Spiritual Wanderings of alleycat Reeve

If thou be the Son of God

2012-02-09T11:01:00.001-05:00

“If thou bethe Son of God, come down form the cross”

You did notcome down because you did not want to enslave man by a miracle. Because youhungered for a faith based on free will and not on miracles.

You hungeredfor freely given love and not for the servile raptures of the slave before themight that has terrified him once and for all. But here, too, your judgment ofmen was too high, for they are slaves, though rebels by natures.

…you hopedthat, following you, man would remain with God and ask for no miracle. But youdid not know that as soon as man rejected miracle he would at once reject Godas well, for what man seeks is not so much God as miracles.

And since manis unable to carry on without a miracle, he will create new miracles forhimself, miracles of his own, and will worship the miracle of his own creation.

Chpt 5 The Grand Inquisitor, from “The Brothers Karamazov”

by Fyodor Dostoyevski, first published 1880

In fifteenthcentury Spain, Jesus shows up the day after 100 heretics were torched in agreat cleansing by The Grand Inquisitor. In a scene created by Dmitry for hisbrother Aloysha, the ninety year old bishop – the Grand Inquisitor – has Jesusarrested immediately.

In a darkcell, the old priest tells Jesus the way it is with humanity. How Man loveshappiness and security more than the freedoms in God that Jesus offered.

It all comesdown to the three tests of Jesus by Satan. Jesus is able to reject the idea ofmaking bread from stones, of testing God’s protection, and of the offer ofpolitical power. And while Jesus triumphed over the temptations, the Inquisitorpoints out, ordinary humans will choose bread over faith, security over blindtrust, and sheer power over the possibilities of love every time.

“You left andhanded things over to us” he tells Jesus. He claims that by enslaving manwithin strict religious doctrines, backed up by brutal fear of punishment, theChurch has given humanity what it really wants. Now Man can pursue happinessbecause his freedom is under the Church’s control.

Do we trulywant freedom? Or do we need the security of structure, routine, and ritual tobe happy?

The freedomJesus offers has little to do with the pursuit of happiness. The gospels makeclear that the path of Jesus is full of threat and sacrifice. Loss of security,family, status, is the best you can hope for. Most likely you’ll be scorned andattacked for going at cross-purpose to the social norms of those who pursue theman-made miracles of happiness.

It seems thatDostoyevski’s prediction that once we free ourselves from the addiction toGod-miracles, we’ll also free ourselves from the relationship with the Sourceof mystery, has come true.

Modernity hasshed God like an old coat. But instead of running to the Church for shelter –as the Inquisitor would offer – we’ve also shed the moral authority and fear ofthe Church’s power over our destiny.

It took aCentury for it to happen. The theological wrestling that the Brother’sKaramazov started in 1880 took a lot of decades to be absorbed by WesternCulture. Can we be good without God? What are the consequences of a morallyfree humanity? Is humanity at heart religious? Or, are we ultimately fearful ofthe dark corners in every heart freed without the constraints of religion’scontrol.

The generationof churchgoers who came through WWII and rode the last wave of a dominantChristian culture, celebrate the loss of innocence that Spong, Borg, andCrosson dish up. The offer of faith without a belief in miracles is an excitingfreedom for those whose beliefs were tested by the threats of hellfire (or atleast social exclusion)

But the end ofModernity has seen the end of the Church’s grip on humanity’s heart. In thewest a new generation has grown to adulthood without ever stepping insidechurches. They don’t fear hell. They don’t fear being godless or unchurched.Their baby-boomer parents faced those fears and managed to cope fairly wellwith living outside the box of religion.

The PostModern generation is not surprised to hear that they don’t need to believe in aVirgin Birth, or a wave-walking Jesus, to “get” God. They come to religionfreed of any social-control fears, and freed of illusions about religion’shuman nature (it’s corrupt and violent mistakes). If they come, they comelooking for ways to connect to the Source.

If allhumanity has a divine nature, then we all have an innate ability and desire toexpress and explore that essence of who we are.

Religion comesin two forms. If the box is quite small, if the offering is all too human - thenit will attract those seeking happiness. It will offer the miracles of bread(telling people what they want to hear). It will offer the miracles ofprotection (God helps those who are like us). And it will offer the miracles ofpower (God has a plan for you. God has a plan for “us” and not “them”). This ishow religion gets in the way of people’s yearning for God and gives theminstead what their weaker, more fearful natures desire.

Or Religioncan get out of the way. This is the Jesus Way. The primary purpose is to assistsearchers in their searching. To invite the divine imagination in each personto express Joy, Fear, Hope, Hate, Hunger, Passion and whatever hurts andhealings they encounter in a container that is safe and sacred.

Over and over,Jesus tried to declare that the miracles he offered were only what the peoplethemselves had within them. Their own capacity to be healed, saved, sent orsorry was simply evoked by the presence of a pure, clear, grounded divinitylike that of Jesus. It wasn’t what Jesus did but what he evoked, invited,inspired in others. “You’ll do what I do – and more.”

It wasn’t themiracles, or the creation of a bigger religious box, that was the point ofJesus’ journey. Jesus’ invitation is then, and now, simply to walk fearlesslyin relationship with the Source of divine Imagination.

Jesus sitssilent in the Grand inquisitor’s cell. That he’ll be tortured and murdered onceagain is certain. He knows that it’s not a matter of logic, it’s not a matterof argument, it’s not a matter of legalities that can change hearts or minds.Love is just a word until one experiences it.

It is theexperience of divine love flowing – in art, in all my relations, in music, intruth spoken to power, in silent eyes meeting at death’s bed, in the miracle ofbirth and re-birth awakening souls to be free, unafraid, and unhappily butjoyfully dancing into the suffering that is ours to share.

Is there roomfor this to flow in our church?

The Believer/Atheist iceberg cartoon

comes from www.nakedpastor.com

Eggs and Intuition

2012-02-02T09:31:00.000-05:00

We hadbreakfast with some new Peterborough friends this week. We met at a Poetry Slamand got talking and laughing and found we had lots in common. Except for onething. We are “church people” and they are not. They are musicians, among otherthings, so they came out to church one morning to check out our “gig”.

At breakfastwe got talking about Imagination and Intuition. She told stories of using songlyrics to get school drop-out students to start writing about soul matters. Hetold us stories of relying on intuition to let business deals emerge from themidst of problems. Instead of rushing in with brainy solutions, he’d keeppeople talking, keep them relaxed, and let imagination work its way up fromtheir midst. The outcome, he described, was always something he’d never havecome up with on his own. It would emerge from the ether.

As artiststhey could also relate to the experience of inspiration. How a tune, a lyric, acharacter, a plot, or an image can emerge from that “somewhere else” source.Most artists – the ones whose egos don’t get in way - will give credit fortheir best ideas to the “wherever it comes from”.

More and moreI find that I’m using the word Imagination interchangeably with the wordSpirit. It’s not just that God gives us the gift of imagination. But that Godis Imagination.

Let’s turnaround and reclaim our “imaginary God”. It’s not that God comes from ourimaginations, but that we come from God’s. Genesis says that we are made, maleand female, in the “image” of God. That image is imagination. It is when we arein touch with the flow of creativity, the stirring of visions, the expressingthe images in word, canvas and dance that we participate in the divineidentity.

This is hardlyan original idea. But like the best of all ideas – it comes out of that vastdeep underworld, underwater, ancient and ever-renewing source. The more we tapinto it. The more we experience it. The more we learn to trust in it’sleadings.

“All dreamscome from God.” I was taught. It’s just another way of saying when we turn offour rational, thinking, monkey-minded processing machine we call the brain, Godtakes over. We are fed otherworldly images, scenarios – silly, frightening,funny and profound – that speak to our flat-footed days if we have the ears andimaginations to listen. All humans dream - but who listens to what God's saying?

I once had aninterview with a Neuroscientist. He sat with us to explain that our son’s DownSyndrome brain would be smaller and less capable than normal. I asked how thatwould affect his Imagination? This brain surgeon looked at me with a puzzledexpression and said “I’ve never thought about that.”

Do ourChurch’s brain surgeons ever wonder about the power of imagination? As ourchurch’s shrink and shrivel. As our capacities to solve problems and muscle ourway into making the world a better place diminish – are we trying to think toohard?

One of thereasons we don’t find a lot of artists in church is that they’re not real bigon fitting into boxes. Anything with a label on it is suspect. Callingthemselves a Christian, let alone a Baptist, Catholic, or Progressive is justanother way of limiting imagination.

But that’s howwe organize ourselves we say. How else could we work? How else would we knowwho we are and who we’re not?

Good question.Maybe we could use a little imagination? Instead of praying what we think – howabout playing with that divine source of ideas? Instead of making slightlybigger boxes for that un-nameable source of joy, why not free the slaves ofconformity and paint a picture big enough for the world in a nutshell?

As my newfriend wrote “Curiosity killed the Cat-holic in me”.

Good thingcats have nine lives. To all you cats out there who care, who are open toSpirit and creating new possibilities every day…I say…stay curious, stay loose,laugh, and let the spirit do what it does – create and re-create.

Jesus was theMaster in the art of making community. He never stuck a label on it. It wasPaul who set up the art school. It was Rome who branded it, franchised it, andput it in the hands of Neurosurgeon Priests who made it into a global corporation.

When thechurch kills off your best ideas, throw them seventeen more. Make those brainsurgeons looking for solutions in our best practices and bank accounts wonderwhy you’re dancing while the world is burning.

It’s when wewonder, stop counting the stars and listen to their song in the dark silencebetween, that we begin to sing along with the angels. We let ego fall to theground like leaves fertilizing next years new ideas. We know beyond reckoningthat there’s no end to the muse that makes humans divine. The kindom of thestoryteller is here already. It’s just waiting for you to express it in yourown special way. The world’s your stage. Go play.

thanks to the Naked Pastor for the cartoon

www.nakedpastor.com

What's next for George?

2012-01-26T09:18:00.001-05:00

Last night we invited friends of George Street Church to an OpenHouse. From late afternoon, into the night, friends dropped in to talk to usabout “what’s next for George?”. It was a Who’s Who of Peterborough communityactivists. Social Service Providers, Greeners, Church Neighbours, Housingproviders, Politicized Poor folks, Politicized Do-Gooders, Raging Grannies, anartist, a neighbor, an entrepreneur and a Mayor.

For me, it was kind of like George (if we can personify him) was sufferingfrom a mid-life crises. No, let’s make that the crisis that arrives upon aretirement from a long and dedicated career. He’d invited his friends to comeand help him figure out what’s next?

He wasn’t totally ready to give up what he’d been doing for solong. But he was being downsized. The culture had shifted and what he wasselling was no longer in demand. How to retrofit, re-imagine, re-createhimself?

His friends had many good things to say about him, his trackrecord, and his reputation in the community. Progressive, intelligent, inclusive,accessible, compassionate. The kind words you’d want to hear spoken at yourfuneral.

One good, bold, friend shared their sadness that the bloom had comeoff the rose. He was no longer in his prime. But not dead yet.

Doors were opened. George would be welcomed at the anti-povertyround tables. He could roll up his sleeves and pitch in at the variety ofcommunity meals being served up. He could pick a cause and run with it;affordable housing, local food security, loving the unlovable, teaching theun-teachable, reaching the un-reachable.

George is no stranger to these tasks. He’s done his bit. Less thansome, more than many.

Would George open up his large and beautiful home to his friends?He’s known for his hospitality – although lately the big rec room in thebasement is underused. And the living room upstairs might as well have plasticon the couches – that only comes off Sunday mornings for the guests.

If for nothing else – the Open House reminded friends they werewelcome to drop in and make themselves at home.

Amidst all these accolades and invitations, there was a hopeexpressed too. It came from different quarters and was expressed in differentways. There was a suggestion that maybe George shouldn’t entirely give up hisday job.

The God-song that George had sung for so long was a note in thecommunity’s chorus that his friends would miss. It wasn’t their note to sing,but they wanted – or needed – to hear it still.

In all the busy busy work of social change there was somethingabout George’s place that his friends said provided peace, pause for thought,for a breath, for a soul to slow down and get fed, watered, rested, andre-inspired.

How might George’s lawn be transformed to create a garden wherebirds and bees and neighbours hungry for a turning over of topsoil might dwell.A place to plant seeds and watch the miracle of god’s greening grow tofruition. A place where we reclaim the lost art of canning and pickling and preservingthat taste of summer for the long winter’s hunger.

Instead of rows of wooden pews, what about rows of beans andberries?

And I thought I heard, not overtly, but ever so gently a suggestionthat maybe it was time for George to finally let Georgette out of the closet.That the straight and narrow rows he’d kept in place for so long might makeroom for his inner goddess to glow.

There was a just a hint of gentle coaxing to free his femininemuse. To explore his deepest intuitive self. To clear away the conformingconstraints of his old profession and let a more ancient mystery loose withinhis walls.

Neighbours might come to share in such circles of freedom. Friendswould come to sit in sacred circles. Strangers would join in sacred dances.Hurting ones would come to lie down and let go and let the healing happen inthe presence of Georgette’s silent angels.

Might George explore the loss arts beneath the profession he’dpracticed so long and so well? How might he re-connect with the divine inspiringsource of expression? Like bees to honey, who wouldn’t want to come along andre-discover the art of living, of letting go, of beginning again, of makinglove with the world.

Good friends won’t tell you what to do. They trust you to make theright move. After you’ve given so much – they don’t make demands for more thanyou’ve got to give. They want only what’s best for you because they know that ahappier healthier you makes way for change, growth, prosperity and peace. Goodfriends know that when we change, the world changes too.

thanks to Richard Choe for the photos

www.wondergaze.blogspot.com

A church for Jesus?

2012-01-19T08:52:00.002-05:00

Whatchurch would Jesus attend?

Firstyou have to ask

Wouldhe call himself a Christian?

Weknow that he wasn’t big on organized religion

andcouldn’t help but run into trouble

withthe control freaks (Pharisees like me) that run most churches.

So,whether believer or heathen
- aside from these small problems,

ifthere were a building that housed holy activities

thatmight interest an itinerant holy man like Jesus,

whatwould they be?

Since no day is Sabbath any more,

everyday would be a holy sacred day.

withtimes of silent worship

timesof chanting and smoke

timeswhen everyone would drum a great cacophony

tila rhythm would rise and fall and lift us into a place of communal beat.

musiciansof all kinds would share their songs of praise

ofblues to meet us where we live,

ofnews to take us far from here

andjoyous songs to set us walking into heaven’s day.

There would be stories of great hope in God.

Storiesabout what God did then in ancient times

- anddoes today when we’re not watching.

NoDoctrinal preaching would be necessary

becausewe’d learn about God’s nature and desires

fromthe sorrows and joys we’d share.

Elderswould tell the best stories

ofhow when they finally let go...

andsaw how God was there behind the worry

Childrenwould learn to tell stories that make you look and listen

forthe truth running like a rabbit in the tall grass.

There’d be healing.

Allkinds of healing.

Godmoving with and through the healers of various traditions

inthe spirit, if not the name, of Christ

withoutboundaries where love can flow.

The livingpower of love and trust

wouldcast out fear and ignorance.

Handswould help and heal.

Artwould help and heal.

Foodwould help and heal.

There’d be only good whole foods.

Nofood bank charity cast offs.

Buyingcooperatives and community gardens would feed our sense of pride.

Vegetarianmeals served daily.

and Feastdays we’d gorge on meat; turkey, deer, grass-fed cattle,

pickereland partridge and a pig in the middle of winter fattened from table scraps.

Who would come? The poor, the crazy and the creative.

The poor whose hunger is God’s.

Hungryfor good news of a day when

thejustice that the rich buy and sell

comesalso to their doors.

Insidethe doors of this holy place

thefloors would shine with respect and dignity and equity.
The crazy - all who feel they don’t fit in

wouldfind a place where no size fits all

andso even you and I might belong.

The creative would be there

todraw it out in us all.

AllPeople who want - who need

tomeet the world’s pain with beauty and truth.

Youngones would be apprenticed

tothe crafts of music, and image, and words and dance.

Soulcraftwould be a fountain of ageless wisdom

Towash and send us through the barrens of hope.

Where would the money come from?
Patrons and partners would share profits with prophets.

Peoplewhose art is making money would share what they’ve made.

Expenseswould outrun the pace of gifts

tokeep us always depending on God-surprises

tosustain us - or send us on our way.

Freetheatre and concerts would draw new patrons’s pennies

intothe daily drama of the church.

Wewouldn’t waste time telling our story to the media.

Wordwould spread and rumours would run and the curious would come.

Butthere’d be no parking.

Onlybike racks and footbaths.

And Jesus would show up.

He’dbe the woman demanding the crumbs that fell from our table

andwouldn’t’ go away ‘til she’d turned our hearts inside out.

He’dbe the annoying, smelly, begging, babbling conscience

who’dcall us to stop and pay attention just when we were well on our way.

He’dbe the angry one disturbing our piety and breaking things.

He’dturn the tables on us just when we thought we had peace to serve.

We’d kick Jesus out of course.

Forwho can stand to look into the face of God and live?

Buthe’d come back.

TheChrist would be just too curious

aboutwhat was going on today to stay away.

She’dhear our morning prayers and turn towards us.

She’dhear the noonday drums and would run to meet such friends

andplay along.

got mugged

2012-01-12T09:50:00.001-05:00

Got mugged onthe way home last night. No violence involved. Just blindsided by a young manwith good theatrical skills and a story.

I was almosthome, thinking of dropping into the corner grocer for a tub of Kawartha Dairyice cream. A luxury purchase I thought. Money is tight these days. Everypurchase gets run through a little expense rationalization process. It causesme to be thankful that I have choices to make. These decisions are like slowlysavouring the taste of a good soup when hungry. So good to have choices.

“Hey bud,” Iheard a call and turned to see a young guy, twenty-something. He was neatlydressed – clean-shaven. My “come-on” sensors hummed to life and I prepared myusual friendly “not today”.

This guy hadan innocence about him and a bright enthusiasm unusual among panhandlers. Hewas a con-man. Not your average beggar. He gave me his story.

“Are you fromaround here?” he was establishing a rapport like a good salesman – interestedfirst in the customer (it’s not just about the sale).

“Do you knowwhere Lakefield is?” he asked. And when I said I did, he told me he was fromNephton, another twenty minutes past there. “My girlfriend and I were shoppingat WalMart and my truck died. The tow-truck driver wouldn’t take us homebecause of my 220 lb Saint Bernard.”

“I’ve beenwalking around downtown here for an hour and no one will trust me. You’re thefirst guy to even listen this long.” That was a good hook. Made me feelspecial. I like to think my compassion is a little better than the averageguy’s.

“So, I gottaget home so I can work tomorrow. I’ve got $28 but I need another $32 for acab-ride home.”

“Good story,”I told him. I thought of all the times I’d been conned. I thought of the youngguys who’d taught me – when I’d stayed at the Sally Ann shelter - such storiesto use at the church door. A favourite was “I just got home off the night shiftand my wife tells me we’re out of diapers.”

I wanted tobelieve this guy. What if what he was saying was true? What if – by believinghim – this young man’s faith in humanity might be restored? What if – even ifhe was conning me – my willingness to be conned patched up a bit of the gapinghole in his own soul?

What did Ihave to lose? Would my faith and trust be damaged? At this stage in life - wheremy prime is somewhere back behind me – I’ve got few illusions to lose abouthuman nature. I know that appearances have little to do with honesty. No, whatI was dealing in here was a choice.

Did I believe him?No. But would I choose to believe him?

Did I trusthim? No. But would I choose to trust him?

What thisyoung man was trading on was my willingness to take a chance - to believe inthe possibility of a stranger in need being aided out of the blue by an openheart.

My heart isnot usually so open. Walking down George Street back and forth from work I getasked for handouts almost every time. I almost never hand it over. Tonightthough, something different had happened. I’d been offered a drink by astranger.

I’d stoppedoutside a pub to catch a bit of live music through the glass doors. A guyleaning on a cane, having a smoke, invited me in. He told me, “people in thereare different”. When I asked what he meant, he said, “these people have asoul”. Sounds like this guy’s found his church I thought.

(Do youbelieve in angels? That chance meetings can bump us off course to affect astring of circumstances played down the road and out of sight?)

A littlefurther down I spied a pub owner sitting lonely in his window. I gave Dave awave and kept going. Too focused on home to stop and chat and warm up with abit of human kinship.

Two blatantchances to just be a human being. And now a third chance. How many times can Ikeep to myself what god’s given and not lose it?

So I took theguy home, found my wallet, and even drove him back uptown to where he said hisgirlfriend was waiting.

I did it forme I guess. I listened to his assurances that he was going to pay me back. Igave him the pen he asked for. He wrote down his name and address and my addressand phone number. I never once let myself believe that he would comethrough. He told me he was a Christianand offered to show me the tattoos. He told me he would take my favour and “Payit forward”.

These were allgood words. Words to bank on. How different were these words from what I speakinto the world Sunday mornings? People take the words I offer and use them asfuel for another week. Unbelievable words. Unbelievable stories. They choose tobelieve. They listen for what they want to hear. They hand over money hopingit’s going to make a difference.

This guy and Iwere in the same business. Selling hope that maybe there’s more in this worldthan human nature at work. He was offering me an opportunity to play a part ina Bible story today.

I chose togive without expectation of its return. I chose to purchase my soul for just$40. Seemed a bargain.

Driving home Iwas swamped with regrets. I thought of all the other ways that money could havebeen spent. So many, many worthy causes. My children’s needs. Friends struggling.All things I tell myself “there isn’t enough to go around” for. And here I’velet this crack-addict talk me out of the pennies I’ve been pinching.

I thought ofall the opportunities I’d had to say to no. I thought of ways I could havedouble-checked his story – or seen through it. I thought I’d just handed him aquick hit, a fix, what he needed to get through the night…

Before turningin and letting the day go - I apologized to Lynn. We’re sharing our incomes andencouraging each other to scrimp for the things that matter. She puts her hand on my heart and says,“better an open heart willing to be broken again than a broken heart safelyshut closed”.

New born

2012-01-03T10:35:00.002-05:00

On the lastday of 2011, I had the honour of holding in my arms a new born little girl. TeeganCameron Dawn Loney was born to Lynn’s daughter Hollee and partner Chris.

We got thecall while out in the woods. We’d stopped to catch the clifftop view lookingwest over the river, forest, and hills to where the clouds brushed the treetopson the horizon. Lynn’s cellphone rang and set us off in the direction of Ottawajust ahead of the Friday night freezing rainstorm.

We arrivedjust before the second midwife. While I made myself scarce, the team supportedHollee’s superhuman effort to bring baby Teegan out of hiding.

Just an hourlater I got to see everyone in recovery. Mother and child, father andgrandmother were all wide-eyed and a little post-traumatic. The glow of theawe-full miracle still held in the room. The midwives quietly andprofessionally busied themselves while gracing us with big smilingglances.

Next morningwe brought fruit and chocolate and got to take turns holding the wonder as weretold the amazing story of her arrival. Holding this tiny bundle was a meetingof the physical and the metaphysical. Her deep red dusky rose complexion seemedboth tender and incredibly resilient. Her sleeping wrinkled brown kept lifting inconsternation. “What does she have to worry about?” I wondered. What dreamlikememories are running through her head?

Is shewondering great mystical thoughts? Trying to measure the distance she’s comefrom god’s imagination into a dark wet womb? She grows at a mind-boggling rateonly to be pushed violently into this bright cold place where she’s poked andhandled and the subject of such happy discussion.

Is her mind ablank scroll? Or is the sum of the universe’s mysteries slowly slipping fromher grasp as she wakes to the challenges of consciousness? She’s transformedfrom being one with the whole-of-it-all to being just one little humbled humanbaby.

The nursepricks her heel for a blood test. She squeals at the shock of this invasion. Thenurse apologizes and her father tells her everything’s all right. It breaks my heart to hear this firstencounter with the pain of this world.

Previously,she had been an aquatic creature. She’d received all she needed via the umbilicalcord connecting her tiny rapidly growing body with the sac of amniotic fluidthat was her home, her universe.

From thisplace of true security - a place that we grown-ups can only achieve now inimmortal moments of spiritual bliss – she enters the unpredictable world ofmortals. She’s suffered the shock of being squeezed like toothpaste from herwarm underwater home into this Midway House of Horrors. At every turn intenselynew sights and sounds challenge her to absorb and adjust. Fingers poke and liftand spin her around at dizzying speeds. So much to deal with in so short a time.

It was themiracle of her breathing that struck me most. Watching her tiny nostrils flareand relax as they naturally drew in what she’d need from now on. Herenvironment was now air. She was a fish out of water, a nymph turned amphibian,a mermaid now on shore. What an incredible, unbelievable transformation!

Starting as amicroscopic single circle - an egg first formed when her own mother grew insidegrandma’s womb – already she embodied the whole of potent creation. Waitingjust a generation to meet its future - among the zillion sperm that swam and pokedtheir way up in the desperate search - it took only one dark spark to make itall begin.

Didn’t theuniverse begin in some such way? In the airless void before there was a before,a gazillion glints in God's eye searched for a beginning and by random chance foundpurchase in the cell we now call home. We wonder - with first awareness of ourown fingers - at how the universe could still be expanding at such a ratewithout realizing we’re just in the first trimester of time.

And babyTeegan takes another breath. The air sets off sets off a series of reactions asher blood begins to be fed by oxygen. Her heart tastes the blood fed by breath. As mother and father fall in love with Teegan's presence -so her own heart finds it needs air like love - like it never knew before. Shebecomes one of us and what we were – has now grown bigger to take her in.

As the birth-cycleswim ends and the walk with lungs begins - with a cough and a sneeze and a cryto mark the passage - we celebrate the miracle. Not just a beginning. But alsothe end of what was before the beginning.

Within every measure of time - from nanosecond to aeon -the same circle spins. And yet with every single cycle the surprise comes as adiscovery - that the only baby - the only universe - that ever mattered is the one born now. The onlybreath that ever mattered is the one you take right now.

What if...Jesus were born in Canada?

2011-12-27T07:21:00.000-05:00

INTRO:
To be true to the story, he would most certainly be born an indigenous nativeCanadian. He would be of a tribe out on the fringe of the Empire. He’d livewithin a day’s travel of the capital – say within the flight distance of asmall airplane - putting him perhaps in a community in Northern Quebec?

It’s been seven generations since this child’s people have drifted from theirtraditional ways. Slowly at first, they lost their trust in the land as thesource of security. Slowly they began to depend upon the machines and tinnedfoods and coin of the realm that eventually invaded every aspect of theirlives.

The child’s parent’s, Mary and Joe remember the stories their grandparents toldthem. They remember trips stolen away from school where they were shown how tonegotiate the waters, get what was needed from the land, use everything to goodpurpose, watch the stars, the birds, the tracks that would tell them where theywere, when they were, who they were. Sometimes they can even remember parts ofthe songs their grandparents sang.

So the legend goes - seven generations is the time for renewal, for rebirth,for hope – when ancient ways become new again. When a new path is found thatwill lead the people – Anishnabe – for seven generations still to come.

The Story:
It was bad timing. It was perfect timing. Mary got pregnant just as thegovernment orders came through for evacuation. Their town’s site would soon bedeep under water. Their town was about to be flooded by the power damn underconstruction. They’d protested and fought against it in courts. They’d prayedagainst it since they were children. They resisted - and held out – stayingwhile others gave up and left – hoping for a last minute court injunction.

But when Mary was just about due to deliver - Joseph had a dream. A strangevisitor in his dream told him to go. Told him that the journey they were aboutto begin would be a great unwinding of the circle - starting small and reachingfar beyond any horizons he could imagine. He would name his son “Singer of oldSongs”.

Mary was also visited. In her vision, she got the message that the babe in herbelonged to the past, and belonged to the future. She would know the sufferingof her people in the birth and death - of the life in her womb. But with thisbad news came also a strange and powerful joy that didn’t let her worry butprovided an incredible, calm, trust in what was to come.

***
So, Mary and Joe boarded the Airplane and headed south, leaving behind all theyhad known, to create a new home with the others. The weather was supposed to beclear. But the storms had become more and more unpredictable with every passingyear.

Before they’d been inthe air an hour, the pilot had announced that they were in for some roughriding. Mary began to worry that the jumps and jerks might bring her labour on.But one look at Joseph’s strained face changed that. She’d let him do theworrying. She’d be strong and calm – claiming the gift the visitor in hervision had offered.

It got a lot worse before it got better. And it only got better when the pilotgave up and decided to land at the power dam construction site. He knew there’dbe empty barracks there for his passengers. He’d flown the crew out for theholidays just days before.

There was still a skeleton crew left behind to run the place. They’d stayed forthe double overtime pay – to keep the heat on and fuel in the machines – keepthem running so the whole place wouldn’t freeze solid.

The shift boss met the travelers in the mess hall and assigned them barracks.The cooks got busy putting on coffee and chili and sandwiches. Then the bossgot a look at Mary – doubled up in pain – and Joseph’s pleading gaze. The bosswent into action, he got the dishwashers to go clear some space in the foodstorage shed.

It was the cleanestplace in the camp – and there was room because supplies were low. Only troublewas – the camp nurse and company doctor had left on the last flight out. Heapologized to the couple and showed them to their digs. Maybe the baby wouldwait?

At the station that night there also happened to be an Innu hunting party blownin by the storm. Further south than they usually traveled they didn’t reallyneed the shelter or supplies. They were accustomed to getting by with fewcomforts. But they’d decided to go see the construction site.

They wanted to beable to tell their children about the place where everything changed. About theplace where the river’s power was sold to the south in exchange for the last oftheir memories. They were old. Their children didn’t know what they knew. Theirgrandchildren would never know. They wanted to see the place where this finalchange would happen.

What they found instead was a couple in need. The grandmother in the huntingparty had been at many births and she took things in hand. As she worked toprepare she sang songs. It was a dialect from which Mary and Joe could onlycatch a word or two – the odd phase rang familiar – but the comfort of thewoman’s song ran deep within them. The old man with her, her husband, sat on amilk crate in the corner keeping rhythm with a shaker he’d produced from deepparka pockets.

Not many in the camp slept that night. The winds howled and everyone was surethat it was Mary’s cries they heard. No one dared break in on them untilfinally they could stand it no longer. The storm was raging. They woke theshift boss to go find out. “We’re worried about how they’re doing out there inthat shack in this storm!” they explained.

“Storm? What storm?”he asked stumbling over to his office window. There was a luminous glow –green, blue, white, orange filling the windowpane. They all crowded to thewindow in wonder.

The wind had blown the storm over - and now a still quiet had descended uponthe camp. The stars pierced the black night like high trumpet notes while thesky danced with colour celebrating the limitless universe filling their eyes tooverflowing, making their hearts jump up laughing and their guts boom deep –all without a sound.

They knew -as if with one mind. Their gaze now turned to the storage shed wherethey saw a dull low light in the window. Without a word they all – every one ofthem – headed for the door – without stopping for parkas they walked out intothe night and to the door of the shed where they froze stiff – still – for acentury it felt like – until finally the shift boss reached out and turned thehandle and they one by one filed into the room.

It was no room. It had become a sanctuary. In the dim light the ceiling seemedto soar above them. The crates and boxes were ancient stone pillars rising ingrandeur. The four people inside became priests at an altar where something newlay quietly breathing among blankets in an empty banana box. You could almosthear her tiny breath – the whispered awe was so thick among them.

***
They explained it later – to friends and family and strangers who might listen–

“It was like the babywas aware of my presence. I felt like the child was mine. Like I felt when myown kids were born. This child - whose parents I’d never met before that night- gave me such a sense of belonging in that room. Gave me a sense that time hadstopped and the whole universe was spinning around us – with us standing thereat its centre.

It’s crazy talk I know. But the funny thing was – over breakfast when we talkedit over – we all felt the same. We all just knew that something had happenedthat would change everything.

We were changed. Don’t ask me how. I just knowthat now - since that night - I’m watching and searching and aware of thingsI’d never noticed before that night. There’s something new inside me I neverknew before – or had long forgotten. I know we’ll be hearing good news comingfrom that girl one day.”

baby painting courtesy of ed barragan http://edworldesigns.wordpress.com/

A Clumsy Choice

2011-12-20T08:17:00.003-05:00

Ithas been said that God’s greatest sacrifice is not on the cross but in choosingbirth. That the Creator’s love for us was expressed not only in dying - but inbeing born human.

Youknow how difficult these bodies can be. After a hard and long day - how gravityjust pins you to the couch. How hard it is to get up - and then you bang yourshin on the edge of the coffee table, stumble and bump your head on the halfopen door…

Whatabout the physical experience of those of us who live with pain? Whose bonesand joints shout with agony at every movement. Who would choose it?

I’mtalking about a toddler struggling to find balance, falling and crashing andcrying with frustration at the limits of this flesh. I’m talking about a baby’sempty cry at their helplessness in this cold and messy world of threats.

Andyet, so the story goes, the Maker of the universe, the source of creative powerthat bursts forth galaxies from the void of a black hole, chooses to become ashelpless and hopeless as you and I.

Thelimitless one become confined within flesh and blood. The all knowing mind ofgod can only express itself from within the limited RAM of the human brain.

Andso it is right and good that if such a Maker would devise a way to show us whatlengths divine love can go - that the demonstration would not be expansive =but limiting.

Thechoice to be born to an unwed mother of a conquered people is about godsacrificing “it all” to become just another guy.

Bhuddawas a prince but Jesus was a pauper – beaten before he even began by aworthless birthright.

Philippians 2:3-11(The Message)

Think of yourselves the way ChristJesus thought of himself. He had equalstatus with God but didn't think so much of himself that he had to cling to theadvantages of that status no matter what. Not at all.

When the time came, he set aside theprivileges of deity and took on the status of a slave, became human! Having become human, he stayed human. It wasan incredibly humbling process. He didn't claim special privileges. Instead, helived a selfless, obedient life and then died a selfless, obedient death

Butwhy? What was the message? Was it simply that God was with us born two thousandyears ago? Or, isn’t the message that God’s divinity is born within us all?

Jesus’mission, in my humble opinion, was to connect us – every one of us – with thatdivinity. To make clear the path from the core of our being to the limitlessbeyond – and from the limitless beyond to the core of our being.

Insteadof being a door himself, as is popularly thought, he showed us the door in eachof our own hearts.

Fromwithin the confines of a human body and brain Jesus became a clear and openchannel to the divine. The revelation of Jesus is that the Christ light thatshone in him is the same light that shines in every child.

Andthe message of Hope is that no matter how distorted or perverted or torturedthe body and brain that holds that light becomes, there is no power on earththat can diminish it.

Thepower of divine love is born in us all.

Thepart of me, the part of you, that is touched by awe at the sight, smell, wonderof a newborn baby.

Thepart of me, the part of you that finds courage in the midst of a situationwhere we are overwhelmingly helpless.

Thepart of me, that part of you that is moved to compassion for the suffering of aneighbor, a stranger, and even ourselves…

Thepart of me, that part of you that gets lifted up, healed, encouraged by thepresence of the Holy Spirit (or whatever you want to call it).

Thepart of me, that part of you that is able to suspend judgment when every bonein our body is calling for condemnation.

Thepart of me, the part of you that is touched by the underserved forgiveness ofsomeone we’ve harmed.

Thepart of me, the part of you that finds ourselves offering grace to someone whohas intentionally hurt us.

Thepart of me, that part of you that is creature – that recognizes our home in themidst of nature - the wild and free part of us…

Thepart of me, that part of you that – when words fail – music touches and providesjust what we need to carry on.

I’mtalking about the god part of me, that god part of you that the birth of Jesustells us is a part of every human. That Emmanuel, God is with us, God dwellswithin, among, and beyond and beneath us all.

Thatin this sacrificial story there is the truth that the power of the universe’sexpanding, eternal, creating love will find a way to express itself in ourhumble and holy, moment by moment, inspiring-expiring, giving and receiving -no matter what.

Thanksbe to God. Thanks be to You.

thanks to Richard Choe for the pics

www.wondergaze.blogspot.com

In-car-nating

2011-12-13T08:26:00.000-05:00

The world tocome

was just begun

There - whileyou blinked

Do you think?

In everymoment

a savior windowopens

for a chanceto see

Eternity.

We’re speedingin a car

within anillusion of stillness

Inside thisbubble it’s all about me

– where I’mgoing, doing, screwing it down

But if I stickmy head out the window like Jake the dog

Eyelids pushedwide by the force

Ears silencedby the whistle and rush

grinning tonguehanging out to lick the future coming fast

My own firstsecond gets split infinite

And poor brain- calculating, separating, masturbating

– gets left inthe dust

As wonder(that part kept tucked deep inside for holy moments)

gets suckedoutside and expands in a flash

to take itall-in-all in

Once wonder’sfreed – of course it won’t stop there

Before I knowit – can slow it

the earth isswallowed whole

and sun getssnorted in with all the rest of the stars

until timebends in and…

From theseed’s spark in the womb of beginning

The bang, thebig one, ejaculates us, you/me/now/then/when – the time to come was just begun

And god’sgroan of pleasure is neverending.

December 13, 2011

269 Rubidge st.

reading Kaballah andJohn 1

Incarnation

2011-12-06T09:26:00.001-05:00

Been thinkingabout incarnation. About how everything – every weed, every tree, every birdand squirrel and doe and fawn and rock and waterdrop frozen into a snowflake –how everything has the potency of the divine in it.

If God isalready “in” all things, then how do we “await” the advent of God’s arrival?The calendar says it’s time to be awaiting.

Simone Weil,the radical Jewish philosopher turned Christ-lover conceived of a god whosepresence is so full that it allows nothing that is not god. For Simone, it isonly as the divine withdraws that creation can fill the void.

From wheredoes she get this? From the same source as her vision of Christ – in the midstof a fierce and piercing migraine attack. In her mind’s eye, when her amazingreasoning powers are pushed off the table by the power of pain, she experiencesa presence beneath the veil of what’s what.

I spent sometime on my day off sitting beside and below the 3 bros falls. It had rained allday the day before. And then it snowed - and those uniquely crafted frozenwater crystals had stuck to every drenched surface and coated it with a blanketof wonder. Every branch was blessed white. On top of every grey and black underlining was a frosting.

You couldn’tlook at what last week was grey and evergreen – now transformed into white, white, white everywhere on everysurface ofevery thing – without it touching that place of wonder in you.

To wake up andlook out and see it - was to be opened up to childhood wonder and awe – to havethe sponge of a child’s mind/heart again. Even my supersaturated adult mind had room to soak up that breath-takingsight. Heart and mind fused with soul to create Wonder.

This alsomeant that the 3 bros falls were in high flow. The thousands of watershed acresof forest and marsh and highlands trickled and flowed and filled the Burnt andIrondale rivers that meet just above the falls.

Drawing near,you first feel the thunder reverberating in your chest – even before your earspick up the roar and hiss of white water. When eyes connect with the source ofthis rush, wonder strikes again.

Is this wonderwhat we are waiting for? Is this natural beauty the source of lifegiving hopewe yearn for? The first glimpse of a new babe. The way mind stops calculatingand breath is caught midstream – eyes widen to take it awe in.

The riveroverflows with excitement and hurry. It feels like the rush of streams ofshoppers, the spinning of revolving doors, with muzac filling that white noisespace between the ears where second thoughts might rise.

Down below thethird falls I wander and find a place to sit in the sun. I get as close as Ican to the power – this unstoppable power. And as I draw near – it never fails– fear rises.

To be so closeto such a rush of power evokes an anxiety from somewhere deep beneath thelayers of cloth and skin. It rises up in me like the mist from the falls. I canfeel it climb up my spine and spray from the cerebral cortex into the top of myskull. It’s an instinctive fight-or-flight kind of fear. My body reacts -nerves pull me back, make me want to withdraw. It’s unsettling.

And that’s whyI love it.

It’s rare thatI really feel the fear in me. I’m sure it’s there every day. I’m sure it’sstored in my cellular memory. I’m sure it flows in my blood. I’m just rarelyconscious of it.

I’m so good at“dealing” with it. So good at using mind over matter to conquer the anxieties,the unanswerable questions, that get triggered every day. This mental jugglingact allows me to function, to tackle the world, to put on the coat ofconfidence that gets me out the door.

Or am I reallydealing with it?

How many timeseach day do I miss the god-moments? When I’m busy figuring out the best thingto do, the best thing to say, the best thing to buy, the best way to be afollower – how many times do I miss the wonder and awe of divinity in eachthing and person?

Unaware of theeffects of anxiety at work in me – how pre-occupied am I by the unstoppablethreats of this world thundering down around my ears?

The threatsnever stop. Sometimes the flow slows a bit. And then disaster strikes again. Ifit ain’t in the lives around me, then it’s just a reach for the radio dial orcomputer keys away.

And so are allthe ways to distract my attention from those threats. Just as close as the fearare the amusements and merry-making that help me, if not forget – at least copewith that ever-present anxiety.

From beneath thelayers of my middle class security, a fear rises up. In the face of anoutpouring of the world’s pain – I need to get in touch with that fear.

Fear is asmuch a part of the Christmas story as the wonder. It’s a violent threat of theRoman empire that dislodges the pregnant family and sends them scurrying. It’sa jealous Herod who’s looking under every star for who’ll next threaten hiswhite-knuckled grip on a ruthless power. It’s a life and death question -giving birth in a strange shelter far from the securities of stockings hung bythe fire.

And so myjourney towards the Advent of a Messiah must include getting in touch with thatancient fear so very present in the empires of today.

Because what Idiscover – by the discipline of staying – just for a while – with my fear. Byresisting the impulse to run and draw away. By sitting close and noticing –just how scared I am. I discover something even deeper in me.

In the rock.In the earth. In the beating heart of my mother earth’s womb there is astrength and a security that is older and more powerful than all the daily flowof stress that threatens.

For thousandsof years this rock has provided the channel, the crucible, the course for this day-by-dayflow of uncertainty. The rock beneath the flow is shaped and worn and broken bythe flow – but its unmovable presence is the ages answer to the changingseasons on the surface.

And in this deepdark crucible I connect with the spark of courage – the divine creative sparkthat evokes a rekindled joy. It sends me once again into the flow. Into thevoid of god-answers that might save us from the pain, I walk again.

I’ve shedanother year’s skin of insecurity. And by simply once again getting in touchwith that fear in me, I’m more aware than ever of the passing nature of thatfear and the enduring nature of the love I serve.

And so maybetoday I’ll notice god in the moments and see the wonder at work among us.

Nicodemus finally gets it

2011-11-29T09:56:00.001-05:00

We drove thethirty hours straight to Florida. Twelve year old David. Twenty year old Alana.Mom and Dad. It was June 2008. It was our last family trip together. We wereoff to see the Wizard – a crazy Canadian faith healer on a ninety day binge ofdoing god’s wonders.

Jesus said, “You’re not listening. Let me say it again.Unless a person submits to this original creation—the ‘wind hovering over thewater’ creation, the invisible moving the visible, a baptism into a newlife—it’s not possible to enter God’s kingdom.

“So don’t be so surprised when I tell you that you have tobe ‘born from above’—out of this world, so to speak.

You know well enough how the wind blows this way and that.You hear it rustling through the trees, but you have no idea where it comesfrom or where it’s headed next. That’s the way it is with everyone ‘born fromabove’ by the wind of God, the Spirit of God.”

Nicodemus asked, “What do you mean by this? How does thishappen?”

Jesus said, “You’re a respected teacher of Israel andyou don’t know these basics?

The Message: John 3:5

I amNicodemus. I don’t get it. I don’t get why god would choose to heal our son inFlorida instead of Toronto. I don’t get why god would heal him and not allchildren with Autism? I don’t believe it’s about being good enough to deserve ahealing. And I don’t think it’s about just having enough faith.

But still –there is a mystery at work. Friends have been touched and found healing in suchexperiences. So, I suspend my disbelief and get in the car.

Call it a Leapof Faith.

Call it aPilgrimage.

Call it adesperate attempt to cure what was ailing at the heart of our family.

Statisticstell us that the birth of a disabled child is a recipe for marriage break-up.But Carol and I already had a couple of strikes against us before David wasborn.

Right from thestart we walked at different speeds. One of us would always need to adjusttheir gait to accommodate the other.

Going to theAirport Church was one such accommodation. I would go and do my best to suspendjudgment, to enter into the spirit of it, to appreciate what god was doing.

But I wasmostly sitting on the edge of the pool dangling my feet in those waters.Sometimes I would get in and splash around but always in the shallow end – mytoes never leaving the bottom for long.

That’s the wayit was with David and swimming lessons. I took him summer after summer to locallakes around Fenelon Falls. Instructors would use all their skill and coaxingto get him to take off through the water. But he would defy all efforts.

David lovesthe water. He would splash and spin and blow bubbles and do what theinstructors wanted – a bit – but just never enough to lift his feet off thebottom and swim.

So it was withall the different therapies we tried with David. We educated ourselves aboutAutism and tried them out. David would make some progress and we would getexcited – and then he would regress – three steps forward – four stepsback. The hopes that our son mightescape the clutches of this disorder that bottled up his bright light weredashed again and again.

But hope is apowerful tonic. When your heart is already broken open, the soil is fertile forseeds to take root. When all of your questions fall to the ground unansweredlike rain, something green sprouts in those days when the sun comes out.

Somethingwild. Something beyond. Some thing at work in the world that I can’t explain oreven explain away.

Unless a person submits to this original creation—the‘wind hovering over the water’ creation, the invisible moving the visible, abaptism into a new life…

When we get toFlorida – the healer has run out of steam. He’s taking a break. Story of my life– “You should been here an hour ago. You should have been here last year. Youshould have been here when…” I’m always missing the wave it seems.

But the circuscontinues without the big cheese. The focus is on Jesus after all and there’slots of others ready to take the stage and keep things going. We enter in andswim around. Join in the excitement of this “new thing” that is emerging. Thepreacher talks about how what is happening here is so much bigger than oursmall ideas of church and denominations and theologies.

I can digthat. That is a party I can join in. From back in the cheap seats where we’veparked David’s special stroller, I get into the worship. I raise my hands in aTai Chi stance and let the waves of electricity flow through my body. There’s apower present that I’m tapping into.

Then there’s atap on my shoulder. I open my eyes to see a young man with black hair, an olivecomplexion, a neatly trimmed beard, and bright eyes looking up at me.

“what’s wrongwith your son?” he asks. I tell him.

“would youlike me to pray for him?” he offers. I look at Carol and she nods. So, with thedemeanor of a waiter in a fine restaurant uncorking a bottle – he goes to work.

“I’m Samuel”he tells us. He takes out a small vial of oil, gives me a whiff of it, and thenanoints each of us with a small dab on our foreheads. Then he anoints Davidwho’s not sure of this stranger. His parents take hold of his hands and, withour assurance he calms down, and lets Samuel pray over him.

It was shortand simple and then he was gone. I loved how it happened. Not up front. Not ondisplay. But Samuel came to us, found us, and offered us the gift with a quietconfidence and humble dignity.

It was onlyafter he left that I made the connection. Carol saw my grin grow and the tearson my cheeks, and gave me a quizzical look.

“Samuel has just anointed David” I explained.She smiled and nodded.

David didn’tstart talking or singing or anything. He didn’t seem any different at all as weheaded back to the motel. But we’d had a moment and it had touched us and weheld it close in our hearts.

********

Next morning David and I head off to the motel pool for a splash. David’s in the lead andI’m surprised when he marches right past the shallow end and climbs down intothe deep end. Before I have a chance to say anything or jump in – he pushes offfrom the side and paddles all the way across to the other side.

I’m standingthere with my mouth open just watching. He pushes off again from the far side,spins like a dolphin, ducks under and bobs up to the surface with a big smile.He’s floating – relaxed and free and happy.

Somethingshifted for David that day. From somewhere he’d discovered the trust he neededto let go.

Somethingshifted for me that day too. From somewhere I discovered the trust I needed tolet go of my grip on the pool’s edge, to lift my feet from the bottom and justfloat.

What happenedwas not what I expected. Letting go of what I was sure was my true securitymeant that I was swept out of the four corners of the pool and down river. Thefour walls that I called home -that held my life together – I thought - wasleft behind.

There weremoments of great elation and freedom. There were moments of panic and pain as Itumbled over rocks and rapids swallowing water and thrashing about. There werefriends on the shore who had swam those waters before me. Their calls ofencouragement helped as I slowly relaxed and learned to trust that the air inmy lungs, the spirit I breathed, was enough to buoy me.

David and Iswim most weekends now. There’s no instructor. There’s no number of laps weachieve. We float. We dive. We play. David’s got this style of thrashing aboutso that newcomers to the pool think he’s drowning. I love watching their facesgo from alarm to surprise when David finishes his duck and spin and ends up ina calm float - Nicodemus on his back watching and learning close by.

Nicodemus goes to Florida

2011-11-23T08:00:00.001-05:00

George Street church has been searching for Jesus for some yearsnow. An annual lecture series has hosted Jesus-seminar speakers and someCanadian “progressive” thinkers. So, it’s not too shocking to have Jesusstripped of his royal, heavenly, robes in this church.

This biblical scholarship has attracted an interesting mix of Jesussearchers that I’m just starting to get to know. In our book study group we’vehad some great discussions that spill out into the week. Trying to find Jesusnot only somewhere in between the four gospels but also between the lines –dissecting the political and socialmotivations of each writer – is good work.

But on a Sunday morning I still have to find some soul food toserve. There ain’t enough time to unravel a literary critique lecture. Thatwould feed the mind but would it feed the soul?

So, I served up the story of Nicodemus sneaking through the nightto visit this faith healer Jesus. He wants to know what’s behind the miracles.He wants to fit them into his scholarship and tradition. Jesus gives Nicodemusa bunch of metaphors. You must be born again – born of water and wind – a windthat blows where it will…

I could have talked about how this passage is John’s effort to setthe ritual of Christian baptism in Jesus’ hands. I could have critiqued thestory as a purely fictional account. John’s effort to pose the early church’s emergingspirituality – and their dialogue with the Jewish tradition – back into adramatic dialogue featuring two great characters.

Instead, I got inside the story. And told a story from my own life.Because I am Nicodemus.

Three years ago last June I snuck off to go visit a faith healer.Like Nicodemus I was in search of something more than my tradition could offer.

I was looking for GOD to do something special with my twelve yearold son David. Born with Downs Syndrome, David developed Autism at the age ofthree. It bottled up his bright mind and crippled his ability to express. Hespent much of his energy just coping with the sensory overload caused by thecondition.

We’d been watching live webcasts of a crazy tattooed Canadian faith healer on amarathon of wonders in a tent down in Lakeland Florida. I took time off workand we packed up the Subaru and headed for the land of Disney.

There were cues. There were intuitions. There were dreams. Therewas a timely gift of funds. There was no reason – except reason – to not go andsee if there might a healing for our son David.

Looking back I realize this was the last trip we took as a familyof four. Now that Carol and I have split up, it’s an especially poignantmemory.

You see, this Nicodemus search was something that began beforeDavid was born. As young parents of David’s older sister Alana, we went lookingfor a church home in the east end of Toronto. Full of piss and passion forSocial Justice, none of the United Churches we visited scratched what we wereitching for.

I gave up, but Carol went looking outside the box and came up witha bunch of church drop outs and new converts singing God’s praises in an oldBaptist church on the Danforth.

At this point in the story, I always blame Carol’s evangelicalroots for me stepping into this church. I should admit though, that I wasfascinated by what I found.

It was a bunch of people looking hard to follow Jesus. Sure, the luggage theypacked were mostly theological and biblically conservative bags. If i label them conservative - you need to understand that they were far from Fundamentalists. And, most impressively, they were not afraid to step outside theircomfort zones and see where Jesus might lead them.

In whatever other way I might try to describe this congregation,they were an authentic community to us. Over the years we experienced Christ’slove time and again in the messy mix of being church with one another.

It was only after we’d put roots into this church, become membersof a house group with other young families, that the Holy Spirit showed up. Itblew in on the same wind that set fire to “The Toronto Blessing”. This wave ofmiracles, wonders, and healings that swept people from all over the world intoan auditorium in Toronto – spilled over into our Sunday morning worship.

It was controversial. It caused all kinds of trouble. And I wasboth disturbed and fascinated by it. It took me, and us as a family, on a tripdeep into the bowels of our faith.

My day to day ministry was working in the community at the everuphill work of community economic development. And while that work put mybrains and creativity to the test, on Sundays the Spirit kept opening my heartwider and wider to the wonders of what humans can do to mess with mystery.

I still hadn’t lost my Nicodemus status. My liberal theologicaltraining was still intact. My nature as a thinker, philosopher, andorganizational control freak was untouched by my observations of the Spirit atwork. As many times as I went forward to receive what the Spirit had to give –always thankful for what I did get - my rational Nicodemus rug never got pulledout from under me…

Fast forward ten years. We’re living in Fenelon Falls. I’m workingin a United Church congregation. There is a growing divide in our home. WhileCarol is still fed by the teachings and worship of the Airport Fellowship, I’mon a path of listening to what the earth has to say to my soul. We incorporateboth into the United Church box – with mixed results.

Our home becomes centred around the care of David. The work ofhelping him grow to potential consumes all of our disposable income – and more.We encourage his body to heal with the best that science has to offer and wecontinue to search in GOD’s heart for a healing that science can’t bottle.

My rationale for the trip to Lakelands was as a spiritualpilgrimage. The Moslems have Mecca. The Jews have Jerusalem. The Catholics havethe Vatican. Where do we Protestants go?

I’d just finished reading “The Horse Boy”. It’s written (also afilm) by the father of an autistic boy who follows the healing trail, onhorseback, all the way to shamanic healers high in the steppes of Tibet. Theadvice that sets him off on the journey was “the worst thing you can do – isnothing”.

So, Nicodemus packed up the family car and drove all night and daydown to where this strange man was delivering GOD’s blessings on the pilgrimswho showed up.

Next week, I’ll tell you what i told George St. about the healing.

I'll also try to capture what telling that story again has helped me to see about how our home life unravelled.

thanks for the photos again Richard

The fifth dimension

2011-11-15T07:57:00.001-05:00

Friends that inspire us are precious. On the weekend we attended a birthday party for a friend who, five years ago, served me as a herald of the journey i was about to take.

His own journey into transformation, his dedication to it, his intentional crafting of the rituals and the language to share it - continue to inspire me.

I hope he doesn't mind me sharing this poem i wrote for his birthday.

You’ve achieved the fifth dimension

The four corners of the box you crafted

into hearth and home

work and worth

were squared away with decades four

But the music in the hills

the rhythm of water’s rush

the heart of wild ones beat in your chest

running in dreams of forests dark

and four corners could no longer hold

what spirit fired your soul to seek.

A larger hope was lifted

in the clutches of the eagle’s claws.

You saw beyond yesterday’s horizon

a place where death dances

passion’s fire from embers sleeping

into the light of dawn.

Returning to earth you found friends

who’d heard that strange song too

calling us on to find the path

to the ground where we all belong.

for Doug Aldsworth’s 50^th

November 16^th,2011

thanks to Richard Choe for his inspiring four feathers photo

www.wondergaze.ca

All Saints thin times

2011-11-01T09:38:00.000-04:00

All HallowedEve is a thin time. A time to open our minds and hearts to the presence ofsaints. Protestant tradition says that all (of us) who pass across the veil ofdeath are “the saints”.

One such sainthas come close by in this last week. It was a song that stimulated theconnection. A line from a song in fact “I still haven’t found what I’m lookingfor.”

Whenever Ihear that song and that lyric, I think of my friend John Chang. On a canoe tripon the French river he sang that song, among others, from his heart out intothe woods and waters. “From the heart” is the way John lived every day.

A year later,on the same river, he drowned in whitewater. After capsizing and making it tosafety, he went after the paddle he’d made in our shop. Without a lifejacket,the current took him, and he was lost to us who loved him. Or so we thought…

In hisgrandmother’s huge modern Korean Catholic church in Don Mills, we celebratedhis life. I was honoured to be one of those who shared stories about John. Whatwas remarkable about that event was the incredible diversity of folks present.John’s network, his community, his “family” spanned all ages, creeds, coloursfrom all across Toronto.

I was struckby how many different people – very different people - told me that John wastheir best friend. That’s how I felt about him too.

I first metJohn at Danforth Baptist Church. Among the enthusiastic lovers of Jesus in thatcrowd – John stood out. I’d finally just got comfortable with praising with myhands held high. And over there in the sanctuary I saw this young guy sototally immersed in worship that his spine was bent back like a willow. Hisface and whole being were raised and glowing with love.

When Johnturned that smile your way, the hardest heart had to smile back. When he letout one of his high-pitched long giggles – it tickled your ribs until you justhad to join in a belly laugh along with him.

I’d never metanyone more enthusiastically in love with Jesus. He was unafraid in his desireto share his lover’s tale. And he wanted to know – genuinely wanted to knowwhat your/my relationship with the divine was all about?

John startedup a landscaping business employing psychiatric survivors and became a part ofour TCV woodshop collective. Monday mornings he’d have a story about someneighbourhood church he’d visited looking for Jesus in all the right places.And he’d have stories about looking in all the wrong places too.

He’d have madea new best friend in a pub, bar, or club - trading soul stories and connectingfrom a place of passion with whoever crossed his path. He’d be amazed at howGOD was working in people’s lives - whether they knew how to articulate it thatway or not.

When John gotreally drunk – he’d speak in tongues. I remember wandering streets heading backhome from a night out - he’d break into tongues of praise - dialoging with hisMaker about his unspeakable joy.

And of course,a heart so open to joy was also open to sorrow. We’d share our anger,frustration, and despair at the broken relationships among churches, amongcommunity agencies, among politicians trying hard to do the right thing - butfailing in the face of ego and greed’s mighty distractions.

John wassearching for a way to serve his Lord. Trained as a landscape architect, his visionwas to make community using the same artist’s touch. He loved to turn anabandoned lot into a garden with a rich diversity of plants, stones, and foundobjects. He’d do it by drawing in the talents of wounded people and woundedhealers – whoever GOD sent his way. We were his materials.

John looked atentering the professional ministry in the United Church. But of course nochurch could hold him. His love was so much bigger and wilder and footloosethan any institution could accommodate. He was homeless in that way. Ittroubled him and drove him to keep searching for that elusive “what I’m lookingfor”.

That joyfilledsorrow. That homeless searching. That curious heart’s invitation to thestranger. These are notes in the song I still need to keep singing as I paddlealong. Is it lost to me with John’s absence?

Early lastMay, Lynn and I pushed our kayak into the white waters at 3 brother’s falls. Awave curled and plunged into the boat capsizing us. The icy waters were a shockand the current pulled us towards panic, but we managed to get ourselves andthe kayak to shore.

Adrenalinepumping - I saw the paddle we needed to get back to warmth and safety - circlingin the rapids’ eddy. Without a lifejacket I stumbled out into the river’s rockybottom to get it. As the current pulled me off-balance and my footing slipped -the adrenaline pushed me - to reach just a little further - to get thatimportant paddle…

And then Johncame to mind. And I stepped back. And I let the paddle go – trusting instead thatwe would make it home without it.

Was it just amemory kicking in? Was it just a lesson learned the hard way? Or, was John withme then? Was that saint making his presence known to keep me from harm’s way.To keep me alive and working and searching on?

Isn’t thatwhat the saints want? From their God’s eye view into today and the future –don’t the saints want us to live and live well? Aren’t they singing GOD’spraises into our hearts and giving us signs to go by every moment of every day?

Most of thetime I don’t notice. Lynn was the one who said to me - when I told her how Johnhad come to mind… “He saved your life in those rapids today.” Most of the timeI don’t notice how the saints save me from despair, save me from mediocrity,save me from the rapid running fears that would freeze and suck me in.

Most of thetime I don’t notice. And then, once in a while, a thin time happens.

Y’know?

The Shield:

2011-10-25T08:08:00.000-04:00

Over the last couple of years I havebeen opening up my heart to see the influence of “guides” in my life. While theliving Christ remains central to my relationship with the Source of life,within “Christ” I find many dimensions, facets, and mysteries that cannot becaptured by a male human deity alone.

I still have no idea of what to callthese guides. “Guardian Angels” are a Christian concept. They are an idea Ifind pervasive in the popular culture – and in people’s experience. Animaltotems are indigenous to North American first peoples and common in earthcultures. New age mysticism talks about “spirit guides”.

From somewhere I got the idea, in themidst of transformation, that I wanted to create a shield to represent, Isuppose, my growing awareness of how much help I needed to defend this newemerging Self.

I scrounged a large rusted steelmanhole cover about three feet in diameter. It’s gotta weigh thirty kilos atleast. It would take a Goliath to hold it with one arm. At Thanksgiving I hungit on the pine at the entrance to the 3 brothers retreat property.

Deciding how to decorate this shieldtook well over a year. Each colour, each animal, and where to place them, haschanged and evolved as I work at the art of re-creating Self. On the shield Ipainted images to express the protection, strength, courage that I’ve alwaysneeded and depended on. I’ve just never before acknowledged, or named, or beenso aware of their role in my becoming.

In some ways I am weaker – more vulnerable- than ever. I’ve lost my chain mail ego stumbling through the Shadowlands. Igo into the day to day battles now naked (not literally) and so I need the helpof these guides as never before.

These symbols have now also found theirway onto the ceremonial robe I use to lead in Worship. They help to draw me outof ego and into Self so I can share from a wider, more universal, place ofSpirit.

Two fish swim in a circle head totail

This water symbol is about mypredominant way of being. I swim in the waters of psyche beneath the surface ofordinary daily things. I search for meaning beneath - in the realm of heart andsoul.

The fish appear to be opposed in yinyang counter balance. This is my tendency to play with opposing masculine/feminine,Christian/pagan, conservative/progressive ways of being. I tend to swim againstthe popular current – whatever current I find myself in.

But in fact the two fish are swimmingin the same direction, completing the circle’s round path. Of course thecircle, as the primary universal symbol of spirit and life is, at the heart,the centre, of who I am. And so it is at the centre of my shield. And yes, I ama Pisces. And no, I am not “into” Astrology.

Red Cat: based on the Scottish wildcat from my maternal MacDougalllineage crest. The motto is “touch not the cat ere a glove”. Translated as“don’t mess with us”. The Scottish wildcat is a long-legged grey stripedfeline. It swims and hunts fish. It is endangered by human invasion of its territoryand inter-breeding with domestic cats.

It heads into the red romantic sunsetof the west. West is the direction of the Quest. The hungry cat discovers adultidentity and purpose through adventure and risk.

My “alleycat” alter-ego is aboutleaving the security of the status-quo and wandering the culture’s back alleysfor soulfood. The nine lives of the cat corresponds with the Enneagram’s nineways of being in the world. To integrate all nine ways is the path of wholeness.

White Bear: (a white black bear with a white cub)

After leaving my family home inFenelon Falls I had a vivid dream of meeting these two creatures on a woodedroad. The dream led me to an Algonquin elder named, you guessed it, White Bear.

White is the direction of North, ofwisdom, of the elders, of death, of sleep, of a clean hard cold truth.

It is a symbol that reminds me of mysacred role as father. The wisdom of White Bear is to claim my inner wisdom and“never back down”. This corresponds to memories of youthful encounters with amother bear and cub – and a few years later - a charging grizzly.

Yellow Heron:

My heart has always risen to see themajestic slow flight of the great blue heron. It has an ancient pre-historiclook and an unhurried Tai Chi kind of energy.

It serves in place of other largebirds I might have chosen. The eagle is too American. Hawks are too small.Vultures are too hungry and opportunistic (bells ring there).

Known to hunt river shores and restatop the tallest of white pines, the heron is appropriate for the 3 brothers’river retreat. It is the God’s eye view of things. The long view and largerperspective we glimpse but cannot hold onto.

Yellow is the eastern direction ofrebirth. From that high ground comes new insight to begin again. The abundanceof ideas and opportunities “spring” up from this powerful creative energy -generated within winter’s wisdom of “letting go”.

Green Dragonfly:

Another river creature. Thedragonfly’s life cycle is a powerful story of transformation and liberation.After seven years of bottom-feeding as a nymph, it sheds its skin and becomesthe deadly winged hunter of humanity’s curse – the mosquito. It is about coming into one’s own – if onlyat the end of life. The dragon flies only for one summer’s season.

It is a Warrior symbol of strength,dexterity and resilience. The dragonfly can travel great distances, mate onwing, and hover above the flow of the river’s passing.

Green is the summer colour of growth.It is the energy of life and the childhood spirit of discovery, imagination andplay. Without a return to this season, the adventure of the adult western questcannot be sustained.

Compass opposites:

I’ve arranged these symbols accordingto the placement of the shield on the retreat property of 3 brothers falls.Where it hangs on a white pine at the entrance, the symbols are situatedaccording to the directions they face on the property. It happens to put themin opposite directions to a compass’ face.

Contrary? On the Contrary. Welcome tomy life.

I put this description out to you –fearing that I’ll be labeled a Christian quack, a Native wanna-be, or a New Ageflight captain. Can you understand me when I say that it’s not that I “believe”in these things – because whether I “believe” in them or not – they are there.I’m simply expressing my experience of being part of something wider, deeper,more powerful, and wiser than my isolated mind alone can grasp.

Y’know?

Kindergarten Fires

2011-10-20T09:02:00.001-04:00

Thedifference between being a senior and being an elder? Elders are those who havemastered the art of “letting go”.

Ionce met a greyhaired lady lying in a hospital bed who told me everything sheowned had just been lost in a fire.

“Wow!That’s awful” I sympathized

“I’mjust Thankful” she told me.

“Oh?”

“I’mjust Thankful that no one was hurt and that even my dog got out okay”.

Whatif you lost everything you own? Your home, clothes, photos, music, computer –everything. Would you still be you?

Wouldyou become superbusy recreating it all? Do you have an insurance policy thatwould allow you to go out and buy back your old you?

Orwould you buy a new you? Change your hair and finally go punk pink like youalways wanted? Stop dying your hair and go bold and grey declaring just howwise, or foolish, you really are?

Orwould you jump in your car (the fire didn’t get it) and start all over somewhereelse? Create a new home in a new place in a way you’ve never tried before? Howwould you keep from slipping back into the same old comfortable patterns,preferences, habits and hopes?

Couldyou find some new energy to keep you edgy enough to explore those parts ofyourself that have always been in you like slow-burning embers without everenough oxygen to catch fire?

“Goodteacher, what must I do to deserve eternal life? I’ve kept all the commandments– but it’s not enough…”

“Thenthere’s only one thing left to do: Sell everything you own and give it away tothe poor. Then come and follow me. Unless you accept God’s kingdom in thesimplicity of a child, you’ll never get in.”

Luke 18: 17

Whatchildhood fires of yours have been covered up with the ever falling leaves ofresponsibility? Day after day, year after year the leaves of duty, service,commandments fall upon our childhood dreams and freedoms.

“WhenI was five I was a poet, a dancer, a painter, a prophet, a sculptor, anadventurer and a hero. I was everything and anything I could dream of.”

Parker Palmer

Thenslowly, gradually, gently, as leaves gently accumulate on your front lawn, thechildhood fires of imagination get smothered.

Youneed an education. You need a job. You need a family. You need to make good andgive back the debt you owe. And you need needNEED so many things to make all that happen. The needs keep growing and theneeds keep falling – piling higher and higher on those childhood fires. Soon,your life is all about those needs, all about the leaves you’re neck deep in.

ButGOD kindles those kindergarten fires. Back when you were really you. Withouttitles or job descriptions to define your place in the world, you belonged heresimply because the Maker had put a spark in your mother’s womb. That divinespark is what you carried into this world – what makes you uniquely you.

Maybeyou were a lucky one. Maybe you had teachers, parents, mentors whose firesburned brightly. Whose lives consumed all the dross of “things” that get in theway of inspiration and imagination. Maybe you had elders who had losteverything already and learned that what counts is what you can’t lose. Maybeyour small fires were encouraged to burn freely – given space and oxygen andfuel to burn.

“It’seasier for a camel to pass through the eye of a needle than for a rich churchto enter into the kingdom” joked Jesus.

Whatif lightning struck? If Zeus sent a bolt down, if the Tower of Babel fell, ifour church burned to the ground? Would we discover a language common to all?Would we discover that in the embers burned many small fires of imaginationthat have slept beneath the leaves piled high?

Ifyou’ve obeyed the Commandments all your life and you are still asking “whatelse?” then all that’s left is to follow Jesus into a kingdom of childhood play.The world needs poets, dancers, bold discoverers of radical generosity andsimple pleasures.

Yourfamily, your church, your co-workers need someone to play with more than theyneed leaves to gather. When they look into your eyes will they see the Divinespark burning bright? When they look at your life will they see leaves pileddeep or will they see a bright bonfire burning in this dark world?

Tomorrow’s Hero today

alightning flash woke me while still dark.

therain shower’s rush called outside my window

washingaway the dream that held me undercover

tricklingthrough mind’s grasp

tojoin with your dreams in the storm sewers

ofthis city’s awakening

whatgreat drama held us overnight

whilecaretakers watched our empty buildings sleep

cleanersemptied yesterday’s waste into ever bigger bins

andcops kept company with cabbies and coffee counter clerks

asyesterday’s grind became today’s double double

youfought deep in the dragon’s lair

whileI stole your magic coat

andrunning for the stars tripped on the golden ring

encirclingthe world

andShe found the door at last

inthe endless hall of searching

andHe lost again

whatwas surely in the bag

andthe crowd cheered when the dragon fell

butturned their backs

toavoid the mirrored look within the eyes

ofHer severed trophy’s head

Whatkiss in sleep is sweeter

thanthe Mother’s waking call

toemerge from beneath the blanket’s cave

andbecome tomorrow’s hero before today is gone.

Can a Church pass through the eye of a needle?

2011-10-17T08:05:00.000-04:00

Areyou listening? Really listening?

Unlessyou accept God’s kingdom, here among you, with the simplicity of a child,you’ll never see that you’re already in it.

Jesusasked “Do you have any idea how difficult it is for people who have it all toenter into God’s kingdom – to walk out the door, out of the box – and into thefreedom of God’s Kingdom?

It’slike trying to get a church through the eye of a needle.

Georgehad lived in the same house all his life. He was born there and his father hadbeen born there before him. It was a big old house, built by the best craftsmenof the day.

Allof George’s most precious memories had to do with this home. His birthdays, hiswedding day, the birth of his own five children, the death of his belovedparents. His friends and extended family had come to this grand old house tocelebrate and to mourn with him.

Thehouse held all these shared memories. And it also held memories for George ofprivate quiet times. Times in the middle of the night when his heart wastroubled, when he had some great decision to make, when he felt so very alone –the house was a comfort. It spoke to him. It held him. It knew him. The housegave him solace the way a Mother comforts a child.

Henever felt so alone as when his wife of thirty years left him. She told himthat she needed to be free. That he and the house no longer held any passionfor her.

“Weren’tthe comforts of memories enough to sustain her?” he asked incredulously.

“No,there is something calling to me – something wild and untamed. Somethingunexplored and unknown -but also close to my heart and precious.”

Sheexplained these things to her husband’s sad blank expression…

“Ionly know that if I don’t reach for it, go for it, I’ll feel that I havebetrayed my own best Self. I have this feeling that God has something more instore for me – and that if I don’t pursue it God will be disappointed.”

Shefelt like she’d have as much success explaining it to the family dog.

ToGeorge, all meaning and purpose were wrapped up in the container that hadalways held him, served him.

Howcould another place offer anything more? How could another place replace whathe had here? It never occurred to him to sell off the house and join his wifeon her adventure. To exchange the known comforts of home for a search for theunknown seemed too high a price to pay. To exchange security for risk seemed asacrilege to his parent’s memory.

Andso George learned to live alone in his big old house. The neighbours who wouldcome and visit and help him with chores slowly moved away. He had to hire inhelp to take care of the place.

Theextra costs were chipping away at his retirement funds. More and more he askedhimself the question “Would his days outlast his funds, or would his funds runout before his time?”

George’schildren would visit too. They’d rush in and tell him stories of their lives,complain about the challenges, boast of their successes, wonder why he wantedto stay in this big old place alone?

Hethought maybe one of them would like to take over the house? But no, they hadnew houses with all the modern conveniences and appliances to serve their busylifestyles… “why not sell this house and get a condo?” they asked - knowing theanswer before they asked.

So,they’d take a stroll down memory lane together and then they’d rush off tofollow their guiding star, each in their own direction, towards some distantunknown destination.

Itwas one clear silent night after a Thanksgiving weekend. After the last of theturkey leftovers had been sandwiched and boiled and casseroled away. The nightair was crisp with a frost descending. The harvest moon had all but gone.George knew that his evenings out on his beloved front porch were numbered sohe put on a jacket and went out to see the stars.

Lookingout into dark night strewn with diamonds it seemed a dark curtain was piercedwith pinpricks to reveal a wondrous white light beyond. It felt like everyonehe knew had gone off to follow one of those stars. So many different directionsto pursue, so many guiding lights to follow. George wondered which one was his?Was there a star up there calling to him?

Andwith that question, a question he had never asked before, he got an answer. Hefixed his eye on a star just above the western horizon and his heart leapt.

Hefelt the electric spark in his chest - that caused blood to pump through hisveins - was in some way connected to that distant light.

Heknew that the Creator who had caused that star to twinkle in its place had alsocaused that spark to first jump in his mother’s womb. That spark had become thetwinkle in his eye that made his mother laugh.

Heknew that for all the comforts of the fires he’d kindled in the hearth of hisbig old house – those fires would all goout. But the spark in his chest was connected to that distant star in a waythat was eternal.

AndGeorge realized - perhaps for the first time - perhaps what he had longforgotten - that to be alive is to reachfor the stars – a star – his heart’s desire.

Thatto pursue it was why he was here. That within him was the call to reach furtherout beyond his comforts for a prize that was worth risking everything for. Thatstar, that desire was not a fire in a hearth that would go out in the night.

Thatstar, that desire, was a fire from beyond that would never expire, that wouldsustain his journey, provide for his needs, care for his weary feet – for aslong as he followed its light.

SoGeorge, facing west, took his first baby step of discovery.

Q:The difference between being a senior and being an elder?

A:Elders are those who have mastered the art of “letting go”.

Areyou listening? Really listening?

One Came Back

2011-10-10T16:29:00.000-04:00

There were ten Christians who came to church on Thanksgiving Sunday. They all prayed “Jesus, Master, have mercy on us!” and they received the assurance of pardon.

They all went out humming the last hymn and returned to their good works; raising families, paying the mortgage, helping out with charities, doing their bit in the community.

But one came back to church the next Sunday with a question. “Who are you really Jesus and what are you up to? How can I truly show you my thanks?”.

And somewhere in the hour, perhaps between the offering and the closing hymn, this person heard a reply. It was an echo of their own question carried on imagination’s wings. It was the same question mirrored back, “Who are YOU really and why are you here? What is in your heart to give?”

And so began a journey of discovery. The one who came back with a question was different than the nine who had the answers going in - and coming back out - of church.

The nine believed they were doing their faithful duty serving Jesus by being good fathers, mothers, sons, daughters, workers, friends…

It is just that they are perhaps unaware of the Maker’s presence walking the path with them. They read the book and are following the instructions.

But the one who came back now walks and works with the Author. The one who came back heard his Maker’s invitation to know better her own/his own heart. And so began a relationship between the Divine Wisdom and a Human soul. So began a journey into self, into ego, and out the other side into service.

This story is really about me.

Lately I’ve been going in nine different directions. Septembers are like that. I’ve been coming up with plans and projects and possibilities - about what “I” could do here at George Street and in Peterborough.

Busy as I have been coming up with answers, solutions, ways to serve – I found my head swirling, my heart overwhelmed, and my guts churning with the problems posed. There’s only one of me, I thought. How can I be in all those places? How can I best serve?

And so I did what I do when I get into such a spin. I went on retreat.

I drove out to the place in the woods by the stream where my guides are waiting to remind me.

This guide, this coach if you like, helps me to go deep. She’s not interested in my analysis, or any details of my problems. She takes me to where my energy and imagination speaks.

And we found that my energy had shrunk into a very small place. My energy was all bottled up in my ego. What was “I” to do? How could “I” handle all these problems? What direction should “I” go first?

She laughed and told me it happens to her too and she set about reminding me of how wide, tall, deep and profound are my connections to all the world.

She got me to pour all that bottled ego energy out onto the wide wild landscape I carry with me in my imagination’s heart.

Do you have such a place in your imagination? Where there’s water, rocks, trees, birds, animals? Where your soul is most alive?

Journeying with imagination I visited the great grandmother tree. I leaned my back against her great wide trunk and immediately felt how deep her roots went into the ground and so – into the past.

From the roots she drew me up, through the branches of ego where I’d become entangled, to the crown of the forest and higher. As my spirit soared on imagination’s wings I could see again the breadth of my true self.

North, west, east, south, in every direction was the Maker’s bounty. In every direction the Maker had filled that space with not only potent possibilities but with Help.

I’d once again made the mistake in thinking that I was alone. I’d ignored the help, and the Helpers, waiting for me to open up, to untie the problem I’d knotted up with my answers, and ask the questions…

From where will the help arrive?

Who else out there cares about these things?

Who can see what I’ve been missing?

Who can bring what we need to move us forward?

Who is waiting for that piece I’ve got?

No longer is it my problem alone. My bottled angst is poured out ... and in the wind is transformed into seeds of hope. Instead of hoarding my problems until they make me ill, I toss them out to the Universe to see where they’ll land.

What this guide does for me is to help me Remember. She helps me remember that I am not alone. By guiding my imagination, she helps release the bottled energy caught up once again in my guts and get it flowing out beyond the ego-“I” to the places where I meets “us” and becomes so much more powerful than the small answers, tasks, and problem-solving I could come up with alone.

And so, like the one leper who returns, I go to that place of Thankfulness, of Noticing, of Remembering that I am not alone.

That we are not alone. When we Celebrate God’s Presence. When we ask for help. When we open our hearts to the wide, long, high, and deep reality of a God’s eye view that is so much more real than my small pedestrian problem-solving – there is healing, there is help, there is an open door to the questions I keep asking…“What will we do today, Jesus? Who will you bring? What surprises are around the next corner?”

Luke 17:11-19

Thanksgiving & Pickled Beets

2011-09-29T08:36:00.000-04:00

Thanksgiving

Once in a while

You get a break

Once in a while

You make god laugh

Once in a while

Things suddenly shift

You spend so long

fighting the wind

leaning into it

gritting teeth against stinging rain

You find your mind

is busier than a storm of squirrels

collecting questions Why? Why not? For what?

For whose demands do you hang on?

And then - the wind changes.

Surprised by no longer needing to lean

you lose balance and loosening your grip

all leaves are pulled from your fingers

All the reasons why

have flown

The clothes that kept you covered

pulled away

Instead standing still

you straighten and relax

hands loose and empty

sighing deep and easy

The diminishing struggle

that wore away for so long

is fruit at your feet

returning Joy

Wider, taller, deeper

the sun smiles

at your stretch

and you know again

Grow another ring round

skin a little thicker

heart a little softer

ready for the next blow

allan reeve

September 29, 2011

Pickled beets

Our friend John plowed and tilled a fallowed plot

and invited our seeds to sow

I put tiny dreams of pickled beets into his ground

expecting them to grow

I prayed for rain to grow my crop

and got nothing much

the deer munched away the tops

I was happy for their lunch

Somehow those seeds found what needed

from an invisible powerful source

I only had to pull and wash and cut and boil

now dreams are my next course

allan reeve

September 29, 2011

(I think this poem is about George Street United church.)

Prophetic genitals

2011-09-23T07:33:00.005-04:00

What do you know in your bones? In your guts? What words can you put to that knowledge? How else can you express that knowing?

This week is Pride week in Peterborough. The first decision I was asked to make – even before I started at George Street – was whether we would accept the opportunity to host the Pride Sunday service. I was in a pub with the Chair of Worship and she handed me her cell phone. Would we host?

“Of course” I replied “why not?” (having absolutely no idea why not - it was a from the gut decision.)

Our worship leader was an openly gay man who did a great job of celebrating his story of being welcomed into the George Street congregation. Peter educated us about the counter-effects of Pride on the regular Shaming of GLBTQ folks. He also left us with a challenge to keep reaching out and creating the change necessary for friends, family and neighbours living with very real fear as they “come out”.

The Bible passage we chose was Isaiah 58 (the whole thing). It is a great blast at the church of any age. It slams the human tendency to squeeze the heart of GOD’s passion into a religious intellectual box.

The Prophet points fingers and shames the good church folk (who already feel like they’re not doing enough to please GOD.)

The Prophet feeds into the guilt and worthless feelings of people of conscience by pointing out how they end up raising money instead of opening their hearts.

The Prophet becomes one of those voices in our heads that tells us we’re not doing enough, not generous enough, not Holy enough…

’You’re busy, busy, busy at worship,

and love studying all about me.

To all appearances they’re a nation of right-living people—

law-abiding, God-honoring.

You ask me, ‘What’s the right thing to do?’

and love having me on their side.

“The bottom line of your ‘fast days’ is deficit-reduction.

You drive your ministers much too hard.

⁴You fast, but at the same time you bicker and fight.

⁶“This is the kind of fast day I’m after:

to break the chains of injustice,

get rid of exploitation in the workplace,

free the oppressed,

cancel debts.

I gotta ask ol' Isaiah here…how can we break the chains of injustice when angry blaming dudes like you just load us up with guilt? Every truth you slam us with is just another link in the chains that hold us back in fear, guilt, worthlessness.

You tell us to free the oppressed but you don’t help us to see how oppressive is the guilt that drives us to keep doing more with less and less. How can we be expected to free other’s debts when we are exhausted fighting the debts of duty we’ve accumulated?

⁷What I’m interested in seeing you do is:

sharing your food with the hungry,

inviting the homeless poor into your homes,

putting clothes on the shivering ill-clad,

being available to your own families.

Isaiah, your blaming, shaming voice doesn’t help me to pick up the pieces of my own shattered identity. It doesn’t help me with the broken heart I’ve suffered from trying trying trying to do right and ending up with just a mess.

Where do I get access to the heart of GOD? To the courage of Jesus? To the source of abundance that overflows from within and floods out of our ears - the voices of Shame we encounter in church pulpits, finance meetings, and Stewardship campaigns?

From where do I get the message to let me know what piece of the great puzzle is my responsibility?

Pride week has got me thinking that people who have “come out” are those who have been able to listen to the truth of their own best selves. In spite of the Voices telling them what’s wrong with the way they are, Pride celebrates those who have listened deeply to the Prophet within and dared to free themselves from the chains of should and shame.

Pride week has got me wondering how many of us feel like we don’t fit in? How many of us feel that the way we are, who we are, what we have to offer – just ain’t good enough?

How many of us are afraid of “coming out” to friends and co-workers about our faith? How many of us are very very careful who we tell that we are followers of Jesus?

And so we conform to what’s deemed presentable, proper, affordable, easily consumable, and most palatable. We get strokes from those external Voices when we fit in with the ever more oppressive media presentation of “be like this – or else. Inflame the fear of your debts – or else. Change the world – and put the costs on credit - or else."

But the truth is found in an unseen kingdom. The truth is discovered when we listen to the unspoken voice of the One who made us just how we are. The One who tells us it is our childlike love of free expression and silliness that will save us.

Those who listen to what their bones have to say. Those who listen to what their guts and genitals, butts and backs, hearts and lungs have to say. Those who can listen and share what the Prophet within is saying. Those who can hear the music in the discordant squawks, squeaks, and squeals of a people trying to drown out the noise of shame, should, and shall nots. Then…

You’ll be known as those who can fix anything,

restore old ruins, rebuild and renovate,

make the community livable again.

Not from without, but from within…

¹“Shout! A full-throated shout!

Hold nothing back—a trumpet-blast shout!

thanks to Richard Choe for the photos this week www.wondergaze.blogspot.com

A Bigger Box

2011-09-16T09:59:00.004-04:00

George Street United Church is a big edifice right on the main drag of Peterborough. When Lynn and I went to first check it out as a place I might work next - it seemed an imposing possibility. A bit daunting.

I joked about a naked pastor cartoon where two male preachers stand in front of their churches. One spire is much taller and the one Pastor says “Mine is bigger than yours”.

Lynn’s comment was ‘Yeah, you’ll have more empty seats than anyone else.” (The congregation currently runs with about 200 households.)

The Sanctuary is impressive but I already miss the projector and screen that the Bobcaygeon church has. The acoustics are amazing and the Pipe organ is as sacred an object as any you’ll find in that sanctuary.

George Street prides itself on being a “theologically progressive” congregation. The book studies are popular and they’ve entertained Bishop Spong, Gretta Vosper, and James Loney to name a few.

What I hope this means – and will soon discover I suppose – is that there is lots of room in their theological box. Are their minds as big as their sanctuary? Or, is “Progressive” just another theological position that heIps us decide who is “In” and who is “out” of the box?

I’ve encountered Progressive fundamentalists who claim such forward thinking that they regard anyone who doesn’t see what they see is either stupid, deluded, or just plain ol sinful. (The George Street website makes it clear that all are welcome and they see theological diversity as a good thing.)

www.nakedpastor.com

Is it possible to have a church without boxes?

My own crisis of identity that I suffered through these last couple of years have reminded of two important facts.

First I recalled how much larger my faith is than any box of ideas could hold. When I first experienced, as a twenty-something, the presence of a Spirit who was personal to me, I knew this deity was so much more than the Christianity I’d grown up with.

I chose to call it Jesus.

Why not? The stories of Jesus were already in my heart and head. The Christian story of struggle for justice and wholeness were part of my DNA.

I chose to offer my life in service to that presence. The presence was one that I immediately trusted. The presence was as familiar to me as my own fingers and it was clear that it knew me inside out, up, down and sideways. “You open the doors LORD” I said “and I’ll walk through them” was what I offered then and that hasn’t changed. I love serving the LORD.

Was my invisible friend just a projection of my own best nature? A trick of my unconscious dancing with an overactive imagination? What was clear to me in that meeting was that the presence was not only close and intimate but also older than the moon we met under. The moon was a mere atom within the body of its being.

I knew that Christianity was so much smaller than this presence. I’d had a liberal education and knew religion to be a cultural construct. And I’d had a Sunday School education that taught me God’s love was…

so high, you can’t go over it

so low, you can’t get under it

so wide, you can’t go round it

-you gotta go in through the door

So I chose the door of my childhood. I could have chosen the door of another church or another religion. But I’m often lazy and always impatient to get on with things so I chose the door where I knew I’d have a head start.

The reminder came this past summer when a Healer had me use the power of my imagination to open up the space between pinched discs. She had me use my mind to open up the muscles squeezed tight to protect that hurt place.

On her foor I became so much larger than those tight, defensive, hurting places. The pinch became a crack in the cliff where I live. That meant my head lay miles away and my feet were the hills on the horizon. The river ran through me from far beyond with far to go.

So, as big as this Peterborough church is. As huge as the challenge of keeping it real is. As big as its ideas of who God really is. I know that my imagination, my faith, and the One who is timeless is just so much bigger.

The other side of that same coin is that… I am so much smaller than any box could hold. My part to play. My piece of the puzzle. My words and my influence are simply a note in the ageless symphony GOD’s spirit plays on. What box could hold music?

If I’m a leaf on a tree in this forest that houses me, then the task of my generation is to simply add another inch of topsoil to the home of the Most ancient of days.

Dragonfly summer

2011-09-08T12:45:00.000-04:00

Did you know that a dragonfly lives out most of its life as a larvae? For something like seven years it swims around beneath the water consuming microbial matter.

Then, it’s drawn from the water by some inner vibrational mystery up into air and sunshine. Taking a position on a tall reed the sun dries up its fishy skin. The old identity peels off, wings emerge, and the bottom feeder becomes a highly efficient airborn hunter.

Ridding the riverbanks of the mosquito, it’s an avenging angel devouring God’s mistakes and earning our praise. The beloved dragonfly can’t get enough air time as if landing is sacrilege. It even mates on wing. Twinned fluorescent bodies reflect sunshine through transparent wings.

This glorious existence lasts for just a season. After spending most of its life spent wiggling underwater. It soars into a new reality, wind beneath its wings, and perishes with a smile on its face.

What a summer I’ve had. A dragonfly summer.

My last alleycat post – last April - I was leaving Bobcaygeon for an uncertain future. I only knew that those familiar waters were no longer where I belonged. I’d spent a year in discombobulation. Losing my marriage, losing my family home, losing my cool, losing my mind, losing the trust of the church elders (most) and earning the worry of many, I was being drawn out of the element I knew into some unfamiliar atmosphere.

The most common conversation I had last Spring was “what will you do next?”. I had no answers and only a few ideas. “The Lord will provide” was my only answer. I preached about Trust and Transformation. I was pretty sure congregational ministry was behind me. I was ready to spread my wings and see what new adventures the wind would drop me into.

I moved from my winter’s accomodations to the acre in the woods on the Burnout River. I’d just nicely got my big canvas tent set up under a hay tarp and was looking forward to being a gypsy when three unseen buds sprung up like wildflowers in my path.

A woman who’d been a good friend and colleague became much more. We became comfort and joy for one another. We entered one another’s shattered hearts and began making a new bigger heart from the pieces.

An opportunity to purchase the 17 acres upriver that ended in a cliff and the third of three brother’s falls popped up next. This golden chance was beyond reach. Even with brother Ted taking half, I had no job and no security for a loan.

The property was the carrot at the end of the stick. The stick was another church. A colleague called me up to say she was moving on and I should apply to supply.

When I told friends and family I’d taken on another church I got lots of surprised comments. No one was more surprised than me. But there it was. A big fat blood-filled mosquito right in my path. What was I to do? I swallowed it whole.

I had two months to digest it. June and July went by on the riverbank. The falls kept pouring forth their endless reminder of the roll of time. Their thunder reverberated with the power of loss – the inevitable fall of all that time sweeps on. And Hope rose with the mists from the thunder and loss. With each first light we drank coffee, read psalms, and sent our hopes out into those mists to rise with the heron’s wide wings to treetops and beyond.

The alleycat of yesterday had drowned tumbling down those falls. The ways I’d related to folks, the scaredy-cat, the rubbing up against legs needing petting and approval, the hungry search for morsels of meaning – all gone.

My psyche took wing. There was a transparent lightness in every day. I fed on the sins of my youth. All the ways I’d betrayed my true wild self -making compromises - mistaking them as sacrifices for a god that could never be appeased.

That false god of endless demands was cut down with the trees and brush we cleared for our campsite by the falls. We ran it through the chipper and used the chips for a footpath into the woods beneath the cliff.

From high on that cliff we watched the sun set and noticed every shade of green and every hue of cloud that the artist Maker could please us with. We breathed in the gift of each inspiration and picked blackberries as numerous as the days we’d wasted away in prisons of codependency.

In the magic of moonlight on water we could see what sister moon sees. How broad and wide and free our lives are to be lived. How much bigger our souls are than the small confines of fear we choose to spend them in.

And now the season is over. It’s back to concrete and asphalt. The great stones of George Street United Church call out for Jesus walking somewhere in the streets of Peterborough. The alleycat is once again on prowl - hungry for morsels.

I’ve lost track of how many lives this alleycat’s used up. He’s still got all the same fleas in his hide. His old habits he wears like fur. But he’s had a dragonfly summer and the shapeshifting has given him eyes to see from on wing. There’s a White Bear and cub at his back to make sure he never returns to the cage but roams always with the One who set him free.

If my whole life were just one day

2011-05-06T07:31:00.000-04:00

I spent the morning getting ready

tying my shoes and washing my face

by lunch I’m so full of my self

that the afternoon is spent running errands

finding a mate, raising kids, fixing this, buying that,

most of it wasted procrastifrigginating

and just before it’s too late

I get down to why I’m here

at dinner I sit with everyone

who woke me

who worked me

who let me be

and listen carefully finally

dusk is my time to tell

and I’ll sing and dance the sun to rest

by nightfall you’ll find me a holy nuisance

tormenting the proud and polite with mercy

ringing up debts that only one could pay

until I fall asleep alone in his arms.

Packing

2011-04-28T10:34:00.002-04:00

It is time to move on. In another month I’ll finish up at the church in Bobcaygeon. I need to pack up ten years of accumulated files and books and assorted objects d’ministry.

This weekend I’m moving out of my rooms in Peterborough and back into the woods at 3 brothers falls. My accommodations there are a 25 foot Camper equipped with propane fridge, stove, and furnace. It’s got a dozen little storage cupboards, two little beds and a small table for dining. This year’s advancement will include running water! I’ll purchase a gas-powered water pump and a storage tank to I can have a flow of river water to wash my dishes and body in. Today I’m buying some new tarps to keep the rain off my outdoor kitchen/dining tent.

Packing is proving to be a challenge.

Winter clothes can go into storage bins and stashed outdoors.

What do I do with my art? Hanging it on trees doesn’t seem too good a solution.

What do I do with my stereo and album collection?

What about my tools and drum kit still in the basement in Fenelon?

It feels like University days again – when I would move at least twice a year. Back then I had all of my possessions down to what could fit into a pick-up.

In some ways it is very freeing. I don’t have much that I didn’t purchase second hand and so I have few long term attachments to what I’ll be leaving behind. I don’t need much in the way of comforts. A desk, a bed, pots and pans, a laptop, tools, table and chairs. That should do it.

This Sunday I’ll preach on my favourite Jesus ghost story. You know the one at the end of John where he shows up on the beach where Peter and the boys have gone fishing. The guys have been fishing all night – hauling up empty net after empty net.

Jesus knows where the fish are – he’s already got some cooking on a breakfast fire. He yells out to the guys to try “the other side”. Sure enough, they pull in the big catch and that’s when they clue in that the guy on the beach is Mr. Abundance himself.

Lent has been all about pulling up empty nets for me. Every time I ask “what’s my next step LORD?” all I get is an empty net.

People ask whether I’ll go back to the community ministry work I did in Toronto.

People ask whether I’ll take on another congregation.

Some people seem even more anxious than I am – to know what’s next.

This morning I spoke with my buddy Wayne Rumsby. He tells me about getting a call out of the blue to come to Alberta and do a social ministry – putting hard to employ people to work out in the foothills.

He asks me whether I’m going to build a dwelling out in the woods? I tell him I’m trying to decide whether I can afford another tent.

I wonder whether there’s a call “out of the blue” in my future. He tells me to keep writing. He says “I know your writing probably freaks some people out – but I love it.” He describes it as nudity. Says sometimes he wants to say “Al – put some clothes on.” but he’s curious about what I might expose next. So instead he tells me to keep writing.

In some ways I feel like I’m that fish cooking over the fire on the beach. I feel like I’ve been cooked and eaten up by Jesus’ followers. As I get ready to depart I suppose they’re digesting just what kind of a meal it was. Some spat me out. Some I gave a case of heart burn. Some I filled up and satisfied. Some I made hungry for more.

I know that on “the other side” of the place I am – abundance is waiting.

Once again I’ll have the hard work of hauling up more fish than I can handle.

Jesus tells Peter he’s gonna be taken places he doesn’t want to go. Peter looks over his should and asks “what about him?” wondering whether he alone gets the special blessing of being dragged away or whether John’ll get the honours too?

So, my word for you who might worry about me is what Jesus tells Peter. “Don’t you worry about him.”

A lot

2011-04-20T08:40:00.000-04:00

The following poem sums up my life experience over the last two years.

It’s better to be loved

than not

- a lot

Thanks for this poem goes to all who have loved me and to those who have not.

I also spewed out a Good Friday poem for this year as has been my custom lately. Good Friday is my favourite day in the Christian calendar. It is the one day when we can express the failure of the Christian enterprise. In the face of power, greed, and those who wield fear – our hope is lost. Cynicism and despair are appropriate. There is a huge part of my heart that lives in Good Friday.

Would Jesus really appreciate it?

the way we’re so consumed by his death

same old story sold again and again

Is it really the best one we’ve got?

Christmas is so cute and cuddly

but Easter’s pretty ugly this side of the tomb

We grow up too fast

to see just how life and death

are a little too close for comfort

children don’t know it’s not polite to stare

at the blood, sweat, and tears of our fears

So we keep it to ourselves

how little we know

about what’s true

and what’s the same old line

‘bout duty blood and suffering

to win the peace for

the sacred line of soldiers’s children

waiting for the mall to open

We meet the needs of a hungry purpose

Self perpetuating

Atoning for the sin that never ends

but missing the point

Say goodbye to the passive aggressive ego

dead at last

hopefully not forgotten

Lest i resurrect

the 7 demons

undone

in that one moment; at-one-ment

thanks to Richard Choe for the photos www.wondergaze@blogspot.com

"Fear Not?"

2011-04-13T10:08:00.003-04:00

What was Jesus up to as he entered Jerusalem?

The drama of his “royal” entrance – like a wily raccoon walking into a trap knowing it’s a trap but sure he’ll outsmart it. The theatre of his “flipping out” on the moneychangers in the temple. His thinly veiled parables exposing the Priest’s power of piety as naked threats in the eyes of GOD. Finally, his sevenfold “rant” against the hypocrisies of the Holy men - spoken with a sad anger at the human condition that seeks to work compromises with Roman swords - taking the reigns from GOD’s hand.

That week was all about one thing. I want to boil it all down to one single statement.

“Fear not”.

My dad asked me to take a walk last weekend. We’d had “words” earlier in the week about my blog statement that I would not vote in this election. We both wanted to find some common ground to share.

He spoke to my responsibility as a Minister of the United Church to lift a lamp of hope in the dark world. (my words) (my dad had spent his life holding up that lamp – lifting it still at 82. To be United Church is to be actively political – involved in the struggle for a better world.)

I told him that a year ago I could do that. But now, after all that’s happened to the once-secure future I’d been working on…marriage, home, job disintegrated…I could no longer be so hope-full that everything would turn out okay if we just keep going...

So why not be quiet then? Why cry out like a wounded animal?

I told him the story of Asher Lev. I’m in the middle of this novel “My name is Asher Lev” by Chaim Potok. The story is about this Jewish boy in 1950’s New York whose father and mother are devoted servants of the Hasidic way. Serving the Rebbe, their lives are all about preserving their culture in the face of an evil world. The father risks his life to bring Jews out of Russia. But his son. All his son wants to do is draw and paint. These gifts have no place within the Hasidic culture.

His father cannot see it. His father tears his hair out. Storms and yells and says his son is lost to him.

His mother is torn apart. She loves them both and cannot bear to see her family split. She fights for the son.

The Rebbe sees and hears everything in his close little knot of believers. When the boy comes of age, he sends him to be an apprentice to a great master artist who is a Jew but who has left the religion. The Rebbe obeys the call of the gift upon the boy and must trust that the words of Torah that the boy has fed upon these thirteen years will stay in his bones as his flesh is exposed to the evil world.

The Rebbe gives the boy to the artist. Because he loves him, he gives him away. Even when the father’s whole life is about bringing people into the safety of their world on behalf of the Rebbe, the Rebbe sends his only son on a path that will take him away…

I told him this story because I feel that my gift is taking me outside of the world that my father has served all of his life.

He started talking about his father – the farmboy who became a CPR locomotive engineer. (I became aware again of how powerful the life of his dad was still upon his shoulders.) His dad had not been happy when he chose to go into ministry. He was afraid that it would be too hard for his sensitive son. Why choose to live with people’s harsh judgments?

“Keep your nose clean” was the advice he passed along from his father. I wondered what the old railroad man meant by that.

My dad interprets it as “Never give up”. But I hear it as “be true to your self”. Be true to what GOD has put inside of you. Be true to the way you feel – more than what you think. Thoughts come and go. Right thinking changes over time. The only thing that is real is our experience. How we experience the world is all we really have. How the world makes us feel. How our encounters with each morning, breeze, sunlight and strong wind, rain filled creek and birdsong.

I want to tell the stories told by the lines on the faces of the storytellers that belie the words that come from their mouths. Feelings don’t lie. But so rarely do we share those sad and angry feelings about how this world gets distorted by greed and fear.

I need to be in places where I feel like I belong.

Right now, I feel like a stranger in my own country. I feel like a stranger in my own church. Where I belong is somewhere on the other side of the crucifixion. A place I have yet to discover.

This morning I read what the master artist tells his young student:

“I see the world as hard-edged, filled with lines and angles. The world fills me with disgust more often than it fills me with joy. Are you listening Asher Lev? The world is a terrible place. I do not sculpt and paint to make the world sacred. I sculpt and paint to give permanence to my feelings about how terrible this world truly is.

Nothing is real to me except my own feelings; nothing is true except my own feelings as I see them all around me in my sculptures and paintings. I know these feelings are true, because if they were not true they would make art that is as terrible as the world.

As Asher Lev works at a painting of a boy in his class, he asks if he hates the boy.

“In art, cowardice and indecision can be seen in every stroke of a brush. If you hate him, paint your hatred or do not paint him at all. One must not paint everything one feels. But once you decide to paint something, you must paint the truth or you will paint green rot.”

p. 216 “Asher Lev”

And as I read the story of Jesus entering Jerusalem I hear him saying “Fear Not.”

“Millions of people can draw. Art is whether or not there is a scream in you wanting to get out in a special way.” said the teacher.

“Or a laugh” said Anna “Picasso laughs too”

P203 Asher Lev

(yield sign cartoon is from Nakedpastor@blogspot.com)

Would Jesus Vote?

2011-04-06T10:02:00.002-04:00

Wow, I received an all time record of responses to that last blog. 23 responses. 24 if you count the Holy Spirit (who didn’t commit to print)

2 agreed with me (two’s company - three’s a crowd - no one wants to lead though)

2 suggested I officially spoil my ballot (show up, not mark an X, hand it in)

6 suggested a vote for the Greens (it’d be like not voting but would give them funds)

8 empathized but said they would still vote (out of a sense of duty)

12 suggested I should do the right thing (for various reasons involving the struggle for democracy in history and the wide world)

3 said DO THE RIGHT THING YOU JERK (all people who could remember WWII)

And the Holy Spirit noted that while I was pointing my finger at the rich, three fingers were pointing back at my own greed, insecurity, and selfishness

(Note: These statistics could vary 2 out of 3 times depending on the vagaries of my memory, how I interpret your comments, and my mood at the time.)

I really appreciate the input and am tempted to be swayed by the majority – except – I’m still with Jesus on the road to Jerusalem. What did the popularity polls tell Jesus about his chances of success?

Only a few comments spoke to the question of “What would Jesus do?”. One was a friend defending the generosity of the rich. Another was a woman who’s been courageously working away in a corner of the federal bureaucracy trying to bring a little light into the dark morass that is our criminal justice system. (Why are our prisons full of poor and/or mentally handicapped people when corporate thieves receive tax breaks?)

She sent me an essay that didn’t answer “What would Jesus say?” but came close with “What would Mary Jo Leddy say”.

Alison Morgan May diagnoses for me the ailment I’m suffering from. She finds in Leddy’s 2002 book “Radical Gratitude” an analysis of our culture of “dissatisfaction”. We have been fed the lies of progress for three generations now. The electronic media blanket we live under assures us that sacrifice, duty, and the pursuit of happiness will provide an ever better life/world/peace.

“We live in a culture of money. The average American watches 26 hours’ TV a week, which is 13 years in a life time, and 3 years of solid advertising. Through TV and other adverts we are bombarded by 16,000 brand name logos every day. Even those who shun TV have to live in a world shaped by people who have had their consciousness altered by advertising.

The result – our culture is constituted through craving. Without consumption there would be no production and no profit; people have to keep wanting more. The problem isn’t in the shopping – it arises when we think we are buying identity, meaning, purpose. These things have to be discovered, they can’t be purchased.

The craving spills over from material possessions to a craving for better experiences, more fulfilling relationships, more information, self-knowledge, even more spirituality – there’s a thriving business in selling spiritual things.”

Alison Morgan May

It’s not so much that I don’t believe in the politicians. I have lost faith in my culture. I have lost faith in my neighbour’s ability to choose a political path that is not merely about maintaining the sacred status quo. God forbid that my right to go to the Mall and purchase a better and better life might be questioned.

Jesus was up against a Roman propaganda machine that offered Peace, Justice, and the gifts of God. His invitation to journey out of that culture and create circles of Radical Gratitude was about saying “NO” to the lie of a better, safer, happier life offered at the cost of “acceptable losses” - won by the sword and secured by the state.

By not voting I am saying “these losses not acceptable”.

There is no acceptable level of radiation poisoning.

There is no acceptable level of homelessness or child poverty.

There is no acceptable level of military aggression.

No Canadian political party is saying these things.

And so I ask “Would Jesus Vote?” and if so – for who?

“Radical gratitude begins when we stop taking life for granted; it arises in astonishment at the miracle of creation, in the recognition of what we have rather than what we don’t have.

The meaning of life is that we are created for God; especially important in a culture which has lost a common sense of what it is for. In the absence of an overarching common vision, the goal of getting more has filled this social vacuum.”

In the experience of radical gratitude we know the origin and purpose of our lives.

Alison Morgan May

It’s not that I don’t appreciate my right to vote. It’s not that I am not grateful for the sacrifices made to win me that right. It is because I truly value my vote – that I choose not to spend it.

I won’t say YES to a political party willing to do deals with the devil to get the power to pursue truth and justice. My YES is reserved for the small ones who refuse violence, greed, and lies in the vision of an ever extending family at the Thanksgiving Table.

I Won't Vote

2011-03-31T09:17:00.003-04:00

I decided this morning that I won’t vote.

I decided to put my vote with the Anarchist non-party of the World.

I’m with the growing majority of Canadians who just don’t see how their vote will affect the “going to hell in a handbasket” path our leaders are on.

Their refusal to let Elizabeth May into the televised debate was the last straw.

I’m tired of the petty squabbling over the chance to serve the real leaders of our country - corporate interests. Jack Layton’s promise to limit credit card interest rates is like the student council president telling us he’ll stand up to the high school principal. Behind that high school CEO is a vast power structure. We all know who’s got the power.

I believe in democracy. I just don’t believe in parliamentary democracy.

Hasn’t it always been so?

Wasn’t parliament invented to try to get the best deal from the rich?

Isn’t that the job of politicians? To twist the arms of the rich and ruthless (that’s a redundancy I know – to be rich is to be ruthless) so that they are forced, shamed, coaxed into sharing.

How can politicians get them to do what their kindergarten teachers failed to do? Like petty thieves going to prison to learn how not to get caught next time, Country Clubs provide the rich a place to trade tax law loopholes. Taxes are mere nuisances in their quest for what is their due.

The rich necessarily have an attitude – I don’t know if you’ve noticed it – that they have a “right” to profit at other’s expense. How can investors in Canadian mining companies turn a blind eye to the theft and devastation of native lands? They must feel that they have a right to profit at whatever are deemed “acceptable costs”. How can theft be called “acceptable”? How can any level of cancer causing radiation be called “acceptable?

To vote is to participate in this process of negotiating with thieves and mad scientists.

Jesus said “unless you pick up your cross – you cannot follow me”.

He didn’t say “hold you nose and vote”.

The “cross” is an invitation to martyrdom. In the face of an empire that had corrupted the religious authorities of his country – the indigenous rulers who themselves had bought power with righteous violence – Jesus says “commit Hari Kari”.

His own death is a statement about power. He clearly says ‘You can take it all. Take my money, clothes, dignity - put my followers to the test at the point of a sword and watch them run – make me watch them turn against me - and then torture me til I’m dead. And then we will see. We will see what the worst of your power can do to the souls I have fed.”

When people have nothing to lose, they have everything to gain. When the rich and ruthless take it all away – all you have is your soul.

If I choose to follow Jesus, then I am choosing to follow a soul.

Not a politician. Not a preacher. Not a saint. Just a soul.

Now I can wait til I’m dead to follow him to some heavenly peace. Or I can wait to see if my accumulated sins will end up torturing me for all time. Or I can choose to lose my life and live as if I’m already dead – as if all I’ve got – really – no really – is a soul.

Soul gets expressed only moment by moment.

It gets tested in every moment and every decision.

I can’t expect the soul decisions I make today to last past sunset or moonrise.

Some rich and ruthless one will be sure to take whatever real thing my yesterday’s soul expression results in - and twist it into an opportunity for more power, prestige, money, or a means to those ends. Every artist knows this all too well.

Take a look at Jesus’ own soul expressions. His words and acts have been used and abused for all the right and wrong reasons for centuries. Misinterpreted, manipulated, manifested into great works of charity that provide safe havens for both sheep and wolf in the same pen.

Of all the print and commentary that has flowed thru my brain in these last weeks – all the news of war, man made environmental disaster, political hockey games, and failures of community to protect the weak – these words rung true.

In a conversation with a Kurdish friend, CPTer Carol Rose commented that sometimes nonviolence doesn’t yield the hoped-for-results right away. The friend replied “Yes, but sometimes you are happy in nonviolence because you are not losing your soul. You might lose hope, or get tired, but you are not losing your soul.”

from Signs of the Times

Christian Peacemmaker Teams

Oct – Dec 2010

For me, voting in this election would be a soul-deteriorating act. One more small compromise of what I know to be true. It would be one more step off the Jesus path – a distraction from the path of soul. Doing something that seems like a thumb in the dike when I need to be living as if the flood has already come and washed away all of my “acceptable” creature comforts. Comforts bought at the cost of the earth and the earth’s peoples.

Will I also ditch my car and walk that path?

One soul expression at a time.

Today my soul says “I will not vote”.

Anyone care to join me?

Devil's best advice

2011-03-21T08:48:00.003-04:00

Satan tells Jesus that he can have unlimited resources to solve the disasters in Japan. Tells him that the world’s arsenal is at his disposal to protect the freedom fighters in Libya. All he has to do is give credit where it belongs. Tell people “that’s the way things work. That’s the real world.”

Instead J trusts in something much deeper. Trusts in a power unseen. From a deep womb place. He goes and tells people “take another look – there’s a world within this world. A power deeper and stronger.”

Forty days in the desert had taken him to that place of trust. Matthew uses the forty days to remind us of the forty years the children of god wandered in search of their promised land – figuring out how to be a people apart. My buddy Mike, the basement poet preacher, reminded me of another significant forty this week. How many weeks does a baby gestate inside its mother? Forty.

That’s what we’re talking about here. That kind of connection between mother and baby; that kind of communication; that kind of wordless sense of belonging, trust, knowing…

These are concepts below the radar, beneath the waters, beneath where heart and mind can go. J says in response to S that instead you are to love the LORD your GOD with heart mind and soul (or something like that). Well, we know how to love the LORD with heart and mind, but where do we get that Soul instruction?

Heart is like Plotkin’s Spirit. The high emotion of good and holy times. The high emotion of sad and sacred moments. The events that take us closer to our Maker we celebrate with ceremony, parties, worship services that lift us up to that higher plane.

Ego is all about how we operate in the world. We love GOD by making the right choices and living rightly. We teach respect and kindness and hard work and – all so important.

Yet there is a part of us that doesn’t get talked about. Mostly because it isn’t a place of words. It’s a place of colour and image where dreams and metaphors attempt to capture the deep underwater fishiness of what it is to be soul-full.

I’ve been listening to soul music with son david. You know that heart-wrenching stuff with a driving beat? It’s like the blues with a gospel stand-up-and-move rhythm. David and I are working on some new vocabulary. We’re starting with “Yeeowwww” - the perfect expression of a man in the midst of the torture of love. How else to put it?

Soul talk is wordless.

Which is why Jesus tells stories. His disciples ask him about all these stories. They complain that they’re hard to figure out. He tells them that most people can’t “see” and can’t “hear” what the soul is about. A few, like them, get that gift of inner vision – can “hear” what is really going on below the surface. But most, he explains, are hardened to see only what’s on the surface. (Matthew 13) And so he tells stories to soften them up and point towards the soul of the matter.

Same with the miracles. They are meant to point to something deeper. Something even more precious than a physical healing – an attention getter if you will. “Look deeper. Dig deeper. Fish.”

And it is territory within us all. Jesus reaches out to the ordinary guys of Galilee. Guys of the earth and sea. Guys who read nature like a book. Who watch and learn for what the seasons and creatures and winds can tell. He calls those guys to help him fish for people’s souls. Help them meet others soul to soul and gather them to the table where unconditional love can slowly pull from them their soul’s calling.

Which is what Jesus knows as his one life’s purpose. Not to solve the world’s problems with the world’s means – but to free souls one at a time. His purpose, that he was willing to die for – to show us that nothing can stop a soul’s calling…is that call to freedom…

If you personally are not in the midst of transformation I’m guessing you probably know someone who’s life is.

What advice do you give them?

Is it parental? Does it go like “do the right thing. Do the safe thing. Do the secure thing.” We tell our children “Get an education. Get a job. Get a mortgage…”

Or do you encourage them to listen deep and follow freedom’s calling?

Parents are all about security. That’s their job. That’s what they know. And that’s why in tribal societies and earth societies, at some point, the child is handed over to the uncles, the aunts, the grandparents - whose job it is to teach the child how to fish in their souls and pull up from the depths their purpose, their gift to the world. Often those gifts are presented at some sacrifice to security and a settled life.

A child can become a safe and secure credit to the family and never become who GOD intended them to be. Made in the image of their parents, or their society, instead of made in the image of GOD.

It’s a recipe for a deep unhappiness that unfortunately can get expressed in all kinds of sad and negative ways. Maybe its just an itch that will never go away. Maybe it’s a source of pain that gets drowned out by addiction and emotional afflictions … until the soul gets to speak.

What is my calling?

Joy Kagawa in an interview about the current disasters in Japan tells a story about a raging forest fire. It drives all of the forest’s creatures to the water’s edge. They stand and watch except for the sparrow. The sparrow fills its tiny beak with water and flies into the fire’s heat to spit those drops into the furnace. Again and again and again. The great eagle asks what the sparrow thinks its doing? And the sparrow replies “I’m doing what I can.”

And that’s your soul’s call.

And the devil is anything or anyone who tries to dissuade you.

Jesus in prison cartoon is from http://www.nakedpastor.com.

Ambition

2011-03-17T09:03:00.000-04:00

Next, taking him to a very high mountain, the devil showed him all the kingdoms of the world and their splendour. And he said to him “I will give you all of these, if you fall at my feet and do me homage.”

Then Jesus replied “away with you Satan! For scripture says

The Lord your God is the one to whom you must do homage,

him alone you must serve. (Deuteronomy 6:13)

Then the devil left him, and suddenly angels appeared and looked after him.

It was a lunch break in a three day conference in Winnipeg. The Samuel and Saidie Bronfman Foundation paid my ticket – I was one of their investments in community-based sustainable urban economic renewal.

I ended up in the lunch line beside one of the few “suits” in the crowd. He’d been introduced earlier as the Provincial Minister of Native Affairs for the current conservative government.

I’d asked him about his last name and whether he was related to a veteran community activist from Sudbury?

“That’s my little sister” he replied.

We sat together and ate our boxed lunches.

He told me about a meeting he’d recently attended. “the greatest minds in the world” had been gathered by the Shell corporation. They were on the payroll working out the planet’s economic and environmental sustainability plan. His message to me was “so you guys don’t really need to worry yourselves about it.”

“What a relief!” I said appreciatively. “Have you let your sister know about this?” His eyes went up to the left perhaps remembering the last family thanksgiving political discussion. He shrugged, grinned and shook his knotted eyebrows. “No, I haven’t.”

I probed a little further. “Have you consulted with the Spiritual elders of the Native groups you work with? Not the political leaders – the Spiritual leaders?” He gave me a quizzical look.

I remember this little twenty minute encounter every time I hear “experts” pronounce their foolproof plans.

Like our Provincial government marching on with their investments in nuclear power in the face of Japan’s disaster.

Like the United Nations deliberating the way to untangle foreign interests while freedom fighters get slaughtered in Libya.

Like the devil offering Jesus the means of solving the world’s problems by putting the world’s reigns into his hands.

Jesus gives the reigns back.

Then goes and starts telling people that the reign of God is at hand. Right after he’s just been given the chance to reign and passed on it.

What gives?

How to discern Satan’s solutions from God’s?

GOD has put the question of ambition on my heart this week. What is my life’s ambition? When they write a paragraph about me for the newspaper obituary (if there are newspapers then?), what will it say?

Ambition

Is my desire to do something remarkable

…of GOD or his devil?

Row across the ocean for Chinese food?

Be the fastest descender of mountains on rollerskates?

These are stories I could sell.

How bout becoming Peterborough’s Mother Theresa?

Discover the cure for what eats us inside out?

Stories to change a million hearts.

What is the path for the best body, best heart, best minds of the world?

...since what GOD gave me is the best (I’ve got).

If I choose to follow the path of a son of god

instead of chasing the sun on one of the king’s horses

I turn towards the night

go into the dark

where blind I see

with heart

one

sparkle

glint

ghost’s hope

a drop in the ocean’s hungry bucket

a moment in history’s cruel returning curve

a story that’s never been truly heard

and never forgotten

by them that’s got all it takes

to laugh at the devil’s promise

tell Jesus “thanks for nothing”

and mean it

++++++++++++++++++++++

Heard a story this week – a friend of a friend’s entire Japanese family - who just happened to be celebrating a family reunion on a mountaintop when the earthquake and tsunami hit.

These things add up. Every one of us needs to pray;

when all hell breaks loose and the dam bursts

we’ll be on high ground, untouched. Psalm 32:6

More than this, when they all returned to their various homes in different places, they found that all of their homes had been untouched.

I have three questions.

Was it their ancestral prayers that called them to that mountaintop?

Was it Satan’s curse that all of their homes were spared?

Was it GOD’s miracle or Satan’s coincidence?

And one question at the heart of the three…

Was it Neither, or Both, or simply One in the same thing?

Mountain top salvation

comes along with valley’s curses

Duality of the whole

-does it tickle or sting?

Make you giggle or cry?

Wonder what answer

could undo the puzzle why

No answer have I found yet…

Just uncovered a suggestion…

^{Psalm 32:11}Celebrate God.

Sing together—everyone!

All you honest hearts, raise the roof!

Winter's Wild Wonders

2011-03-10T10:39:00.001-05:00

Everyone I talk with is hanging onto the idea that spring is around the corner. Hope is a powerful tonic. The mood has shifted.

But in these last ten days of winter I feel that I have something left to do. I still have some emptying to do.

There are regrets still haunting me. They cling to me like horror sci-fi slime. I don’t notice the goo until someone tells a story and it triggers a hindsight-insight. Things I haven’t done, didn’t do, opportunities missed. If only I’d been a better father, minister, man…

I need to pack those up and send them off to someone who needs the extra guilt. Isn’t there a drop box in some mall parking lot where you can drop your used guilt for those in need?

Winter’s wild wonder

tells me

without words

to listen

GOD’s voice

is not in the calling

from that high place of duty

GOD’s voice

is not in the worrying

about what they might say

GOD’s voice

isn’t saying anything

but quietly waiting for me

to get it

to open that door

to walk out into the cold

to step into the place without answers

How can this place without walls

feel so much like home?

How can this place so empty

feel so full?

How can this place without words

speak so clearly into me?

It tells me

what I already know

It tells me

a harsh truth about what is gone and dead

What I don’t want to know

Where I don’t want to go

because the duty that defined me

the people that held me

grip only the false gods I wore

and not the ghost I am

Stepping out that door

I shed the skin

that was afraid to feel

the cold shoulder

And discover that without skin

I am just smoke in the wind

inhaled deep

in the Maker’s lungs

stirring HER imaginations of me

And once I’ve entered HER blood’s stream

touched HER neural receptors beyond Saturn’s rings

helped HER let go of the future we’d made

SHE’ll get the joke

and blow me out

I can’t hold a candle

all my plans and schemes

to the purpose SHE lifts on horizons new day

March 9, 2011

Sunrise over Pidgeon Lake

Indestructable Certainty

2011-03-04T08:09:00.003-05:00

On a grey morning I turn to an old friend, Henri Nouwen, flip open one of his many books to find…

“and yet you are Christian….

only so long as you constantly pose critical questions to the society in which you live,

and only so long as you emphasize the need for conversion both for yourself and for the world.

You are Christian only so long as you, in no way, let yourself become established in a situation of seeming calm,

only so long as you stay unsatisfied with the status quo and keep saying that a new world is yet to come.

You are Christian only when you believe that you have a role to play in the realization of this new kingdom and when you urge everyone you meet with a holy unrest to make haste so that the promise might soon be fulfilled.

(Pg102 of “With Open Hands” – I played with the phrasing)

Nouwen wrote these words in 1972. I was in grade eight – a place of profound dissatisfaction. Too big for public school. Eager to take on the mantle of teendom. And scared silly about swimming with the big high school fish - sharks and all.

I was ready for transformation. Yet my culture offered so little in the form of rite and ritual to help me peel off my childhood skin, ditch the too small shell, and venture into the wild threatening world armed only with what’s inside.

I did the United Church Confirmation Class thing. While the minister was sincere, the experience was more about confirming that I would conform to my parent’s world than about discovering the mysteries of a world where GOD roams hungry. What I remember most about that experience was this cute girl from another school that I got to chat with while we waited for our parents to pick us up.

Probably the closest thing we have in our culture to an initiation rite is the Rock Concert.

I remember my first high school dance. It began with heart pounding – risking arrest and shame - filling out the LCBO form (remember those?) to get a hold of the illegal intoxicating elixir that would – I was told - ease my passage into another world.

I had no circle of elders there to hand me the potion and guide my passage. We guzzled the mickey of vodka in hiding beneath the high school bleachers. It was a ritual handed down by big brothers. Maybe not quite the shamans we needed – it was what we had. And we had to do it. Somehow we knew – somewhere in our ancient celtic DNA - there was a call to enter into the storm to test our wits - witless.

You could hear the pounding bass from outside. The beat draws us in.

We run the gauntlet of teachers and police pretending to threaten our drunken passage - while exchanging knowing looks and smirks at our childish bleary-eyed attempts to appear straight.

We venture from lighted hallway into darkened cavern - eyes deprived of orientation – ears invaded by the flood of sound and every thought you ever had is blown out the top of your head and your a-hole at the same time.

Breathless - you manage to maintain balance – barely – slowly becoming aware of the crowd of shadowy bodies filling this new enticing hell you’ve entered. All eyes are drawn by the coloured rays of light thrown at the strangely costumed madmen on stage. They’re movin and agroovin - and as the magic of their bigger than life personas find you – you find that you’re moving too.

Your scared little butt is shaking. But the cheeks loosen and soon join head and shoulders in the same tribal response that the first humans danced to the first language they ever shared – the drumming. It is the drumming that took the heartbeat inside their chests and picked it up a notch. Once that blood starts pounding, those extremities can’t help but start groovin.

Did we pass into adulthood with that intiation? Hardly. Perhaps we passed from an extended suburban childhood into adolescence. But the world we entered – our North American, Western, Roman Catholic (or variations thereof) consumer culture – is an adolescent culture. Guided by older adolescents, we were initiated into an idea of manhood driven by Ego and not by Soul.

In Bill Plotkin’s second tome on the subject of earth-initiation, “Nature and the Human Soul“, he explains why such rites are no longer practiced in our “advanced” but retarded civilization. The stewards of our culture, the heroes of our youth, the role models of our passages are to be found on television and not around the wilderness fire.

Ghandi, King, Mandela and the Dalai Lama barely hold a candle to Bono, Gates, and Ronald Macdonald. These Billionaire Ego-acheivers do great things with the surplus of the love we send them.

But true soul guides teach us to pursue only the most important of quests – first stripped of all attachments.

The questions we were asked was “what will you do” and not “why are you here?” The acceptable answers were about our somewhat limited choices - jobs, education and social status. Instead of “how will you best offer the gift of who you are to the world” we were asked “beside what kind of house will you park your car?”

In the Broadway drama “Passing Strange“ (Spike Lee put it on video) the narrator says of the mid-life crisis “One day you wake up and realize the life you’ve been living for the last several decades was chosen by a teenager – a stoned teenager.”

I was just as jaded about those choices at twenty five as I am now. But, by luck, chance or a steady pursuit – I’ve found the elders needed to coax that “deeply rooted dissatisfaction” up to the surface where wind, rain, and sunshine can do its work.

The seed of those roots’ origins are what Nouwen defines as an “indestructible certainty”. It is the essence of what it is to be a follower of Christ. Plotkin says it is essential to all humanity.

The thirst, the search, the yearning for what is at the bottom of my soul is what takes me to the heights of my furthest reach. When I slip and inevitably tumble back to the muck and mud of the valley, it is that same unquenchable question that gets me to my feet again and calls me to love with a fierce warrior’s tenderness the ones I meet on today’s path.

“As a Christian it is hard to bear with people who stand still along the way, lose heart and seek their happiness in little pleasures which they cling to.

It irritates you to see things established and settled, and you feel sad about all that self-indulgence and self-satisfaction, for you know with an indestructible certainty that something greater is coming, and you’ve already seen the first rays of light.

“With Open Hands” H. Nouwen Pg103

Another stone on the cairn

2011-02-23T17:17:00.003-05:00

Travellers will add a stone to a cairn to mark the passing of a threshold. Tibetan hikers, upon reaching a summit, will add their stone and say “the gods are victorious! The demons defeated!” Cairns are ancient markers that speak of the importance of passages.

In “Soulcraft” Bill Plotkin records the power of earth rituals to help us move through the stages of life. In the fall of 2006 i took the last week of September as a study leave and headed out to a deserted Lake Opeongo for a four day fast. I’d spent the summer in simple preparations. Not sure just how much raw material I took up to that lake with me – and how much I found out there – but the experience changed me.

The rituals I practiced, and prayers I offered, opened me up like a nut. My hard shell cracked and the universe got in. It watered the seed in there – the reason I was here – the gift of my birth – and nourished it with moon and song. Voices unheard in conversation told me what I’d always known and gave me a name that was already mine.

I returned a year later, following Plotkin’s advice, to pay homage to what been done in that place. It was a way of checking in with the new direction taken and progress made.

In like manner I return this winter to Key West. I’m here to mark the passage of a year unlike any yet experienced. 2010 found me homeless and alone, fifty years old, sleeping 2 to 3 hours a night, and desperately swimming to keep my head above water.

In some ways this situation was the natural outcome of the new path I’d struck out on five years earlier. Back then I thought the transformation had happened. I had no idea that it had only just begun.

Plotkin talks about the threshold. He is quick to point out that it needn’t be a real one. Leaving your family home, your job, your entire identity behind is not necessarily the thing you need to do. In that Vision Fast five years earlier I’d crossed a threshold of a self perception. I’d come home believing that to see myself in a new light was all the change that was required. I could – I convinced myself – with this new inner perspective maintain my work and family life indefinitely. My imagination worked overtime at how to be happy within my chosen prison cell.

Poet priest John O’Donahue talks about the prisons we create for ourselves. They sneak up on us. Made up of a thousand small compromises, promises that – some day – we would answer the call of our souls. O’Donahue lyric poetry makes clear that the call from beyond the threshold is a call from where Spirit dwells.

“The call is much more than an urge for an extended vacation, a challenging project, or a new career or social scene. You may think you are simply going to leave home for a while, learn something new, and return to what you always though was yours, but you will not in fact be in control.” (Soulcraft pg 17)

A year ago in Key West, I thought I had a handle on what was happening to me. I thought I could get out in front and manage the change. I thought that even though my boat had capsized, I could still just keep smiling and swim my way to shore.

Instead I got swallowed by a whale. It was quite a trip. Both terrifying and exhilarating. I experienced the grace and love and tolerance of church, family, and friends. I also experienced the harsh judgment of those hurt, disappointed and dismayed by the path I’d taken.

“Entry into the life of the soul –a life of passion, enchantment, and service – demands a steep price, a psychological form of dying. We do not easily give up our claim on the good life of extended adolescence.

Nature-based societies, understanding this, provide the sojourner with extensive preparation for the encounter with the soul. These rites facilitate the radical shift in consciousness required to turn our focus from familiar egocentric concerns to those of the soul, from our first adulthood to our second.

In contemporary society, the underworld journey is neither understood nor encouraged by the majority of parents, teachers, health professionals or cultural leaders to say nothing of mainstream business, science, or politics.” (Soulcraft P19)

I was fortunate to have excellent guides. I was blessed within the year to have presented to me four golden opportunities to visit the Carribean, Atlantic, and Pacific oceans – and now circle back once more to the Carribean. My companions – old and new friends - were true, patient, and without doubt “stretched” themselves by my company.

And now that 2010 is behind me, I place another stone on the cairn. The whale has spit me out on the beach here in Key West after quite a wild ride. I still feel that much of my life – my future - is beyond the control I once clung to. But I’ve come to a place where that is the new normal.

“Consider the lilies of the field” says the Jesus dude…

“If God gives such attention to the appearance of wildflowers—most of which are never even seen—don’t you think GOD’ll attend to you, take pride in you, do what’s best for you?

What I’m trying to do here is to get you to relax, to not be so preoccupied with getting, so you can respond to God’s giving. People who don’t know the way God works fuss over these things, but you know how God works. Steep your life in God-reality, God-initiative, God-provisions. Don’t worry about missing out. You’ll find all your everyday human concerns will be met.

“Give your entire attention to what God is doing right now, and don’t get worked up about what may or may not happen tomorrow. God will help you deal with whatever hard things come up when the time comes. Matthew 6:30

images from Richard Choe http://wondergaze.blogspot.com

Tiger in the box

2011-02-18T09:16:00.003-05:00

The six thousand Chinese characters, first put together six hundred years before Christ, are known to us westerners as the Tao Te Ching.

My translation of the first stanzas goes something like this.

If you think you know the Way – think again.

Better yet. Throw your map out the car window.

If you think you can put a label on GOD.

It ain’t GOD. Just a box you’re sticking it to.

What’s in the box is a made-in-Taiwan fuzzy facsimile

of the tiger that leaps at you in your dreams

and disappears when you wake in a sweat.

Okay, so there weren’t cars in sixth century China. But, besides that little detail – what did you think of my translation?

Whoops – there you go again – thinking…

I’m still wondering these days about the box that is organized religion. I’m wondering about its function and purpose in my life. I often wonder why people show up on a Sunday morning.

It seems to me to have little to do with Belief. Deepak Chopra says that Belief is a refuge for those too scared to deal with the conundrums of faith. (my translation)

Many critics of the religion box would quickly point to the prominence of ideology in the church. They could conjure up all kinds of examples of religious authorities using fear to manipulate people into conformity of Belief. What gets written down – is what “WE” believe. The reason there are so many churches – but only one Bible – is that intellectuals keep coming up with new interpretations of what “WE” believe. And there’s always some nice man with control issues, who makes it his mission to make true believers of anyone susceptible enough to buy in.

These doctrines become the next new excuse for people to create an identity for themselves. Isn’t it really that people like to belong – or – need to belong? We are tribal creatures. We look for a group identity – and the security that it can provide.

The problems start when our group finds more strength from stating what “we” aren’t – than who are becoming. When religions start getting negative, falling into the trap of judging others “less than right”, that’s when GOD leaves the box to the tigers. We’re left with just a chromachrome negative of the full colour photo we once were…

The Masters of the art of life – whether Jesus or Lao Tsu – did their best to get people past the need to judge. Of course, this is just as impossible as trying to label GOD. We are judging machines. Or, at the very least, we might say that we are souls ruled and run by the judging machines between our ears.

Yet people – many – seem to have an appetite for the attempt to free our souls from the tyrant’s relentless measurements.

As one who has tasted the freedom, I want to let you know…

There is a way. There is a flow. There can be opportunities in each day to connect not only with the music of peace - but to even put that peace into play…

It’s free but costly

It’s true but untellable

To notice …

“When someone gives you a hard time, respond with the energies of prayer, for then you are working out of your true selves, your God-created selves. This is what God does...provides the sun to warm and the rain to nourish—to everyone, regardless: the good and bad, the nice and nasty.

… what I’m saying is, Grow up. Live out your God-created identity. Live generously and graciously toward others – and all beings - the way God lives toward you.”

Matthew 5: 44

open minded cartoon provided by http://www.nakedpastor.com/

The Box

2011-02-05T10:27:00.002-05:00

So much talk about being “outside” the box. So much enthusiasm about “thinking outside” the box. So little practical advice about what to do once you get there…

The Box - my particular box of choice - is a medium sized church in a small Ontario resort town. It’s just beyond the “North of Hwy 7” divide that separates cottage country from the real world of Southern Ontario commerce. Refugees from the Working World of east end Toronto come here to spend their last days among folk who’s families have welcomed these invaders for five generations.

It’s a United Church. What can I say about the United Church of Canada? I could tell you why I call it the “family business”. (I’m a third generation employee of this organization. You’ll see other families find work in General Motors, Air Canada, The Bell, or Hydro, or the O.P.P.). I remember, as a young man, choosing this box not because I thought it superior to every other (although my prejudices run pretty deep). I chose it primarily because I knew it so well.

I’d stepped away from the church for a decade – and when I was ready to start making a living, making babies, and making a home – it seemed a good box to nest in.

I’ll write about just how big a box the UCC is one day. It trained me and provided a platform for my great need to serve. I am a creator and collaborator of experiments in community. The UCC gave me the freedom to consider all of Toronto my sandbox and I dug into the downtown eastside for the last decade of the century. We created some very cool ministry sandcastles, enjoyed the challenges of a steep learning curve, and daily discovered relationships and partnerships with a diverse and ever-evolvinging network of community-minded folks.

In a 3,000 square foot woodshop, we made a sawdust church where woodworkers, landscapers, designers, dreamers and artists could find a platform for their own efforts to “make a living” and “make a difference”.

Over those years we found that about 1/3 of our social entrepreneurs failed and disappeared back into the woodwork. About 1/3 of us succeeded in creating sustainable businesses and another 1/3 went and found a job. I was part of this last category.

Life kicked the crap out of me and my family with three successive blows in just a few short years. My life-partner in this home-community-and-work-making adventure uncovered repressed memories of childhood sexual abuse. This healing-crises drove us deeper into God’s care. We’d given birth to our second child a few years earlier. The blessings that are David came with a steep learning curve about the world of people with disabilities. Not new territory for us – David’s needs drove us deeper into community. Finally, Carol’s life was threatened by colon cancer. This rocked our already thin-stretched world. Family, church, and community circled us in ways that I’ll never forget.

In the pitching storm we sought refuge. We’d always dreamed of living a simple life out in the country. Family holydays often found us searching villages and back roads for that elusive place that called to our imaginations. I’d become a country pastor and a poet. We’d raise our kids with fresh air and rosy cheeks. Carol would share the arts that healed her with the world.

The Bobcaygeon UCC box offered us a refuge. It was inside the 200K circle we’d drawn around Toronto and our health care team. The pulpit had been empty for some time and my enquiries turned up notes of caution about a “troubled” church – along with much enthusiasm about the potential of this unique congregation.

It was a nice little country church full of nice church people. My parents were living in one of the Suburb-by-the-lake retirement communities and they were cautiously optimistic about me taking the tiger by the tail. Surely whatever internal conflicts existed couldn’t be as challenging as the always steep uphill climb of mission-making in the big bad city. I applied into the vacuum.

The Search committee were sore-eyed from looking and I appeared like a dove from heaven (or maybe it was more like a pig in a poke?). They told me they wanted a long-term ministry and I told them I was ready to settle down. I’d just turned forty after all and my wild oats were behind me.

I brought my own share of conflicts into that church with me. The Jesus I found in scripture and the Jesus I found at work in the streets of the city caused me to question the security that my middle class Canadian whitebread church culture provided. How could I respond to the call of Jesus to radically share and grow community among discarded souls from within such a safe box?

My own status and personal security within that box provided me the luxury of critiquing church efforts I esteemed to be “not good enough”. And so the trouble with the church was, in fact, the same trouble I brought with me – a dis-satisfaction with how things are and an obsession with how things might be – if only.

Whatever conclusions I may come to from a decade of congregational ministry in the Bobcaygeon church, I have to say this. This congregation of Jesus followers gave me and my family a wonderful welcome, consistent support and encouragements, and provided us with the opportunity to create a refuge from the storm.

Professionally I have been challenged to grow and learn continually. While mission work challenged my mind and body, congregational work challenged my heart and soul. The opportunity to spend a decade delving into the depths of the human heart from within this box have changed me.

The task of opening up scripture’s song week by week, year by year within the sanctuary’s four-walled box has been a sacred trust. It has opened up my own heart, mind & soul to God’s wonder. If it has also, on occasion, assisted others in their journey, then how could I be anything but thank full?