Posts filed under 'Uncategorized'
December 1st, 2006
Allow me a bit of a divergent, and, well, self-referential post…you’re kind.
December 3rd Headline: Little known early-eighties band makes return engagement and achieves super-stardom!
Alternate headline: Proof people age but some never grow-up!
Actually there are people in this band who are truly talented musicians…and have kept their edge. (Bob McLaughlin, Ken Kowalyshyn, Rose Marie Bain, Julia Walker, Mike Simpson)
Me? (That’d be the guy on the far right with the nervously-surprised-but-delighted-I’m-here-holding-a-guitar grin.) Well…it’s so hard to blow the rust off of 15-20 years of very little playing.
But it was so much fun getting together and playing and practicing over the past few short months. So even if I completely suck tomorrow, I’ll consider this a delightful gift.
(And bless you Bob M. for the crazy and necessary idea. Carry on my friend. You are always in our prayers. And thank you all!)
One more possible headline: Groupies enthralled by jazzy ties, overcome by Beatles Medley.
Technorati Tags: Sable Ridge
October 25th, 2006
In most shelters across Canada, like the one I work for, there is a glaring disproportionate representation of aboriginals. It’s a deep problem that needs constant attention. It needs nothing short of a systemic overhaul.
I’m happy that at least one of the Liberal leadership candidates is talking about something fresh regarding the antiquated "Indian Act." See yesterday’s paper.
Of course we know that something deeper than administrative politics is needed for long-term healing, but it’s at least a beginning. Hopefully it will get ongoing appraisal and more details will come out soon.
Technorati Tags: Indian Act, Michael Ignatieff, Liberal Leadership Race
October 20th, 2006
Connie Howard writes a health column (Well, Well, Well) for Vue Magazine. Her well researched pieces always stimulate, enlighten and guide without haranguing. (Unlike some of our mothers and doctors.)
While credit is given were it is due, Connie also reveals how too often we are, or can be, bushwhacked by our own medical and pharmaceutical systems. Her articles inject some much needed balance here, sometimes exposing motives and always asking critical questions.
What I do love about Well, Well, Well, is that she almost always finds the upside of an issue and takes time to give permission–which we seem to need these days–to do what we should be doing; or what we’ve forgotten to do about our health.
For example, here’s a thought from this weeks column.
…keeping our brains working well to the end involves a lot more than a diet rich in the right kinds of fats and antioxidants, and these are fun, conventional and completely safe things: mental stimulation such as reading, writing, debating or venting; physical stimulation such as dancing, walking, biking or any sport you enjoy; socializing, laughing, drinking tea and red wine.
You can read the entire column here.
Technorati Tags: Health, Vue Magazine, Connie Howard
September 19th, 2006
Somehow the underwater nasal strains of Bob Dylan always settle me. Dylan has the voice of a sad mystic, which is hope for me. It counters the sight of fire trucks and the sound of police sirens here on 9th street.
I like that sometimes Dylan’s muse is sick and his "horse is blind". I like it because I feel it; I know what that’s like. Sometimes words don’t come. They get stuck–jammed like logs at the throat of a river. They wait there for the river to rise. A rain perhaps. Perhaps they will wait until spring after the thaw.
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I like the man in the bright orange and yellow vest with the broom and the heavy blue bag with the long handle, that serves as dustpan. I like him because he always says hello to me. Says hello to as many people as meet his eyes. You can tell he likes saying hello. I also like him because he keeps this concrete acre clean.
Today a lady that could be his wife is working with him. What kind of life do they have? Does he say hello to his wife several times a day?
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Lately I’ve been waking up late. 6:30-7:00 AM. The reason is that I wake up early, around 3:30-4:00, and lie awake for an hour or more before falling back to sleep. What’s that about? Certainly not the sleep-of-the-dead. Which is fine with me if that’s my alternative.
The people that are writing "spots" for Hope Mission’s Radio-thon had a story of a guy wandering the streets, not sleeping for eight days. I read someplace that after eleven days you die. Thinking that the man in their story was an anecdotal-composite-man, I told the writer that we don’t see too many people who haven’t slept for eight days and asked him to adjust the story a bit. But he came back to me and said the eight days was an actual quote.
I know street guys-I talk to them-who claim to not have slept for several days; and by the zombie-signs I believe them. But eight days? What would that be like?
Technorati Tags: Starbucks, Sleepless, Bob Dylan, Hope Mission
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.
July 26th, 2006
"The secret to a happy and lasting marriage", my wife said to a friend yesterday, "is learning how to fight well."
I have heard her say this before. I’ve never liked the answer…it seems so negative. Everything in me wants to say something like, "Having found the right person, love simply endures."
My wife however, hearing this, would smile and humour my quixotic side, and allow me to go on tilting at windmills, ah, for a time. Not that "compatibility" is unimportant. My wife would simply say that it’s not key.
You see, she looks deeper. There is, within her "inscape", an intuitive amative (love expressing) pragmatism. In other words, she knows the value of true communication.
Her, "learning how to fight well", is really a way of saying that in a marriage it’s critical to tenaciously keep lines of communication open. She would tell you that it’s imperative to fight for those connections and openings, to keep things flowing, even when they hurt.
Well, I’m here to tell you that with me, Debbie almost met her match. I can close down like a prodded sea anemone. That is my default position. Another phrase comes to mind…passive aggressive, which when I heard the term for the first time, oh, twenty years ago or so, had me heading for cover. But my wife would find me and shine a light under the layers. Which I know for her was excruciatingly hard work.
Of course what that is, is nothing but active love. It’s caring enough to hurt. It’s saying that you matter, and not just for the moment.
What happens to you when you know you matter to someone? You either grow or run. I’ve done both but perhaps, as twenty years may indicate, I’ve learned to run less and grow more.
I’ve even learned, I think, to occasionally seek out and shine a light under my wife’s "layers".
And all this only because someone loved me enough to "fight well" with me.
Happy Twentieth Anniversary Love…, s.
Technorati Tags: Marriage
July 4th, 2006
A few days ago I posted a mulling on patriotism. (It is the season.) Well, it’s turned into something like an article. If I get it published I’ll post it here with it’s slightly revised beginning. If not I may publish it here angway. That, my friends, is the beauty of blogging. It concludes as follows:
The “patriotic spirit”, which so easily becomes an idol, keeps us tied-up in escalating cycles of retaliation. It’s this “patriotic spirit” that can become the worst form of nationalism-witnessed today in the rise of new-nationalism.
During the early 1990’s, Michael Ignatieff saw this new-nationalism first hand as he traveled from Serbia to Northern Ireland and elsewhere. As chronicled in his book, “Blood and Belonging”, he exposes the deep connection between violence and belonging. Ignatieff reports, “I have been to places where belonging is so strong, so intense, that I now recoil from it in fear.” There was a reason why the good Dr. Johnson said that patriotism was the last refuge of scoundrels.
That is not to say a Christian should not have a love for her country, or take part in its political process. But her love will not be for “blood and soil”. It will be a simple love of place and relationships; and her love will not stop at a border. As well, her political involvement will be a provisional involvement. It may look more like a respectful child who sits quietly with the grown-ups after dinner, but who can’t wait to get back to playing outdoors.
It’s this kind of “play” that is at work within Jesus’ notion of the kingdom. We get the impression that Jesus loved his land, his people, but he was no patriot. His allegiance was to a “kingdom that was not of this world” (John 18), meaning, he was profoundly indifferent to our ways of founding and keeping alive nation-states through violence. He was not promoting any kind of escapist formula as though there was a disconnect between this world and the kingdom. He was instead actively inviting us to shed our categories of us and them, categories that are inherent in patriotism.
Now all of this leaves any Christian in agreement open to the charge of supreme naiveté. However from the perspective of Jesus, this naiveté is a kind imaginative innocence that takes no prisoners and exacts no revenge and is willing to stand in front of tanks so as to open up the possibility of human evolution.
The “way of patriotism” has no understanding of this possibility, and so sees it, as Nietzsche saw it, as ultimate weakness and folly. But the supposed sophistication of state-craft through patriotic-nationalism, because it is founded on the mechanism of expulsion, because its unity is at the expense of a violent exclusion of some other group or nation, is doomed to the same tired results. We’ve tried this, in all its variations. What too many of us Christians haven’t begun to try is Jesus’ way of creative naiveté.
Tags: Christianity, Gospel, Patriotism, Violence
June 14th, 2006
Many years ago I read a book by called, "A Call to Conversion", by Jim Wallis. You might have heard of Wallis before. I suppose you could describe him as a Christian social activist.
The book described his own ongoing conversion concerning care of the poor. He also shared his experiences of living with a few like-minded Christians, in community with the poor. It was a prophetic book and at times Wallis sounded like an Old Testament Amos.
His challenge to Christendom's all too often insular ways is fervent, and even though the book is a quarter century old, the message is still relevant. From a certain perspective this is sad.
Well Jim Wallis hasn't gone away, or changed his message. His latest endeavor is organizing something called Pentecost 2006: Building A Covenant for a New America. His plan is to put poverty on America's national agenda.
Alternatively check out a magazine called
Sojourners of which Wallis is editor-in-chief. Always insightful and challenging articles on social justice issues. Somewhat disappointing is that I have yet to find a Canadian equivalent to
Sojourners. Or perhaps you can point me to one.
June 13th, 2006
We have an addictions treatment program at our mission and there's a renewed vision it. Our men's centre manager and chaplains are embarking on a shift of direction. Not everything is in place or solidified of course but the early trajectory seems right.
In something less than a nutshell, my own nutshell at that, the new shift is about allowing the guys on the program to grow up. Instead of controlling the movements of men in recovery through regimentation and moderate to high structure, the idea here is to invest time and care into lives through creating an environment of supportive responsibility. So for example, as early as possible, a guy on the program will be given a set of tasks or inserted in an appropriate avenue of work within the mission. In other words, given responsibility earlier than later.
The program's structure, if you want to call it that–perhaps trellis is a better metaphor–is under girded by a component of tough-nosed mercy. What this means is that the lattice-work, the trellis, has open areas that allow for the possibility of failure. But these open areas are also spaces to breath, and so, space enough to learn from failure. If you'll allow me, "re-trusting" might indicate something of the direction here.
Overall, the shift is more fluid, and as such, risky. But the possibilities for real growth are exponentially elevated.
Think about it. If you where in a program, would you want a bunker or a trellis?
June 9th, 2006
It's Friday and I feel a distinct lack of gravitas. (Friday's should be about buoyancy. In fact, I think buoyancy should be a spiritual discipline.) So here's some ephemera that would normally drown under the weight of a weekday.
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Notice: Someone in our building who can't punctuate is selling Oiler tickets for tomorrow night's game. A scribbled note pasted to the entrance says he/she has "a pair". Doesn't say whether or not that's $600 each, or for the pair. So if you have an inheritance you can dip into… Of course after the shellacking the Oilers took the other night you could have bought up all those ubiquitous little car flags from the guy's in the blue Ford Econoline's, set 'em all to half-mast, and made a killing, thereby raising the 600-1200 dollars to go to Saturday's game.
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Starbucks Log: There's an elderly lady sitting across from me in the purple plush chair. She's reading a biology text and smiling. And taking notes. There are so many explanations.
Sometimes I wonder if the note-takers' and scribblers sitting in Starbucks, coffee at their side, are all making observations about each other.
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And now my staff are coming through to pick up their morning quava. "Hello, Janelle." She comes over to talk. She used to work here before Hope Mission scooped her. And now I'm waving and smiling through the glass entrance (I've seen people walk into it, it's been kept that clean) at Ting and Robyn. I wonder what they think I really do here? I wonder what I think they really do?
Yesterday we all went to the Oriental Veggie House by the Herb Jay. Robyn and Jodie are vegetarians, the rest of us, carnivores. If you go, check the inside of the menu cover. A few lines of prose will give you the reason to become, if you aren't already, a vegan. It's all about the slaughtering of innocent beasts. I must say, while eating my curry lamb made out of pressed mushrooms, I felt mildly morally superior.
So last night at supper, over pork-chops, my daughter, a science/biology major, told me about an article she read that described how some people in white coats have "grown" a fillet-o-fish, in vitro. They're not stopping there. Lab-Steak is next. They believe that they'll be able to produce a beautiful rib-eye that will eclipse the best Outback steak you've ever had. On top of that, it will be guarantied mad-cow free.
There goes the OVH menu's flyleaf. Maybe now we can all just get along. Have a wonderful Friday!
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