Beauty/Peace

First Love (Percy, Buffalo Bill and I)

Posted on by stephen t berg / 1 Comment

Remember Reginna? Reggie? Linda? Larry? (Oh, I remember you Reginna!)

Do you remember your first love? Remember how it came down to you light as chiffon and picked you up so that when you walked your legs cycled, like you were running in mid-air?4112

Remember when you found out that that crazy hazy buoyancy of love as big as a cloud wasn’t, wouldn’t be, returned? That all your awkward efforts of transcribing your forever-love upon the flawless object of your love were just, well, goofy? And you were left standing naked (I’m hoping metaphorically) and alone in a rainy playground, a mere silly boy or girl?

Remember the chiffon cloud turning to stone and falling on your head when you found out that the object of your love actually loved your friend?

Do you remember how the whole wringing experience of this gave you a world of wisdom, …or not? And do you recall looking at your parents, your grandparents, aunts and uncles with a new discerning light, and you saw that they too, still might not have deciphered the vagaries of their own love and desire and dreams and disappointments? And that maybe this is what caused all their grumpy weirdness?4113

But then strangely, maybe they intuited your experience and it threw a flicker of light on their own relationship and as Cohen says, the gates of love budged.

If any of this reverberates, resonates, regurgitates, then go and see "Percy, Buffalo Bill and I". It’s not a "great" film. It’s simply and innocently charming. If it’s been awhile since you left a theatre emotionally sated and hopeful about the misunderstood stranger embedded deep within you, well, when the film festival comes to your town, step out to see it.

There is space enough for all in this Swedish (English subtitles) gem. Think opposite of Ingmar Bergman (mercifully) but with the same penchant for intuition over intellect. It’s wonderfully un-Hollywood.

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Christianity/Poverty/Spirituality

What Kind of Poverty?

Posted on by stephen t berg / 2 Comments

It was a Sunday like today, with a sharp cool fall wind, but sunny, when I walked Heather home from church.

I had called to her from the sidewalk, she was in the ally shuffling her shuffle toward me. She called back, "Heather, my name is Heather not Teresa." She wasn’t disappointed or upset that I confused her name with someone else, she was just matter of fact.

Heather is handicapped and lives in a group home. Her eyes are crossed but clear, and deep brown. She can fix you with either eye allowing the other one to roam. One arm doesn’t work well so she uses her cane with the other. She moves by bending forward and half dragging her left leg then throwing it out in front of her.

The sidewalk dips for a driveway and Heather has to adjust her stride. She leans to the side to compensate for the angle and seems almost to fall. I start to reach out, then, still talking, she catches herself like she’s done countless times before.

There is no hint of awkwardness as we talk and walk. She tells me about her tumour operation. She says she is 34. She talks about her parents and when they lived in Northern Alberta. She lets me know that her mom is recovering from flesh eating disease.

I ask her about Rehoboth, her group home. She says she’s been with them since the mid nineties and that she is very happy here and I believe her. Then we walk in silence and I notice the fall sun and breeze on my face.

We walked together for 2 blocks, I gauged that I could cover twenty blocks in the same time.

I’m told that Heather is impoverished in a thousand ways. But that day she enriched my life.

112th street sandals
sandals

Later, Deb asked me why I was renewed by walking and talking with Heather. I’ve concluded that in some way, as I listened, Heather offered me simply Heather.

She gave me a place, a space to be, she received me without pretense, silently, and she became a host to me.

Her poverty was a short cut to Christ. So what kind of poverty is that?

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Religion

Normal Nihilism and Tolerance

Posted on by stephen t berg / 2 Comments

A generation ago Thomas Merton said, "we are free to buy a car but we are not free to own one." 63chevcorvairnova

Hunting for a "beater" with my son the other day, I thought we might not even be free to buy one. But that’s another story.

If you stroll West Edmonton Mall you’ll catch on to what, I think, Merton was talking about. Here is a world of choice that leads inevitably to more choice which guarantees the question of whether I will make the right choice.

Sociologist Stanley Hauerwas called this "normal nihilism". That is, having so many compact discs, lawn-mowers, cheeses, from which to choose that no matter which ones we choose, we are dissatisfied because we cannot be sure we have chosen what we really wanted. And there is nothing so wonderful for the "adman" than a climate of discontent and dissatisfaction. Because it always leads to more purchases. Consequently we are owned by what we buy (and don’t buy).

What’s more is that in this slurry of choice I am seduced to believe that I can purchase not just things but purchase a lifestyle. And of course a consumer lifestyle can itself be modified, changed and exchanged at will. In effect all "lifestyles" are devalued.

If lifestyle is radically individualistic, is merely personal choice and preference, then one lifestyle (You’ll gather I’m speaking of lifestyle as far more than fashion.) is inherently as good as the next; and because our lifestyle is a reflection of our values and attitudes, values and attitudes are by the same token subject to choice and preference. Now if my values bump up against yours… there is simply nothing to say.

You have your set of values and I have mine; I like coffee, you like tea, cela vie. This sounds like tolerance, but is it?

Tolerance is in itself a beautiful virtue but when used to escape navigating important opposing moral issues, it becomes something like the opposite of love. This evasion is as bad as the "fundamentalist" evasion that defers all things to the decalogue writ in stone.

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Christianity/Peace

New Kind of Game

Posted on by stephen t berg / 4 Comments

(Matthew 12) He will not wrangle or cry aloud, nor will any one hear his voice in the streets; he will not break a bruised reed or quench a smoldering wick, till he brings justice to victory.

Our age, like every age I suppose, is marked by wrangling. And we, like people of every age, still believe that wrangling, even when it leads to war, is the best strategy to address an injustice.

I like to think I’m above the fray. But I always join in. I do so by complaining about some politician or murmuring about some perceived slight and so in my own way add to the great common wrangle.

But Jesus is different. He is audacious enough to employ an entirely different strategy. His strategy for the triumph of justice, which is not really a strategy, but more like a new kind of game, has to do with small acts of gentleness. His way of justice is about doing no harm, about doing no violence to anyone’s soul. His justice is concern with bruised reeds and smoldering wicks. And to the bruised ones he says, "Take my yoke upon you, and learn from me; for I am gentle and lowly in heart, and you will find rest for your souls. (Matthew 11)."

When we remember that a reed is already a symbol for weakness, and so a bruised reed is a thing near desolation, we catch a glimmer of his gentle love. A love that walks slowly with the bare feet of attentive care. In this new kind of game we could even say that justice is a synonym for love.

I recall the warm summer evening when during a moderate rain, brought on by a passing thunder storm, my son Lucas, in his early teens at the time, ran out of the house and dashed around the front lawn playing the clown.

Earlier that day we had been playing "Sorry" and as these games go, we competed as strenuously as we could, knocking one another of the board at any and every opportunity. But now, here we were, all gathered at the picture window watching Lucas in the rain. He danced, hooted, did silly walks, hopped like a rabbit and turned cartwheels.

Our small kids, leaning over the couch, faces against the glass, squealed with delight while Deb and I stood behind and laughed. Lucas was at play in a game with no rules. He was making everything up as he went. And I loved him for it.

Here were two games with vastly different rules and outcomes and ways of participating. The one is the tit-for-tat game we all know how to play; the other is a game that has at its heart the antithesis of rivalry. It’s this new game that I’m invited to, where getting my fair share has no currency and what is just, takes on a new light.

This is the invitation Jesus invites us to play. And every day is a new opportunity to join in the new game.

Gentle souls leave it to others to make a commotion. Gentle souls don’t know what the commotion is about. Gentle people play by a different set of rules.

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