus’ name, something that earlier in the chapter, they were not able to do, I can really relate.  Especially in a town with lots of different churches.  It’s so tempting to think that we do church better than ‘them’ whoever ‘them’ might happen to be.  But annoyingly, Jesus doesn’t join their side in the resentment match.  “We’re better than he is,” doesn’t cut any dice with Jesus.  And he launches into a long lecture to remind them to keep their minds on the business at hand.  Don’t forget that you are to be salty, and undistracted from what is important, helping children not to stumble, helping community come together to make a difference in the world.  Be flavorful, zesty, tasty, seasoning for life.  Be the sparkle that makes others around us go, “Wow, I want some of that.”

That’s a big tall order.  How do we be zesty when we’re living the average life with the average challenges from family, neighbors, acquaintances and church community?  How do we be sparkling when we’re in the presence of that annoying so and so who goes out of his or her way to be deliberately annoying and vexatious?

That’s where I think the James reading is important.  What are we to be doing? Calling on Jesus name.  Reminding ourselves to pray.  Prayer?  Yikes!  I don’t know about you, but prayer is one of those things we don’t talk about, right up there with talking about sex, our bank accounts, politics and what kind of computer or phone is best.  Dangerous stuff.

And prayer is so nebulous.  It has a huge ‘ick’ factor for many people, who think about prayer as something a ‘holy roller’ kind of guru does.  I must admit that I never gave prayer much thought when I was growing up.  Wasn’t that something that kids were supposed to do on their knees in their nightshirts right before bed?  What if the floor was cold? What if my knees were bony?  So pretty much as soon as I was old enough to get an understanding that there was something called prayer, I was rejecting it as hard work.  Then there were the gurus that apparently could sit cross-legged in the lotus position chanting ‘om’ for hours at a time.  Boring!  Why do that when there was so much more interesting stuff in the world like root beer floats or ice cream sundaes or even boys?

Then there were the embarrassing people who went on and on about how their prayers fixed their lives and made all their dreams come true.  The people who put ads in the paper, like one I remember reading in the 1980’s, “Thank you God for my Mercedes”, or the athletes who thanked God for their Grey Cup touchdown, and so on.  Really?  God gave you a Mercedes?  Why? 

Couldn’t God give the people on Boyle Street a ham sandwich then?  Wouldn’t 5 thousand ham sandwiches do more good?  So praying for stuff seemed pretty silly or selfish or some combination of that.  And it doesn’t help that James makes it sound like all our problems will be solved if we pray.  Jesus prayed that he might not be crucified, and look at how that turned out.

So how do we look at prayer with modern eyes?  The neuroscientists are doing some interesting work on the power of our thoughts to impact our brain chemistry.  They report “The practise of Gratitude produces the same brain chemical as the antidepressant Wellbutrin, dopamine as well as doing what Prozac does, it boosts the neurotransmitter serotonin.  It’s not finding gratitude that matters most; it’s remembering to look in the first place. One study found that it actually affected neuron density in both the ventromedial and lateral prefrontal cortex.”

They have also found that labelling our negative emotions can lessen their impact.  When participants in a study were asked to name their emotion, the ventrolateral prefrontal cortex activated and reduced the emotional amygdala reactivity. In other words, consciously recognizing the emotions reduced their impact.  “Dear God, I am so angry at such and such” may actually calm us down.

Even the decision to turn something over to God can help our stress levels.  One of the most powerful prayers we can make is to say, “Oh God, this problem is too big for me.”  But James wants us not to pray just for the sake of ourselves but for our own community.  He wrote, “Therefore confess your sins to one another, and pray for one another, so that you may be healed.” And the you he used in Greek was plural.  Pray for each other so that your congregation, your fellowship, your community, your town will be healed. 

What would Athabasca really look like if we all prayed for every single person in it?  A wonderful place where every flavorful, salty person would be at peace with everyone else in one wonderful circle of love and fellowship.  Let us work and pray for that day to come.  Amen. 

Below the Belt

Ever wonder what the first Christian communities were really like?  All love and peace and harmony, right? And especially when Jesus was there, we can easily slip into this vision of a wonderful party, with shades of Jesus Christ Superstar, of a bunch of nice men basking in the glow of Jesus, who like those old paintings I remember from Sunday School, shone even in the middle of the night, he was so holy.

Sweet, wonderful glow in the dark Jesus, going around and healing people, hugging children, and being helpful and forgiving to everyone he met.  Acting like a shepherd, getting his portrait painted with baby lambs in his arms and gazing thoughtfully up into the sky.

Well, if that’s our picture of Jesus and his followers, how do we deal with the scriptures today?  The book of James describes would-be Christians as greedy assassins.  Listen again, “You want something and do not have it; so you commit murder. And you covet something and cannot obtain it; so you engage in disputes and conflicts.”  James was supposed to be the brother of Jesus, and the leader of the people of Jerusalem.  So here we have a vision of a rather drastic Church community that James is trying to lead. 

Mark’s gospel is not much better.  The disciples are so wrapped up in their own fighting that they are ashamed and embarrassed when Jesus asks them what they were talking about.  They don’t want to admit that they don’t understand what he’s teaching.  “I’m the greatest!”  “No, I am!” the argument goes on and on until Jesus challenges them.  Just like two kids yelling at each other in the basement when Mom or Dad asks, “What’s going on down there?”

If we look for advice about being community, being church in a challenging time, Jesus and James have the same message.  Keep your big picture in mind.  Don’t go hitting each other below the belt in unfair fights.  Don’t get greedy or violent or selfish or manipulative.

That’s easier said than done.  It’s much more fun to be the victim, resenting how so and so treated me, or the way that I’m going to treat that jerk who’s been attacking me and deserves to suffer.  Revenge is a dish that’s best served up cold, and get them before they get me, right?

Neither Jesus nor James agree.  They don’t think much of the quarrels, complaints, whining, grumbling and competitive jostling for power and status among God’s followers.  In short, don’t act like some politicians who use fear and attack ads to tear down other people.  Don’t go below the belt, don’t act aggressively.  Don’t grasp after possessions or power.  Be more like children.

I don’t know about you, but children have been on my mind a lot recently.  First it was the photograph of Alan Kurdi drowned on a beach after leaving Syria, then it was the horrific story of Hailey Dunbar-Blanchette in Blairmore.  And just yesterday more Syrian children drowned trying to cross to safety.  So when I hear children in the gospel, that’s what I imagine, a child like Alan or Hailey in the centre of a circle of quarrelsome men.

Put a small child in the middle of a bunch of adults, and watch the little ones play, be curious, ask for rides on shoulders, and have very little in the way of power and authority.  A two year old is not going to run for Prime Minister, for example.  And some of you might remember that children were seen in the ancient world as having no status except as a possession of their fathers’, and in some cultures, as disposable as the fathers saw fit.

Children are vulnerable.  They can’t feed themselves when they are very little, they need someone to cook for them and provide for them.  They have to ask for help to even survive.  They have no power over where they live, or what conditions they live in.  But they do have the ability to ask.  Even a newborn will cry when it’s hungry in a bid to get help.

Here’s where I think James and Jesus both challenge us to ask ourselves what is really important.  What do we want our children to feel: welcomed, accepted, loved, vindicated, forgiven, liberated, and hopeful?  If the disciples had thought about what they had wanted in a different way, maybe instead they could have said, “we’d like have a better future for our children, we’d like to have more fair play and fair employment for ourselves and our neighbors, we’d like to feel that we weren’t alone in the struggles of an unfair government system, and we’d like to live free from oppression and the threat of violence.

To me it sounds like they are both trying to lead us to simplify what our purpose is in our lives.  To not get all caught up in the daily grind until we lose hope and dignity and kindness, but to remember to connect our lives to a higher purpose, a higher dream, a loftier hope.  A dream that never dies but keeps on showing us the way to a life where we can know real peace and belonging, gentleness and all of that with true integrity and trustworthiness in the service of something much bigger than ourselves, that will leave behind a legacy we can be proud of.  We can follow in the footsteps of James and the other quarrelsome disciples who found themselves profoundly transformed into a community that healed and encouraged, practised generosity and transparency for the greater good of all no matter what your age.  For the vision of God’s beautiful, kind and peaceful community lived among us every day. May we too work for such a vision of God’s kingdom among us.

Talking about the Tough Stuff

"If any want to become my followers, let them deny themselves and take up their cross and follow me.  For those who want to save their life will lose it, and those who lose their life for my sake, and for the sake of the gospel, will save it.”

Christianity is not a pilgrim path for the light-hearted or the lazy.  Our lives are on the line, and this is a daily experience.  We humans don’t like to talk about death much, and here in our scriptures, Jesus did just that.  He talked about his life purpose and his death to disciples who were still trying to figure things out.  Jesus challenged them to change their attitudes towards life and towards who he was.  In two of our gospels, Matthew and in Mark, the writers wanted us to know that he had this conversation not in Jerusalem or in Nazareth or even in Samaria.  He had ‘the talk’ in Caesarea Philippi, the district filled with Roman temples and Hebrew rulers like Herod who had compromised their faith in order to fit in with the government of Rome.  I don’t know about you, but talking about being the Messiah, the hero that the people hoped would save them from empires, in the shadow of a roman temple sounds pretty suicidal to me.  I think it would be like driving a Volt to the Syncrude plant in Fort McMurray, or going to downtown Edmonton during rush hour traffic in a John Deer tractor, parking it in the middle of Churchill Square and talk to your buddies about where you are going to plant the corn and the canola next spring.  Yeah, over there by that statue, that gets plenty of sunshine, or it will once we bulldoze the Citadel Theatre.

No wonder Peter called Jesus on it.  Let’s not talk about death!  Let’s not talk about losing the war before we’ve even grabbed our weapons!  For Peter thought it would be about war, most people did think the prophecy would come about with bloodshed and violence.  Being right could only be proved by forcing people at sword-point to realize it.  Might is right, and if God is with us, why, Jesus, why are you talking about defeat?

Going back to Churchill Station, the farmer says, yup, I’ll probably demolish this and that to get the farmland back and then the cops will shoot me.  Nobody wants to hear such a thing.  It sounds like suicide, and perhaps that was what was going on in Peter’s head too.  Jesus being rash, Jesus not having a plan for success, Jesus needs to go off on one of those retreats to teach leaders how to be, well, a better leader.  Nobody wants to follow someone who is already talking about defeat.  About death.

Speaking of death is never easy.  I got an e-mail this week from the Movember fellows who raise money and awareness for prostate and testicular cancer.  This time Movember tackled suicide prevention.  They wrote, “Men are pretty good at talking about sports, work, movies or the latest gadget, but we need to get better at talking about the significant stuff going on in our lives - things like losing a job, the breakdown of a relationship or becoming a father for the first time. These things happen to all of us, and for some, they prove challenging to the point where they have the potential to derail us.”

I was surprised to read this and even more surprised to hear that in Canada, 11 people will die today by their own hand.  That’s more than breast cancer.  Men are more successful than women at suicide, and usually get it right the first time.  Nunavut, if it was a country, would have the second highest suicide rate in the world.  The most dangerous time for men is when they are between 45 and 49 years old, and there is an upswing again at 80.  Children as young as 10 are recorded, too.  Factors that contribute can be unemployment, depression, sexual orientation, living on reserve, family violence, substance abuse or just the challenges of living in a hectic society where no one seems to have time to listen.

Listening is the key.  Being a safe person, a sanctuary for those feelings can make a huge difference to those who are struggling.  And it happens to us all.  We all know someone or of someone who made that terrible choice.  The day that I heard our church treasurer had let depression get the best of him and that his family and children were in shock was a turning point for one congregation.  But it’s not just people struggling with mental illness.  I can remember when I was a young adult away at university wondering what it would feel like and would anyone notice or care.  There didn’t seem to be anything to hope for in my life.  I was a dunce with boys, I was flunking out of school, I was a drain on my parents’ finances, and I didn’t have someone to talk to.  Luckily for me, or God was at work, someone came into my life, listened without putting his agenda on me and said, “have you thought about going back to church?”  What a stupid idea that was! How could some moldy old superstition have anything to do with my life?  But it gave me hope, and it gave me a purpose and it gave me many someones I could really talk to.

Movember wrote, “Tragically, for too many men, the first and only time they talk about how these changes have affected them is in a suicide note. So, we have a simple message - Men, we need to talk, especially when things get tough.”

Jesus knew how to talk about the dark and dangerous things, he talked honestly about his life and the life of his followers.  We who call him “messiah”, are called to also be honest and talk about the tough stuff.  However, we need to remember James’ wise words that our tongues can be dangerous.  Not all of us are able to rein it in and listen calmly without interruption to taboo topics.  Not all of us are called to be teachers or suicide prevention experts.  But we can point the way to people we know are good listeners.  We can say, “so and so is safe,” or “let me drive you to the emergency room”, or “let me go with you to the doctor’s office” and so on.  We can ask, “where do you find hope?” and remember that for hundreds of years, people just like us have pointed to gatherings just like this as a place to find that hope.  Jesus is my hope and my messiah.  Who do you say that he is?

The Syrophoenician mother (Mark 7:24-37)

A Dramatic Monologue

Well, that didn’t go the way I expected! Most things go the way I expect, it’s the nature of the job I’m in, well, my husband and I of course.  I know, most people would be shocked at such a well-known person as myself in this neighborhood.  I can usually be found in the nicer end of town, with the other merchants.  After all, my family has been there as far back as we can remember, selling our dyes around the world.  You’ve seen emperors and kings wearing the purple that only they can afford, woven from thread dyed in our vats.  Our people have sailed around the world for hundreds of years as successful merchants because of the sea shells in our waters.  Everyone has heard of my people, and most folks welcome our traders with open arms!

I wish I could say the same for our neighbors.  Those troublesome Hebrews who think they are the center of the universe.  They have sneered at our Gods, knocked over our altars, and been a quarrelsome bunch ever since they arrived.  They’ve caused nothing but trouble for our greatest heros, too.  You’ve heard of Goliath, right?  So tall and so mighty a warrior that he could end wars and battles just by walking onto the field.  Sure prevented a lot of unnecessary bloodshed in his day.  At least he did, until some pipsqueak had a lucky shot with a slingshot.  And just a kid, if I remember rightly.  And our most famous heroine also helped prevent wars.  Remember, Delilah, right? She used her brains and beauty, and even her hair dresser to stop one of their fiercest warriors in his tracks.  What was his name again? S something, and stories said he had a whole lifetime of bad hair days until she fixed him up.  So if I’ve got height and smarts, I’ve come by it naturally, with such noble ancestors as that!

So when my housemaids were gossiping instead of doing their duties, I eavesdropped before giving my usual scolding.  Turns out it was a good thing.  One of their countrymen was in town for a visit, a Hebrew man and his friends.  The leader of the group was some kind of faith healer, and judging from the gossip of the girls, much more effective than the run of the mill shysters and snake oil salesmen we usually see around here.  We’ve seen our share of the medics, healers, doctors and priests these last eight years.  My husband used to go down to the docks when our trade ships came in, hoping that some Greek-trained doctor might be able to help.  We even turned to the Roman surgeons with their leeches and blood-letting, but those Roman fellows are more handy with a saw than a potion.  We borrowed the Governor’s personal physician, too.  No one helped. They tried, goodness knows, but they all gave up in the end, except the ones who kept promising better results with larger amounts of gold.  We gave up on them long before they gave up on us.  Like my husband says, “Never match wits with a Phoenician.”

The bizarre thing the girls said is that this guy never asked for payment.  Inconceivable! They always want something.  Every last one of them have their hand out for something.  And as my husband says, “you get what you pay for”, especially when it comes to healers.  But this time it felt like a sign.  My husband had told me just this morning that he was tired of throwing good money after bad and we had just better get used to the fact that no one knew how to help our daughter.

I was heartbroken, of course, and went straight to my daughter’s room.  It didn’t help that she was in the throes of another fit.  They seem to be getting stronger the older she gets, and it’s everything we can do to keep her from biting her tongue clean through, or to keep servants around to help take care of her.

So like I said, it felt like a godsend when I heard the girls gossiping, and I had a pretty good idea where I’d find them, in one of the bigger houses in the Hebrew neighborhood.  So I put on my most subdued shawl, they have some crazy notion that women should keep their heads covered, and made my way here.

I’m not sure what I expected, but I didn’t expect the look of hostility I got when I walked into the room.  I’m used to my gold rings and fine clothes bringing me a good deal of respect, especially amongst people like them.  They smelled of fish and sheep, for goodness sake!  It was immediately obvious to me who the leader was, he held himself like a temple priest, with dignity and quiet authority.  I didn’t care, if he could fix my daughter, I didn’t care what they thought of me, or my people, or my gods or my temples or my employment.  The only thing that mattered was my daughter!

I guessed that money would not buy this man’s help, but I could not believe him calling me a dog! Or my people dogs! I said the first thing that came to mind, “Even the dogs get crumbs from the children’s table!”

As soon as I said it, I knew that my big mouth had doomed my daughter.  These Hebrew men don’t like their women to talk to them in public, and with such disrespect, too.  I started to cry in anger and fear and helplessness.  My husband was right.  She was doomed through no fault of her own.  Then he touched my shoulder.  I looked up, and saw him, really saw him for the first time.  This man, this teacher, he looked tired, like the whole world was on his shoulders, like he had to carry a burden far too big for him, like he could see into the future and what he saw there was not pleasant.  Like he was trying to heal everyone in the short time he had left.  I could feel goosebumps at his gaze.

He smiled sadly at me.  For a moment it felt like we were the only people in the room and we had both forgotten to breathe.  “So many children, so many lost, and sick and dying children,” he whispered.  “So many mothers risking their lives and their hearts to find hope for their children.”

He said my daughter is healed because of I dared to challenge him.  I believe him, even though I haven’t gone home yet.  And once I get back, I’m going to see what I can do to help those other children who are lost, sick or abandoned.  My servant girls can help, now that my daughter is going to be okay.  I hope he comes back, or his followers.  It’s not just about me after all.  Sometimes we need to challenge our leaders, and sometimes we need to see a bigger story.  There’s so much to do, and so much to learn.  He can’t do it all himself, and if I can take some of that burden from his shoulders, I will have done a good thing.  It’s the least I can do.

The Pillow Method

Posted 05-02-08 at 11:20 AM by Grafter

I was introduced to this communication tool during an Interpersonal Communications course I attended at my University. The Pillow Method was reportedly developed by a group of Japanese school children and first reported by writer Paul Reps in the book Square Sun, Square Moon published in 1967. Its purpose is to help boost empathy or find merit in another’s position. The name comes from the analogy that a pillow has four sides and a middle, just like all problems. By working though each side of the problem, viewing an issue from each perspective, we should be able to find value in another’s perspective.

I've created a visual to illustrate the method and positions and attached to this blog.. In the center I placed a symbol synonymous with finding direction, a compass rose. In this case I have used the Numbers one through four instead of north, south, east, and west to signify where to begin and which direction to move toward.

Position 1: I’m Right, You’re Wrong. This is the perspective most of us default to when we view an idea or hear a differing point of view. It is the perspective that we believe and have faith in, and requires little effort for us to understand. As a metaphor I have used the yellow circle with the green border to signify “I’m right.” The blue circle with the red border and cross hash symbolizes “You’re wrong.”

Position 2: You’re Right, I’m Wrong. In this position we must play devil’s advocate and begin looking for flaws in our own perspective. It also requires us to find the strengths in the other’s position or view. This is often the most difficult task to accomplish However, the fact that we can understand another’s position does mean we have to approve of it. Position 2 is represented by the same metaphors of Position 1, but are reversed in this case.

Position 3: Both Right, Both Wrong. Once arriving at the third position we should be able to acknowledge the strengths and weaknesses of both perspectives. Each side has merit and flaws. More importantly, we should be able to identify commonalities between our positions. Position 3 is represented on the pillow with two yellow and green circles and two blue and red circles. We now have a broader view than we previously had.

Position 4: The Issue Isn’t as Important as It Seems. In this view we may find that we have made the issue out to be bigger than it truly is. Even in the most severe or traumatic events the effects of the dispute will eventually lesson or fade away. I have used the same yellow and blue circles to signify this position. In this case they surround question marks as if asking “What were we arguing about?”

Position 5: There Is Truth in All Four Perspectives. The process of looking at an issue from these four positions should yield the idea that most disagreements contain both right and wrong elements. Whether or not we have reached agreement, we are able find merit or understating of an opposing position. This is the middle ground. I have used the Japanese script for “Truth” to signify this position and to give appreciation to the young Japanese children who have been credited with The Pillow Method.

Attached Thumbnails

Position 1: I’m Right, You’re Wrong.

Position 2: You’re Right, I’m Wrong.

Position 3: Both Right, Both Wrong.

Position 4: What’s the bigger picture?

Position 5: There Is Truth in All Four Sides