Archive for November, 2006
November 29th, 2006
The sun burns cold and you can see the breath of all the buildings.
They make days like this so you remember and appreciate the warmth of human intimacy in all its forms. Which is the stuff that connects you to the invisible world. A world governed by the truth of beauty, music, art, poetry and mercy.
A pleasant East Indian gentleman stoped me on the street yesterday and asked me if, this was cold. He was wondering if he should be prepared for worse. I told him this was cold and to expect things to get better. His eyes smiled and he laughed through his scarf and was totally relieved. And I wondered why I didn’t qualify etc. etc. But was happy I didn’t.
My mother’s wringer-washer
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How many memories can a body contain?
My 1964 Austin Cambridge (So sweet and so unreliable.)
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And why do some things evoke such inexplicable longing?
Technorati Tags: Human longing, memory, intimacy, Wringer washer, Austin Cambridge, Beauty, Spirituality
November 26th, 2006
Exploding the Scapegoat Mechanism
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(pdf version)
This past week our city has seen the violent deaths of two teenagers. One murder was the result of a swarming. Consequently the paper has been full of letters and op-ed pieces. I had sent this in a while ago. They decided to publish it this weekend.
(If you’re a regular reader of this blog you’ll recognize the article. I had posted parts of it previously.)
Technorati Tags: Edmonton Journal, Scapegoating, James Alison, Rene Girard, Christianity, Peace, Violence
November 24th, 2006
November is Family Violence Prevention Month. I was reminded of this when I received the Alberta Council of Women’s Shelters’ newsletter. The cover letter asks us to consider this over our next "coffee break". 
- In the time it takes to brew a cup of tea, 3 woman in Canada will be assaulted by an intimate partner.
- In the time it takes for an average coffee break - a child in Canada will be physically or sexually assaulted by a family member.
- In the 24 hours it take to produce tea leaves into a tea bag - 31 abused women and their children will seek refuge in Alberta’s shelters.
How tragic that with all our advantages, we in Alberta have the shadowy distinction of leading the country in spousal assault, stalking, and domestic murder/suicide.
What can we do? Refuse to be silent. Name violence as violence. And in the larger community, be prepared to lobby, write, and boycott.
Such was the case with many good folks in America–who by the way, just had their own Domestic Violence Awareness Month in October. To Fox and HarperCollins, October was apparently old news, or it just didn’t register. These giant media outlets were poised to do interviews and publish O. J. Simpson’s book, "If I did It." But a beautiful thing happened. Ordinary and yes, some powerful people, said, "enough already!"
Technorati Tags: Family Violence, Alberta Council of Women’s Shelters, O. J. Simpson, HarperCollins, Fox
November 22nd, 2006
Ever on the lookout, your middlingly-intrepid scribe has uncovered another amazing achievement in euphemism.
Now I’m not saying we don’t need access to the occasional euphemism–especially if you’re a parent–but like everything else in life, there are limits.
We are all familiar with euphemisms for death, sex, and all those fun ones for excrement (and sex). And of course these days the U.S. Department of Defence, once the Department of War, spawns a new military euphemism everyday…oh let me see: smart bombs, collateral damage, safe bunkers, hard targets, hit ratios, surgical strikes, preemptive strike, friendly fire…stop me if you’ve heard these before. Yup, war is essentially bloodless.
Well, to the academy of deflection, in the category of poverty, I mean, low-income status, add: "very low food security."
Central Park, New York, May 2003
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The U.S. government has proclaimed that Americans will never be hungry again. But they may experience "very low food security," or, "multiple indications of disrupted eating patterns and reduced food intake."
Hunger has hit the skids as an acceptable, and according to the U.S. Department of Agriculture, a scientifically accurate term. You see the term hunger isn’t "conceptually and operationally sound." It is instead "a consequence of food insecurity."
So gone are the embarrassing yearly reports that used the word ’hunger’ to describe those who can least afford to put food on the table. Which the Committee on National Statistics puts at a startling 11 percent of American households. Canadian stats are around 6 percent (Fraser Institute).
Of course when it comes to poverty, numbers are flexible things. But then, one percent is too much. And anything that serves to hide a problem that real people are facing does us all a huge disservice.
Euphemism in this context does exactly that. It subtly eases the friction we need to feel over hungry people. It anesthetizes our perception and allows us to turn away.
And the last thing we need is more excuses and ways to become less human, less merciful. Sorry, I mean the last thing we need is more avenues to a sumptuary engagement of personhood.
Technorati Tags: Food Security, Euphemism, Hunger, USDA, Politics
November 20th, 2006
Andrea House
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I have a therapist. Now that’s a sentence I thought I’d never use. But there it is.
My wife encouraged me to see her. And now I too, am drawn into her circle.
What Andrea does:
She listens to the motion within you through the tips of her fingers and tells the strength of your ch’i by your colour.
While you lie surrounded by full, accepting colours, she works healing with her needles and her hands.
She gives you essence of oranges and white peonies. And other things that come all the way from China. And tea if you like.
She speaks wisdom to you. The wisdom of listening and living within your body. The wisdom of sleep cycles and daily rhythm.
She recalls for you your more genuine desires and gently helps you dismiss the phantom duties that exhaust you.
And then when she’s done all this she sends you home with songs.
And you drink red wine by a gas fireplace and listen to her voice–powerfully delicate.
And from your eastern window you regard the mystery and mercy of gathering night.
Tags: Andrea House, Acupuncture Works, Spirituality
- Support Andrea’s trip to Nicaragua where, in her special way, she’ll be caring for kids in need. (Fundraiser, Thursday, Nov. 23rd, 7:30PM @ Acquired Tastes)
November 19th, 2006
I know my soul is exhausted when I’m on the cusp of something tremendously obvious, thinking I’m onto something startlingly original.
When my spirit is flat my thoughts are a naked man in a trench coat. In a flash they’re over and done with. Leaving nothing surprising or shocking–just silly and puerile and pitiable.
When my spirit is flagging sometimes the only remedy is the feeling of having all the time in the world. The feeling of open afternoons and eternal weekends.
There is only so much deconstruction and exhaustion tolerable. Only so long that time can be choked off. But construction, creativity, active and holy longing do not have limits. They cannot be exhausted. Cannot stop reviving things around them.
To know this, in the fog of the moors is to still be alive to possibility. To know, as I’ve just read, that God is sheer joy and that she made the world because sheer joy demands company (Aquinas) is to sense the blue heavens above the indefinite grey.
To know that God desires to sip hot Java from a paper cup with me across the table is to have time curve away from every clenching immediacy, and be.
Madison
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Technorati Tags: Soul, Time, Beauty, Spirituality
November 18th, 2006
Sometimes when you read a text things become far too clear for comfort. And a reasonable question surfaces before the clarity heads back underground.
Why was I, former Gideon, scripture carrier, evangelical church board member, writer of letters opposing abortion and gay marriage, upholder of "family values," decrier of "humanism,"…why was I at the same time a supporter of the cold war, silent about nuclear arms buildup, silent about MAD (mutually assured destruction), supporter of preemptive strikes (in the right circumstances), as in "just" war?
Here’s the text often restrictively referred to as the curse against the Pharisee’s.
Therefore I send you prophets, sages, and scribes, some of whom you will kill and crucify, and some you will flog in your synagogues and pursue from town to town, so that upon you may come all the righteous blood shed on earth, from the blood of righteous Abel to the blood of Zechariah son of Barachiah, whom you murdered between the sanctuary and the altar.
Why do I suppose I will not fall under the same condemnation just because I belong to a religion called Christianity. A religion that when confronted by its own close-mouthed support of war contorts to justify itself through a fallacious reading of Romans 13 about the authority of government. A religion like other religions that is based on the violent disavowal of violence. And so hides itself from it’s own violence–once again losing the key to knowledge.
How was it possible for me not to see my complicity, my solidarity with Abel’s murderers? Well perhaps, because I once thought like this parishioner: "The same suffering Messiah is also in the book of Revelation going to be the conquering Messiah. So we have the same God, who died for our sins, is also the God of justice. Just read Revelation, read Ezekiel, read Isaiah." And like this pastor: "Often in the Bible, God sanctions and even encourages war and invasion."
Technorati Tags: Christianity, Religion, Just war, Violence
November 16th, 2006
The loose end of a tarp covering a pane of new glass from a construction project across the avenue is snapping in a strong wind. The reflected morning sunlight is strobing, hitting the caramel coloured wall just above my left shoulder.
Three tradesmen are carrying on with the hostess who is busy behind the espresso machine. She’s charming, sorcerous even, and has their number.
A girl with hair the colour of toffee is in the corner staring into a Dell laptop. She’s researching a sociology essay. It will be her best writing yet.
Just above the girl’s head on a square of azure fibreboard, in copperplate gothic, is written: "Nicely done," the Siren thought, and magically instilled in her coffee the ability to recreate itself from its own spent grounds.
It’s the birth of the refill. That’s my kind of magic.
Technorati Tags: Beauty, Spirituality, Magic, Starbucks
November 13th, 2006
I say, "You are gods, sons of the Most High, all of you." (Psalm 82)
From the beginning, the incarnation is rumoured in creation.
I learn from Simone Weil that the creation of the heavens and the earth and every living thing is God’s act of self reduction, self renunciation. God, pure spirit, all perfection, entire, reduces, shrinks in order to bring things that are distinct from herself into being.
And so, in ways I can’t explain, God after creation is somehow less than God before creation. Creation was God’s risk and act of love.
And we… we are the tailings of God. A kind of God-like residue, unmistakably marked by God. Not Divine, but not, not divine. Not one with God, but neither are we two. While we are mere creatures, it is our mereness and creaturelyness that bears the mark of divinity.
Thomas Merton says somewhere in his journals that it is hard to explain to people that they are all walking around shining like the sun.
Sacraments are provisional things useful only as lenses for our nearsightedness. God is already transmuted in the things of earth. If we were properly materialistic we would see this. Our problem isn’t materialism, we are not nearly materialistic enough. We are far too sober and serious about substance and miss the dance of colour in front of our eyes.
God is in the business of secularizing all things. She is in the business of atheism. In God’s world the terms secular and sacred have no currency. We can no longer talk of a split.
We can only talk of union and reunion. In God’s act of self effacement we are prepared, through separation, for union with God. The risk and folly of God is in our being given the power refuse this union. But is it possible, when finally striped of everything except our primal longing, that we could refuse the offer?
The only thing that makes sense of Creation is the possibility of a love reunion.
We are all gods, all remarkable ordinary gods.
Technorati Tags: Simone Weil, Thomas Merton, Beauty, Christianity, Spirituality, Love reunion
November 12th, 2006
Whom have I in heaven but you? And there is nothing on earth that I desire other than you. (Psalm 73)
I am being schooled by a friend who is dying. I am being reoriented in longing and belonging.
Somewhere on the cliffs of Cornwall
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It’s time to set aside the things that make you a plodder and not a dancer. It’s time to give things away.
It’s time to forget about what people think of you. It’s time to own your desire.
Don’t try to change the world. Instead, find what it is that makes you come alive and pursue it as though death were not, and the world will change behind your back. But remember that wasn’t the point.
You are the point. So for God’s sake and yours, forgive yourself.
Mercy is majesty.
Technorati Tags: Longing, Spirituality
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