Ah, Youth

A couple of months ago I borrowed Wal-Town from our public library. It's a National Film Board documentary about six activists from Montreal who embark on a cross-Canada campaign against that Walmart box-store juggernaut that you may have seen parked on the edge of a home-town near you.

This ten minute trailer pretty much sums up the whole movie.

Now, I wasn't ready to sign up for the cause by the end of the film, but I thought it raised some important issues about Walmart's response to organized labour, and about the impact of the box-store phenomenon on the common-weal of society. I've shared some tentative thoughts elsewhere about ways our Faith might inform where and why and how we shop for stuff. Wal-town seems to be asking some similar kinds of questions about whether or not the "bottom line" should be our only bottom line when it comes to making decisions about where we spend our money.

But these weren't the issues in particular that stuck with me.

What stuck with me is the poignant and compelling portrait of youth the film evokes. Here are six college-aged young people honestly trying to make a difference: taking on a larger-than-life multi-national corporation with nothing but a sling of optimism and five smooth pamphlets, because they can imagine a world where things are different.

And there's something beautiful there. And there's something beautiful in lines like: "I don't know how to react when people refuse to take information." ""We're gonna stay unless the police ask us to leave..and..uh..thank you." [Customer returning pamphlet to activist]: "You can hand this crap to someone else." [Activist]: "Okay."

I was part of a Youth Parliament when I was in university, where we got together and passed resolutions on issues like fair labour, free education, child exploitation-- where we tried to speak into existence the world we could imagine where things are different. This film helped me see that youthful, world-changing imagination as something beautiful.

It reminded me of the imaginative vision and determination that a real cause can ignite in youth.

And it reminded me of something I heard Tony Campolo say about the church. He was talking about how this generation of youth, more than perhaps any in recent memory, are hungry for a cause... longing for something they can commit to, that will put all their creativity and energy and optimism to the ultimate test. Then he said: if the church looses this generation, it won't be because they made Christianity too hard. It will be because they made it too easy.

As I mulled over the closing credits of Wal-town (six activists, 36 towns, 1 corporation), I started to think he might be right.

After Forty Days

Today marks the end of my first forty days as the new pastor at the FreeWay. Not one to let a biblical milestone slip by unremarked, I`m thinking today about all the biblical 40-day spans that marked major turning points in the history of God's relationship with his people: Noah huddled in the shelter of the ark while the deluge battered the earth for forty days; Moses communed with the Lord for forty days on Mount Sinai, while impenetrable cloud overshadowed the peak; later he interceded for the apostate people of Israel forty days after the golden calf debacle; the heathen giant taunted the children of Israel forty days before David finally silenced him with one smooth stone; Jesus waited in the wilderness forty days before he was tested by Satan; and again his resurrected feet walked among his people for forty days after Easter, before he ascended into heaven.

To mark this biblically-significant milestone, I thought I'd post the first sermon I preached, forty days ago, as the new pastor at the FreeWay. It's a sermon, incidentally, about another time when the history of God's dealings with his people reached a crisis after forty days.

1 Kings 19: 8-18

Back to the Beginning with God?

The Seventh First Time

About 6 years ago I watched a big yellow monster swallow my 5-year-old son, duotang-stuffed backpack and all, and lumber off with him down the highway for the first time.

My 3-year-old daughter wailed in my arms as we tried to get her to wave good-bye (to this day we've never been able to figure out if she was crying because he was leaving, or because she wasn't).

My eyes misted with pride and loss and brine as I drove to work that morning.

He didn't even look back as he climbed the steps of the bus.

I was thinking about all this yesterday as my children shared their first-day-of-school stories at the dinner table. Stories of another first day, when yet again we let the big yellow monsters of this world swallow our children, in the hopes that they'll spit them back on the curb at the end of the day, older and wiser and refined for Christian life in a secular world.

These are among the hardest moments of parenting.

But the Psalmist claims that children are like arrows in the hand of a warrior-- and that when our quiver is full of them we can stand before the enemy in the gate with perfect confidence. And it makes me think: as hard as they are, perhaps these moments when we watch our children step out again for the first time-- first day of school-- first day on the job-- first day as a newly-wed-- first time holding a child of their own-- in all these firsts, perhaps we're actually watching them be sharpened for that day when we stand up for truth and justice in the gate.

As arrows in our quiver, may God make our childrens' hearts keen-edged; may he make them fly true; and may he speed them home.

A Tale of Two Towers (September 6)

I've had a few people ask about having my sermons available online. At some point we expect to provide this through our church website, but that's still a little ways away. Until then, I thought a simple approach would be just to post them here. Simple, and if it happens to prompt comments and/or further dialogue over the Good Book, all the better.

Here's last Sunday's sermon (click play below):

Genesis 11:1-9 A Tale of Two Towers

Updates update

No deep thoughts today. I was feeling that my blog was starting to look a little ho-hum, so last night I spent my blogging time tinkering with the clock-works, sweeping out the corners, polishing the furniture and generally spiffing the place up.

Here's a little techie update:

• New widgets. As you can tell from the sidebar, I got a little widget happy last night. Now instead of just reading about what I'm reading, hearing, watching in the wide world of media these days, you can enjoy a widget-guided tour. Gotta love that LibraryThing.
• New posting parameters. I discovered that for a long time I had my comments settings set so that only blogger account-holders could post a comment. My bad. If you've tried to post something on terra incognita in the past and got turned down, let me now profusely apologize. I've corrected this and would like to take this opportunity to invite any and all readers to post a comment as they feel so led.
• New blogs on the blog roll. I've updated my blog roll. Most of these are blogs of friends and instructors of mine from Briercrest. I'd encourage you to check them out.
• Soon-to-be-new media hosting. Since leaving Saskatchewan, I haven't yet found a new web-host for my media files. Until I do, some of the music files in back-issues of terra incognita will be offline. Please bear with this inconvenience as we grow to serve you better.

The Second Shortest Verse in the Bible

A little Bible trivia for you today. Contrary to what you might have learned at Bible Camp, John 11:35 ("Jesus wept") is not the shortest verse of the Bible. Not quite, anyway.

In the original Greek, John 11:35 clocks in at a whopping 16 letters (εδακρυσεν ο Ιησους), while 1 Thessalonians 5:16 ("Rejoice continually") is a mere 14 letters (παντοτε χαιρετε).

If five years of Seminary hadn't so thoroughly conditioned me to be wary of making theological mountains out of exegetical molehills like this, I'd be tempted to wonder out loud over the fact that the two most succinct words the Bible has to speak are so seemingly contradictory.

Rejoice continually.

But Jesus wept.

I'd be tempted to reiterate something I've said before about "true contradictions" in the Bible.

Rejoice continually.

And Jesus wept.

I'd be tempted to say something about how these two contradictory words frame a paradox that pulses (or should pulse) at the heart of genuine Christian community: We are a people called to rejoice continually; But our founder and leader and Lord wept.

I'd be tempted to say something about Churches I've seen where one of these two brief words was allowed to drown out the other: Churches rejoicing so continually that they couldn't hear Jesus weeping in their midst, and wouldn't have known what to do if they did; or Churches so intent on hearing his tears that they'd forgotten his call to rejoice, and might not know what to do if they remembered.

Rejoice continually; Jesus wept.

I might even be tempted to make outrageous and entirely unsubstantiate-able speculations about the weight of the irony here: that the verse we remember as the most concise- "Jesus wept"- actually has a more concise word underlying it- "Rejoice continually." And maybe wonder about how our joy must fundamentally depend on those tears; how those tears were for our joy; how our joy must be mingled with those tears, because those tears alone make possible a deeper joy.

Rejoice continually. Jesus wept.

Then again, maybe sometimes the exegetical molehill is the theological mountain.

Rodos, or Where have all the Salmon gone?

The other day I heard a report about the disastrous failure of this summer's sockeye salmon run in BC. In what is being described as an ecological catastrophe, more than 9 million sockeye failed to return to their spawning grounds on the Fraser River this July.

For what they're worth, I've shared some words before about how followers of Jesus might let their faith inform their response to ecological isues like these. For what they're worth. Our words alone won't recreate 9 million sockeye salmon ex nihilio. (Though my faith assures me that there's One whose Word can. Come Lord Jesus, come.)


How do 9 million fish simply vanish? No one really knows, though all the usual suspects- water contamination, global warming, human encroachment- are standing in the police line up.


But I think I've seen the perpetrator. I can point it out.

It was about 12 years ago. My wife and I were backpacking through Europe and we were waiting for a ferry in Rodos, Greece. While we waited I watched these two guys fish a squid out of the water kind of kick it back and forth between them. For no particular reason. A game. Bored. And bored, they wandered off leaving the squid drying out to die in the sun.

Human indiffence.

It was one of those weird (in the Anglo-Saxon sense) moments that somehow sear themselves into your imagination. A glimpse behind the veil of the every-day at the ache deep down in things that we're a part of. Years later I wrote this poem about that day. Thinking today about 9 million fish gone without a trace, I thought I'd post it here.


For what it's worth.


Rodos


And shining in our innocence we strolled among
That ancient Grecian heat and down
Along the chalky crusade walls that glower
Spiked and shaded on the greasy water
Of the bay at Rodos Town:

Saw wide-eyed tourists, fresh from yesterday
The ebony Santorini slopes, tomorrow then
Onto that monumental monastery,
At John of Patmos' prison--
Today they tumble groggy from the ferry:

Along the antique walls they wander,
Cameras shutter through the shaded labyrinth
Of ivied green and purple flowers,
Narrow cobbled streets and arching bowers
Snapping blushing postcard scenes of plunder.


I watch two night-eyed Grecians laughing
Plunge their hands into the greasy slick--
Still laughing fling from bay to cobbles,
A bulbous, rock-hued squid whose bubbles
Clear to black with fearful ink grow thick:

Vain clots of tar spread oozing
Fearful from the flitting gills--
In sport they nudge it through the dust, till loosing
Interest, leave it wheezing liquid spouts of night
To find another victim of their choosing:

The puddle of its dying flowing
Black across the cobbles from the blinking gills--
While winking camera eyes intent on seeing
Orange sunsets blushing the Aegean
Miss a gasping squid beneath their going.


And yet one lonely white clad tourist stops,
The eye of Helios, that ancient heat
Bright on his pristine shirt, he fingering
A hat in nervous hands, reaches lingering
Towards the dying squid beneath his feet:

A furtive glance along the pier,
His shiny, sunburned head dips down--
Oblivious the crowds rush on to leer
About the ancient sights at Rodos Town --
He plucks it from the stones with nervous fear:

And he: precarious between his thumb
And index finger hangs the squid, its ink
Like tears of oil shining through the air--
His squeamish arm extended, flings it where
The tender water lulls its death to numb.


And yet a stain of ink is left, a greasy blot--
Of spreading night, of human brutishness--
A dark and creeping stain of ink unseen--

Not over cobbles, dust or dirt
Alone but on the very stony knot
Of greed, indifference and hurt
That is our coursing heart-- a stain of brokenness
No single act compassionate could scour clean.

The Teacher's Tale (A lost chapter from Chaucer...)

In a comment to my previous post, my friend Jon wondered out loud about how "commedians have such an ability to preach at times. " It reminded me of this little skeleton in my closet: my most woefully failed attempt to use comedy to make a pedagogical point.

A High School English class I was subbing for was studying Chaucer's Canterbury Tales, and in his absence, the teacher had left a film production of the Pardoner's Tale for them to view. I dutifully dusted off the two-decades layer of dust from the jacket and popped it into the VCR.

Remember those rickety old English-teacher documentaries they used to make you watch, where some BBC narrator flat-lines his way through a description of "Merry Olde England," while details of stained glass windows and tapestries from the period pan across the screen?

This made those look like Oscar material.

When the film ended and the lights went on, there was more glaze in the eyes of the crowd than there is behind the counter of any Tim Horton's in the country. One student managed a pathetic "Mr. Harris-- that was awful--" otherwise, the apathy was underwhelming.

And the injustice of it all hit me: that these students should go home today thinking that Geoffry Chaucer-- merry olde Chaucer-- Geoffry "father of English poetry" Chaucer-- that Chaucer's boring? If English Lit was religion it would be blasphemy of the worst kind.

My mind raced back to my Chaucer days in university and returned with the one tale from the Canterbury Tales I vaguely remembered. "Chaucer told some better ones than that," I volunteered. "If you want, I'll tell you one you might find funny..."

They accepted my fateful offer, and I started telling them the Miller's Tale.

Now, for those of you who know the Miller's Tale, let me say this in my defense: it had been about 10 years since I'd read it, and I'd truly forgotten how.. err.. risqué... it was (pardon my French). For those who don't know the Miller's Tale, let me say this: part way through the telling, I heard this strange voice explaining to a room full of 16-and-17-year-olds how "hende Nicholas" tricked John the carpenter into spending the night in a barrel on his roof, so that Nicholas could spend the night with John's wife Alison--

And I realized the voice was mine.

Chagrin crept up my spine as I explained how Absolon happened to come to Alison's window that same night to confess his love for her and ask for a kiss-And with it crept this niggling thought: "I should have thought this through before I started..."

Suddenly, to my great relief, the bell rang. But before the chagrin could drain out of me, I realized that no one had bolted for the door and freedom, like they usually do at the bell. They sat where they were. They wanted to know how the story ended.

Nor would they accept my feeble attempts to turn it into a teachable moment: "Oops, there's the bell... guess you'll just have to read it for yourself..." (Which you'll have to do.)

They were prepared to wait as long as I could.

So, swallowing great gulps of mortification, that strange voice told the tale to the end: how "nicholas is scalded in the towte," till the "tale was doon, God save al the rowte!"

There was some laughter, but more astonishment (not least of all mine): did the teacher really just tell that story in school? No one went home that day thinking Chaucer is boring; but I went home wishing with all my heart I could call a mulligan on that attempt to bring English Lit to life.

The Fine Art of Listening

I've been thinking a bit about about this comedy routine by Brian Regan I saw a couple of months ago.

Funny and incisive.

True.

In his book Humiliation of the Word, Jaques Ellul suggests that it's only through the concrete act of listening (as opposed to merely seeing) that humans find themselves situated in the universe of truth, for "nothing beside language can establish the order of truth." In this sense, listening-- real active, receptive listening--is one of the most spiritually profound acts we can do.

Spiritually profound, and entirely counter-intuitive.

More intuitive is the impatient waiting for the other's lips to stop moving. "You? ME! See the difference?" Because to listen-- to listen well-- means assuming an entirely receptive posture, a posture of not-knowing, of genuine curiosity and generosity and self-awareness-- it means refusing to use others' stories as merely means to our own ends.

All of this, again, is counter intuitive; but it's there, in this risky openness to the other, that we find ourselves "truthing one another," as St. Paul put it for the Ephesians. And in that truthing, I think, there is the potential for real healing and spiritual growth together as Christian community.

All Things New

And pondering Christian restlessness, I was reminded of this video I made for a New Years Eve service in our church a couple of years ago. The text is adapted from a liturgical reading I found in a book I got for 25 cents at a used book sale (on my short list for the Best 25 Cents I Ever Spent award). Looking back now, it feels a bit contrived to me, but at the time it said something I thought was really important about the tension we must maintain between the old and the new; and still there's some poignant words in there: "Let us rejoice in the power of Christ to rereate our humanity, to give us a new status before God, to bring forth powers we never suspected within ourselves and to redeem us from the drag of the past." But it also turns around and prays for his power to save us from seeking what is novel.

Still treading water in a sea of newness (though the shore is getting closer), I'm wondering all over again about what our Rabbi meant when he said: Behold, I make all things new.