Archive for August, 2006
August 30th, 2006
Here’s a CBC Radio clip worth its salt…and light. Pastor Jonathan Gonyou does a whirlwind tour of unlikely gospel tunes and unlikely-er gospel recording artists that will surprise and perhaps astound.
It will be easy for the tightly-knit among us to pass some of these artists off as dabblers or provocateurs sent to bedevil the true flock, or at least leave us scratching noggins.
But what Jonathan G. finds here, by overturning a wide swath of pop-stones in his quest for anything and everything redeemable–is, more often than not, genuine human yearning and longing for a meaning that transcends culture’s calcified boundaries and offers salvation.
Well done Pastor Gonyou. Link to clip.
Technorati Tags: Music, Christian Contemporary, Christianity, Spirituality
August 29th, 2006
He heals the broken-hearted, and binds up their wounds.
He determines the number of the stars; he gives to all of them their names. (Psalm 147)
You would imagine that God, who determines the number of stars, has no problem binding up wounds and healing broken hearted people. No doubt, both have certain challenges. But those special challenges, what ever they may be, are God’s. Good thing.
I had a friend in high school who migrated to the coast with a group of us. We went to see what was there and to find what we could find.
We were not far into our twenties when he began to believe he could move stars with his newly expanded mind. He also believed, as things progressed, that he could travel to the stars, fly within their orbits, accompanying them on their stellar ways. And all this astral journeying without leaving the couch.
When he returned he would tell us stories about what it was like. And when we got tired of listening he would go downtown Victoria and corral strangers and tell them. When they got tired, which was pretty well immediately, he began to walk in traffic with his eyes closed, moving the approaching cars out of his way with his hyper-expanded mind.
Later, we would visit him in the hospital where we met his new doctor friend who challenged us to figure out the acronym MDMD. We shrugged and he laughed, and pointing to his head, spouted, "Medical Doctor Manic Depressive". Me, I just wanted to take my friends head in my hands and reshape it.
I wonder why anyone would venture to think that they have the power to heal broken souls. Perhaps this is the reason these two verses from the 147th song–about stars and hearts–are juxtaposed. There is always a temptation to attribute any "success" at helping people to ourselves. So the tip from the Psalm is when this temptation arises just decide to determine the creation of stars as well. That should set you straight.
As soon as we think that we are "sources", we cut off the true Source from flowing through us. And if and when there is any healing of hearts and souls, it is because of something that flows between the Source and those involved. Making the mistake to suppose that we are anything but conduits is just as delusional as the hallucinations my friend still suffers, these thirty years later. But, being a conduit true to your own special shape is a most beautiful thing.
To the motion of the Spirit…be true.
Technorati Tags: Beauty, Christianity, Spirituality
August 28th, 2006
O give thanks to the Lord of lords, for his steadfast love endures forever; who alone does great wonders, for his steadfast love endures forever… (Psalm 136)
In the church I grew up in I heard preaching against "vain repetition" often enough to know that it was something grievous, something right up there with lying and stealing and coveting.
What I didn’t know, what I came to understand later in life, was that a good deal of that "preaching" was simply a veiled castigating reference against (primarily) Catholics whose liturgy incorporated a great deal of repetition.
Of course anything vain, is, well, vain. But repetition itself (is this too obvious?) is essential for growth, for mastery, for reorientation, for getting up and out of our deeper ruts, and for deepening our good channels.
Addiction treatment programs, for example, are really about reorienting lives through repetition, through rehearsal of right thought and action. And when that repetition is guided and driven by a spirit awakened by God’s love the chance of permanent return to the deep-rut pretty well vanishes.
Certainly Psalm 136 should put to flight any (Protestant) fretting about repetition. Why the entire Psalm is one long cyclical hymn to God’s steadfast love. The Psalm, because of its structure, can’t help but become a meditation on God’s enduring love and all the grace and mercy and forgiveness that that encompasses.
And isn’t it at loving where we need constant rehearsal? (I suspect we’re in luck. Sometime today we’ll get a chance to rehearse love.)
For those of us who have had the benefit of years of rehearsal, should not love dominate our lives in such a way that it follows us like fragrance follows a flower?
(P.E.I. Roses)
Technorati Tags: Love, Beauty, Peace
August 25th, 2006
Holiday…from the Old English, holy+day:
To come to see with every cell, and to feel through your eyes, what is before you, what you are part of, and what you are within. This is a holy-day.
(Tree skeleton on Skyline hike)
(Deb-scape)
(Dogwood, Cabot Trail hike)
(Micro tide pool, P.E.I.)
Technorati Tags: Beauty
August 24th, 2006
We were seven miles inland on Nova Scotia’s St. Mary’s river and the tide reached in to transform the backdrop of our campsite from a black bog to a blue mirror reflecting the old water mill.
(Photo by Deb…an inscape)
August 23rd, 2006
Two times, every day, oceans give birth to new beaches.
(North Shore, Nova Scotia)
Technorati Tags: Nova Scotia, Beauty
August 22nd, 2006
I’ve noticed that I have a fascination with lighthouses. I automatically take a picture every time one comes into my horizon. Of course they all pretty much look the same. Even so, I reach for my camera when I spot one.
I remember doing this when I was hiking in England, and I do the same thing when I go to the West coast. Perhaps it’s the Mission in me. The "rescue" element in our ministry has a nautical theme. Where I work our first logo was the anchor and life-buoy. As well our Mission’s founder, before coming to Canada, worked on the boats off the northern coast of Norway.
Or perhaps it’s the grand metaphor itself. While easily overused, it is still an apt one for all we humans. We all need a lighthouse in our lives.
I should mention that the one basic difference with lighthouses here is that some have "houses" built into them. Our hosts knew the family and their six kids that grew up in this one. Seems that it might have been idyllic to grow up in a lighthouse.
August 18th, 2006
Lieutenant Governor Barbara Hagerman ran out of Government House into the rose garden were we were ambling, smelling the perfumed air, and watching the Canalilies sway in the slow breeze.
She came out to see her friends, our hosts. We had just finished touring the house, learning the mysteries of a two hundred year old piano, the 1864 Charlottetown Conference that led to the birth of Canada, and French realist wallpaper.
The Lieutenant Governor lives and works here, and after our tour the guide had given notice of our presence. Earith, Deb’s cousin, didn’t want to bother her. After all, Barabara Hagerman had just been "installed" two weeks ago. Our hosts could call her up any time. They knew her well. Also, she had been the church organist at Summerside Presbyterian, where they went to church.
Barbara is vivacious, energetic, and comes on as someone who has never met a conversation she didn’t like. I asked her how she was enjoying here new post and she said "It’s just like performing at Carnegie Hall every day."
She knows of what she speaks. She is, apparently, an amazing musician; but she is also a keen community booster. Her Carnegie Hall performance was the result of her organizing and directing and playing for a choir from the island. What our own Lois Hole was to gardening and community, Barbara Hagerman is to music and local society.
She is also as engaging and grounded as Lois Hole was. No guile or pretense. Even as representing the Queen to the province, she does things like run out to flower gardens after old friends.
(Above) Lieutenant Governor Barbara Hagerman with her "home" in the background.
(Below) Deb and her cousin Earith.
Technorati Tags: PEI Lieutenant Governor Barbara Hagerman, Politics
August 17th, 2006
Maritime life, I was told by a "therapist" friend, would suit my temperament.
P.E.I. is all about primary colours. Nothing complicated.
Cavendish cliffs…where we went picnic-table-rolling.
Many of the island’s lighthouses are still operational. Main land lighthouses are disappearing faster.
August 15th, 2006
The lady selling me the highlighter wasn’t exactly sure if the yellow inky stuff inside the highlighter was banned. I had asked. She said no one told her she couldn’t sell the pens but that I might as well just "innocently" stick it down further in my shirt pocket when going through the boarding gate. As I was already within the secured area I took her advice.
Mean time the lady at Second Cup was pouring all purchased bottled water and juices into plastic cups to make sure people consumed them before boarding.On the early morning ride the cab driver had said the terrorists were sticking up the world and it "just wasn’t right".
It’s difficult to know what goes on in the brain of a bomber, especially a suicide bomber. Ideology, revenge, property, resources, historical claims etc. all figure into it I suppose, but after a while it seems that violence and the war itself is the object of desire.
My wife Deb said it might be hard to find an old suicide bomber. It’s true. Usually age greys ideologies of blood and soil, confidence in violence wanes, maybe even possessions are seen with clearer perspective, and maybe relationships are venerated. All of this makes it hard to blow yourself and others up.
It’s the young that warlords and ideologues know to recruit. A dispossessed young person is fertile ground for an absolutist cause, particularly when that cause is habitually linked to a transcendent cause and calling.And any cause will do. Christian, Muslim, Jew. As long as the victims are well hidden. That is, abstracted and exterminated as infidels or pagans long before any plastique or nitroglycerine tears their limbs away.
In the end the bombers probably have very little knowledge about their "cause", outside of what’s been prescribed. "Causes" are like that. Veneers of freedom and security conceal confusion and a great vacuum. The original object of conflict is lost and people get locked into a spiralling conflict.
But then…as we took off for Canada’s east coast…there was the morning sunrise…
Technorati Tags: Peace, Violence, Terrorism, Sunrise
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