So, This is What Happened

I will admit that I tried to resist. Really, I did.

I have said in the past that I would never do the long distance thing. It is irrational to attempt to conduct a relationship when you are so far apart let alone a really hard experience where I was burned on it before. It is hard to delve into a relationship when I can't see their expression.

I had begun to adjust of living the single life to the full. Doing my thing in Nelson, doing the Summer Ministry Team, looking at other places to move. My temperament and skill set works well as one that moves around.

I've realized that a girl who wants to be with me has to be one who can do without a lot of things that our culture says is important.

I've realized that although I may be admired by some, that it is a different story when it comes to joining with me in a relationship.

I'm aware that my faith is not as orthodox as some would like it to be and I didn't want it to be a shock and somehow upset everything.

I could tell that she liked me. I can't really explain how. She smiled a little too much, eyes twinkled a little. It was either she liked me or was planning to con me of my inheritance. But I figured it was a little crush and I wasn't about to get distracted from what I was at the camp to do and that is to be with the kids and work on projects. At the time, I liked her too, but it was one of those scenarios where maybe if things were different it would work.

On some days off, I spent time with her and I knew she was a great girl, but I looked at the situation and my past and I really didn't consider the relationship to be viable.

She invited me to her parent's place for a few days after camp and at the back of my mind, I was unsure of what to do. She was falling for me and I believed it to be a lost cause and I was going to be the villain when I would break her heart. I tried to warn her and let her know the summer was not going to end the way she wished it to end.

I agreed to go nonetheless, because I liked spending time with her. She was sincere and I didn't have the heart to be cruel despite in the end I knew I would be far more cruel in leading her on.

On one of the last nights of camp, when the kids had gone to bed, she and I talked about the weekend. We were talking about what our relationship would look like after camp. I was saying that it was not going to work. Not right now. I'm going back to Nelson and she's off to school in Edmonton and neither of us should change our plans because of this. I said, if it were a different time and place and perhaps in the future it would work to pursue something.

What happened next is what changed it for me.

She told me that not trying would not cut it for her. She opened up and I saw that it was more than some crush. She not only liked me, but liked me enough to push against me. I had told her for a while that it would not work and that at the end of the summer I wasn't going to pursue anything. Despite the odds of me not going along with it, she thought I was worth it enough to defy my pessimism. If you knew her, you'd realize that she is normally a passive and quiet girl. One who accommodates for others. I did not expect her to say anything like what she said because it was out of character for her and because no girl has stood up and told me how she felt about me.

Suddenly, I saw her different. Not only has this girl encouraged me and supported me, but she actually felt passionately for me.

I tried to resist. Really, I did.

However, now the long distance thing was an annoyance, but then I remembered they have Skype, planes, trains and automobiles.

Now, my wanderlust is not a detriment to a relationship, but perhaps I can wander near her next.

Now, maybe this girl cares more about the guy I am than the things I have.

Now, maybe this girl actually admires me and believes in me.

Now, maybe our faiths can grow together.

I some times assume my story is supposed to be one where things don't go my way. That it's my lot in life.

Every once in a while, it's nice to be wrong.

"Hey, you've got to hide your love away

Hey, you've got to hide your love away

How can I even try

I can never win

Hearing them, seeing them

In the state I'm in

How could she say to me

'Love will find a way'

Gather 'round all you clowns

Let me hear you say,

'Hey, you've got to hide your love away

Hey, you've got to hide your love away.'"

- "You've Got to Hide Your Love Away" from the Beatles' album "Help!"

I Guess That's Why They Call Me the Working Man

[Note from David: It was brought to my attention that this post was miscommunicated to people who read it. While I was trying to communicate my difficulty in knowing how to get people to help, it could have been read that others were incapable of helping me which is a mistake on my part and not my intention. I have edited it to try and communicate better what I intended. I apologize to those who believed that I thought less of them.]

We have now finished our first full week at Covenant Bay and it has been a busy week. It was probably too much. One of the nights involved me staying up until 5am editing videos that would be shown the next day because I was not able to find enough time to do it before. I should point out that I did have a hand in making myself busier than I could handle. I suggested that we play a couple of games that I have designed such as my semi-infamous "Monster" game and my elaborate game of the summer called "The Legend of Zelda". (Side note: If you are a fan of the Zelda, know that it was awesome and if you know "Ocarina of Time", you would have appreciated it. And our Princess Zelda was played by Hanne Johnson who looks exactly like her. Except for the whole "she's a real person" thing.) Because we played those games and I worked to expand the Zelda game because we had more staff that we could incorporate, it added to a week of planning and filming four videos and helping with worship leading. Yes, you read that right. I was involved with the worship leading despite my lack of musical ability. I was kind of an advisor and was supposed to help plan the sessions.

However, I really didn't know how to approach it and it left me not able to do the thing I really love which is coming up with sketches to perform. Really, the role I am gifted at. I tried to do the best I could with it, but in regards to planning a whole session, it's hard. It takes a lot of time and a lot of meeting with people and it involves leaving the things I am best at.

I was barely keeping ahead of what was coming next and even then, my suggested order for the sessions were essentially abandoned making most of my effort a vain pursuit. However, that is a side point. Really, I could have handled it if I did not have all the other stuff that I am passionate about and excel at also on my plate. I love constructing elaborate fun games that kids get excited about. I love making sketches. I love making movies. I do all of those very well.

The problem is that I make all of those things complex and it is in my brain and I don't how to simply and concisely convey my ideas. In the end, I have these games that are fun and different but since they are more intricate, it's hard to boil everything down to have them better understood. I want to perform sketches, but I only like my own because it's what I'm comfortable with. I am the one who knows editing and I want quality so I will pile hours into making the best video I can. It's either that I don't want someone else doing the work because I am afraid that someone might ruin it and I have a terrible sense of pride. Even if I did let someone help, I would feel the need to essentially hold the hand of someone because I am afraid that I would forget a detail in the initial explanation.

This leaves me in a predicament. I love doing these big projects, but I have a hard time knowing how to get people to help me. What winds up happening is that I am the one who must do it if it is to be done well enough. I feel really bad, because I don't know how to incorporate the girls from the Summer Ministry Team into my projects because their passions lie in the people side of ministry. They want to help. They see that I am clearly overworking myself to do way more than what one can do, but I am unsure of how to fix it.

At the end of this week, I was brought around to the realization that what I missed most was the human connection and really that is what I've been wanting. Something of substance. It goes from the campers that I didn't hang out with a whole lot this week, to the girls on the team that I've had a hard time finding the opportunities to grow close to, to the wider scenario of people in general because of the skills I possess and the roles I take on. I don't know how to get the help I would like because I know noone who operates on the same level.

The thing is, I don't think the help I'm really needing or wanting is one of helping me do these big projects. I don't mind doing that kind of work or even using the amount of time that I do to craft them. In the end, I want someone who recognizes the work I do and gives me an even-handed critique. I am looking for someone to look out for me and make sure that I'm alright because I don't do that well. The challenge is how do I find a person or people like that when I isolate myself behind the projects I am involved with? How do I not alienate myself from others with how much I push myself in these projects?

"I get up at seven, yeah,
And I go to work at nine.
I got no time for living, yes,
I'm working all the time.
It seems to me I could live my life a lot better than I think I am.
I guess that's why they call me,
They call me the working man.
They call me the working man,
I guess that's what I am."
- "Working Man" from Rush's self-titled album

No Guarantees

I am writing in my blog again, because I have time off. Forced time off. Right now I should be at Covenant Bay Bible Camp in Alberta, but due to circumstances beyond our control, we may or not be going there and we may be looking at other options as how to end our summer. At the very least, this week's camp was cancelled which is too bad for sure but at the same time I taking advantage of this time to reflect. And when I reflect I have to let my pretentiousness out into the internet. After all, the internet needs pretentiousness in order to work.

I have been thinking about dynamics between people and trying to unravel what makes me frustrated and what can I do to help my relationships be better. I think the that stands out to me that makes me frustrated is guarantees.

We want everything to be guaranteed. We want our things to be guaranteed to work for forever. We want jobs to be guaranteed. We want people guaranteed to never change. We believe relationships (at least the ones we are apart of) are guaranteed to bring us happiness.

The big problem that I have with guarantees is that really nothing is guaranteed. Even the highest quality items break down. The economy can change. People will change. Relationships have never been guaranteed. At the same time, we are surprised when the guarantee falls through and angry or frustrated that it did. We lean heavily on the guarantees in life and can often be neglectful because of them.

I get why people like guarantees. They can rest easy. They know that things will be okay. A guarantee can align their world right.

But isn't a guarantee merely some words used to convince someone to go along with whatever the plan is? A guarantee requires nothing of us and yet should we really be so angry when the guarantee turns out to fail? I live as though there is no guarantee. I have never trusted guarantees because I don't believe they exist.

Remember when Jesus forbade oaths in Matthew 5 because of the reason that you don't know the future. There is uncertainty in the future. Instead we are told to simply make your "yes" "yes" and your "no" "no". Oaths in that time was a basically a way of saying, "Trust me". I remember reading somewhere that the lesson is to be honest all the time and that the use of an oath implies that they rest of the time you might be lying. There are a couple of ways of looking at the passage, but for me it comes across that it boils down that there is uncertainty in the future and that it is wrong to claim certainty.

I think that is what bothers me. When people are certain and perhaps they shouldn't be. They are going to be devastated when it turns out that it is not. That their certainty has led them to stop thinking because in their mind they don't have to think anymore. They are certain. It's fact. You are either uninformed, willingly ignorant, or looking to pick a fight if you are not lining up with their definitive statements.

You see it when people treat their jobs with a cocky attitude and are surprised that a worker of their caliber is so foolishly let go or they treat their relationships with a carefree attitude and then are devastated when their spouses leave them and no one wants them.

It's the world of black and white. It's the world of children's stories. It's the world of comic books. In a word, "fantasy". There is little that is certain and to make things simply black and white in a world of complex colours will only bring conflict and you see it.

I suppose that I have an equally difficult time with black and white in regards to faith. People still love their guarantees and especially in the realm of the fate of their souls. Accept Jesus as your Lord and savior and know that nothing can separate you from your home in heaven. That's one of the biggest guarantees out there. Unfortunately, our treatment of guarantees still transfer to this one. Since it is a guarantee there is little reflection on it, there can be neglect of it. Things become black and white. Eventually more and more becomes black and white and soon our lives of faith are dull and meaningless. The only thing left for black and white faith is to eliminate the colour and make things line up and if that means some relationships are destroyed, some people declared 'heathens' or some lives are taken then so be it.

If faith is treated like a guarantee, then I fear that faith is dead. If a Christian cannot see the life-giving value of the way of Christ without heaven and without a guarantee, then you will be like the disciples and abandon Christ when the darkest times come. They also guaranteed Christ that they would never deny him or abandon him, but they did because they were certain in their mind about Jesus. They thought he wouldn't be captured and killed. They thought he was going to establish the earthly kingdom of God. They were certain and because they were certain they did not consider that the bigger issue at hand was that a religious system that suffocated it's people needed to be broken. But in the face of the loss of the guarantee of God's kingdom, the loss of the guarantee of eternal life, they could not see the value of being faithful to something bigger than themselves.

My question for those of you who follow Christ: If there were no guarantees in your faith, can you see the value of living faithfully? Is it possible to have the truly wonderful, full life-giving life that Jesus speaks of without those guarantees?

"On bended knee is no way to be free
Lifting up an empty cup I ask silently
That all my destinations will accept the one that's me
So I can breathe
Circles they grow and they swallow people whole
Half their lives they say goodnight to wives they'll never know
Got a mind full of questions and a teacher in my soul
So it goes...
Don't come closer or I'll have to go
Holding me like gravity are places that pull
If ever there was someone to keep me at home
It would be you...
Everyone I come across in cages they bought
They think of me and my wandering
But I'm never what they thought
Got my indignation but I'm pure in all my thoughts
I'm alive
Wind in my hair, I feel part of everywhere
Underneath my being is a road that disappeared
Late at night I hear the trees
They're singing with the dead
Overhead...
Leave it to me as I find a way to be
Consider me a satellite for ever orbiting
I knew all the rules but the rules did not know me
Guaranteed..."
- "Guaranteed" by Eddie Vedder from the "Into the Wild" soundtrack

Great Expectations

Hopefully the title of this post doesn't get your hopes up that this will be a fantastic piece of writing like the book of the same name. Although if that were the case and you were disappointed at the end, it would oddly be fitting. At which point, my post would in some way be brilliant. There you go literature nerds, something that you can appreciate while the riff raff read through the rest of this unenlightened (unless they have Google).

Another thing I should point out before I start is that some of this may be repetitious of posts previous. It seems like I remember writing a little bit of what I want to write about and so I guess... I'm sorry? I don't know why I feel like I need to pretext the fact I may repeat myself. Maybe to at least recognize that I can be a broken record but ultimately I hope I am adding new insight.

I should also point out that this is also the first time that I had two pretext paragraphs. Oh, wait this is a third. Alright, let's get this ball rolling. Here we go:

This summer as a whole has been one that's been good and yet challenging. I will only make a brief comparison to last year (because I don't want to muddy one experience with the memory of the other) and that the challenges this year are ones that strike a little closer to the centre of my lifelong wrestling with finding connection with others. Last year, the big challenge was simple. Get as much high-quality done and give insight to situations between other people. This year, I feel like my expectations of what I thought I would find this summer are not lining up with reality.

From my days of working at Rogers I have learned that what makes people more disappointed in a given movie is not the quality of the movie but rather the predicted content of the movie not lining up with reality. If the trailer of the movie inferred it was going to be an outrageous Will Ferrel comedy and it turns out it was "Stranger than Fiction", people will say the movie sucked despite it was actually was a fantastic movie that was simply different from the trailer's portrayal of it.

In the same way, I think that that is what is happening this summer. This summer has been great but the expectations and what I wanted to have were not happening. I should point out that I am speaking of my summer as a whole, not specifically camp or the team or a certain situation.

I suppose I am handling my disappointment not too badly being that I have simply turned back to what I do so well and that is putting my head down and doing a pile of work.

I wish I could have aligned my expectations better so that I wouldn't be disappointed but I then wonder, isn't it okay to have expectations? Maybe even ones that may not be fulfilled? Is disappointment a necessary endeavor? This I believe relates to my earlier thoughts on being present and living fully. I want to find passion in this life and not just glide through not caring. My challenge is finding that balance between hopeful expectation and realistic expectation.

I broke a dear friendship I didn't think I would lose. I was wounded when my expectation of a relationship did not turn out my way and in fact turned out in the least favorable way. I was frustrated that I still have a hard time drawing close to people and I don't know how to change it. I was disappointed in myself and losing my patience with a kid and in some regards not living up to my own bar of quality that I have set for myself in years passed.

In my reflection and in a conversation with my mentor for this summer, Chris, I have wondered if it's because my expectation is not what fits who I am. I have sometimes compared myself to a person like the prophets of the Old Testament in terms of one who was outside the community and could speak into it, but has a hard time actually fitting into it. Probably more accurately and like many people, I perhaps expect far too much out of my relationships and thus I break them under my own pressure on them. Maybe it's both.

The answer I believe lies in the simple manner of being content with what you have and continuing to hope that following in the sacrificial way of love that Jesus displays will continue to refine me and bring peace. That my expectations will be reasonable yet hopeful. That I will embrace the good things and learn to be content when life is not what we wished it was. My ongoing prayer for myself and ultimately for all, is that all things are put back to the way they should be and that if we are able to bring realization to the hope of mankind who seek peace, then we will.

"Words you say never seem to live up to the ones inside your head,
The lives we make never seem to ever get us anywhere but dead,
The day I tried to live"
- "The Day I Tried to Live" from the Soundgarden album "Superunknown"

It's an Inside Job Today

Today was my first day off in the camp stretch of the Summer Ministry Team and it was very much needed. I have been a little sick and a little frustrated. When I drove away from the camp, it was nice to have a chance to breathe and not worry about the next sketch or the next big game. I didn't even prep for what was next. I checked email, Twitter, read my Bible, listened to music, reflect.

I think what made me relax was, strangely enough, an article that Mark Driscoll wrote. Let me say that he is not a usual source for me, but he did say something that struck me. He talked about when big things like someone stealing his car or something hurting his family that he would have a Christian kind of reaction, but it was the common annoyances that he would have an atheistic reaction. His reaction would not be consistent with what he believed. It was a good thought. I've thought about my perspective on the world and holding onto things loosely and the big things in my life don't bother me such as what am I doing in the future because I know I will go where I am needed. The area that slips through is the common annoyances that can add up and even in those situations my patience needs to endure.

It goes with my idea of the heavenmind and the hellmind. I'm sure someone smarter has come up with a similar idea and this can be misconstrued as ripping that person off, but I did not talk to that person. The idea can be easily summed up in the picture of a traffic jam where the heavenminded person sits peacefully and enjoys the opportunity to reflect while the hellminded person is losing it in the next car over. The heavenminded has patience and has the perspective to not get wrapped up in minor things while the hellminded person is so focused on their little kingdoms that when their expectations are not met, it derails them.

I think that's why humans are supposed to have Sabbath or a day in the week to step back, rest and reflect on who they are in relation to God, themselves and the world around them.

Anyway, another great moment was finding a book at a store in Onanole called "Poor Michael's". The book was called "Why Christianity Must Change or Die" by an Episcopal bishop named John Shelby Spong. I flipped through it and read something that made me want to buy the book. So I did. It was a book that he writes to, as he calls them, "believers in exile".

This is what stood out to me:
"I have no interest in a system of rewards and punishments. I do not see the purpose of life after death to be that of motivating behavior in the here and now. I can live without any sense of heaven as a place of reward or hell as a place of punishment... I do assert that one prepares for eternity not by being religious and keeping the rules, but by living fully, loving wastefully, and daring to be all that each of us has the capacity to be. I also assert that making it possible for everyone else to live, to love, and to be is the only mission that Christian people possess. Our task is not to convert; our task is to call people into the depths of their own capacity to be... In that faith I believe that I discover life that is eternal. Is that sufficient to say that Christianity redefined, freed from many of its supernatural claims of the past, but still recognizable, will survive the exile? I think it is. But time alone will conclude whether or not my judgment is correct. I, however, will live my life as if it is."

I think I will find the rest of it to be an interesting read, but this gave me excitement.

As I got back to the camp, I had several conversations all in a row that made this day significant. I talked with the director of the team about the how the team was going and she encouraged my work with the churches, the camps and the team. I talked with a camper about how a major step in maturity is knowing when to ask for help as opposed to expecting others to know when we hurt. I, along with Rob, talked with another camper about how it is important to live with integrity and respond with peace and honesty in the face of those who mock us or lie about us. I had another talk with Bryan, the director of the current camp, about what it means to follow Christ, the grace of God and that life change is not in a moment, but rather requires us to participate in it.

It was very convenient that the day that started me off ragged and frustrated wound up strengthening me and reminding me that this life of faith is bigger than the here and now, but rather through the grace of God, the example of Christ, the refining of the Holy Spirit and our compliance that we will grow into our heroic selves with a heavenmindedness that will call humanity out of the darkness.

"I will not lose my faith
It's an inside job today
I know this one thing well,
I used to try and kill love, it was the highest sin
Breathing insecurity out and in
Searching hope, I'm shown the way to run straight
Pursuing the greater way for all human light
How I choose to feel is how I am
How I choose to feel is how I am
I will not lose my faith
It's an inside job today
Holding on, the light of the night
On my knees to rise and fix my broken soul again.
Let me run into the rain
To be a human light again
Let me run into the rain
To shine a human light again."
- "Inside Job" from Pearl Jam's self-titled album

Difference that a Year Makes

I am halfway through this year's Summer Ministry Team and that is sad to say. I am currently in the chapel of the camp I grew up going to as a kid and am sitting here in a moment of quiet. The others have gone to bed and I could see why. Junior camp frequently leaves me sick at the end of it and it can be a long week. The kids are so young and you are essentially their temporary surrogate parent. I had a challenging kid in my cabin who eventually found a way to fit in with the others, I had another who would wake up in the night, (on some nights, several times) and just panic about where he was and I would have to scramble before he woke the others to take him outside and calm him down.

I had other kids who I knew had no respect for my authority. To be fair, they thumbed their nose at any authority, but it was aggravating to know they came from nice lives and they didn't even realize what they had.

It was one of the most challenging weeks at camp I've had in a few years, partially because I think that I have a hard time knowing how to deal with wildcard kids that are dealing with some sort of social or developmental issue who operate outside the typical rule of thumb. Generally, if you have a solid system thought out to bring a sense of structure to a group, the kids actually prefer to follow the system and you can have fun with them while still maintaining leadership despite being a surrogate parent. However, the wildcard kids tend to upset the whole cart unless you devote all your time to the one kid and that is difficult when you have ten others to worry about.

I'll interject to point out that the week was still great. I had a ton of fun with the kids, doing puppet sketches, being a fake eastern European bad guy singing the national anthem to the glorious nation of Davisamistan, doing commentary for the nukem games at the volleyball court, doing a pretty good Neil Young impersonation singing "Whip My Hair", and pretending I was morphed into a monster and being saved by the work of the kids. A lot of laughs had.

The biggest difference for me this year than last is the state of mind that I am in. This year has involved a lot of working out the faith I believe in. Last summer, I had just come out of one of the darkest points in my life and I had an energy that spurred me to push hard and lived out of inspiration. This year, I am fueled more by a sense of purpose. That I realize how well designed I am for a ministry like this.

However, the challenge to me has come out of this growth. As I had cabin devotional times with the kids, we had questions from our speaker who was fantastic and engaging, I had issues with theological stance. Not that he was vastly out of tune with Christianity and saying unorthodox statements. Rather it was the opposite. He was very orthodox. His theology and eschatology that he presented was traditional evangelical conservative Christian. The brand I grew up with. I should point out that this was not the crazy extreme seen in the movie "Jesus Camp" but a very sincere and hopeful presentation. He was not the one out of place here. It was me.

As I looked at some of the questions that were suggested in being asked, I knew what the answers were supposed to be and I realized that I believed little of it in the same way the speaker did. What was more difficult was the questions from the kids about what heaven and hell is like, or what about evolution, or what about natural disasters. I knew what the answers were supposed to be and that I did not agree with any of it. I didn't know how to suggest that there are many thoughts about those things and that even Christians disagree about them without confusing them too much. At this age, the kids see the world in very much black and white and to try to give them the huge explanation of my many years of wrestling with those questions would be difficult.

That's not what bothered me. What bothered me was that the Christian homes that these kids came from are just as black and white in their explanations about God, the world, and the end of it all. That they had a child-like understanding of these things and that even thinking deeper about those things is pretty much unnecessary and potentially dangerous to faith was hard.

How do I say that I believe that there is a strong chance that people may have evolved and that I am perfectly okay with that and that does not change the power of the story of Christ? How do I say that I don't particularly think the afterlife is not the point of being a Christian and that I am comfortable with there being no afterlife at all? How do I tell them that I don't believe that the reason natural disasters happen is because of human sin that broke the world on a fundamental level?

It reminded me of a conversation I had a couple of months ago with another who grew up in a similar tradition and had wound up disagreeing with much of the traditional understanding of Christianity. After discussing many things in regards to what we believe, she asked me the simple question, "At what point does all of this stops being Christian and is in fact something different?"

I could see what she was getting at. But I still believe in the story of Christ and that it is the example that we should follow if we are to find the Way, the Truth and the Life. I just see it differently.

My issue is, how do I stand up for it?

"You, who are on the road, must have a code that you can live by.
And so become yourself because the past is just a goodbye.
Teach your children well, their father's hell did slowly go by
And feed them on your dreams, the one they picked, the one you're known by."
- "Teach Your Children" from the Crosby, Stills, Nash & Young album "Deja Vu"

David Rae and the Iconic Hat

Last night, I was walking home from a journey over to Tim Hortons where I finished a puppet script. I was wearing my new hat that I've had for a month when I had bought it for a night when I impersonated Neil Young at karaoke (It was a terrible impression undoubtedly). The hat was also going to double as Indiana Jones' fedora for a game I had concocted for camp based on the movies. It was going to be fantastic.

When I first wore the hat, I was initially uncomfortable wearing it around Nelson, but it grew on me. I liked it. It was a sweet hat. It was a cowboy's hat.

I was wearing it along with my black corduroy jacket and had my laptop bag slung over my shoulder (which, now that I think of it, is like a modern day version of the satchel that Indy had). As I walked down the street lamp lit streets of Prince Albert back to my billet's place, I noticed a probably high, young guy climbing on top of road construction equipment that was resting on the shut down side of one of the main streets of the town. I kept a cautious eye out for him and continued on my way. I turned the corner and knew that there was only four blocks back to my place. After walking down one block, I could hear the guy shouting at me to slow down over top of the music playing in my earphones.

I casually removed my earphones and put them away in my breast pocket and listened closely. As I continued along the second block, I scanned the dark trees of the Kinsmen Park to make sure no one else may be lurking. I could hear the guy get closer and continue to call for me to slow down. As I approached the end of the second block, I turned and faced him.

What comes next was one of the strangest conversations I've had. I supposed I don't talk to a lot of drugged individuals, but it takes on a special tinge of bizarro in the middle of the night all alone in the city with a federal penitentiary. I won't get into details, but it essentially went like this. He initially thought I was someone else, then talked about how he was in trouble, then he started to call out for people in the park (who weren't there). At this point, I told him I was not going to help him because he was making me super uncomfortable. I walked across the street and he followed. He claims that he just said that because he was afraid of guys coming after him or something. I understood he was trying a wide range of cons on me all at once. He pleads with me to take his shoe because it will save him from his dad who hates him because he's half-white. Yes, I typed all of that right.

In the middle of this conversation, my mind is thinking of my exit. I realize that I am only two blocks from home and that the girls from the team are there along with two young daughters of the house. I did not want him to know where I stayed. If this was just me, then who cares, he's not a threat to me, but there are the others. And this guy is unpredictable.

He clings to me and I keep breaking his grasp and claims that I will save him. I continue to let him know that I can't but he moves in cause he wants a hug.

For whatever reason I let him hug me.

Immediately, his hands move to grab my hat.

I quickly snatch it back from his shaky grip. He then begs me to give it to him.

My mind is still figuring out what the solution to this is. It jumps to the price tag of the hat and to use of it later in the summer. It jumps to the wisdom of running or fighting to thoughts of pacifism. And the one that hit the hardest was my thought of letting go of things.

This hat didn't matter. Maybe it would placate him. Maybe I need to let it go. So, I handed it over.

The guy takes on a more aggressive tone and tries to intimidate me with a monologue that sounds like it was written by the Ultimate Warrior using overly aggrandizing language of the heavens and the spirits and forces of nature and other improvised crock. I realized I made the wrong move. I gave him confidence. But I did not want violence to be my answer. Not over a hat.

I turn and start walking away telling him that he's got the hat and let me be. He preaches his monologue further like a Bond villain and as I plot my next move. Then a cop car flashes his lights. I approach the car and tell him the guy has my hat as the punk half-stumbled, half ran away.

The cop asks me, "Why don't you just take it back?" which was weird considering I am the cop here.

"I just want to get home."

"I can't really do anything, I've got another in the back already."

I tell him it's alright and head home watching to make sure the punk was not lurking around.

I tweeted about it and went to bed. The girls knew about it in the morning because of that and I kind of brushed the event off, giving minimal details. I really didn't want to hear the "I thought something like this would happen..." but I heard it anyway. The presumptive question was asked, "So, did losing that hat really bother you?" as though I were petty.

To a degree, yes, it bothers me. That hat cost a decent chunk of change and I barely had it for a month. We were going to need it later in the summer and so I couldn't just let the loss be done with, I will be throwing down money for a replacement. Yeah, it bothers me, but that is not the money or the hat itself that really bothers me.

I can't help but think that I have just enabled this guy further. I gave him the ability to terrorize people further. My pacifism has let him potentially harm people in the future. I didn't stand my ground like I could have and made him back down.

I have talked quite a bit, especially recently, about becoming the heroic version of yourself. Was I really doing that in that moment? I can't help but think that the reason I lost the hat of the hero, is because I am not one myself. This came at the end of a day where I felt like I kept failing. I didn't plan the day out right and I almost got the team in an accident. The cost of the hat and the style of the hat is not what ultimately bothers me about losing it, it's the idea that I failed to be the thing I want to be most. Hero. And the fact that the item I lost in the event is symbolic of a classic hero makes it hit that much harder.

Now, before you all get on the band wagon of "Suck it up Sally" or "You did the right thing" or "You shouldn't beat yourself up over it", I am aware that I am not defined by this event. But what it has me wondering is what does my heroic persona look like?

"I see a bad moon rising
I see trouble on the way
I see earthquakes and lightning
I see bad times today
Don't go round tonight,
Well, it's bound to take to take your life
There's a bad moon on the rise."
- "Bad Moon Rising" from the Creedence Clearwater Revival album "Green River"

Advice for David Rae

You can't help liking who you like. This is a phrase that I use over and over when I talk with people about who they like. Whether it's that person who would be the perfect match for you or the one who would bring a world of trouble to your life, sometimes you can't help liking who you like. Maybe it's the way they look or the way they hold themselves or the connection you've made with them. Who knows? Attraction is fickle and so are we. That's okay. It's apart of our nature.

Sometimes, we find ourselves attracted to people who are just not meant for us. Whether they are married to someone else or we are a great distance from them or you just know in your gut that it would not work, we still are drawn to them. We think that if things were different maybe you would be together and it would be wonderful and perhaps you would be right. However, that is not the reality. You cannot or perhaps should not be with them for whatever reason and yet you like them.

Some would say that those feelings are wrong or even a sin to have. I don't believe so. You can't help liking who you like. It's okay to be attracted to or admire someone. I think we do ourselves a disservice by not admitting to ourselves that we are attracted and try to pretend that it isn't true.

However, I think the problem comes in when we are attracted to someone and we move forward with it when we should not. Just because you are attracted to someone (which is okay), it does not mean you are in full rights to a romantic relationship to that person.

If you should not be pursuing a relationship that is out of bounds for you, then you shouldn't. The classic example of King David sending a man to his death on the front lines so that he may take the dead man's wife is this overreaching of attraction. We have thousands of examples from people we know or history or the arts or the tabloids to show how devastating it is and how selfish it is.

I know you may be thinking that everything I have said is obvious and does not need saying. I would hope so but that is sometimes not the case. What I want to warn against is something just beyond this idea.

After we find ourselves unable to be with the one that in our heart of hearts we wish we could be with, we will settle for the second one on the list. We'll date the person for a long time and even choose to marry them, but they still are not truly the one they would choose if they could choose anyone. Perhaps at the alter, they wished it was their ex who was exchanging vows with them, or someone else's spouse, or perhaps an imagined person who no living person could be like. This is where the trouble starts.

I would advise that if the person you are dating or are considering dating is not the number one person your heart is drawn to, you should not be dating. If you are dating and your heart is still attached to another, that is not fair to the person who believes you are with them.

Know who holds the number one place in your heart. Don't pursue any one who is not because it is not fair to them. Don't pursue any one who is not for you, but instead learn how to let go of that person.

I don't say this is easy. I find it extraordinarily difficult even right now. It hurts. I can't help liking who I like. I hope I find the ability to let go so I can move on.

"Loving you isn't the right thing to do
How can I ever change things that I feel?
If I could, maybe I'd give you my world
How can I, when you won't take it from me?
You can go your own way, go your own way"
- "Go Your Own Way" from the Fleetwood Mac album "Rumours"

Pick Me Up, Love

This will likely be the last entry for a while because as of tomorrow, I will be on the road with the Summer Ministry Team. After these first week and a half, I am excited to work with these young ladies and see what the summer has in store. There will be challenges as I try to adjust to the team and try to lead as best I can. However, we are leaving here in a little over six hours. So, this will (or should) be short.

Tonight at youth, we were talking about the topic of my last blog post which was 'letting go and moving on'. Generally, if I am asked to teach in some capacity and I am given free reign to choose the topic, I will go with one that I am thinking about. I also thought it suited this time in youth's lives as some are graduation and are preparing for their next step.

In my last post, I said that this was the biggest challenge for humankind and that the journey of life is essentially all about moving on. I still believe that. For me personally, it has been sinking into my perspective more and more and how I navigate life. I have more peace and have become more comfortable with the life in which we find ourselves. However, I have also come to see the potential downfalls of this perspective.

The most obvious is passion. More specifically, the lack of it. If one becomes more and more focused on looking to the horizon and willing to let things go and move on, it may get to the point where we won't hold anything for any period of time. We may drift through life, not really participating in any of it. That if the opportunity for something wonderful comes along, we may not try to reach for it at all or do it with a half-hearted attempt.

I don't think this extreme is good either, because this kind of hands-off approach can leave us to miss participating in the wonder of life. Although I don't want to be weighed down by clinging to things for too long and too desperately, I still want to live life. I think of the times when I would ride in the back of a truck going through tall grass and I would reach out and try to grab the tall weeds as I went by in one of those impromptu games that only you play and only you know that you're playing a game. I am simply seeing if I can grab it as I go. Then the weed pulls up out of the ground or snaps and then I try to grab another. I didn't want to simply brush my hands through the grass, I wanted to grab.

In the same way, I don't want to breeze through life with no passion. Perhaps I just need to see those moments or phases in life or special people and relationships that I can grab, experience, and let go when the time is up. I think, if we know that time we have is precious, then we will live with passion. With a love for life and what it has for us and what it can teach us. Then when it comes time for us to let it go, we know that we experienced it well and did not take our time or relationships for granted and we can move on to the next wonderful experience in life.

"Pick me up, love, from the bottom
Up onto the top, love, everyday
Pay no mind to taunts or advances
I'm gonna take my chances on everyday
Left to right
Up and up and inside out right
Good love fight for everyday
Jump in the mud, mud
Get your hands filthy, love
Give it up, love
Everyday"
- Title track of the Dave Matthews Band album "Everyday"
(for the first time, I will share a link to the music video, because it is that fantastic and you should spend the few minutes watching it. Especially, if you are a fan of 30 Rock: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RXe8PFKsOIc )

Letting Go and Moving On

We have started training for this year's Summer Ministry Team and I am excited to be doing it once again. For me, this transition of going back on the team is marking of the end of a year that has indicated a major shift in my life and thought. It has been fantastic. Not that it was without it's challenges, but rather it has been one where things have never made more sense to me. This entry may sound like a repeat of previous entries, but this to me is a summary of some of my thoughts this past year.

Anyway, through out various conversations and even some of my previous blog entries, I have been thinking about what is the biggest challenge for humanity. I was struck with this thought: The experience of humanity is letting go and moving on. This is probably not new to some or even most of you, but it got me thinking (which is a good thing?). People frequently talk about how the scariest thing is change and we often focus on that. We talk about how change is good and yet how it is intimidating. I am, however, starting to think that maybe change is not the problem or solution. I think the root of the fear of change is that we don't really know that letting go and moving on is the journey of life. Change in our lives is not something that is a necessity, but rather is a thing that is coming and there is nothing you can do to stop. The question is more accurately, are you able to accept the change and can you adapt to it?

When we cannot let go, change will cause much more trauma in our lives and it will leave us smashed on the rocks that if we can't figure out what are the things we are to hold onto. When someone dies and we hold on far too long and far too strongly, it may pull you down. You may think that you are drowning in it all. And you would be right. You would be drowning, but not because the person died, that the change occurred, but because you have yet to let go. By the way, I am not saying that we forget the person, but rather when we learn from their lives, then we actually take them with us.

In the same way, when someone commits an evil deed against you or continues to abuse you whether directly or indirectly and we let that act continue to dictate our lives, then we are actually surrendering more of our will and lives to something that shouldn't be in existence. Don't be shackled by the sins of the past. Seek forgiveness. I should point out that this paragraph still applies when you are the someone who commits the evil deed. Don't be shackled by the sins of the past. See what you have done. Identify them. Admit to them. Seek forgiveness and never go back. Let go of your sins and the sins of others otherwise they will bury you.

We cling to things that will never give us what we truly seek. We find that one good thing and maybe it is a really good thing and we cling so hard that we squeeze the life out of it. Whether it is the love of another person, the security of wealth, the power of our own hand, or the comfort of tradition. Instead of recognizing the good in things and being good stewards of them, we tend to take and take and take. Become dependant on those things and when those things fade away or disappear or break under the weight of our greed. We need to be able to let go and we will never be able to move on.

I believe this was what the downfall of Lot's wife was about. As the town she left behind suffered the consequences of their sin, she could not let go. She had to turn and look back and she died. This is a picture of what many suffer. They cling to their past and the way they like and it will cause them to die in their past. All the way from the guy who thought he could have made it in the big leagues if he would have been played in that last high school game to the widow who cannot navigate life without her husband to the man who will cut throats in order to secure his position of comfort.

Moving on, I believe, is like sailing on. Whether it is storming or dark or clear and bright, you continue to move forward, learning as you go. If you don't desire to move forward, then you will find it very difficult to proceed through the gates of heaven. You will only hope that it one day comes to you, when in reality, it beacons you and if you don't go, you may never reach it.

This is all apart of the way of the Christ. This is apart of the life of sacrifice. Putting aside the things that hold us back from reaching heaven whether those things are evil like the sins of the past or the comforts of this life.

The winds of change have come, are coming and will continue to come. Are you ready to let go of things that may destroy you? Are you ready to move on?

"Come gather 'round people

Wherever you roam

And admit that the waters

Around you have grown

And accept it that soon

You'll be drenched to the bone

If your time to you

Is worth savin'

Then you better start swimmin'

Or you'll sink like a stone

For the times they are a-changin'"

- The title track of the Bob Dylan album "The Times They Are A-Changin'"

Friends for the Road

I am a couple of short days before I switch from being the intern at Nelson Covenant Church to taking up my role as member of the Evangelical Covenant Church of Canada's Summer Ministry Team. I'm a big fan of long titles.

It's a time of transition for me, but also many others at my church. Many are getting ready to leave and experience what God has for them outside the city limits of Nelson. I am very excited for them. I think one of the most important things that a young person can do is expand their world outside of their hometown. Especially one like Nelson or Minnedosa. I think that expanding our horizons is a part of expanding our perspectives, which is an important component of understanding ourselves, the world and our beliefs.

I do see that for some that there is much anxiousness about this next step. I can understand that. You are heading out into the world by yourself, with no one looking over your shoulder, you have to make decisions and you are without the familiarity of what has been home. You have to make a new home somehow.

In short, it can be intimidating to leave relationships behind.

We have spent time with these folk and have invested our hearts and trust with them. They know us and we know them. Even when the relationships they are leaving behind may be toxic for them, they fear leaving it because they are about to face the intimidating task of finding familiarity with others.

I suppose I have learned over the years was that yes, you may leave people behind, but now you have the opportunity to learn more people's stories and be challenged by new ideas and find that you can offer something that you bring with you.

One of my favourite lessons I learned from Covenant Bible College (God rest it's soul) is that throughout your life, you have friends for the journey and friends for the road. Friends for the journey are those who go with us for a long time, maybe all the way through life being at our side. Friends for the road are those who we have the pleasure of having with us for a short time. Maybe a couple of years, maybe for a ten minute ride on a bus. I think we often wish that all of our high school friends or hometown friends would be our friends for the journey, but I don't think that is a realistic or healthy expectation. We put too much on ourselves to build up relationships. And it becomes distressing to consider moving onto something different. We get wrapped up with trying to keep together what you have and it may even stunt the growth of those in the group to keep one moment in stasis.

However, if we realize that most of the people in our lives are friends for the road, we can find a richer interaction. That maybe we can, even for a brief moment in time, find a deep connection to those that we meet. It would also mean that the time we have with people is significant. We don't necessarily have years and years with people, but rather maybe we only have a little while.

Now, some of you may think, "Obviously, we only have a limited time with people" but although we understand that on a surface level, I don't know if we deeply understand it. You would see it most often when someone suddenly dies and people regret not saying the things they have felt about the person or regret not fixing a broken relationship.

Similarly, when we go into public, we could be that friend for the person who needs one. That the waitress who screws up your order needs for you to overlook it, because her life is filled with pain and the last thing she needs is a stranger to tear into her when she knows she messed up. You wouldn't ream out a friend like that, would you? Or maybe you can be the one that notices the guy on the street who no one else does and give him a compliment for his sweet kicks (do people still say that?). We could be their friend for the road.

I think one of the hardest lessons that a human can learn is moving on and knowing when to. When we want to lock everything down and fit what we want, we may find that we are actually killing the memory of it. That what we want to encourage people to do is grow and growth usually means we need room to do that. Whether that is physically space or emotional space.

So my encouragement to those of you intimidated by a big life change, whether it is you that is moving on or someone else close to you who is, is to make the most of your time that you have with them now. Don't be texting other people when you're with a friend. Tell people what you need to tell them. Don't wait too long to fix a broken relationship.

If you can start seeing the value of everyone's story, if you can worry less about having your friends with you for all time, if you can see the main thrust of human relationships should be growth, then you can start finding that peace when we lose people, whether it's temporarily or permanently.

I think the best thing that comes out of being willing to grow and experience a bigger world is that you can really see who your friends for the journey are. Those individuals who you truly miss and feel on a gut level their absence. Those individuals who, when once you see them again, you can pick things up again and know they still have your back. Those individuals who you love.

"Yes, I understand that every life must end, uh huh,
As we sit alone, I know someday we must go, uh huh
Oh, I'm a lucky man, to count on both hands the ones I love,
Some folks just have one,
Yeah, others, they've got none, uh huh"
- "Just Breathe" from the Pearl Jam album "Backspacer"

Cheat Codes and The Rapture

I will admit that I was one of the folk that made several jokes about the supposed Rapture that was predicted to happen this past weekend. I don't want to dwell on the ridiculousness of trying to predict such an event if you are using the Christian scriptures as your basis because they (as many, many people have pointed out) even state that Jesus does not even know when it will happen. I don't want to dwell on the how dangerous and foolish it is to promote such a prediction that lead others to sell everything and potentially ruining their own livelihoods. I don't want to dwell on how stupid these predictions make Christians look especially when they always are wrong.

I don't want to dwell on these things, because I think the bulk of Christians have already talked about all of the above things and moved on.

I want to talk about my own personal reservations about the Rapture and ultimately the afterlife. One of the reactions I saw a few times over the course of the weekend was one of a certain wish for the Rapture to come. Even fellow Christian skeptics of the predictions gave a sense of mourning that they weren't wrong. They wished that the Rapture had come despite them knowing it would not happen.

I get why people would want to be taken straight up to heaven without ever dying. You get to circumvent one of the scariest moments in everyone's life. You go from living in a broken world and go straight to Jesus! For some (probably most), the best part about being a Christian is heaven. Not me.

One reason I don't want to experience the Rapture is that I would feel like I am cheating. You know when you play video games and you're trying your best to play through an impossible game. You sometimes wish that you could just get to the end and so you find cheat codes to allow you to jump to the last level or give you infinite lives or all the weapons upgrades and then you breeze through the game. The thing is, at the end of it you are left with no sense of accomplishment. You didn't really beat the game. You got to see the ending. That's all. What makes beating a game an accomplishment is struggling through it and ultimately triumphing over it. I feel like the Rapture would be cheating in certain regard. I leave all the rest of the world to burn behind me and I get to go to heaven? That feels cheap, doesn't it?

It seems strange to me that billions of people have lived and died and then I would amongst the few that skipped the last part. I don't know if you can truly appreciate a life in heaven if you have not experienced death. Death is not to be feared, but known and overcome.

The other thing that makes me not want to be "raptured" is that I believe I would have this sense of "we need to go back". Like I would be trying to convince God to send me back and get more people. I think it would be like Abraham pleading with God to not destroy Sodom and Gomorrah.

Why? I do not really deserve heaven and I know it. Not just because it's taught like that, but because I feel like it's my duty to continue to be a part of a rescue effort until I am not longer able to help. I have been taught that the grace of God will deliver me, but I don't want to rest on that. It gives me this sense that I want to bring the good news to those still in chains, whatever that may look like. And if I know that I just left the world and I still have breath in my lungs, then I don't feel like I should be leaving. I want to be like those people who have been given much and would do anything to pay it back as feeble as it may be to do so.

Another main reason that this whole afterlife business bothers me is that it seems to be such a distracting force in our lives here. We have this mindset that "Well, this is all screwed up and I am a messed up person and everything will be just better once I...". It's the exact same thing I hear with people now who have broken relationships and addictions and they figure once they move to another town that they can start over and everything will be fixed as opposed to starting the process of changing themselves now. They continue to wallow in their addictions or continue to bend to the will of those who don't have their best interests at heart because they don't want to alienate their friends despite the reason that they want to leave is because of the same people. I see it with the wishing for Heaven. "Once I get to Heaven, everything will be put right" and then we stay put.

Probably the people best equipped to adjust to Heaven are those who are working to bring Heaven about here.

To be honest, I am not sold on Heaven. In terms of how great it will be. In my human mind, I can not conceive of a way of living forever would be awesome. I do believe that the afterlife will be as it should be. That God has it handled. Maybe He has something up His sleeve that will blow my mind. That'd be great. I will happily eat the words I just wrote because I also know that it is unknowable.

I would rather live as though I don't care about the reward. I would rather live as though I am living this one life. I would rather spend my life helping people out of the hell on earth that they experience. I would rather not wait for me to go to Heaven, but rather be apart of the work to bring Heaven to earth. That way, when I stand before God I have offered my best case before Him. Sure, I have screwed up and I don't measure up and Jesus will have to vouch for me, but hopefully I haven't just wasted the gifts given me.

And if it turns out that when I die, that is all and my soul disappears into the ether, at the least I will have already experienced Heaven and know that Heaven is real and have given people the same before I went.

"And it feels now
Just like heaven's coming down
Your soul shakes free
As its conscience hits the ground
These signs, this fate
Takes a path you didn't choose
Stay strong, keep faith
There's a change that's coming through
Hold on my love, hold on..."
- "Heaven Coming Down" from the Tea Party album "TRIPtych"

Single People are People, Too!

At the church, we are continuing the series on "This Changes Everything" in reference to how Jesus' resurrection changes various aspects of life. For instance, my sermon from a few weeks ago was about how the resurrection changed religion. This week, we are talking about marriage. I haven't done any videos for the last while and so I've been thinking about what I can do this week. I have an idea that I am sorting out to give a perspective on the whole thing.

A few weeks ago when I went to Vancouver, I was talking with some friends that I was friends with from Manitoba. We were talking about how marriage is such a major focus of Christians. My one friend lamented how the pressure is so great to get married so young that people frequently wind up stifling their development as a person and then think that the whole purpose of everything is create more kids. It sometimes leads them to marry right away and choose a person before they have matured enough to make such a serious commitment. It can lead them to broken marriages and then even splitting leaving them on there own the very first time and they suddenly realize that they have spent no time developing themselves as an individuals and they are lost.

My friend pointed out how strange and even offensive it is for us to even ask a married couple, "So, when are you having kids?" Personally, I don't have that hang up on the question, because it usually comes out of a place of the typical order of things when you are married and I think it's a natural question to ask, but I also see her point. Especially when it comes from someone who spends no time getting to know you otherwise. If the first question out of my mouth when I see someone I haven't seen for a long time is "So, now that you're married, when will we hear the pitter-patter of little feet?" that reinforces the idea that having children is the only way we become complete people.

This is what is screwed up in the perspective of marriage and in particular the Christian culture surrounding marriage. I fear that people are desperately hunting for someone who will be willing to marry them as though it will solve their problems. Or that it will validate them as a complete human. Or that you will miss on a critical and necessary aspect of life if you don't get married. Then, it extends into having children. That the best people in the world are mothers and fathers. Who cares if you discover the cure for cancer or lead a humanitarian organization or help poor people on a day to day basis? Being a parent trumps all of that. In particular a good Christian parent that makes sure their kid becomes a Christian as soon as they are able to form sentences.

As Christians, I hope we are careful with how we view being single. It seems like the only way for a Christian to be single and considered as valued as a rank and file pew member is be a monk or a nun or dying of typhoid fever in some far off country preaching the name of Jesus. Single people seemed to be viewed as misguided or lost or lacking something that will make them a complete person. It makes the role of single one of inferiority. I frequently see young adults (and I was in this group, too) scrambling to find a mate because they can finally take on their ultimate role as parent. There is no role better than parent according to Christian culture.

It sometimes comes across as single people have no insight into marriage or children. They are less than or not as advanced as the ones who do. It's seen when you hear from the new dad and they give you the new dad speech where it turns out that having a child changes everything. WHAT? You're telling me being responsible for this new life has somehow made your life different? I just assumed everything would be the same. But with a baby. I wouldn't know because I don't have kids, how could I ever figure out? I'm too dumb. You really got to have kids to understand that it's a big deal.

Don't get me wrong, of course there's some stuff I have never experienced and thus will never "truly" know, but that does not make me a lesser person.

Now, here's the thing. One's mother or father or spouse should be striving to be the best parent or spouse they can be. Leading you and guiding to be the best person you can be in the case of a parent and being a person that supports you and you support them so that way you have an ally in this tough life. A good parent is critical on an individual level. Spouses can be a great person to have along for what life has for us. Parents help shape our perspectives and we want to raise up good citizens. However, the role of parent or spouse itself is not the ultimate role one can have.

The premise that the best thing a person can be is to be married or to have kids is where things begin to break down because these things cannot live up to the expectations.

I believe that the ultimate role people can take on is one that everyone can choose to take on.

What is our ultimate role? To be a part of the ongoing process of putting things back to the way they should. Whatever that looks like. This premise does not require you to be married or single, woman or man, a doctor or a lawyer, to be from North America, or to be a certain ethnicity. This ultimate role is one that can and has spanned all time to all places, it's just are we going to embrace it? It is simple to understand. It is difficult to live. It is admirable to be.

I would call this role "Christ" or less controversially "Christ-like". Although making the goal "Christ-like" seems like we don't have to try as hard. Look, I get it, no one can be Christ but Jesus. Fine. But when kids say they want to be "Batman" they don't mean "Batman-like". Sure, they will never attain "Batmanhood" but at the very least, you will have a dark, brooding ankle-biter of justice. I'm off-track on this idea already adjunct to the main point of this blog.

The ultimate role of Christ is one that can be taken up in all circumstances and looks different for each person. Of course, we aren't in 1st century Israel, born to a Jewish family, working as a carpenter. That was Jesus. But the Christ role does not dictate those aspects. You follow?

If we should look into incorporating the Christ role into our lives as hard as we pursue the parent and spouse role, then you would see amazing things.

I think a good question for us to have is "What does the Christ role look like in my circumstances?" What would Christ look like as in 21st century British Columbia, born to a white family in Manitoba, working as an intern? What would Christ look like as a parent? Or a spouse? Or a single person.

Another way of saying it is that you strive to be the heroic version of yourself.

The goal of the single person is not to get married. The goal of the married person is not to have children. The goal of the parent is not to make sure your children get married and have kids. The goal of all people should be a redemptive force wherever and however we are.

This all said, I think marriage is still a wonderful thing. To dedicate yourself to another person and be lifelong allies committing to mutually help each other become their better selves is a great thing. It is however not the best way to live. Nor is being single the best way to live. Those roles are circumstantial. Being the best version of yourself is your ultimate role.

"I, I will be king
And you, you will be queen
Though nothing will drive them away
We can beat them
Just for one day
We can be heroes
Just for one day"
- Title track from the David Bowie album "Heroes"

I may write something a little longer later, but I just wanted to post a link to my sermon that I mentioned a couple of posts ago. Sadly, the 24 clip was cut short. None the less, check it out if you have time.

http://wpm.ecov.org/2010/06/247/?sermon_id=307

Stranger in a Strange Land

I have just gotten back from a bus trip that took 22 hours from Saskatoon. I was out for a good friend's wedding and I had to make the decision of paying an extra $200 to take a flight or take the bus ride. I had to go with making the financially wiser choice and go with the bus.

People were commenting that it must have been a terrible thing to do and I agree to a point. I just agree in the moment and it is true that I dislike the long bouts of sitting, however, it was ultimately really good. I was reminded of how much I actually enjoy the process of travelling from one place to another. The destination is the point I suppose, but I appreciate the period of moving from one place to another. I get to sit there and think. I get to listen to my music and reflect. I come up with ideas for the future.

The long bus ride allowed just for more time of doing that. It also provided a couple of experiences that I appreciated just as much as the actual wedding event. On the way out there, I had a few hours in Calgary and it just so happened that a friend there happened to have a shift at a store downtown and I got to see her and talk with her, when I haven't spoken to her in what has been far too long.

On the way back, I was in Calgary and I went to a local restaurant to get food and to read a theology book ("The Cost of Discipleship" by Dietrich Bonhoeffer) when I encountered a couple of friendly strangers and we wound up talking about life and spirituality.

It seemed like these two encounters really encapsulates how I feel like in general. More and more I feel like a stranger in a strange land wherever I go. Even the people and places once familiar to me, have changed and evolved. While in Saskatoon, I was catching up with people and spending time with old friends and it was a little weird. There were moments where I felt like I didn't fit anymore. Other times, just the reality of people continuing to live their lives made me just realize how truly free I feel to continue to wander.

Let me explain that last sentence further. Some people, perhaps most people or even all people at different points in their life, see familiarity as prime importance. That we huddle up with people we like and build each other up and strengthen the community. We fear leaving because we will have wasted relationships that we had built. As a human race, we seek to cling. It's a good thing. It allows us to dig into each other's lives and hopefully help each other out (and pray it does not go the other way into gossip). We live together (and die alone because the Lost reference must be used). It's how societies work. It doesn't matter what cultural background you come from, their is always an interdependence somewhere in the culture. Some focus on familial connections or community connections or faith-based or tribe-based, but every culture has it.

In any culture, you are going to have deviants to the structure. I feel very much like one of the deviants outside of the community. I reminded fairly frequently that I am fine with that. Mostly circumstance has created it I suppose, but even people who are outside a community wish to be apart of it (except for those who are like me and embrace it as oppose to fight it).

That said, I understand the importance of community. I get why we do team exercises at camps. Sometimes it feels like I get the point better than those who believe that community is of the utmost importance and go all gung ho into team exercises. I get that we need connections to other people. We need to be grounded from our own headspace, imaginations, selfishness and pride.

However, I feel like I get that from conversing with people that I meet at a random restaurant or from touching base with folk on occasion. I learn from people and their experiences and what brings them to now. I find the more familiar I get with people, the more alien I feel around them.

There are exceptions to this. There are some individuals that I feel like I could spend all day with and I could see them the next day and not feel like it would be difficult, but in terms of bigger groups I would say that I don't get that chummy feeling that others get. I just kind of go along with it. I suppose it's closely related to how I feel like a town is a town is a town. I don't hate or love Minnedosa. Or Winnipeg. Or Nelson. Or Vancouver. I've been finding nationalism more and more weird.

In essence, it's like I fit everywhere, but I fit nowhere and I'm fine with that. The troubling thing is that others are not. They think there's something wrong. Maybe there is. I realize (and others have pointed out) that this would be very difficult to bring someone close to me, specifically someone that I could marry. This is the tension I feel because I would love an ally to go with me on my journey to bring hope and hold loosely onto the world, but not a lot of women (and people in general) are geared like me and I can't expect that out of them. It's likely, I either cave and join in (like I tried before) or I continue to wander.

Ultimately, I don't have an answer. I am not sure of what to do, but I also feel like I have bigger priorities anyway. I am not worrying about this. I am not looking for a solution. I am not even saying I will think like this forever. Maybe something will change everything.

"Like most babies smell like butter
His smell smelled like no other
He was born scentless and senseless
He was born a scentless apprentice"
- "Scentless Apprentice" from the Nirvana album "In Utero"

The Christian Trump Card

I have found a place to pause and reflect. It's been a little while since my last post but that's because April was crazy month for me. Since I last posted (which I did shortly after my show at the high school), I visited Vancouver and Victoria to see my friends the Hildebrandts and the Dwyers (it is strange to refer to peers as chunks of family like that) as well to see one of my favorite comedians, Patton Oswalt. Then I came back to film more sketches for my May 1st show, went on the local radio station to promote the show, went to a farewell party for my dear friend Annalea, I filmed and edited baptism videos for some of the youth as well as the entire baptism service (which I then edited like it were an episode of Lost, though I did not add a smoke monster), did my show (which had a low turnout because it was a Sunday night and it was the last day of the local fair, but actually went very well) and then spent the last week getting my sermon ready for this weekend. I applied for a BC driver's license (since I'm here for another year), voted in an election, avoided a royal wedding, and loosely followed the story of the end of a madman (and also rediscovered my love for parentheses).

Busy, in other words.

Throughout this whole process, I have had a few conversations with a variety of folk and for some reason the conversation would lead to a mentioning of a passage of the Bible from John 14. It's the one that Christians use frequently use and reference and has been for me one used flippantly and always explained weird. By the way, this is sort of a condensed version of my sermon because of the prevalent discussions that lead up to it. This discussion cuts to the heart of what has pained me in my Christianity because it feels like we have been fundamentally missing the point as Christians.

The phrase that I am referring to is when Jesus said, "I am the way, the truth and the life. No one comes to the Father but through me". In some conversations, this was a part of the problem of Christianity that makes it exclusionary and for others this is why they will not look to anything but the Bible for Truth. 

While I was growing up, that's how it was taught to me. That phrase was always taken to mean, "You need to accept Jesus as your savior and that you need to ask for forgiveness." That bothered me on the basis that the statement to explain to Jesus' words took a leap in logic and connected dots that don't very obviously connect. However, I was always told that that's what it is and I figured that maybe I would understand later because I must just be stupid. It has been proven in the past, so I went along with it.

However, it never was resolved, instead it was used a Christian trump card.

Now, without repeating my whole sermon (which will hopefully be online in the next few days), I want to cut to the chase.

The problem, I believe, with the Judeo-Christian religions is that it focuses on the wrong idea. We generally take the point of doing the religion rituals and being forgiven is so that we are blameless before God and so He will give us a pass. So we do whatever it is that we need to do to be considered clean, holy, righteous, blameless in His eyes. In the Old Testament, it was giving sacrifices. In Christianity, it's "accepting Jesus into your heart"(whatever that means).

If the point were to be blameless and forgiven by God, then why does God get upset at the sacrifices given in Isaiah 1 or why does Jesus clear the temple and throw out all the people selling animals for sacrifices in the Gospels?

I think the idea is that forgiveness is not the point. It is about changing your ways to get on with what we are really here for. What are we here for? To make things the way they should be. Bringing order to chaos. This is God's will that you see again and again in the Bible. You see it with how nature works.

My one friend's problem with asking God for forgiveness is that it makes us think that when we ask God for forgiveness, we think that that's being forgiven. However, it misses what being forgiven is. Doing that doesn't change us. Frequently as Christians, we have short-circuited what the process of forgiveness is. It's not just having our sins wiped away, but it's actually about moving on. Putting our past behind us. Putting the wrong actions we have done and putting them in the past and moving on towards being better. Putting the wrong actions of others that hurt us in the past. Actions and words that say we are less than or worthless. If we can't put our past behind us, it becomes much more difficult to do what I believe is our goal which is putting things back the way they should be.

That's why when Jesus stood up against the religious leaders which had a system in place that actually discouraged people from changing with them earning money off the sacrifices and having a strict set of religious rules which would be impossible for a person to uphold, it would inevitably lead him to a death sentence. We frequently dwell on Jesus' death on the cross as a sacrifice for mankind's sins, but the other side of it is what led him to the cross. It was his fight for injustice and fight to bring about change in the lives of people that would allow them to come alongside the real goal of God which is to put things back the way they should be.

The Way, I believe, is the way of a becoming the sacrifice. Living in a way that strives to put things back together, the way they should be.

The Truth, I believe that Jesus was getting at, was that he was teaching from the same law as the Pharisees, but he was teaching what the real goal of the law and religion was.

The Life is the fact that when we can help in the ongoing redemptive work, then that's where life thrives. When relationships are mended. When mercy is given. When we clothe the naked, feed the hungry, heal the sick, defend the case of the fatherless, plead the case of the widow. These bring life. To you, to people, to the world.

Unfortunately, Christians still fall in the trap of thinking the point is being blameless before God. It's just our sacrifice has been upgraded to Jesus. But the sacrifice is still meaningless to them.

Ironically, it means that when people take the phrase "the way, the truth, and the life" to mean we need to ask forgiveness of Jesus as our sacrifice they may actually have taken it the exact opposite way it meant to be taken.

UPDATE: I figured I should add a more complete end instead of leaving things sort of up in the air. Specifically, the idea of forgiveness. I still believe that forgiveness is important. I hinted at it half way through, where forgiveness is actually more than the mere asking for forgiveness, but it also involves changing and putting our past behind us.

I'll use the same example as I did at the end of my sermon. Christians talk a lot about being cleaned and being made "white as snow" or "having the slate wiped clean". However, being a clean slate is not the point of Christianity. Instead, I believe our slates (or lives for those unable to follow the metaphor) should state that:
'God is good'
'God is love'
'God is justice'
'God is mercy'
'God is working'
'Christ is the way, the truth, and the life'

However, if our slates are cluttered with the sins and lies of others or with our own past and our continuing sin, then it becomes much more difficult for our slates to say those things. We find life in the ongoing work of the world's redemption, but we need to put to death the sins of our past. 

"I watch the heavens and I find a calling

Something I can do to change what's coming

Stay close to me while the sky is falling

Don't wanna be left alone, don't wanna be alone

World's on fire and

It's more than I can handle

I'll tap into the water

I try to pull my ship

I try to bring more

More than I can handle

Bring it to the table

Bring what I am able"

- "World on Fire" from the Sarah McLachlan album "Afterglow"

Hatred of Heretics

A few weeks ago, Rob Bell released a book called "Love Wins: A Book About Heaven, Hell, and the Fate of Every Person Who Ever Lived" and in the wake of a video he made to promote the book, it caused a kerfuffle (by the way, I have never had to spell that word before and had to look it up) in the church world. Some took that the video was implying that Bell didn't believe in hell or that at the very least he believed that Gandhi is not in hell (when they believe that he is because he was not a Christian). This was all based off of people not even reading the book. Some used this moment to dismiss him and could finally call him a false teacher, etcetera, etcetera.

At this point, I should mention that I have since read the book myself and I am admittedly a fan of Rob Bell and have been for a long time. His approach to teaching is one that I appreciate and one that challenges. I feel I should say this because I admit I have a bias in this.

However, I don't want this post to be about what I thought about the book. Perhaps in a future post, but I am not interested in that. What caught my attention and what made me more sympathetic to Bell before the book even came out was the reaction of Christians.

It was the immediate and seemingly flippant response to Bell. It was considered outside of Christian thought because it seemed to challenge the traditional understanding of faith. The question was not allowed to be asked.

This has always been a sore spot for me because it feels like questions are treated like they are the source of evil in faith. I was born into a faith that had everything locked down. Every story and passage had a certain understanding and it did not waiver. If there was a question that was asked, there is an answer even if it is an uncomfortable, hard truth that people will just have to suck up.

Essentially, everything in theology and Christianity had been boxed up and the only people that were allowed to ask questions were those who were outside the church because they "lacked understanding" and even then eventually they would be told "you just need to have faith" if their questions could not be answered.

I understand why many think that questions in faith is contradictory. How can you say you believe something when you question it? Doesn't that indicate that you don't have faith? Doesn't that indicate a distance because you don't even know the god that you profess to follow?

It would essentially boil down to "If Jesus said it, I believe it!" and it was a battle cry of sorts. I have faith! I have zero questions! Questions don't matter! The only one who can ask questions is God, that is it! The fewer questions you have, the more faith you had.

It felt strange to be honest. When someone said that they "had faith in Jesus", it seemed like they meant that they believed what he said was true. Thus the line of logic is that as long as you believe that Jesus is Lord and saviour and that you say you're sorry, then you "had faith in Jesus" and that you'd be saved.

The idea was that justification (being declared righteous before God) came at a word spoken and that sanctification (the process of becoming 'holy') was either unimportant for your eternal soul or is automatically given to you when you become a Christian. It seems like the spiritual journey of faith boils down to a moment in time. That split second where you asking Jesus to be your saviour changed you from being condemned to hell forever to getting the greatest gift in the world.

I always felt like that was a cheap journey. In fact, not really a journey. It turned the journey of faith to be essentially slapping a bumper sticker on the back of your car and then you could do donuts in the parking lot until you ran out of gas and you would still be declared a traveller.

Is the journey of faith really that easy? So simple? The rest of your life doesn't matter except for a 30 second prayer?

It was strange because when it talks about faith in Hebrews 11, it lists the great heroes and heroines of the Hebrews who did something because they believed. If I told you that your house was about to blow up, and you said "I totally believe everything you are saying and you are truly my saviour" but that was it, do you really act in faith just saying you believed? It seemed like faith was tied up in doing what God wants you to do. To show that you had faith seems more like you believed what God tells you to do to the point that you actually did it. James 2 talks about faith being something that you do.

Some Christians seem to balk at the idea and are quick to say that you aren't saved by doing good works. Which is not what I was saying. I am saying that your statement of faith is not words. I am saying that your faith is living faithfully the best you can because that shows that you actually have faith that God isn't out to trick you.

Which leads me back to questions. If we are trying to be faithful to the call of Jesus, shouldn't we be working to act the best we can as followers?

In every other field of thought, it is questioning the status quo that leads to innovation and to keep up with the changing culture and changing social paradigms. Not that the Bible is irrelevant to today and we need to update it, but rather shouldn't we be figuring out how to apply the powerful, life-changing message of the Bible in a context that is different. What does it mean to be faithful when the scenario is vastly different from the time of Christ when His message was subversive and his Lordship not understood and when He broke the chains of a strangling religion? Now, we live in a culture where Jesus is apart of the social milieu, when some of the world's leaders and rich are His followers (in sharp contrast to the oppressed people of the less influential). What does it mean to be a rich North American in the state of security far from the tragic issues of the world? How do we be faithful? Aren't all of these questions that are worth asking?

I suppose I have two reasons that I am inclined to listen to a guy like Rob Bell.

One is that I have felt for a long time that Christianity has lost its power and its purpose because we don't do much. We do missions and perhaps serve once in a while not because we see it as apart of us declaring that Jesus is Lord but because it makes us feel good. Faith has become a way to make us feel good as opposed to being apart of our purpose which is to join with the work of God to bring rejuvenation, redemption, order and love to a world in chaos and on the brink of destruction. It is my belief that this is rooted in how we understand what faith is and I have wondered for a long time if we have allowed our traditional understanding of faith to actually make us spiritually blind and lazy. Our faith is taught as something cheap, easy and an accessory to a privileged lifestyle as opposed to something that requires us to live completely different.

I believe that the journey of faith is much more than slapping on a bumper sticker. It is something that requires us to be curious. To be adventurous. To be aware of the hurt in the world. To be willing to become heroes for the sake of the one who calls us to be heroes and has shown us the way to be heroes.

Unfortunately, I do not believe our current understanding to be a sacrificial hero, but rather it is constructed as something that keeps us locked up in our walled cities and guns ready to shoot anyone who disagrees with us.

The other reason I am inclined to believe Rob Bell is not necessarily because of who he is. Rob Bell, unlike many other preachers who were cast out as someone legitimate to listen to, has had a history of teaching that looks to not just tow the line, but rather set people free from the demons of this life. Demons like insecurity, laziness, anger and distance from God. He doesn't seem to be in it for the money. Sure, maybe the Nooma videos are pricey, but he's not begging to send money to his church. It is hard to say that what he is saying is self-serving or even an easy gospel.

However, he asks a question that Christians do not like which is one that strikes to the core understanding of faith and he is painted as a monster. He is the anti-Christ (just like Barack Obama and Michel Gorbachev before him). We are told that he is crazy and off-base without hearing him out. He is a heretic and he deserves hatred from Christians despite bringing messages of hope and freedom in this world of pain and tragedy.

This reaction seems to be so violent and angry that it makes it seem like everything that Bell has ever said before this moment is not to be listened to. I think the guy's earned the chance to ask a question.

Who seems more like the one with compassion and wisdom? The guy who is sincerely wanting to challenge the status quo to bring about possibly a richer, deeper faith or the guy who is willing to cast the first stone before the sin is even committed? There is a distressingly strict religion that has built up around the life-saving teachings of Christ that it feels like the Pharisees have found their new home in the church. Let's remember that the Pharisees were born out of a sincere desire to follow God, but they let their understanding of the scriptures to be the prison to those who want to seek God as opposed to an opportunity to live in the richness of faith.

It is important for us to not put our faith in a stranglehold because we may kill it, but rather wrestle with it back and forth with the questions of what faith is and what it looks like. It will make us stronger and better able to travel the journey of life.

"Oh, let me put you in your place
I love it when you say
Giving everything away

Tell what's in it for me
Tell me now what's in it for me
No one's getting this for free
So tell me now what's in it for me

Whatever keeps you warm at night
(Whatever keeps you warm at night)
Whatever keeps you warm inside

Your bridges are burning down
They're all coming down
It's all coming round
You're burning them down"
- "Bridge Burning" from the Foo Fighters' album "Wasting Light"

Hatred of Villains

A few weeks ago, I wrote a post on the sadness I felt in regards to the treatment of celebrities. I feel that culture has a terrible tendency to either idolize or demonize individuals on the basis of a mere like or dislike of their art. I think it doesn't take much to admonish each other to give these folks a certain amount of humanity. They are nether worthy of worship or dehumanization. To me, it is a mere overlook of a basic understanding that humans deserve no more and no less respect than other humans.

However, I want to address something that is perhaps more difficult for an individual to concede. We all have our own villains in our lives. Some are minor villains like those of the snotty kid at school who teases us for the clothes we wear or this could be the man who commits monstrous crimes on fellow humans. For each of us, the villains are different, look different and could be the heroes of others. Perhaps they rightfully deserve the title of "monster". This is where hatred seems like it would most belong. We're supposed to hate villains.

Perhaps our villains are sorry. Perhaps they are defiantly angry and relentless in their abuse. In the end, I want to bring them together in one category. Let's call them "villains" for the duration of this post.

One of the things that breaks my heart is to see a person who has been wronged by a villain. Especially, when it rocks their world and it seems like they are imprisoned by the wrong-doing. Sometimes it enrages me so much to hear the amount of evil and hate that villains are capable of. I sometimes wish I could grab a bat and find justice a la "Taken". Some things are so wrong and no one should have to endure at the hands of another human.

I mourn with you, if you have faced the brunt of the black shadow that the human mind is capable of summoning. I wish I could take the pain away. If there was a way that I could, I would. I am sorry that I don't have that ability, but all I can do is say that you don't have to be alone.

It is easy to be angry with the villains in our lives. I believe you are justified to be angry. The question then becomes what are you going to do about your pain and your anger.

There are options. Like any other scenario that we find ourselves in, we have many ways that we can go. Broadly, we can try to take care of the symptoms or we can address the disease.

Many people go the route of when they get hurt by another, they deal with the thing that hurts them the most. They may seek revenge, believing that an equal or greater attack on the individual that hurt them is just and they will then feel like things are right. However, this may feel good temporarily, but ultimately it does not take away the damage done. They are still in pain. They do not feel like things have returned to the way they were.

Some turn into lifelong victims. They take the wrong that was done to them and carry it forward, blaming future failures on the past. If someone is bullied, they may carry low self-esteem that cripples their ability to reach their potential because of the doubt planted in them and then that doubt grown by their inner critic and bully. My own mom still carries the burden of her victimhood that she experienced from her mother and it clouded the rest of her life even past grandma's death sixteen years ago. This one is particularly hard for a person to recover from, because they actually face constant doubt in themselves and feel justified in not dealing with the issue thinking that it is someone's else fault.

Some live in reclusion from the rest of mankind. They will not trust people because people can hurt them. They live with fear and isolation. They can turn bitter and gain a vicious hedge of defensiveness. Perhaps they cut with their words or with their actions. Either way, the will not allow pain to come their way again. They will not allow themselves to be fooled again.

There are surely other ways people can react to the wrong-doing of the villains, but when you deal with the symptom of evil, you do not deal with the disease of evil. The sad thing is that if we do not deal with our pain or anger, we give the wrong done to us much more control of our lives and our character than should be. It is terrible the things done to us by the villains in our lives, let's not give it more power over our lives. We cannot control what people will do to us, but we can deal with how we deal with it.

If you are tortured by your past or by your villains, we need to have to prevent the evil of their actions from seeping into our actions. If we allow their violence or their hatred to make us angry, bitter, or afraid, we let evil into our lives. The evil that says "You must strike back", "You must close yourself off" or "You deserve this". If we want any chance of healing, we need to get to working on fighting the disease of evil.

We need to be assured that their actions are not a reflection on our character. Our actions are a reflection of our character. Evil being done to us does not mean we have to become evil.

How then, do we fight the evil of the actions of villains before it dominates our lives? It comes down to something that can be very difficult. It is the process of forgiveness. I am not talking about the simple saying "I forgive you" but rather the pursuit of making that statement true. It can take an incredible amount of effort to try and see that the villains in our lives are also victims. They are dealing with their pain, their issues and they don't know how. Villains are not born as villains. Villains grow up out of unresolved pain and pent up anger and fear. Villains are people that have not been able to forgive.

This is what I am trying to get at. If we do not become the people that do not let the evil done to them dominate them, then we will become the villains in the lives of others. We will be multiplying the evil. We will spread it more. We will become the very thing that we hate.

However, if we can latch onto the bizarre, yet wonderful concept of forgiveness, we will not only find that we can reverse the tide of evil, but we will actually find the healing that our soul seeks when we are hurt. It may be easy to deal with the symptom of evil, but I suggest that to fight against evil we cannot fight with evil.

All of these things said, I still believe that justice is necessary and that justice should be dealt with wisdom. If a person is in a place where their villain continues to attack them and hurt them, they are fully in their rights to go to lengths necessary to stop the acts of the villain from continuing. A bully needs to be corrected. A criminal needs to go to jail. An abuser needs to be separated from their victims. They need to deal with their demons and continuing evil should not be overlooked.

My pleading however, is for those victims. Don't let evil dominate you. Don't let the evil of other's become your evil. Allow yourself to be the one who forgives and in that find the thing that heals you. It is difficult and that is why I would submit that often we don't have the power to truly forgive. We need the one who knows forgiveness. Jesus, who came to the world in order to reconcile humankind with their creator, knows what it means to be rejected, attacked and wounded by those he came to save. He was killed in the name of evil, but he forgives in the name of goodness and healing because that is who God is.

May you find the healing power of forgiveness, the only true weapon against evil. May you know that your destiny is not determined by those who wrong you. May you find comfort in Him who is comfort.

"See my sister got raped, so a man got killed
Local boy went to prison, man's buried on the hill
Folks went back to normal when they closed the case
They still stare at their shoes when they pass our place

My mother cried 'The horror has finally ceased'
He whispered 'Yeah, for the time being, at least'
Over his shoulder, on the squad car megaphone
Said, 'Let's go Michael, son, we're taking you home'

Same pattern on the table, same clock on the wall
Been one seat empty 18 years in all
Freezing slow time away from the world
He's 38 years old, never kissed a girl
He's 38 years old, never kissed a girl"
- "38 Years Old" from the Tragically Hip album "Up to Here"