pacific grace

Seeds of Fuller Humanity

2012-01-23T07:42:00.000-08:00

If the church is not a place where we not only learn something about what it means to be human but also a place where seeds of a fuller humanity are planted in us and watered, to grow, then all our hymns and prayers and preachments are vanity.

Frederick Buechner

All the Same People

2012-01-19T07:17:00.000-08:00

You can safely assume you've created God in your own image when it turns out that God hates all the same people you do.

Anne Lamott

Live Inside God's Imagination

2012-01-17T07:15:00.000-08:00

To participate in the Eucharist is to live inside God's imagination. It is to be caught up into what is really real, the body of Christ. As human persons, body and soul, are incorporated into the performance of Christ's corpus verum, they resist the state's ability to define what is real through the mechanism of torture. Hardly anything remains to be said about imagination as a theological force. Except to note that clearly the need for Eucharistic imagination in the United States (Canada) is very different from the need for it in abusive contexts ... It may be, however, that torture and consumer satiation perform the same negative function: to deny lively communal imagination that resists mindless humanity of despairing conformity ... Numbness does not hurt like torture, but in quite a parallel way, numbness robs us of our capability for humanity.

Walter Brueggemann

Prophetic Imagination

The Work of Christmas Begins

2012-01-16T20:18:00.000-08:00

When the song of the angels is stilled,
When the star in the sky is gone,
When the kings and princes are home,
When the shepherds are back with their flock,
The work of Christmas begins:
To find the lost,
To heal the broken,
To feed the hungry,
To release the prisoner,
To rebuild the nations,
To bring peace among people,
To make music in the heart.

-The Mood of Christmas

Timing is Everything

2012-01-15T08:42:00.000-08:00

On thinking of the busyness of the last two weeks and wondering out loud about God's timing and decisions, this was helpful (it didn't provide an answer or make anything clear to me, but helpful none the less).

Oh God, grant us a sense of your timing.
In this season of short days and long nights,
of grey and white and cold,
teach us the lessons of beginnings;
that such waitings and endings may be the starting place,
a planting of seeds which bring to birth what is ready to be born--
something right and just and different,
a new song, a deeper relationship, a fuller love--
in the fullness of your time.

O God, grant us the sense of your timing

Ted Loder

Spotting the Elusive Snowy Owl!

2011-12-30T08:25:00.000-08:00

We headed down to Boundary Bay in search of the elusive Snowy Owl. The Snowy Owl shows up once every few years, apparently tied to the rodent population in Alaska. Who knew? What a magnificent site.

If you live locally, head to the very end of 72nd Street in Delta (by the Boundary Bay airport) and head east down the path and you will see them in all their splendor. It is definitely worth a visit.

First Love

2011-12-29T10:10:00.000-08:00

Got this from Chuck:

Now I realize that the real sin is to deny God’s first love for me, to ignore my original goodness. Because without claiming that first love and that original goodness for myself, I lose touch with my true self and embark on a destructive search among the wrong people and in the wrong places for what can only be found in the house of my Father.

Henri Nouwen

Came Down

2011-12-24T09:17:00.000-08:00

"Christmas itself is by grace. It could never have survived our own blindness and depredations otherwise. It could never have happened otherwise. Perhaps it is the very wildness and strangeness of the grace that has led us to try to tame it. We have tried to make it habitable. We have roofed it in and furnished it. We have reduced it to an occasion we feel at home with, at best a touching and beautiful occasion, at worst a trite and cloying one. But if the Christmas event in itself is indeed - as a matter of cold, hard fact - all it's cracked up to be, then even at best our efforts are misleading.

The Word become flesh. Ultimate Mystery born with a skull you could crush one-handed. Incarnation. It is not tame. It is not touching. It is not beautiful. It is uninhabitable terror. It is unthinkable darkness riven with unbearable light. Agonized laboring led to it, vast upheavals of intergalactic space, time split apart, a wrenching and tearing of the very sinews of reality itself. You can only cover your eyes and shudder before it, before this: "God of God, Light of Light, very God of very God... who for us and for our salvation," as the Nicene Creed puts it, "came down from heaven."

Came down. Only then do we dare uncover our eyes and see what we can see. It is the Resurrection and the Life she holds in her arms. It is the bitterness of death he takes at her breast."

Fredrick Buechner

Picture of the Year

2011-12-22T13:09:00.000-08:00

I am trying to compile my favorite 10 pictures of the year and hope to have that done by next week. But as I thought about that list, I knew immediately my favorite sequence.

Each fall we walk through various fish hatcheries; seeing spawning salmon upclose is one of our families favorite annual traditions. Watching large salmon swim upstream is something that never ceases to amaze us and it is something we never tire of. I just happened to capture our youngest daughter seeing salmon for the first time this year, and as she is quite young maybe the first time that she realized what she was looking at. These pictures are walking through Semiahmoo Fish Hatchery and me capturing her seeing her first salmon of the year.

She may never forget that moment, and neither will I.

Into the Darkest Hour

2011-12-22T09:31:00.000-08:00

Into the Darkest Hour

It was a time like this,
War & tumult of war,
a horror in the air.
Hungry yawned the abyss –
and yet there came the star
and the child most wonderfully there.

It was time like this
of fear & lust for power,
license & greed and blight –
and yet the Prince of bliss
came into the darkest hour
in quiet & silent light.

And in a time like this
how celebrate his birth
when all things fall apart?
Ah! wonderful it is
with no room on the earth
the stable is our heart.

Madeline L'Engle

Canadian Drummer Boy

2011-12-21T09:57:00.000-08:00

Drumming a christmas song in the snow with shorts and red Olympic mitts gives this classic carol a very Canadian feel...just try and not tap your feet.

Do You Hear What I Hear?

2011-12-21T08:15:00.001-08:00

Brilliant. Just Brilliant. I think I would hear the theme song from "Hockey Night in Canada"...

Wading Into The Culture

2011-12-20T08:57:00.000-08:00

"There are all kinds of things wrong with the way we celebrate Christmas. We eat too much, we spend too much, we sentimentalize too much, we worry too much. Those excesses cannot douse the holy instincts that underlie them. We really are hungry. We really do want to give and receive. We really do want to feel deeply, live peaceably, sleep soundly and rise renewed. As the season moves toward its apogee, those of us who believe we know where the instincts lead may do more good by wading into the culture than by separating ourselves from it. God is in the midst of it, after all, still hunting new flesh in which to be born."

Barbara Brown Taylor

A New Zealand Christmas

2011-12-18T21:57:00.000-08:00

The sheep and the stars are brilliant!

Let Jesus Show!

2011-12-17T15:25:00.001-08:00

“A friend of mine told me about a Christmas pageant he took part in once as the rector of an Episcopal church somewhere. The manger was down in front at the chancel steps where it always is. Mary was there in a blue mantle and Joseph in a cotton beard. The wise men were there with a handful of shepherds, and of course in the midst of them all the Christ child was there, lying in the straw. The nativity story was read aloud by my friend with carols sung at the appropriate places, and all went like clockwork until it came time for the arrival of the angels of the heavenly host as represented by the children of the congregation, who were robed in white and scattered throughout the pews with their parents.

“At the right moment they were supposed to come forward and gather around the manger saying. “Glory to God in the highest, and on earth peace, good will among men, and that is just what they did except there were so many of them that there was a fair amount of crowding and jockeying for position, with the result that one particular angel, a girl about nine years old who was smaller than most of them, ended up so far out on the fringes of things that not even by craning her neck and standing on tiptoe could she see what was going on.

“Glory to God in the highest and on earth peace, good will among men,” they all sang on cue, and then in the momentary pause that followed, the small girl electrified the entire church by crying out in a voice shrill with irritation and frustration and enormous sadness at having her view blocked, “Let Jesus show!”

“There was a lot of the service still to go, but my friend the rector said that one of the best things he ever did in his life was to end everything precisely there. “Let Jesus show!” the child cried out, and while the congregation was still sitting in stunned silence, he pronounced the benediction, and everybody filed out of the church with those unforgettable words ringing in their ears.”

Fredrick Buechner

Pebble in the Pond

2011-12-15T22:56:00.000-08:00

“What we would like to do is change the world--make it a little simpler for people to feed, clothe, and shelter themselves as God intended them to do. And, by fighting for better conditions, by crying out unceasingly for the rights of the workers, the poor, of the destitute--the rights of the worthy and the unworthy poor, in other words--we can, to a certain extent, change the world; we can work for the oasis, the little cell of joy and peace in a harried world. We can throw our pebble in the pond and be confident that its ever widening circle will reach around the world. We repeat, there is nothing we can do but love, and, dear God, please enlarge our hearts to love each other, to love our neighbor, to love our enemy as our friend.”

Dorothy Day

Cosmic Dance

2011-12-15T07:00:00.001-08:00

When we are alone on a starlit night, when by chance we see the migrating birds in autumn descending on a grove of junipers to rest and eat; when we see children in a moment when they are really children, when we know love in our own hearts; or when, like the Japanese poet, Basho, we hear an old frog land in a quiet pond with a solitary splash--at such times the awakening, the turning inside out of all values, the 'newness,' the emptiness and the purity of vision that make themselves evident, all these provide a glimpse of the cosmic dance.

Thomas Merton

Prayer of Abandonment

2011-12-13T08:18:00.001-08:00

Father,
I abandon myself into your hands;
do with me what you will.
Whatever you may do, I thank you;
I am ready for all, I accept all.

Let only your will be done in me,
and in all your creatures—
I wish no more than this, O Lord.
Into your hands I commend my soul:
I offer it to you with all the love of my heart,
for I love you, Lord, and so need
to give myself, to surrender myself into your hands
without reserve and with boundless confidence,
for you are my Father. Amen.

Charles de Foucauld

Bethlehemian Rhapsody

2011-12-03T16:01:00.000-08:00

I don't even know if my friend Gerald would like this, but the tune did make me think of him when we roomed in college together. My love for classic rock music, for better and worse, can all be laid at the feet of Gerald. I can't listen to a single Whitesnake song without thinking of him.

And perhaps this will also help some of you get into the Christmas Spirit.

The Great Obstacle

2011-12-03T06:07:00.000-08:00

The great obstacle may be not greed but the modern hankering after glamour.

A lot of our smartest, most concerned people want to come up with a big solution to a big problem. I don't think that planet-saving, if we take it seriously, can furnish employment to many such people.

When I think of the kind of worker the job requires, I think of Dorothy Day (if one can think of Dorothy Day herself, separate from the publicity that came as a result of her rarity), a person willing to go down and down into the daunting, humbling, almost hopeless local presence of the problem--to face the great problem one small life at a time.

Wendell Berry

Faith and Hope

2011-12-02T17:58:00.000-08:00

A great quote that I got from good friend Dan:

"The question occurs to us, 'What difference is there between faith and hope?' We find it difficult to see any difference. Faith and hope are so closely linked that they cannot be separated....without hope faith cannot endure. On the other hand, hope without faith is blind rashness and arrogance because it lacks knowledge. Before anything else a Christian must have the insight of faith, so that the intellect may know its directions in the day of trouble and the heart may hope for better things. By faith we begin, by hope we continue."

Martin Luther

Naming that Moment

2011-11-27T09:16:00.000-08:00

This morning we lit a candle to signify the first Sunday of advent. In our house we love advent because we love lighting candles and because we love the journey the Christmas. Suddenly the anticipation is palpable. Christmas is coming! The writing from Fredrick Buechner totally resonates with us.

"“The house lights go off and the footlights come on. Even the chattiest stop chattering as they wait in darkness for the curtain to rise. In the orchestra pit, the violin bows are poised. The conductor has raised his baton.

In the silence of a midwinter dusk, there is far off in the deeps of it somewhere a sound so faint that for all you can tell it may be only the sound of the silence itself.

You hold your breath to listen. You walk up the steps to the front door. The empty windows at either side of it tell you nothing, or almost nothing. For a second you catch a whiff of some fragrance that reminds you of a place you’ve never been and a time you have no words for.

You are aware of the beating of your heart…The extraordinary thing that is about to happen is matched only by the extraordinary moment just before it happens. Advent is the name of that moment.”  

Frederick Buechner

Believe in the Love That You Gave Me

2011-11-26T19:11:00.001-08:00

Now I believe in the love that you gave me.
I believe in the faith that could save me.
I believe in the hope and I pray that some day it
Will raise me above these Badlands...

Bruce Springsteen.

Same Person on the Inside as the Outside

2011-11-22T22:42:00.000-08:00

Over the past year I've transitioned to working in a primary school and it has been nothing short of transformational. The quality of the people I work with is ridiculous. One of those people is my good friend Jodie. I wish all my children would've had Jodie as a teacher; the article below that she wrote is but one reason why I think that.

"A tradition in our kindergarten is to end our unit on Creation with a beautiful fall walk at Fleetwood Park. So again this year on a rainy Friday in September we packed up our lunches, put on our raincoats and rubber boots and headed to the park. Children don’t just walk in the park they experience it with all of who they are. They are amazed at a slug, there is great joy in finding a perfect stick to poke with, the colours of the leaves are brilliant and there is nothing but pure pleasure when rubber boots and mud puddles meet. Kids experience the joy that is present in the everyday and the ordinary. That comes from wholeness within them. Their minds, bodies and spirit work together.

Educating for wholeness in kindergarten seems rather natural. Much of what we do takes into account the whole child; who he is and where he comes from. Our plans take into account that children need to experience learning through words, songs and movement. They need to see, hear, feel and move in order to learn. We set the tone for the school year with home visits where we meet each child and their family, one on one. Understanding the child in our classroom and building strong and positive relationship with them helps us understand the needs of our students. Children need to feel safe in a relationship before they can learn. We try to meet physical, emotional and spiritual needs.

Kindergarteners come to school and every aspect of who they are is evident and matters. “I forgot my backpack, I missed the bus, I brought sharing, it’s my birthday, I was mean, I’m tired, somebody pushed me ,I’m so excited to be here, I hurt my knee, I love school, My socks are wet, I don’t want my Mom to go”--these are just a few examples of words that greet us each morning. What is inside the child comes out. If wholeness can be defined as being the same person on the inside as on the outside, then kindergarteners have it. As we deal with situations that arise there are many opportunities to teach our students about seeking justice and how to be a servant leader. Yes, it’s great when you help someone clean up even if you didn’t make the mess.

Yet I want to be intentional about teaching my class that it’s God’s world they are engaging in. When we learn the letters of the alphabet, we learn that God made us with the ability to communicate. He formed us in a way that our teeth, lips, mouths and vocal chords can make different sounds. We can form letters that mean different things and some of us can even put those letters together to make words. It’s not just something that happens, it’s all part of God’s design. We talk about those things while we’re learning the letters of the alphabet. When we write and draw in our journals or create colourful paintings we create beauty. We talk about what kinds of words we use to talk to each other when we work and play and we learn to use words and actions that build community. When we look at the days of the week and the months of the year and the seasons, we discover order. When we recycle paper and plastic from our lunches, we are earth keepers.

Educating for wholeness is what we do every day in kindergarten. It’s intentional and incidental. Frederick Buechner describes a moment where he experienced the holiness of wholeness in this way, “There was no part of me left over to be anywhere other than where I was or to do anything other than what I was doing”. Often, that’s what kindergarteners are like as they learn and interact with God’s world with everything that they are. I saw a glimpse of that at Fleetwood Park and I see glimpses of that every day as we experience learning in kindergarten."

Underpinnings of Hope

2011-11-16T07:22:00.000-08:00

It is not possible to look at the present condition of our land and people and find support for optimism. We must not fool ourselves.

It is altogether conceivable that we may go right along with this business of "business," with our curious religious faith in technological progress, with our glorification of our own greed and violence always rationalized by our indignation at the greed and violence of others, until our land, our world, and ourselves are utterly destroyed. We know from history that massive human failure is possible....

On the other hand, we want to be hopeful, and hope is one of our duties. A part of our obligation to our own being and to our descendants is to study our life and our condition, searching always for the authentic underpinnings of hope. And if we look, these underpinnings can still be found.

-Wendell Berry

No Case Against Us

2011-11-06T09:30:00.000-08:00

"Silence is the language of god, and the only language deep enough to absorb all the contradictions and failures that we are holding against ourselves. God loves us silently because God has no case to make against us. The silent communion absorbs our self-hatred, as every lover know."

Richard Rohr

To Jane, with Love

2011-10-27T16:02:00.000-07:00

Thoughts on my sweet school:

I suppose I should blame Jane Witte. In 1985 I was sitting in her English 8 class in the old shoebox on 92nd Avenue and she came over and said she wanted to talk to me at break time. Before she could even finish, I bellowed “But I haven’t done anything wrong this time…” although maybe I had and just couldn’t remember, which was very possible. At break Jane sat me down and explained to me that she thought I was a much better student and a much better writer than I let on, and she wondered if I would be open to some mentoring and encouragement because she thought, for some ridiculous reason, that maybe I would grow up and be an English teacher someday. I laughed. Perhaps it was a holy laugh because that conversation changed the trajectory of my life forever. The Kingdom of God was crashing into my life at that moment, and I knew it, even though I wouldn’t admit it to anyone.

The joy of my work at school is that I have moments like that every day. The Kingdom of God crashes into our school when young a child runs up to me and squeels because he has a caterpillar crawling up their arm; or when I see a big grade 7 guy walking hand in hand with a quiet and shy kindergarten student on the Terry Fox run, or when a middle school students creates a piece of art work that is much more beautiful than anything they could have imagined. Those are the moments when heaven and earth seem to be so close, when time stands still I feel like am standing on holy ground in a holy place. It is those moments I really do know in my gut what it means when someone whispers “God is in this place.”

But even though I know that one day all shall be well, I also know that all is not well. I can and perhaps should be discouraged because things are not the way God intended them to be. God's creation suddenly groans at our school when a student is bullied, there is an incident on the bus, a friend is intentionally ignored, someone makes fun of a new haircut. We should all groan with creation because the world and the people in it are broken, but we should also cling to the hope that we are not defeated. We dream of reconciliation and restoration and trust that one day all things will be made new, that there indeed will be a new creation.

Each day at school, our students are invited to experience wholeness, quite often they say “Yes” to this invitation, but at times the answer is “No”. When I walk and talk with students, I can be overwhelmed by how many students experience the shadow side of wholeness, and I grieve because I think these children are too young to know the brokenness of God’s kingdom. Children who have wounds I cannot even begin to understand. These deep wounds that fester and spoil and remind me of things I can't or don't want to understand.

Maybe one of the ways we keep our promise to educate for wholeness is that each student, no matter what their story, should experience the Kingdom of God crashing into their lives. For some students, the kingdom is the simple fact that people call them by their first name, for others it realizing for the first time that they are gifted in music or science or athletics, for others the kingdom of God is right there when they finally, for the first time ever, learn to do the letter “g” the right way instead of doing it backwards. For others, the kingdom of God crashes into their lives because being at school is the safest six hours of a student’s life, or when reconciliation and restoration is reached between two students who really do want to find a better way to live faithfully in community.

When you walk the halls at our school, I hope you too can whisper that God is in this place and that you can see the Kingdom of God in our hallways and classrooms. Pray for each of our students, but maybe pray specifically for those who feel like they are living more in the shadows, and remember that each of us—teacher, parent, student-- is blessed to be a blessing; and perhaps your kingdom work today is to maybe pull the clouds away from someone so that they are a little less in the shadow, and a little more in the Son.

Dream of a Miracle

2011-10-27T07:06:00.000-07:00

Forgiveness is the answer to the child's dream of a miracle by which what is broken is made whole again, what is soiled is again made clean. The dream explains why we need to be forgiven, and why we must forgive. In the presence of God, nothing stands between God and us--we are forgiven. But we cannot feel God's presence if anything is allowed to stand between ourselves and others.

-Dag Hammarskjold

Livable, Believable, Life-Giving

2011-10-21T06:59:00.000-07:00

"All of Jesus’ rules of ministry, his “tips for the road,” are very interpersonal. They are based on putting people in touch with people. Person-to-person is the way the gospel was originally communicated. Person-in-love-with-person, person-respecting-person, person-forgiving-person, person-touching-person, person-crying-with-person, person-hugging-person: that’s where the Spirit is so beautifully present.

The challenge is to preach a gospel that is livable, believable, and life-giving. Perhaps that is the most simple criterion by which we can discern Jesus’ teaching. It is always a call to death but is always life-giving in the long run. When you see life being created between people and within people, you see God. Where you see God, you will always see freedom. Restraint and passion—that is the paradoxical experience of the Holy. It takes time to learn. You grow into the ability to love another in a way that totally gives yourself and entrusts yourself and yet respects that person and stands back."

Richard Rohr

Not Myself

2011-10-19T07:02:00.000-07:00

"Who are you?" said the Caterpillar.

This was not an encouraging opening for a conversation. Alice replied, rather shyly, "I--I hardly know, Sir, just at present--at least I know who I was when I got up this morning, but I think I must have been changed several times since then."

"What do you mean by that?" said the Caterpillar, sternly. "Explain yourself!"

"I can't explain myself, I'm afraid, Sir," said Alice, "because I'm not myself, you see."

Lewis Carroll

Exit as Entrance

2011-10-15T06:04:00.000-07:00

When I truly go out of myself in meeting another person, when in that encounter I can let go of my small, fearful, grasping self, then in meeting the other I simultaneously meet my own highest, truest self.... In opening myself to another's essential nature I am at the same time opening myself to my own.

The biblical commandment to 'love thy neighbor as thyself' is in this light tranformed from a moral rule to a profound statement about the nature of relationship. I can love another only as I love myself. Conversely, I can love myself ony as I love another.

Love's exit is its entrance. We see others as strangers only when we are estranged from ourselves. We can fear in others only what we fear in ourselves. And when we meet a loved one, we are meeting ourselves as the beloved.

Philip Simmons

Here and Not Elsewhere

2011-10-09T21:18:00.000-07:00

"You will find stability at the moment when you discover that God is everywehre, that you do not need to seek God elsewhere, that God is here, and if you do not find God here it is useless to go and search elsewhere because it is not God that is absent from us, it is we who are absent from God....this is important because it only at the moment you recognize this that you can truly find the fullness of the Kingdom of God in all its richness within you".

Metropolitan Anthony Bloom

Ted Zander on Music and Passion

2011-10-06T08:01:00.000-07:00

Ted Zander speaks on TED.com on music and passion and leadership. I found this completely inspiring, especially considering that he made me fall in love with Chopin and classical music in a very short period of time. I had some belly chuckle laughs and some lumps in my throat as I watched this. Beautiful, just beautiful.

Trying to Stay Creative

2011-10-01T14:08:00.000-07:00

I just mentioned to somebody that the start of a busy year seems to leave little room to think creatively and makes it hard to find alternative solutions to mundane problems. This small video was helpful.

True Joy

2011-09-03T20:48:00.000-07:00

I forgot who wrote this, but I sure loved it when I read it:

"There is a great difference between successfulness and fruitfulness. Success comes from strength, control, and respectability. A successful person has the energy to create something, to keep control over its development, and to make it available in large quantities. Success brings many rewards and often fame. Fruits, however, come from weakness and vulnerability. And fruits are unique. A child is the fruit conceived in vulnerability, community is the fruit born through shared brokenness, and intimacy is the fruit that grows through touching one another's wounds. Let's remind one another that what brings us true joy is not successfulness but fruitfulness."

As We Are

2011-08-22T07:57:00.000-07:00

God loves us exactly the way we are, and God loves us too much to let us stay exactly the way we are.

Anne Lamott

One Sunday in August

2011-08-21T09:26:00.000-07:00

One Sunday in August we started our day at Crescent Beach in White Rock and then drove to the airport to watch the planes land (and were lucky enough to have a 747 fly right above us)and ended the day doing some beach combing at Iona Beach. It was, to say the least, a fantastic day.

The Power of the Powerless

2011-08-21T09:24:00.001-07:00

"The heart of anti-imperial theory is that liberation comes from the victims of the empire. To undermine and eradicate the empire of course requires the appropriate use of power, but in the long run, power in itself is not enough to bring about a humane and humanizing liberation. For this reason, in the Christian biblical tradition, salvation arises from the weak and the small, from the powerless: a barren old woman, a small people, a marginal Jew; even more a suffering servant, chosen by God to bring salvation.... When we think of liberation from the empire today, we have to draw on this same powerful logic of the powerless".

Jon Sobrino

Which God?

2011-08-08T08:34:00.000-07:00

"Every person becomes the image of the God they adore."

Thomas Merton

Seeking What You Have

2011-08-04T08:13:00.000-07:00

You seek for God, beloved soul, and he is everywhere, everything speaks of him, everything offers him to you, he walks beside you, he surrounds you and is within you. He lives with you and yet you try to find him. You seek your own idea of God, although you have him in his reality.

Jean Pierre de Caussade

A New World Is Yet to Come

2011-07-22T08:49:00.000-07:00

You are Christian only so long as you constantly pose critical questions to the society you live in, so long as you emphasize the need of conversion both for yourself and for the world, so long as you in no way let yourself become established in the situation of the world, so long as you stay unsatisfied with the status quo and keep saying that a new world is yet to come. You are Christian only when you believe you have a role to play in the realization of the new kingdom, and when you urge everyone you meet with holy unrest to make haste so that the promise might soon be fulfilled. So long as you live as a Christian you keep looking for a new order, a new structure, a new life.

Henri Nouwen

Embracing Brokenness

2011-07-20T13:11:00.001-07:00

"To embrace one's brokenness, whatever it looks like, whatever has caused it, carries within it the possibility that one might come to embrace one's healing, and then one might come to the next step: to embrace another and their brokenness and their possibility for being healed. To avoid one's brokenness is to turn one's back on the possibility that the Healer might be at work here, perhaps for you, perhaps for another."

Robert Benson

Love Wins, Again.

2011-07-06T16:14:00.001-07:00

Mike Todd just goes for it today. I love Mike. Seriously, I love him. This blog will explain a little bit my love-hate with Mike. I love Mike, I sometimes hate what he says, and because I hate what he has to say, I love him for it. (And hate is the wrong word, Mike just makes me feel very uncomfortable about my faith, and I am deeply thankful for that.)

Read this. And bookmark Mike. Even if you don't like what he has to say.

Closing the Door

2011-07-06T07:41:00.000-07:00

Today is my last day of school. I will turn the lights off and shut the door and probably do a huge exhale. It could even be emotional, but maybe not tears, maybe a giggle or a laugh or maybe I will punch the air as I walk to my car and let out a barbaric yawp. Either way, I will say a little prayer on my way home and thank my Lord for giving me peace and strength and for being faithful, and then I will say "thank you" to Him for allowing me to discover a unique community of people, adults and children, who I fell in love with more than I could have ever imagined. It was all so hard, but it was so very good.

My prayer for this summer:

Lord, I know not what I ought to ask of thee; thou only knowest my need.... I simply present myself before thee, I open my heart to thee. Behold my needs which I know not myself. Smite, or heal; depress me, or raise me up; I adore all thy purposes without knowing them; I am silent; I offer myself in sacrifice; I yield myself to thee; I would have no other desire than to accomplish thy Will. Teach me to pray. Pray thyself in me. Amen.

A book I am reading this summer is "Becoming Human" by Jean Vanier as I think I need to rediscover a bit of that in the next few weeks.

"A community is only being created when its members accept that they are not going to achieve great things, that they are not going to be heroes, but simply live each day with new hope, like children, in wonderment as the sun rises and in thanksgiving as it sets. Community is only being created when they have recognized that the greatness of man is to accept his insignificance, his human condition and his earth, and to thank God for having put in a finite body the seeds of eternity which are visible in small and daily gestures of love and forgiveness. The beauty of man is in this fidelity to the wonder of each day."

-Jean Vanier

No Technique

2011-07-04T08:24:00.000-07:00

"All truly contemplatives souls have this in common: not that they gather exclusively in the desert, or that they shut themselves up in reclusion, but that where He is, there they are. And how do they find Him? By technique? There is no technique for finding Him. They find Him by His will. And His will, bringing them grace within and arranging their lives exteriorly, carries them infallibly to the precise place in which they can find Him. Even there they do not know how they have got there, or what they are really doing."

Thomas Merton

Incognito

2011-07-03T08:55:00.000-07:00

On having the goal of "paying attention" this coming summer, this was a wonderful reminder this morning:

"We may ignore, but we can nowhere evade, the presence of God. The world is crowded with God. God walks everywhere incognito. And the incognito is not always hard to penetrate. The real labour is to remember, to attend. In fact, to come awake. Still more, to remain awake."

C. S. Lewis

Violence of Love

2011-07-02T16:21:00.000-07:00

We have never preached violence,
except the violence of love,
which left Christ nailed to a cross,
the violence that we must each do to ourselves
to overcome our selfishness
and such cruel inequalities among us.
The violence we preach is not the violence of the sword,
the violence of hatred.
It is the violence of love,
of brotherhood,
the violence that wills to beat weapons
into sickles for work.

Oscar Romero

At the Core

2011-07-01T19:58:00.000-07:00

"The real trap, however, is self-rejection. As soon as someone accuses me or criticizes me, as soon as I am rejected, left alone, or abandoned, I find myself thinking, “Well, that proves once again that I am a nobody.” My dark side says I am no good…I deserve to be pushed aside, forgotten, rejected, and abandoned. Self-rejection is the greatest enemy of the spiritual life because it contradicts the sacred voice that calls us the “Beloved.” Being the Beloved constitutes the core truth of our existence".

Henri Nouwen

This Nouwen quote comes off the blog of an old friend, Chuck De Groat. Back in the day I was writing sports in our old college newspaper while Chuck and his friend Dirk were making me laugh, and I alway loved how they were stirring it up on campus with thought provoking and hilarious editorials. Chuck has his PhD and is doing some important work in San Francisco.

Click here to read Chuck's writing on becoming the beloved. An important question Chucks asks is "do you really believe you are loved that much?"

Listen to Your Doubts

2011-07-01T15:02:00.000-07:00

I am in the middle of a Tim Keller kick, currently reading Counterfeit Gods. This was a good quote for me because I think I was always told that doubt is a sign of a weak faith, which I think is not just sad to tell someone that, but I really think it is wrong and potentially dangerous, especially for young people.

For me there has always been a correlation between some of the doubts I have and the questions I am willing to ask. But I also feel like asking the question takes courage and you come out much further ahead than just going ahead in life like you have all the answers (and believe me, I love being the answer man!) As my friend Lee once told me, always beware the person who feels like they have the corner on the truth.

"A faith without some doubts is like a human body with no antobodies in it. People who blithely go through life too busy or indifferent to ask the hard questions about why they believe as they do will find themselves defenseless against either the experience of tragedy or the probing questions of a smart skeptic. A person's faith can collapse almost overnight if she failed over the years to listen patiently to her own doubts, which should only be discarded after long reflection."

The Task

2011-06-29T07:47:00.000-07:00

From the first NT Wright book I ever read, given to me by my friend Elaine while I was at a teacher's conference. I remember mentioning to her that I was looking for a book to help me see and think about Jesus and his life and death and resurrection and how that tied into my everyday, walking around life in a way I never had before. She simply gave me The Challenge of Jesus and said "read this". The quote below comes from that book. And now I'm off to school, I hope to shut the door and put a wrap on this school year by the end of next week. Can. Not. Wait.

"Our task as image-bearing, God-loving, Christ-shaped, Spirit-filled Christians, following Christ and shaping our world, is to announce redemption to a world that has discovered its fallenness, to announce healing to a world that has discovered its brokenness, to proclaim love and trust to a world that knows only exploitation, fear and suspicion...The gospel of Jesus points us and indeed urges us to be at the leading edge of the whole culture, articulating in story and music and art and philosophy and education and poetry and politics and theology and even--heaven help us--Biblical studies, a worldview that will mount the historically-rooted Christian challenge to both modernity and postmodernity, leading the way...with joy and humor and gentleness and good judgment and true wisdom. I believe if we face the question, "if not now, then when?" if we are grasped by this vision we may also hear the question, "if not us, then who?" And if the gospel of Jesus is not the key to this task, then what is?"

Can Hope Be Wrong?

2011-06-28T21:30:00.001-07:00

I've really come to enjoy reading Jamie Smith. I found his his book Desiring the Kingdom quite pheneomenol as it provided some significant insight to me as an educator, a parent, and a person who still sees great value on being part of the larger church.

This short article by Smith was helpful for me as I can fall into the "I can't imagine" and "at least I hope" view of universalism. And yes, I realize this article is a few months old and was tied to all the fun discussion about Rob Bell and heaven and hell. But hey, I'm catching up after being gone for a few months so bear with me!

Moments of Miracle

2011-06-28T15:08:00.000-07:00

"The sacred moments, the moments of miracle, are often the everyday moments, the moments which, if we do not look with more than our eyes or listen with more than our ears reveal only...a gardener, a stranger coming down the road behind us, a meal like any other meal. But if we look with our hearts, if we listen with all our being and imagination.. what we may see is Jesus himself".

Frederick Buechner

Wisdom and Knowledge

2011-06-27T15:34:00.000-07:00

What is the difference between wisdom and knowledge? This is something I will be watching with my children tonight. 78 seconds. Watch it. Please.

WISDOM + 78 SECONDS from Nic Askew on Vimeo.

Diligently But Gently

2011-06-27T06:42:00.001-07:00

Don't lose any opportunity, however small, of being gentle toward everyone. Don't rely on your own efforts to succeed in your various undertakings, but only God's help. Then rest in God's care of you, confident that God will do what is best for you, provided that you, for your part, work diligently but gently.

I say 'gently' because a tense diligence is harmful both to our heart and to our task and is not really diligence, but rather over eagerness and anxiety.... I recommend you to God's mercy. I beg God, through that same mercy, to fill you with God's love.

Francis de Sales

All We Really Need

2011-06-26T19:16:00.000-07:00

"When it comes down to being a provider of God's love, there is really only one provider, who sends us out with nothing at all and with everything we need: healing, forgiveness, restoration, resurrection. Those are the only things we really have to share with the world, which is just as well, since they are the only things the world really needs."

Barbara Brown Taylor, from Bread of Angels

Expectations and Forgiveness

2011-06-26T08:49:00.000-07:00

On sometimes being disappointed when others do not meet my too-high expectation of them, and the insecurity I feel as a parent that I just don't quite measure up--this quote was quite helpful this morning:

"Forgiveness means that I continually am willing to forgive the other person for not being God--for not fulfilling all my needs. I, too, must ask forgiveness for not being able to fulfill other people's needs.... When you forgive people for not being God, then you can celebrate that they are a reflection of God".

Henri Nouwen

A Difficult Business

2011-06-25T08:43:00.000-07:00

A Revolutionary Message

The gospels, and sometimes the epistles, are pretty revolutionary. They propose a revolution of about 180 degrees. Christ was quite explicit, for instance, about his pacifism. You can't be more explicit than "Love your enemies." He did run those people out of the temple, but he didn't kill them.

People are always talking about the first church. The real first church was that gaggle of people who followed Jesus around. We don't know anything about them. But he apparently didn't ask them what creed they subscribed to, or what their sexual preference was, or any of that. He fed them. He healed them. He forgave them. He is clear about sin, but he was also for forgiveness.

Any religion has to have a practice. When you let it go so far from practice that it just becomes a matter of talk, something bad happens. If you don't have an economic practice, you don't have a practice. Christians conventionally think they've done enough when they've gone to the store and shopped. But that isn't an economic life. If you take seriously those passages in the scripture that say that we live by God's spirit and breath, that we live, move and have our being in God, the implications for the present economy are just devastating. Those passages call for an entirely generous and careful encomic life.

We're a pretty bad species in a lot of ways and in other ways a pretty good one. We can become a warrior civilization and live by piracy; on the other hand, we're capable of lovingkindness, of genuine affection, of generosity, of friendship, of peaceability, of forgiveness and gratitude.... The serious question is whether you're going to become a warrior community and live by piracy, by taking what you need from other people.

I think the only antidote to that is imagination. You have to develop your imagination to the point that permits sympathy to happen. You have to be able to imagine lives that are not yours or the lives of your loved ones or the lives of your neighbors. You have to have at least enough imagination to understand that if you want the benefits of compassion, you must be compassionate. If you want forgiveness you must be forgiving.

It's a difficult business, being human.

Wendell Berry

It Makes All The Difference

2011-04-22T08:47:00.000-07:00

"We proclaim Christ crucified, a stumbling block to Jews and foolishness to Gentiles." 1 Corinthians 1:23

Does the death of Jesus Christ twenty centuries ago make any difference to people like us who live in a world that he could not possibly have imagined, a world of people, many of whom believe God is dead? Is the Death of Christ a death that really matters any more except in the dim way that any noble death might be said to matter?

All I can say is that I would not be writing these words unless I believed that the answer is Yes, that his death does make all the difference, even for us. I believe that by his dying he released into the world an entirely new kind of life, his kind of life, that has flowed down through the tragic centuries like water through a dry land, making alive and whole all who will only kneel to drink. That is the only reason it is not blasphemy to speak of the Friday of his unspeakable death as Good Friday.

Prayer: Help me, O Crucified One, to stand under your cross on Good Friday, to accept the mystery of my redemption and to commit myself anew to your sacred Word and will in all things. Amen.

-Frederick Buechner

In the Core of My Heart

2011-04-21T07:11:00.000-07:00

A friend named Jenny wrote this poem and gave me permission to share it with you today:

Something unsettled that lies deeper than the pit of my stomach.

Something on alert in the core of my heart.

Just a few days ago
I was shouting HALLELUJAH,
waving palm branches,
excited at what was coming,
seeing the Kingdom of God
arriving from up the road
carried on the back of a donkey.

Oh, the illusion of feeling in charge.
Of thinking I 'got it'.
Of believing that I'd be exalted, too.

It's Wednesday of Holy Week.
The palm branches are withered.
The donkey is back in the field.

There's so much that has to happen and no one is making inroads and it's been so long already and yet the Kingdom is still not here and the tide is turning so I'm flexing my muscles and polishing my armour, I'm primed to fight and I've sharpened my sword and filled my quiver with arrows - I'm ready to stand and shed blood for the Lord.

This unrest.
This turmoil in my soul.
Not knowing what's coming makes me want to just DO SOMETHING.

And there's Christ
right over there.
Letting it all wash over him.
Giving himself over to everything.
Not saying anything to turn this around.
To show who he is.
What he is.
Praying instead of resisting.
(Not that I am against praying, of course, but come ON!)

The donkey!
They put him on a donkey!

Makes me wonder what else
he'll let them do to him
before this is all done.

Breathe Deep

2011-04-20T15:26:00.001-07:00

I got this from my good friend Carolyn. She couldn't find the author but the words speak right into my heart...

Breathe deep. The hour has come.

Breathe deep again.

Imagine the deep breath Jesus must have taken as he climbed on a donkey’s back for the ride into Jerusalem, knowing the pit of vipers he was riding into.

Be aware of your own, tired, fearful deep breath. Where will your holy week pilgrimage take you? Where don’t you want to go, but somehow know you must? This isn’t only about giving up chocolate for lent or meat on Fridays. There is a calling in each of us to be…something more, to face that which we deeply fear in ourselves, or to challenge the injustice before our eyes, knowing full well, in so doing, we will be inviting in pain, heartbreak, perhaps even crucifixion.

Breathe deep.

This week is the pinnacle of our faith. How seriously do we take it? Will we just go through the rituals this week, reenacting a last supper, genuflecting before a cross, and happily finding eggs on Sunday or will we truly seek to be resurrected people by next Monday? I’m not sure I trust that grace can take hold of me that fast. Were you to answer the first, that empty ritual is good enough for most folks, just go to mass and check the box, I must admit, my deep breath would turn into a sigh of relief. Whew. That I can do. But I would have to admit to some desolation in my heart—really? Honestly? That’s it? That’s all there is to be done to experience

Oneness with God in this life?

But were you to take my hand and tell me from your heart “The hour has come,” my deep breath would quickly become restricted, short, gasping a bit. We seek to be a resurrected people and you can’t get there without going through the crucifixion. Your own crucifixion. My eyes would well with tears. I’m so not ready to be or do this calling. And I pray God help me.

And I find a bit of an answer:

When we have let ourselves go and no longer belong to ourselves, when we have denied ourselves and no longer have the disposing of ourselves…we begin to live in the world of God himself, the world of grace and eternal life. (Karl Rahner, Reflections on the Experience of Grace)

And in that, in letting go of my fears, in accepting whatever is to come from mounting this donkey into holy week, denying my common sense to stay where it is safe and just do what everyone else does, I find consolation. I don’t want to go there, but somehow I know it is where I have to go. Each of us has a “there”, a Jerusalem, where we don’t want to go, but we know we must. It will not be easy, but it will bring our hearts the Oneness we seek. This is our faith. Do we really buy it?

I find consolation as well, in going with you, in knowing that I have companions on this road who are about to face their own hour, whatever that may be for you. I will be with you as you are with me.

Breathe deep. Here we go.

Redefining Musts and Oughts

2011-04-01T09:47:00.000-07:00

Thoughts on what spring break has offered me this year: a chance to stop going with the "musts" and the "oughts" for two weeks and just be. I kept thinking to myself that I've never felt my mind and body decompress as much as it has over the last two weeks.

Although I suppose I should not be surprised, I just did not realize how tightly I was wound. And so the last two weeks there has just been this slow, positive unravelling. I realized this deep in my guts peacefulness while sitting with my four daughters in Starbucks in downtown Seattle across from the Pike Place Market.

We were just sitting there, waiting to pick up Bev at the airport, and I just took a big breath and realized "this is it." I read this poem by Wendell Berry titled "Purification" and quite honestly have felt that over the past two weeks.

At the start of spring I open a trench
in the ground. I put into it
the winter's accumulation of paper,
pages I do not want to read
again, useless words, fragments,
errors. And I put into it
the contents of the outhouse:
light of the sun, growth of the ground,
finished with one of their journeys.
To the sky, to the wind, then,
and to the faithful trees, I confess
my sins: that I have not been happy
enough, considering my good luck;
have listened to too much noise;
have been inattentive to wonders;
have lusted after praise.
And then upon the gathered refuse
of mind and body, I close the trench,
folding shut again the dark,
the deathless earth. Beneath that seal
the old escapes into the new.

So I got to that deep breath by through reading Rob Bell's new book "Love Wins" and Jamie Smith's "Letters to a Young Calvinist", both books were very affirming and challenging for me, so I came away very encouraged. The last two weeks also allowed me to be a single dad with my four daughters for seven days and I re-realized what amazing young girls they are, I swam with my kids and did a flip off the diving board, jumped on the tramp, went to the Seattle Zoo, watched American Idol, puttered and picked weeds in the garden, walked through book stores and sat on the deck in my shorts drinking cold beer. Deep. Peace. Deep. Breath. And trying to redefine what the ought and the musts need to be, should be, and can't be.

“In general we are very busy people. We have many meetings to attend, many visits to make, many services to lead. Our calendars are filled with appointments, our days and weeks filled with engagements, and our years filed with plans and projects. There is seldom a period in which we do not know what to do, and we move through life in such a distracted way that we do not even take the time and rest to wonder if any of the things we think, say or do are worth thinking, saying, or doing. We simply go along with the many “musts” and “oughts” that have been handed on to us, and we live with them as if they were authentic translations of the Gospel of our Lord.”

Henri Nouwen

Lenten Prayer

2011-04-01T09:38:00.000-07:00

Fast from judging others; feast on the Christ indwelling in them.
Fast from emphasis on differences; feast on the unity of all life.
Fast from apparent darkness; feast on the reality of light.
Fast from words that pollute; feast on phrases that purify.
Fast from discontent; feast on gratitude.
Fast from anger; feast on patience.
Fast from pessimism; feast on optimism.
Fast from worry; feast on trust.
Fast from complaining; feast on appreciation.
Fast from negatives; feast on affirmatives.
Fast from unrelenting pressures; feast on unceasing prayer.
Fast from hostility; feast on nonviolence.
Fast from bitterness; feast on forgiveness.
Fast from self-concern; feast on compassion for others.
Fast from personal anxiety; feast on eternal truth.
Fast from discouragement; feast on hope.
Fast from facts that depress; feast on truths that uplift.
Fast from lethargy; feast on enthusiasm.
Fast from suspicion; feast on truth.
Fast from thoughts that weaken; feast on promises that inspire.
Fast from idle gossip; feast on purposeful silence.

Gentle God, during this season of fasting and feasting, gift us with your presence
so we can be a gift to others in carrying out your work.

Amen.

by William Arthur Ward (

Where Is God?

2011-03-30T08:24:00.001-07:00

Where is God? is the title question. Let us begin by saying where God is not: in the empire. But mysteriously, God is in all the victims that the empire produces--and that we all produce. God is not very helpful in understanding the horrors of Afghanistan, Iraq and Africa. But the victims in those places help us not to be confused about God. He is not the God of the empire. The most courageous believers will tell us: he is the God of the victims. He is the God of Jesus, who was also a victim of the empire.

Jon Sobrino

A Great First Day of Spring

2011-03-20T19:49:00.000-07:00

It was the first day of spring and it really felt like the first day of spring. We celebrated my mom's 73rd birthday (way to go, Mom!), then went up Burnaby Mountain to enjoy the sweet view of Vancouver and beyond, and then we ended up at Barnet Marine Park, which was beautiful and we will be back as there is much more to explore. It finally feels like Spring Break.

Jesus Uses Common Sense

2011-03-13T14:10:00.001-07:00

I've been reading Donald Miller's blog, he of the A Million Miles in a Thousand Years and many other books. The fact that I am going through the deepest struggles ever about church and some other significant changes in my life, this was something I needed to hear from him.

"In John 7, Jesus decides to go to Galilee and avoid Judea because the Jews in Judea were hatching a plan to kill Him. I often turn my faith into voodoo like seances and emotion-filled prayers in seeking God’s will, while Jesus Himself just uses common sense. I’m not going to Judea, He says, because those guys are trying to kill me. I’ll go over to Galilee instead. I hear they have a Dairy Queen.

I remember reading a big report from a church I used to go to, a vision statement outlining the plan for the church to grow. It involved buying new property and building a new building and more than quadrupling the size of the congregation over the next twenty years or so. When I read it, I remember thinking that the vision lacked common sense. The church was in a rural area, and there was no growth happening in the community. It seemed like, if you wanted to reach more people, you’d just send another pastor into an area closer to town and plant another church. It would be a lot cheaper to do it that way anyway. But the vision was couched in a lot of God talk, a lot of talk about how it was “bathed in prayer” and the sort of language that creeps normal people out. That vision statement came out ten years ago, and very little has happened, save a church split and a lot of controversy.

I find it suspect when a vision for power and glory for man is couched in a lot of religious talk. I usually suspect that its one of two things, if not both:

1. Justification for doing something we really want and God didn’t ask for.

2. A way of defending what we want so nobody will argue with us or push back. How can they? We prayed about it and stuff.

Miracles happen and people get visions for sure. But mostly God gives us a hoe and some seeds and introduces us to the miracle of work and a lot of common sense."

Counter Cultural

2011-03-13T10:13:00.000-07:00

Those at the edge of any system and those excluded from any system, ironically and invariably hold the secret for the conversion and wholeness of that very group. They always hold the feared, rejected, and denied parts of the group’s soul. You see, therefore, why the church was meant to be that group that constantly went to the edges, to the “least of the brothers and sisters,” and even to the enemy. Jesus was not just a theological genius, but he was also a psychological and sociological genius. When any church defines itself by exclusion, it is always wrong. It is avoiding its only vocation, which is to be the Christ.

Only as the People of God receive the stranger, the sinner, and the immigrant, those who don’t play our game our way, do we discover not only the hidden, feared, and hated parts of our own souls, but the fullness of Jesus himself. We need them for our own conversion.

The Church is always converted when the outcasts are re-invited back into the temple. You see this in Jesus’ commonly sending marginalized people that he has healed, back into the village, back to their family, or back to the temple to “show themselves to the priests.” It is not just for their re-inclusion and acceptance, but actually for the group itself to be renewed.

Richard Rohr

What if Love Does Win?

2011-03-11T20:27:00.001-08:00

Rob Bell's new book Love Wins has unleashed a storm of controversy. Scot McKnight, someone who I have read for some time, has responded with a thoughtful response that can be found here.

Harper has also decided to capitalize on the powder keg as well. They have announced that the release of the book has been pushed up two weeks and will now be available to the public on March 15.

I wonder how disappointed I would be if God loved the world so much He decided to redeem and save everyone? Not. At. All.

Cautiously Optimistic

2011-02-27T22:01:00.001-08:00

I am looking forward to reading this but am sure that I will come away with even more questions and less answers and I am not sure how I feel about that.

The Week That Was

2011-02-27T21:33:00.000-08:00

The Spiral of Materialism

2011-02-21T20:57:00.000-08:00

The spiral of materialism is eternal and never ends.... The materialist is never satisfied. For the heart is not made full or satisfied by any, or even all, of the things that the religion of materialism and its preachers of advertising want so desperately to sell us. "Where your treasure is, there your heart will be," warned Jesus. And the treasures that lead to compassionate living are not buyable because they are less objects than they are experiences.... Greed never asks when is enough, enough? It knows nothing of limits. Therefore, it knows nothing of the true pleasures that life is about. It is utterly ignorant of celebration.

Matthew Fox

To Live Slowly

2011-02-11T07:13:00.000-08:00

God help us to live slowly:
To move simply:
To look softly:
To allow emptiness:
To let the heart create for us.
Amen

Michael Leunig

All the World Really Needs

2011-02-10T20:00:00.000-08:00

When it comes down to being a provider of God's love, there is really only one provider, who sends us out with nothing at all and with everything we need: healing, forgiveness, restoration, resurrection. Those are the only things we really have to share with the world, which is just as well, since they are the only things the world really needs.

Barbara Brown Taylor,

Great Pics of a Great School

2011-02-04T17:43:00.000-08:00

Louise from GC Photography spent a day taking pictures at our most fabulous PreK-12 Surrey Christian School and see some of the sample pictures that are up on their website. Check out the photos by clicking here.

Louise and Gary take amazing pictures everywhere they go. Check out more of their pictures at their website.

Active Presence

2011-02-02T07:17:00.000-08:00

Our task is to help people concentrate on the real but often hidden event of God's active presence in their lives. Hence, the question is...not how to keep people busy, but how to keep them from being so busy that they can no longer hear the voice of God who speaks in silence.

Morton Kelsey

Presenting the Whole of our Lives

2011-01-18T21:19:00.001-08:00

I got this from my friend Brenda as we pondered how to support people who are suffering and grieving and feeling rather insignificant and helpless in our work:

"The mystery of life is that the Lord of life cannot be known except in and through the act of living. Without concrete and specific involvements of daily life we cannot come to know the loving presence of him who holds us in the palm of his hand. Our limited acts of love reveal to us his unlimited love. Our small gestures of care reveal his boundless care. Our fearful and hesitant words reveal his fearless and guiding Word. It is indeed through our broken, vulnerable, mortal ways of being that the healing power of the eternal God becomes visible to us. Therefore, we are called each day to present to our Lord the whole of our lives - our joys as well as sorrows, our successes as well as failures, our hopes as well as fears. We are called to do so with our limited means, our stuttering words and halting expressions. In this way, we will come to know in mind and heart the unceasing prayer of God's Spirit in us. Our many prayers are in fact confessions of our inability to pray. But they are confessions that enable us to perceive the merciful presence of God"

Henri Nouwen, Mornings with Henri J.M. Nouwen, p. 39.

A Friend in Need of Prayer

2010-12-31T10:09:00.000-08:00

Judy, a friend and colleague of mine, found out last week that her husband Bill has bile duct cancer. We are all quite shocked. Bill is also the pastor of a local church that our family previously attended. You can follow their journey here. Please pray for Judy and their family as the next weeks and months will be very difficult.

This is True

2010-12-24T09:01:00.000-08:00

It is not true that creation and the human family are doomed to destruction and loss—
This is true: For God so loved the world that he gave his only begotten Son, that whoever believes in him shall not perish, but have everlasting life.

It is not true that we must accept inhumanity and discrimination, hunger and poverty, death and destruction:
This is true: I have come that they may have life, and have it abundantly.
It is not true that violence and hatred should have the last word…
This is true: For unto us a child is born, and unto us a Son is given, and the government shall be upon his shoulders, and his name shall be called Wonderful Counselor, Mighty God, Everlasting Father, Prince of Peace.

It is not true that we are simply victims of the powers of evil who seek to rule the world—
This is true: To me is given authority in heaven and on earth, and lo, I am with you always, even unto the end of the world.

It is not true that we have to wait for those who are specially gifted, who are the prophets of the church, before we can be peacemakers.
This is true: I will pour out my spirit upon all flesh, and your sons and daughters shall prophesy, your young shall see visions, and your old shall dream dreams.

It is not true that our hopes for the liberation of humankind, of justice, of human dignity, of peace are not meant for this earth and for this history—
This is true: The hour comes, and it is now, that true worshippers shall worship the Father in spirit and in truth.

So let us move from Advent to Christmas with hope,
even hope against hope.
Let us see visions of love and peace and justice.
Let us affirm with humility, with faith, with courage:
Jesus Christ—the Life of the world.

by Daniel Berrigan

A Moment

2010-12-23T09:42:00.000-08:00

A Moment Known Only to God

Was there a moment, known only to God, when all the stars held their breath, when the galaxies paused in their dance for a fraction of a second, and the Word, who had called it all into being, went with all his love into the womb of a young girl, and the universe started to breathe again, and the ancient harmonies resumed their song, and the angels clapped their hands for joy?

Jesus was the firstborn of many brethren. I stand on the deck of my cottage, looking at the sky full of God's children, and know that I am one of them.

Madeleine L'Engle

Rite for Advent

2010-12-22T21:58:00.000-08:00

From the people at Emmaus Way in North Carolina this is called A Rite For Advent

InThose We Know

2010-12-22T09:15:00.000-08:00

God Approaches

How small and gentle his coming was. He came as an infant. The night in which he came was noisy and crowded; it is unlikely that, in the traffic and travelers to Bethlehem, the tiny wail of the newly born could be heard. God approaches gently, often secretly, always in love, never through violence and fear. He comes to us, as God has told us, in those whom we know in our own lives. Very often we do not recognize God.

Caryll Houselander

A Social Media Christmas

2010-12-21T19:15:00.000-08:00

From one of the most wonderful people I know, Elise. What if the birth of Jesus happened in the time of Facebook and other social media?

On What Comes

2010-12-21T09:08:00.000-08:00

Keep Your Eyes on What Comes

One does not always have to wait for something out of the ordinary. The all-important thing is to keep your eyes on what comes from God and to make way for it to come into being here on the earth. If you always try to be heavenly and spiritually minded, you won't understand the everyday work God has for you to do. But if you embrace what is to come from God, if you live for Christ's coming in practical life, you will learn that divine things can be experienced here and now, things quite different from what our human brains can ever imagine.

Christoph Friedrich Blumhardt

Note: Somewhere it told me that this is my 400th blog entry.

A Northern Nativity

2010-12-13T18:53:00.000-08:00

This is a great montage of images from William Kuralek's amazing book A Northern Nativityalong with some stunning music from Chris De Burgh. This is brilliant and moving.

Holy Recklessness

2010-12-11T06:03:00.000-08:00

"What is therefore our task today? Shall I answer: "Faith, hope, and love"? That sounds beautiful. But I would say -courage. No, even that is not challenging enough to be the whole truth. Our task today is recklessness. For what we Christians lack is not psychology or literature...we lack a holy rage-the recklessness which comes from the knowledge of God and humanity.

The ability to rage when justice lies prostrate on the streets, and when the lie rages across the face of the earth...a holy anger about the things that are wrong in the world. To rage against the ravaging of God's earth, and the destruction of God's world. To rage when little children must die of hunger, when the tables of the rich are sagging with food. To rage at the senseless killing of so many, and against the madness of militaries. To rage at the lie that calls the threat of death and the strategy of destruction peace. To rage against complacency. To restlessly seek that recklessness that will challenge and seek to change human history until it conforms to the norms of the Kingdom of God.

And remember the signs of the Christian Church have been the Lion, the Lamb, the Dove, and the Fish...but never the chamelon."

~ Kaj Munk

Double Dream Hands

2010-12-10T21:03:00.000-08:00

I can not wait to bust this out at some public function. Everything I need to know is right here. Potential liturgical advent dance possibilities.

Snow Day

2010-11-26T16:20:00.000-08:00

Faster or Farther

2010-11-26T07:46:00.000-08:00

Ways to Walk

If you want to walk faster,
you walk alone.

If you want to walk farther,
you walk together.

-African saying

Fishy

2010-11-22T20:24:00.001-08:00

Kuroshio Sea - 2nd largest aquarium tank in the world - (song is Please don't go by Barcelona) from Jon Rawlinson on Vimeo.

Longing

2010-11-20T10:36:00.000-08:00

Wherever we look we find the language of longing at the heart of the quest for God. Are we made for love? This perpetual longing, the unquenchable thirst for intimacy, the gargantuan appetite for love, seems to me the most natural state of being.

Fortunate are the ones who realize early enough that another human being can't possibly respond to this unrequitable need for love. Even more fortunate are men and women of prayer who realize that peace comes by embracing the longing itself. Addictions and loneliness can mask this deeper longing for God. Our material culture exploits these natural longings. Screaming advertisements dupe us into believing that a product, a gadget or some glittering things will satisfy our unformulated, nonspecific desires. It all comes at us so fast! We can't allow ourselves to reflect, to feel foolish about it before we buy more stuff like an addict no longer in touch with his conscience....

The prayer that Jesus taught acknowledges the longing embedded within us. Thy kingdom come! We beg the kingdom come to satisfy our kingdom-sized desire. We beg for union of heaven and earth, for bread, for healing of our sins and for relief from suffering and evil. Jesus acknowledges our needs, our inborn desires--the sense of unrequited love, the knowing that our love can't be fulfilled temporally. To sit with the Lord's Prayer is to sit with longing.

Source: The Christian Century (11.02.2010)
by Suzanne Guthry

Remembrance Day

2010-11-11T10:20:00.000-08:00

Give of True Peace

2010-11-04T17:41:00.000-07:00

From my good friend Joel:

Jesus, you must have been very lonely when, as you faced death, your friends deserted you. I believe you can understand the terrible ache of loneliness that gnaws within me now. I know that there are people who care about me, but that knowledge does not relieve my pain. I ask for the peace that the world cannot give or take away. I ask too that you open my spiritual eyes so that I may see the lonely ache in other lives. Please empower me to reach out to them with empathy and love and the assurance that your promises are trustworthy, that you are with us always, and that comfort, strength, and love are ours for the taking. In the name of the only giver of true peace, we pray.

Amen

- Sarah Enos Brown

Storytelling

2010-11-03T18:23:00.000-07:00

Storytelling is fundamental for healthy social relationships.To feel connected and respected we need to tell our own stories and have others listen. For others to feel respected and connected to us, they need to tell their stories and have us listen. Having others listen to your story is a function of power in our culture. The more power you have, the more people will listen respectfully to your story. Consequently,
listening to someone’s story is a way of empowering them, of validating their intrinsic worth as a human being.

Kay Pranis

Tire Swings

2010-10-25T19:27:00.000-07:00

A young student stood in my doorway and stared at me. If I have seen a sadder face in my life, I cannot remember it. His glistening eyes suggested he was on the edge of tears.

“What is the matter? You look so sad? If you are sad, then I am sad,” I said, drawing on all the empathy I had inside of me.

“Mr. B, I don’t think you are doing your job. It is the grade 2′s turn on the tire swing but all the big kids are on it because you haven’t made up a new tire swing schedule. The principal’s job is to make a tire swing schedule and you haven’t done your job.”

And with that, my new reality as a Pre-Kindergarten-Grade 4 administrator set in. And I knew, in a way, this child was right. I wasn’t doing my job.

I must admit, I love my job. This teaching staff and these young image bearers of God breathe new life into me every day. As a staff, we are diligent and work hard at being faithful to the vision of our schools and the trust that parents have put in us to educate, care, and love their children in the servant way of Jesus. But being faithful sometimes asks a lot of us. Being faithful can be exhausting. Being faithful means our journey will sometimes be more difficult than easy. But being faithful also means that the decisions we make, no matter how simple or complex will be blessed by God, even though sometimes those blessings are more tangible to see on some days than others.

Over the past few weeks I have also come to realize that creating tire swing schedules, posting students pictures on my wall, and playing soccer with children are really, really important. To most people, in the big scope of Christian education, a tire swing schedule seems like a very minute detail. But if Christian education is truly about teaching God’s covenantal children, then those minute details are actually some of the most important evidence that we are practically working out our mission and vision in the hallways and classrooms of our schools. How can we claim to be “educating for wholeness” (our school's mission) and ignore the injustices taking place on the playground? Or how can I possibly say “No” when a grade three student in asks me to hang his personally written “Psalm of Confession” on my door where he confesses: I’m sorry Lord, sorry for making looks, sorry for not helping, sorry for hiding. I am sorry Lord. Forgive me.

Yes Lord, forgive us when we are not faithful and ignore the small but important things in a child’s life. The hanging of a poem on a door may seem like a small gestures to some, but those acts of hospitality are important to our students, so then they must be important to us. After all, isn’t this how God our Father in Heaven works?

How small and trite must our requests seem to God? But when I consider how deep the Father's love for us is, so deep that he considers us his children and made us in His image, a God who knows us so well that He even knows when a hair falls from our head, I have confidence that He knows that our requests, however small, are really big. Because he loves us, he hears us. And He listens to us. The simple act of listening and hearing is one way God is faithful to us and honors us as His children. So should it be in our relationship with the children we teach.

Paradox and Powerlessness

2010-10-21T21:36:00.000-07:00

“On the cross, our false dependencies are revealed. On the cross, our illusions are killed off. On the cross, our small self dies so that the true self, the God-given self, can emerge. On the cross, we give up the fantasy that we are in control, and the death of this fantasy central to acceptance.

The cross is, above all, a place of powerlessness. Here is the final proof that our own feeble powers can no more alter life’s trajectory than a magnet can pull down the moon. Here is the death of the ego, of the self that insists on being in charge, the self that continually tries to impose its own idea of order and righteousness on the world.

The cross is a place of contradiction. For the powerlessness of the cross, if fully embraced, takes us to a place of power. This is the great mystery at the heart of the Christian faith, from Jesus to Martin Luther King Jr., the mystery of the power of powerlessness. As long as I am preoccupied with the marshaling of my own feeble powers, there will be no way for God’s power to flow through me. As long as I am getting in my own way, I cannot live in the power of God’s way.”

Parker Palmer, The Promise of Paradox

Thanksgiving Monday

2010-10-11T20:23:00.000-07:00

After a great day with the larger family yesterday, we spent the day exploring and ended up at the Stave Lake Falls, Hayward River recreation area, and the Westminster Abby in Mission.

Let us Build a House

2010-10-10T08:40:00.000-07:00

Homilies on First Corinthians
St. John Chrysostom, 4th Century

Let us build a house where love can dwell
and all can safely live.
A place where saints and children tell
how hearts learn to forgive.
Built of hopes and dreams and visions,
rock of faith and vault of grace;
here the love of Christ shall end divisions:
all are welcome in this place.

Let us build a house where prophets speak,
and words are strong and true.
Where all God's children dare to seek
to dream God's reign anew.
Here the cross shall stand as witness
and as symbol of God's grace;
here as one we claim the faith of Jesus;
all are welcome in this place.

Let us build a house where love is found
in water, wine and wheat;
a banquet hall on holy ground,
where peace and justice meet.
Here the love of God, through Jesus,
is revealed in time and space,
as we share in Christ the feast that frees us;
all are welcome in this place.

Let us build a house where hands will reach
beyond the wood and stone,
to heal and strengthen, serve and teach,
and live the Word they've known.
Here the outcast and the stranger
bears the image of God's face;
let us bring and end to fear and danger:
all are welcome in this place.

Let us build a house where all are named,
their songs and visions heard
and loved and treasured, taught and claimed
as words within the Word.
Built of tears and cries and laughter,
prayers of faith and songs of grace.
Let this house proclaim from floor to rafter:
all are welcome in this place.

Telling Real Stories

2010-10-02T09:52:00.000-07:00

"We speak of books we've read and ideas we've had. We speak of great questions like abortion and conservation and the dangers of nuclear power, and of what we take to be the Christian answers to such questions. If we get more personal about it, we speak of problems we've had--problems with children and old age, problems with sex and marriage, ethical problems--and of Christian solutions to those problems or at least of Christian ways of viewing them.

And if, in the process, we decide to tell stories, then, like the preacher as peddler, we may tell stories about ourselves as well as about other people but not, for the most part, our real stories, not stories about what lies beneath all our other problems, which is the problem of being human, the problem of trying to hold fast somehow to Christ when much of the time, both in ourselves and in our world, it is as if Christ had never existed.

Because all peddlers of God's word have that in common, I think: they tell what costs them least to tell and what will gain them most; and to tell the story of who we really are, and of the battle between light and dark, between belief and unbelief, between sin and grace that is waged within us all, costs plenty and may not gain us anything, we're afraid, but an uneasy silence and fishy stare."

Frederick Buechner

Present and in Awe

2010-09-22T08:18:00.000-07:00

I got this from good friend Wendy as I am in my third week as a primary school administrator and loving every minute of it even though it is a new rhythm and it is exhausting.

"Let’s think of reverence as awe, as presence in and openness to the world…Try walking around with a child who’s going, ‘Wow, wow! Look at that dirty dog! Look at that burned-down house! Look at that red sky!’ And the child points, and you look, and you see, and you start going, ‘Wow! Look at that huge crazy hedge! Look at that teeny little baby! Look at the scary dark cloud!’ I think this is how we are supposed to be in the world – present and in awe."

Anne Lamott

On the Move

2010-09-03T08:44:00.000-07:00

As my life has taken a sudden turn in the last week with many exciting changes and I ponder the mystery of what could happen in the next year:

"This means we can enter into the challenges of the day with a kind of joyful confidence, knowing that the future belongs to the Lord. It is not our part to bring that future about. God is doing that. Our part is to discern the goings of what God is already doing and to take up our positions there, knowing that God’s future of human liberty and human wholeness is, truly, to live for and, if necessary, “to die for”. Wherever God is on the move, that is where we want to be."

Fleming Rutledge

Incognito

2010-08-30T18:13:00.000-07:00

We may ignore, but we can nowhere evade, the presence of God. The world is crowded with God. God walks everywhere incognito. And the incognito is not always hard to penetrate. The real labour is to remember, to attend. In fact, to come awake. Still more, to remain awake.

C. S. Lewis