Safer Than a Known Way

The Gate of the Year

I said to the man who stood at the gate of the year
'Give me a light that I may tread safely into the unknown.'
And he replied, 'Go into the darkness and put your hand into the hand of God
That shall be to you better than light and safer than a known way!'

So I went forth and finding the Hand of God
Trod gladly into the night
He led me towards the hills
And the breaking of day in the lone east.

So heart be still!
What need our human life to know
If God hath comprehension?
In all the dizzy strife of things

Both high and low,
God hideth his intention."

 
This poem of by Minnie Haskins 1908 was a favorite of the late Queen Elizabeth the Queen Mother. The opening four lines were used by her husband, King George VI, to open his Christmas address to the nation in 1939, just a few months after the start of World War II.

The End of Things

Can it be that the end of things paves the way for the beginning of the new? And yet it's hard to let go when the new is not yet apparent, has not yet arrived.

There is a certain inevitabity about the passing of the years, and of our days, but still we want to hold on, to hang back, to go back to what was. Even the Israelites, at one point in their wanderings, longed for the certainty of the old - though it were slavery - rather than the uncertainty of their present struggles and striving - and facing the unknowability of God's timing and will for any future entrance into Promise.

I wonder what my deep heart mostly fears as I face the days ahead . . .

Light at the year's end ? . . .

Am I - are we emerging to a better year or worse ?
And how will we move on - or hold on anyway?

Believing Anyway

It is our Lord Jesus alone who can bring hope in the darkness 
and faith in the most cold of days. 

Christmas - Enriched by His Poverty

You know the grace of our Lord Jesus, how that though He was rich,
yet for our sakes He became poor - that we through His poverty
might become rich. -- St. Paul

The poet, Gerard Manley Hopkins puts it like this -
     Across my foundering deck shone
     A beacon, an eternal beam . . .

     In a flash, at a trumpet crash,
     I am all at once what Christ is,
    Since He was what I am . . .

The Paradox of Guidance

From an interview with Dallas Willard -

Comment: In your book (Hearing God) you talk about the paradox of guidance. What are the elements of that paradox?

Willard: Well, the paradox has to do with the fact that on the one hand we talk so much about God's guidance, and we especially want our leaders to be guided by God. Yet, when it comes down to us, we do the humble-mumble and say, "Well, you know, not me. I'm not big enough, or important enough for God to bother with."

It's that combination: on the one hand we expect guidance, and we desperately need it, but on the other hand we're not prepared to receive it and we think it wouldn't really be appropriate. You have to be "kicked upstairs" to become a so-called "full-time Christian worker" for it to be appropriate.

Generally people can't deal with this at all. Christians can't. There's that little joke about: "When we speak to God we call it prayer, and when he speaks to us we call it schizophrenia." It's a curious ambivalence that's driven by our deep need as finite human beings.

Comment: It's almost like that story about Joan of Arc. When her accusers said, "Those voices you hear, they're just your imagination," she answered, "Yes. I know. That's how God speaks to me."

Willard:That's a very good line. It's by using our natural faculties in a certain way that God speaks to us. In a way, the paradox is the same as in the Incarnation - it's the union of God with human beings in a relationship. The Incarnation (God taking on full humanity in Jesus Christ) is much more than that, but it is that.
 

Hymns in the Dark

When the darkness closes in, Lord
Still I will say...
Blessed be the name of the Lord
Blessed be your name
Blessed be the name of the Lord
Blessed be your glorious name

Blessed be your name
When the sun's shining down on me
When the world's all as it should be
Blessed be your name

Blessed be your name
On the road marked with suffering
Though there's pain in the offering
Blessed be your name

Every blessing you pour out,
I turn back to praise
When the darkness closes in, Lord
Still I will say...
Blessed be the name of the Lord
Blessed be your name
Blessed be the name of the Lord
Blessed be your glorious name

You give and take away
You give and take away
My heart will choose to stay
Well, blessed be your name
 

Winter Solstice - Hope in the Darkest Day

Tomorrow is the shortest day of the year. It's not snowy yet, but it's coming . . .

In the bleak midwinter, frosty wind made moan,
Earth stood hard as iron, water like a stone;
Snow had fallen, snow on snow, snow on snow,
In the bleak midwinter, long ago.

Our God, Heaven cannot hold Him, nor earth sustain;
Heaven and earth shall flee away when He comes to reign.
In the bleak midwinter a stable place sufficed
The Lord God Almighty, Jesus Christ.

Enough for Him, Whom cherubim, worship night and day,
Breastful of milk, and a mangerful of hay;
Enough for Him, Whom angels fall before,
The ox and ass and camel which adore.

What can I give Him, poor as I am?
If I were a shepherd, I would bring a lamb;
If I were a Wise Man, I would do my part;
Yet what I can I give Him: give my heart.

  Christina Rossetti, 1872

Stuck

Stuck In a Moment You Can't Get Out Of

Bono's songs sometimes resonate and hurt, teach and heal - like a Psalm - 
so I meditate . . .

From the album: All That You Can't Leave Behind

I'm not afraid of anything in this world
There's nothing you can throw at me that I haven't already heard
I'm just trying to find a decent melody
A song that I can sing in my own company

I never thought you were a fool
But darling, look at you
You gotta stand up straight, carry your own weight
These tears are going nowhere, baby

You've got to get yourself together
You've got stuck in a moment and now you can't get out of it
Don't say that later will be better now you're stuck in a moment
And you can't get out of it

I will not forsake, the colors that you bring
But the nights you filled with fireworks
They left you with nothing
I am still enchanted by the light you brought to me
I listen through your ears, and through your eyes I can see

And you are such a fool
To worry like you do
I know it's tough, and you can never get enough
Of what you don't really need now ... my oh my

You've got to get yourself together
You've got stuck in a moment and you can't get out of it
Oh love look at you now
You've got yourself stuck in a moment and you can't get out of it

I was unconscious, half asleep
The water is warm till you discover how deep
It wasn't jumping for me it was a fall
It's a long way down to nothing at all

You've got to get yourself together
You've got stuck in a moment and you can't get out of it
Don't say that later will be better now
You're stuck in a moment and you can't get out of it

And if the night runs over
And if the day won't last
And if our way should falter
Along the stony pass

And if the night runs over
And if the day won't last
And if your way should falter
Along the stony pass

It's just a moment
This time will pass



 

Ah, nuts !

So I listen to the helpful Toshiba tech person online who
suggests he's going to help me significantly with my
problem (like, my Qosmio laptop won't turn on). And so
a Purolator box appears the next day, which I dutifully
fill with said laptop and send away.
 
Two weeks later, today, my computer returns. The CPU 
has been replaced and everything's been updated. Unfortunately
that includes my hard-drive and everything on it. 

Lost. Gone, c'est tout. No warning, no attempt to backup my
drive so as to retrieve now irretrievable files, trip to Iona, to
Turkey, to weddings, and musings, office work, website data
genealogical research information - gone.

Sure, I've got backups, in parts - bits and pieces - in varying
locales, but right now I don't even know what I don't have
anymore.

I'm finding it really difficult this evening to be merely civil.
Perhaps I'll feel better in the morning? . . . . or maybe not.

How to Leave the World that Worships should

Let faxes butter-curl on dusty shelves.
Let junkmail build its castles in the hush
of other people’s halls. Let deadlines burst
and flash like glorious fireworks somewhere else.
As hours go softly by, let others curse
the roads where distant drivers queue like sheep.
Let e-mails fly like panicked, tiny birds.
Let phones, unanswered, ring themselves to sleep.

Above, the sky unrolls its telegram,
immense and wordless, simply understood:
you’ve made your mark like birdtracks in the sand -
now make the air in your lungs your livelihood.
See how each wave arrives at last to heave
itself upon the beach and vanish. Breathe.

Seaside Sonnets

by Ros Barber

Rhythmic Tides of Relationship

Dancing by Constant Shores

I reflect on my neediness, struggles, fears and loves in relationships - with spouse and friends. I learn that I can receive from someone’s going as well as from their being present - and that my nostalgia for the past and my fears for the future can make me impatient, anxious, oblivious, even more needy, in the now of my life. I learn this as I read and reflect on the following, adapted from Anne Morrow Lindbergh -The Gift From the Sea.

Relationship is not strangled by claims. Intimacy is tempered by lightness of touch. We have moved through our day like dancers, not needing to touch more than lightly because we were instinctively moving to the same rhythm.

A good relationship has a pattern like a dance and is built on some of the same rules. The partners do not need to hold on tightly, because they move confidently in the same pattern, intricate but gay, and swift and free . . .To touch heavily would be to arrest the pattern and freeze the movement, to check the endlessly changing beauty of its unfolding. There is no place here for the possessive clutch, the clinging arm, the heavy hand; only the barest touch in passing.

The joy of such a pattern is not only the joy of creation or the joy of participation; it is also the joy of living in the moment. Lightness of touch and living in the moment are intertwined.

It is fear . . . that makes one cling nostalgically to the last moment or clutch greedily toward the next . . . It can only be exorcised by love. When the heart is flooded with love there is no room in it for fear, for doubt, for hesitation. And it this lack of fear that makes for the dance. When each loves so completely that he has forgotten to ask himself whether or not he is loved in return; when he knows only that he loves and is moving to its music - then, and then only, are two people able to dance perfectly in tune to the same rhythm.

When you love someone you do not love them all the time, in exactly the same way, from moment to moment. It is an impossibility. It is even a lie to pretend to. And yet this is exactly what we demand. We have so little faith in the ebb and flow of life, of love, of relationship. We leap at the flow of the tide and resist in terror its ebb. We are afraid it will never return. We insist on permanency, on duration, on continuity; when the only continuity possible, in life as in love, is in growth, in fluidity - in freedom, in the sense that the dancers are free, barely touching as they pass, but partners in the same pattern.

The only real security is not in owning or possessing, not in demanding or expecting, not in hoping, even. Security in a relationship lies neither in looking back to what it was in nostalgia, nor forward to what it might be in dread or anticipation, but living in the present relationship and accepting it as it is now.

How can one learn to live through the ebb-tide’s of one’s existence? How can one learn to take the trough of the wave? It is easier to understand on the beach, where the breathlessly still ebb-tides reveal another life below the level which mortals usually reach. In this crystalline moment of suspense, one has a sudden revelation of the secret kingdom at the bottom of the sea. . . . So beautiful is the still hour of the sea’s withdrawal, as beautiful as the sea’s return when the encroaching waves pound up the beach, pressing to reach those dark rumpled chains of seaweed which mark the last high tide.

Ephesus

Walking through Ephesus (in modern day Turkey), recently, was an incredible experience. It is 'up and down' terrain, situated in a long sloping valley between two mountains. The former bay and port is now silted in for about 6 kms to the modern Aegean seaside and the town of Kusadasi, where we stayed several nights as a locus for several day trips. When I think of Paul writing to the Ephesians of the love of God - its height and breadth and depth and width, I can now mind-picture the 'geography' of their locale, streets that wind and slope, and of the heights of the hills and the lows of the swamps and marshes -- and of the long ditch and one huge pillar -- which is all that remains of the Temple of Artemus - one of the 7 wonders of the ancient world.

We had our devotional there, sitting up in the stone theatre, very much like Toronto's Rogers Centre (Skydome) but without the rails to protect you from tripping and rolling all the way down -- where Christians were thrown to lions, or burned, or drowned for the entertainment of the crowds gathered -- or there the city populace enjoyed a lovely theatre outing and performance of a Greek play or tragedy. It's where the locals (threatened by the presence and effects of the message of this godly man -- by the witness of St. Paul), shouted: "Great is Artemus" for over two hours. In fact, the Scripture says most of them didn't even know why they had come together -- such is a mob and often a crowd (and even some Baptist annual meetings). A colleague and fellow-traveller, Harry Gardener who shared the devotional, reminded us that 'Paul came into Ephesus HOT' - i.e. full of the Spirit and with the power and Presence of the Risen Christ in His life.

We walked down ancient 'Roman-time' streets and roads, the stones and pavement where Paul, and John and Mary (Jesus' mother) walked -- and Priscilla and Acquilla - and Apollos - through this city where Paul left Timothy to pastor the new and growting church -- and also where walked, through the early decades and centuries of the Church, other Christians whose names and faithful witness is now lost to the ages, but not to God.

We looked around at the ruins and remains of what would then have been glistening marble, at the still intact walls and roofs - with it all still seeming so immense and so impressive. Large pillars, arches and stones reveal feats of architectural genius and beauty, in how they looked and how they were raised into their places. Past the agora, and the library of Celcius, and another, smaller theatre - through the brothel, 'resting' discretely at the public toilets row-ruins, surveying the road leading down to harbour and ancient piers, at the race-track - examining the shops and homes -- entering houses that still crawl and stretch up the slopes beyond the street(protected by huge awnings that the Austrians have provided as they escavate and preserve still more.

They preserve, for example, huge houses, with mosaic floors and frescoes - and hot and cold water pipes, and fireplaces. These homes make yours, mine, look almost primitive. And it's quite possible that Paul lived in, visited, preached and prayed, conducted services in these very homes. It changed ALL my thinking of what a 'house church' was in those ancient times.

It was stinking hot - sultry, humid and my nose and face was red and sore the next day. We grinned into each other's cameras and gawked, wandered and wondered - but mostly we were lost in our own thoughts of how impossibly wonderful was the privilege of being there and as we surveyed it all and sought to take in and make sense of what it used to mean, has meant through the centuries, and now meannt to us - to even pass through those ancient walls and streets . . .

High on a hill was an ancient walled castle, built by the Crusaders in the Middle Ages, for this was a holy place in lots of ways, to Christian pilgrims, Crusaders, and to the weird and powerful Templar Order (who reverenced St. John to a fault - their ideals still have come down in enlightenment thought -- and in some of Quebec's national and independence-culture in St. Jean Baptiste Day, celebrated each year at the summer's annual solstice.) So many configurations and factors and secrets, now hidden, almost occultic things -- and pure orthodoxy too of course - flow from ancient Ephesus.

Beneath the hill and sprawling out, larger than any cathedral extant that I can think of, are the ruins of a church, cloister, walls and all, that was built after Constatine that Christianity was now to be 'kosher' -- the religion of choice (imposed often more than offered), the state religion of the Roman world. The church was built around the tomb of St. John by the Emperor Justinian. We walked around here too, almost numb, taking pictures - pondering it all.

There was something hauntingly beautiful, eery even. about being at the tomb of St. John (where in fact the Pope will conduct mass later this month -- as he will also at a Greek Orthodox church we also visited in Istanbul - this 'breakthrough' seeking to reverse the almost laughable and clumsy excommunication each of the other that harkens back to the 7th century and led to the first and until now split of the Orthodox and Roman Catholic branches of the Church).

I lingered there awhile and heard one of our group teasingly remark: - O sure, there are the group's contemplatives still at John's grave. Right; to be sure. And when they were out of sight, I knelt and crossed myself both ways (in the Roman and then the Orthodox style), feeling somehow that I wanted to do something external to express the deep pulsing of my heart and spirit­ - and I didn't know what else to do, feeling as I did so moved. This brother, this Apostle who walked with the Saviour, who lived Him so much, who lived so faithfully with and for Him so long. He who cared for Mary, Jesus' mother.

We stood then together in one of the church's trancepts, by the ancient treasury, and when there was a break from the excellent history and religion commentary of our guide, I felt moved to say: "Listen now to some words from the Book that we all love (I Jn. 3:1 - 3): 'How great is the love that the Father has lavished upon us -- that we should be called the children of God -- and that is what we are. The world does not know us because it did not know Him. Dear ones, now we are the children of God, and it does not yet appear what we shall be, but we know that -- when He shall appear, we shall be like Him, for we shall see Him as He is. And everyone who has this hope in him (or her ) keeps himself (herself) pure." We just stood and meditated and wondered, awhile -- and then made our way together slowly back through the streets of Ephesus, and to our bus.

I can't get over, nor can I comprehend, what it was that happened in the context of the whole trip - I cannot explain what it was really like in its personal, inner impact - beyond that of giving a mere geography or history lesson, or referring others as to a travel guide in some booklet. My pictures take head-on shots but cannot capture the 360 degrees of sense and the many layers and heights and depths (both physical and spiritual) of the experience. It was and will remain in my life a transforming experience. The impact born in Ephesus and throughout each aspect of trip - and the opportunity in itself is now to me another great example of the genius of CBM (Canadian Baptist Ministries) in making possible these STMSs (Short Term Mission experiences) that are so deeply life-changing, stirring, and so spiritually uplifting.

Sheree Plett, 'Ramblings'

every morning, you'll hear me at it again
every morning, i lay out the pieces of my life
on your altar, at your feet.
listen yahweh can you make sense of my groans and cries,
listen yahweh.
breathe over, breathe over,
breathe over these ramblings of the night.
and here i am, your guest, i enter your house, here i am
waiting for directions, to get me safely through enemy lines
like a blind hunter, they wait for me all day
every word they speak, their lungs breathe out poison.
the chase is wild my god
i'm tired of all this, so tired
my beds been floating forty days and forty
nights on the flood of tears
can't you see i'm black and blue
beat up badly in bones and soul?
yahweh, how long? yahweh.

Sheree Plett is an awesome singer I heard recently in Vancouver.

Pacing the Cage - Bruce Cockburn

Sunset is an angel weeping
Holding out a bloody sword
No matter how I squint I cannot
Make out what it's pointing toward
Sometimes you feel like you've lived too long
The days drip slowly on the page
And you catch yourself
Pacing the cage

I've proved who I am so many times,
The magnetic strip's worn thin
And each time I was someone else
And everyone was taken in.
Powers chatter in high places
Stir up eddies in the dust of rage
Set me to pacing the cage.

I never knew what you all wanted
So I gave you everything.
All that I could pillage
All the spells that I could sing
It's as if the thing were written
In the constitution of the age
Sooner or later you'll wind up
Pacing the cage

Sometimes the best map will not guide you
You can't see what's round the bend.
Sometimes the road leads through dark places
Sometimes the darkness is your friend.
Today these eyes scan bleached-out land,
For the coming of the outbound stage
Pacing the cage...

Annie Dillard - 'Church

The higher Christian churches - where, if anywhere, I belong - come at God with an unwarranted air of professionalism, with authority and pomp, as though they knew what they were doing, as though people in themselves were an appropriate set of creatures to have dealings with God. I often think of the set pieces of liturgy as certain words which people have successfully addressed to God without their getting killed. In the high churches they saunter through the liturgy like Mohawks along a strand of scaffolding who have long since forgotten their danger. If God were to blast such a service to bits, the congregation would be, I believe, genuinely shocked. But in the low churches you expect it any minute. This is the beginning of wisdom.

*

It is the second Sunday in Advent. For a year I have been attending Mass at this Catholic church. Every Sunday for a year I have run away from home and joined the circus as a dancing bear. We dancing bears have dressed ourselves in buttoned clothes; we mince around the rings on two feet. Today we were restless; we kept dropping onto our forepaws.

No one, least of all the organist, could find the opening hymn. Then no one knew it. Then no one could sing anyway.

There was no sermon, only announcements.

The priest proudly introduced the rascally acolyte who was going to light the two Advent candles. As we all could plainly see, the rascally acolyte had already lighted them.

*

There is a singing group in this Catholic church today, a singing group which calls itself "Wildflowers." The lead is a tall, square-jawed teen-aged boy, buoyant and glad to be here. He carries a guitar; he plucks out a little bluesy riff and hits some chords. With him are the rest of the Wildflowers. There is an old woman, wonderfully determined; she has long orange hair and is dressed country-and-western style. A long embroidered strap around her neck slings a big western guitar low over her pelvis. Beside her stands a frail, withdrawn fourteen-year-old boy, and a large Chinese man in his twenties who seems to want to enjoy himself but is not quite sure how to. He looks around wildly as he sings, and shuffles his feet. There is also a very tall teen-aged girl, presumably the lead singer's girl friend; she is delicate of feature, half serene and half petrified, a wispy soprano. They straggle out in front of the altar and teach us a brand-new hymn.

It all seems a pity at first, for I have overcome a fiercely anti-Catholic upbringing in order to attend Mass simply and solely to escape Protestant guitars. Why am I here? Who gave these nice Catholics guitars? Why are they not mumbling in Latin and performing superstitious rituals? What is the Pope thinking of?

*

During communion, the priest handed me a wafer which proved to be stuck to five other wafers. I waited while he tore the clump into rags of wafer, resisting the impulse to help. Directly to my left, and all through the communion, a woman was banging out the theme from The Sound Of Music on a piano.

*

Why do we people in churches seem like cheerful, brainless tourists on a packaged tour of the Absolute?

The tourists are having coffee and doughnuts on Deck C. Presumably someone is minding the ship, correcting the course, avoiding icebergs and shoals, fueling the engines, avoiding icebergs and shoals, fueling the engines, watching the radar screen, noting weather reports radioed in from shore. No one would dream of asking the tourists to do these things. Alas, among the tourists on Deck C, drinking coffee and eating donuts, we find the captain, and all the ship's officers, and all the ship's crew.

On the whole, I do not find Christians, outside of the catacombs, sufficiently sensible of conditions. Does anyone have the foggiest idea what sort of power we so blithely invoke? Or, as I suspect, does no one believe a word of it? The churches are children playing on the floor with their chemistry sets, mixing up a batch of TNT to kill a Sunday morning. It is madness to wear ladies' straw hats and velvet hats to church; we should all be wearing crash helmets. Ushers should issue life preservers and signal flares; they should lash us to our pews.

*

A high school stage play is more polished than this service we have been rehearsing since the year one. In two thousand years, we have not worked out the kinks. We positively glorify them. Week after week we witness the same miracle: that God is so mighty he can stifle his own laughter. Week after week, we witness the same miracle: that God, for reasons unfathomable, refrains from blowing our dancing bear act to smithereens.

Who can believe it?


from Holy The Firm and Teaching A Stone To Talk

Herb Gardner, "General-All-Purpose Apology"

I shall now leave you breathless with the strange and wondrous tale of this sturdy lad's adventures today in downtown Oz.

Picture, if you will, me. I am walking on East Fifty-first Street an hour ago and I decided to construct and develop a really decorative, general-all-purpose Apology. Not complicated, just the words "I am sorry" said with a little style.

Sorry for what? Anything. For being late, early, stupid, asleep, silly, alive--

Well, y'know when you're walking down the street talking to yourself how sometimes you suddenly say a coupla words out loud? So I said "I'm sorry," and this fellah, complete stranger, he looks up a second and says "That's all right, Mac," and goes on.

He automatically forgave me.

I communicated. Five o'clock rush hour in midtown you could say "Sir, I believe your hair is on fire," and they wouldn't hear you. So I decided to test the whole thing out scientifically, I stayed right there on the corner of Fifty-first and Lex for a while, just saying "I'm sorry" to everybody that went by. "Oh, I'm so sorry, sir..." "I'm terribly sorry, madam..." "Say there, Miss, I'm sorry."

Of course, some people just gave me a funny look, but I swear, seventy-five percent of them forgave me! "Forget it, buddy." "That's O.K. really." Two ladies forgave me in unison, one fellah forgave me from a passing car, and one guy forgave me for his dog. "Poofer forgives the nice man, don't you, Poofer?"

It was fabulous. I had tapped some vast reservoir. Something had happened to all of them for which they felt somebody should apologize. If you went up to people on the street and offered them money, they'd refuse it. But everybody accepts apology immediately. It is the most negotiable currency. I said to them "I am sorry," and they were all so generous, so kind. You could give 'em love and it wouldn't be accepted half as graciously, as unquestioningly.

I could run up on the roof right now and holler "I am sorry," and half a million people would holler right back, "That's O.K., just see that you don't do it again!"

That's the most you should expect from life, a really good apology.


from "A Thousand Clowns" by Herb Gardner

C.S. Lewis, "As The Ruin Falls"

All this is flashy rhetoric about loving you.
I never had a selfless thought since I was born.
I am mercenary and self-seeking through and through:
I want God, you, all friends, merely to serve my turn.

Peace, re-assurance, pleasure, are the goals I seek,
I cannot crawl one inch outside my proper skin:
I talk of love – a scholar's parrot may talk Greek –
But, self-imprisoned, always end where I begin.

Only that now you have taught me (but how late) my lack.
I see the chasm. And everything you are was making
My heart into a bridge by which I might get back
From exile, and grow man. And now the bridge is breaking.

For this I bless you as the ruin falls. The pains
You give me are more precious than all other gains.

Hormones

I'm having a brief sabbatical this weekend as Jane has her sister Lois over and two of Lois' sister-in-laws - Jan and Ginny. They're all catching up after several years apart, I'm sure reminiscing about teen years spent together at a Brethren camp near Timmins. Anyway, I've been invited to find other things to do and places to be. So I taped video greetings yesterday for a new Chinese church building expansion banquet (that I can't attend) and then spent the afternoon, with my Mom, visiting my Dad at CAMA Woodland nursing home. He was quite lucid in some ways, for a change - though in and out of sleep. Thought at first I was his brother (Bert, who's been dead for several years - which doesn't say much for my facial colouring) but then thanked me for coming, calling me Laurie when I was leaving. Stayed overnight with friends in Hamilton and, because I have a really sore back, didn't go to church with them - which adds to my being stiffnecked and perverse, I suppose. Soup for lunch and then home to Jane, and to a house empty of 'sisters' - but I'm sure with a lingering aura of hormones. Ah, well.

Only Jesus

When there are no answers, only mystery, and when the road seems closed and all bridges back and forward appear to be washed away, one turns to the Friend who sticks closer than a brother.

Choices

Sometimes you feel that whatever you do, you just cannot win. Speaking to a graduating class a few years ago, Woody Allen said to the graduates: "More than any other time in its history humankind faces a crossroads. One path leads to despair and utter hopelessness. The other to total extinction. Let us pray that we have the wisdom to choose correctly." We've all had days when we feel like that. Question is - what to do about them?

The World is Flat

That's the title of a book by Pulitzer prize winner Thomas L. Friedman, subtitled: A Brief History of the Twenty-First Century. This is an astounding book that, as the blurb has it - "helps you see things in a new way." Friedman writes for the New York Times where he is the foreign affairs columnist. The lightning fast and changing times in which we live reflect incredible advances in technology and communications. The globe has shrunk, time zones have become almost meaningless. Now, the new and remarkable convergences of things like weblogs, the internet, global out-sourcing and in-sourcing have created a new world for commerce, knowledge, and nearly every other aspect of life on this planet. Globalization, again as the blurb has it, "has shifted into warp-drive." This book is must reading for present global understanding and future-think implications.

Hymn to Jesus

(Tune: Love Divine all Loves Excelling)

Worthy! Majesty! - sing to Jesus!
He, the King of Kings, the Lord,
Healing touch for each soul wounded
Life abundant, fresh His Word;
Jesus, Alpha and Omega,
Christ, the Bright and Morning Star,
Precious Companion, our start and our ending
Lightens our Journey to Heaven afar.

Brightness, clarity streams from Jesus
As we seek to do His will,
Beauty, joy, in His near Presence
Each new morning's mercies thrill;
Living Door that opens Heaven,
Lamb once slain to break the curse,
Manna that feeds us each day in our hunger,
Water that quenches the gift of thirst.

Sure our victory now, in Jesus
Strength for battles we all face,
Sends us venturing with His blythe Spirit
Girds and guides us in the race;
Grants us peace that this world cannot offer,
Grace to face each daily trial,
Hymns to sing, though in a dark prison,
Songs through pain — and often His smile.

Precious solace found in Jesus,
Hope and guidance on the Way,
Such a marvellous Source of Wisdom
Showing us His will each new day;
As we trust and ask Him humbly
In our strivings we are blest;
Comforts and calms us in all of life’s ventures
Safe, we journey into Rest.

Faith

Faith, writes Frederick Buechner, is the direction your feet start walking - when you discover that you are loved.

Deep Peace

Thoughtful Love

Mahatma Gandhi stepped aboard a train one day - but as he did so one of his shoes slipped off and landed on the track. He was unable to retrieve it as the train slowly moved ahead.

Then, to the astonishment of those who were with him, Gandhi calmly removed his other shoe and threw it back along the track to land as closely as possible to the other.

He smiled at a fellow passenger who was nonplussed as to why he had done that. Said Gandhi: Now the poor man who finds the shoe lying on the track will have a pair he can use.

Encouragement

Keep away from folk who try to belittle your ambitions. Small people always do that, but the really great make you feel that you too can become great.

- Mark Twain

Love Cures

Dr. Karl Menninger said once that love cures people - both the ones who give it and the ones who receive it.

More

Wanting to know God more, to go deeper, to experience all that He has for us - surely that is our desire, at least some of the time.

One night a group of nomads were surrounded by a great Light. They felt they were in the Presence of a celestial being, and their anticipation and wonder was great as they awaited an important heavenly message.

Finally a Voice spoke. "Gather as many pebbles as you can; put them in your saddlebags; travel a day's journey, and tomorrow night will find you glad - and it will find you sad."

The Visitor departed. The nomads shared their disappointment for they had expected the revelation of a great universal truth - something to enable them to create wealth, health and purpose for the world. Instead, they had been given a task that made no sense to them at all.

Nevertheless, the memory of the brilliance of their visitor caused each of them to pick up least a few pebbles to deposit in their saddlebags.

They travelled a day's journey and made camp at night. But when each reached into his saddle bag, he discovered that every pebble gathered had become a diamond!

They were glad they had diamonds. They were sad they had not gathered more pebbles.

Ministry

 As with most great books and authors, one can re-read them with new insight and increased profit time and again. Henri Nouwen is one who's writings continue to inspire and to touch my life deeply. He wrote, in Lifesigns: Intimacy, Fecundity and Ecstasy in Christian Perspecive - All Ministry is a caring attentiveness to vulnerable lives, and a grateful receiving of the variety of fruits by which they manifest their beauty.

The Blue Boat

Tobermory, Isle of Mull, Scotland

Evermore

Stained glass image of Christ, St. Mungo's Cathedral, Glasgow, Scotland

Prudentius Clemens Aurelius lived between 348 and 410 AD. A lawyer by training he was for many years employed in the civil service of Spain. He quit that aspect of his life, determined in a new way to commit himself to becoming a devoted servant of Christ. Writing in Latin, he published many of his hymns and poetry. To us now, he seems obscure and unknown but some of his hymns are still sung. They speak of the eternal and of the Eternal One, who is for believers in Him, daily, the same unchanging Friend.

Of the Father's love begotten,
Ere the worlds began to be,
He is Alpha and Omega
He the Source, the Ending He,
Of the things that are,
That have been,
And the future years shall see,
Evermore and evermore!

All Will be Well

Julian of Norwich (1342-1416) was a Benectine mystic whose little cell I have visited in Norwich, Norfolk England. She was a recluse and seldom left her little room but she was able to 'see' far beyond the confines of the parish and the present tumult of her day. She wrote the first published book in the English language by a woman and was motivated in her life and writings by her belief that “the [Lord Jesus] will have all our love fastened to Him.”

Fressingfield, in NE Suffolk, is just a few miles due south of Norwich, Norfolk. In and around this little village nestled in small hills, my line of Barbers have lived since at least the 1300's - until my line (through gg grandfather Robert) came to Guelph, Canada in 1836.

Robert was trying, no doubt, to put behind him his recent arrest at a 'riot' at the infamous Bulcamp Workhouse. Conditions in that place seemed to him and others of the day, and to me still, to be intolerable. With so many newly poor and unemployed farm workers, often coming from large families, and with the government's Corn Laws and with the new technologies such as steam threshing machines replacing much sheer manpower' - there was not much hope for many for gainful employment or advance.

Instead they were consigned to the dreadful 'House of Industry,' were called 'inmates' and in the case of spouses separated into the men's or women's quarters. Frustrated, the agricultural populace sizzled, boiled and finally blew in this and many other similar settings throughout England.

I treasure notes indicating that Robert's father William paid surety to gain his release, perhaps so he could travel to Canada with a family whose daughter, Harriet Oakes, he would soon marry in this 'new world.'

Who knows how things - born of awful, evil circumstances will ultimately turn out, with influences evolving towards the good of generations yet unborn?

We too, in the chaos, frustrations - and in the midst of the seemingly random events that influence us in so many ways - make our own choices and sacrifices. Perhaps, even in struggle and uncertainty, they reflect the same light of hope and ultimate rest in which Dame Julian lived. In such faith she would say: All shall be well, and all shall be well; and all manner of things shall be well.

Things We Carry

An old cart in vieux Montreal reminds me that we carry with us, in our hearts, things that are colourful and beautiful, that live with us still.

Next Generation

My son Andrew and his wife Dana, at a recent wedding in Montreal.

Life - Ambiguous & Abundant

My mother's mother's mother was christened in London, England at the beautiful historical church, St. Martins in the Fields. I love the dicta of their Ten Point Charter and especially the last one's wording: We are committed to identifying and affirming what is good and identifying and opposing what is evil, and living as best we can in the mess in the middle.

Yes . . . humbly seeking to live with and for Christ as best we can - in the mess in the middle.

Discouragement

Every once in a while we just seem to lose steam. I think it was Dr. Leslie Weatherhead - not only one of the world's great preachers, but also a distinguished psychologist who had that experience. It is said that in middle-age he entered a period of depression that was one of almost unrelieved darkness.

One of the things that helped him was a quotation from Robert Browning:
If I stoop into a dark tremendous sea of cloud
It is but for a time.
I hold God's lamp close to my breast.
Its splendour soon or late will pierce
the gloom.
I shall emerge one day.

A Favorite Author

Frederich Buechner always challenges my faith, inspires my heart and gives new insight into both how to understand and how to say things that are important.

Here's an example - "The story of Jesus is full of darkness as well as of light. It is a story that hides more than it reveals. It is the story of a mystery we must never assume we understand and that comes to us breathless and broken with unspeakable beauty at the heart of it yet by no means a pretty story though that is the way we're apt to peddle it much of the time.

"We sand down the rough edges, play down the obscurities and contradictions. What we can't explain, we explain away. We set Jesus forth as clear-eyed and noble-browed whereas the chances are he can't have been anything but old before his time once the world started working him over and, once the world was through, his clear eyes were swollen shut and his noble brow as much of a shambles as the rest of him."

Marvellous!

Nathan

Grandson Nathan is one of the chief lights and delights of my life.

Nunnery Ruins, Iona, Scotland

Things both new and old are worth pursuing.

Provider and Radiance

Things are not always as they appear to be.

Colonies of Heaven

I'm almost finished reading "Emerging Churches" by Eddie Gibbs and Ryan K. Bolger. I recommend it for any who want to be conversant with emerging churches. It is disturbing (to a 58 year old) and yet instructive, prophetic and, I find, encouraging. I want to reflect more upon what I have found within its pages.

Living a life with Jesus, and living that life 'on the Way' with others in a messy, profoundly altered world is my passion and goal, though I confess I'm too easily distracted and diverted by my own too self-centred motives, passions and fears.

Emergents are on to something. I want to learn from them. They are struggling to receive, enter into and live the gift of God's Presence and Reign (the Kingdom).

With many of them, I too am profoundly upset with what purports to be the answers we too quickly 'share' - in our still-modern, contemporary attempts to live out the Good News and in that life Jesus called 'abundant' - when our world has moved beyond being simply 'modern.'

I want to journey with those who, in Len Sweet's words, want to move away from or beyond mere 'answers' to the 'mysteries' - into the Mystery.

Burlington Bay

My Canon Power Shot is only 3.3 megapixels but it’s been great for all I need at present.
(click for larger pic)

Last week I spent several hours at LaSalle Park Marina in Burlington (overlooking Burlington Bay towards Hamilton harbour). Boats bob at their moorings near the northern shoreline at what used to be Oaklands Park. Many 'revival preachers' like Gypsy Smith ministered there in the early part of the last century. Now it is comprised of gorgeous luxury homes.

Near the distant shore my mother was baptized in the 1930's, upon her profession of faith in Jesus, along with a number of others from the (then) Freeman Gospel Tabernacle which later became Brant Bible Church. It joined recently with Park Bible Church to form the ‘Compass Point’ congregation.

The old cabins from Oaklands were taken by my grandfather and uncles, by truck, to Fair Havens Bible Conference on the Trent canal system near Beaverton, where they were put to good use for a number of years.

My Red Violin

This is one of two violins which I own. I've played the piano, tuba and tenor sax for years, but having a go at the violin has been a recent challenge. And most interesting, as this is the most difficult instrument imaginable to play. Yet I love to crank up the CD and play along (when the house is otherwise empty, of course - for otherwise my music brings tears to people's eyes for all the wrong reasons).

The violin varnish is red and the violin, made in 1927, is one of many of beautiful vintage made by James Reynold Carlisle. Carlisle was a noted American violin maker, the brother-in-law of Victor Corsi (born Achilles Vittorio Coggi in 1893 in Supino, Italy).

James Reynold Carlisle worked in Cincinnati Ohio in the early 1900's and is said to have made some of the best American violins of that era.

Carlisle was born in Kentucky in 1886 and in 1920 was married to a woman named Blanche who was born in Ohio. They had a son Francis and a daughter Dorothy. In 1920 the family was living at 112 Chapel Street in Cincinnati. He died in 1962.

Clonmacnoise, County Wicklow, Ireland

On a recent trip to Ireland, I visited the ancient site of the monastery of Clonmacnoise, Ireland. Dating back nearly 1,500 years, it is located in County Offaly. The site was chosen circa 545 AD by St. Ciaran. He was the son of an Ulsterman who had settled in Connaught.

Saint Ciaran, before establishing his own monastery in Clonmacnoise, was with St. Enda, a strict teacher and disciplinarian, on the island of Inís Mór off the coast of Galway.

Ideally situated on the River Shannon, Clonmacnoise was founded at the junction of both road and river travel in what was then the Kingdom of Meath. Many of the kings of Connaught, as well as those of Tara, were buried there. Today the site borders the provinces of Connaught, Leinster and Munster.

Passion and Movements

"Nothing worthwhile is ever accomplished wihtout passion . . ."

A movement happens when a number of people share similar passions. They 'click' - sharing similar concerns, challenges, hopes and often with shared vision and values.

But certainly shared passion also calls for shared action and outreach to the benefit of others - ie. beyond an organization or group being together for mere co-dependent affiliation and its own collective benefits.

People who share passion and vision begin to collaborate to address, or enter, or move forward.

MOVEMENTS tend to become become mere organizations, losing 'steam' - losing passion. Beware the tendency of a MAN even though his shared vision and dreams become that of a MOVEMENT only to have his memory carved on a MONUMENT and to have the whole matter end up as in a MAUSOLEUM.

Mavericks and entrepreneurs join movements -- not institutions and organizations. Too often (if they do find themselves part of an organization), they leave or are forced out, for institutions and organizations always lean towards bureaucracy and are often frightened by risk and creativity. For example, churches and denominations don't know what to do with mavericks, passionate people -- emergents. Missional and 'outside-the-box' thinking and caring leaders (apostles, prophets, evangelists) are needed in Christian churches, denominations and organizations (if they can stomach it) and not just those leaders who are more apt to think inside-the box (such as pastors and teachers, administrators, facilitators).

Can the organization in which you serve remain efficient and caring (moving beyond bureaucracy) and yet also attract, keep and release passionate people with new ideas?

Beannacht

Another blessing - 'for Josie' - in the beginning of John O'Donohue's wonderful book on soulfriendship, entitled: Anam Cara.

On the day when
the weight deadens
on your shoulders
and you stumble,
may the clay dance
to balance you.

And when your eyes
freeze behind
the gray window
and the ghost of loss
gets in to you,
may a flock of colours,
indigo, red, green
and azure blue
come to awaken in you
a meadow of delight.

When the canvas frays
in the curach of thought
and a stain of ocean
blackens beneath you,
may there come across the waters
a path of yellow moonlight
to bring you safely home.

May the nourishment of the earth be yours,
may the clarity of light be yours,
may the fluency of the ocean be yours,
may the protection of the ancestors be yours.

And so may a slow
wind work these words
of love around you,
an invisible cloak
to mind your life.

Blessing

A profound and helpful blessing - my favorite for each day.

The Lorica of St. Patrick

I arise today
Through a mighty strength, the invocation of the Trinity,
Through a belief in the Threeness,
Through confession of the Oneness
Of the Creator of creation.

I arise today
Through the strength of Christ's birth and His baptism,
Through the strength of His crucifixion and His burial,
Through the strength of His resurrection and His ascension,
Through the strength of His descent for the judgment of doom.

I arise today
Through the strength of the love of cherubim,
In obedience of angels,
In service of archangels,
In the hope of resurrection to meet with reward,
In the prayers of patriarchs,
In preachings of the apostles,
In faiths of confessors,
In innocence of virgins,
In deeds of righteous men.

I arise today
Through the strength of heaven;
Light of the sun,
Splendor of fire,
Speed of lightning,
Swiftness of the wind,
Depth of the sea,
Stability of the earth,
Firmness of the rock.

I arise today
Through God's strength to pilot me;
God's might to uphold me,
God's wisdom to guide me,
God's eye to look before me,
God's ear to hear me,
God's word to speak for me,
God's hand to guard me,
God's way to lie before me,
God's shield to protect me,
God's hosts to save me
From snares of the devil,
From temptations of vices,
From every one who desires me ill,
Afar and anear,
Alone or in a mulitude.

I summon today all these powers between me and evil,
Against every cruel merciless power that opposes my body and soul,
Against incantations of false prophets,
Against black laws of pagandom,
Against false laws of heretics,
Against craft of idolatry,
Against spells of women and smiths and wizards,
Against every knowledge that corrupts man's body and soul.
Christ shield me today
Against poison, against burning,
Against drowning, against wounding,
So that reward may come to me in abundance.

Christ with me, Christ before me, Christ behind me,
Christ in me, Christ beneath me, Christ above me,
Christ on my right, Christ on my left,
Christ when I lie down, Christ when I sit down,
Christ in the heart of every man who thinks of me,
Christ in the mouth of every man who speaks of me,
Christ in the eye that sees me,
Christ in the ear that hears me.

I arise today
Through a mighty strength, the invocation of the Trinity,
Through a belief in the Threeness,
Through a confession of the Oneness
Of the Creator of creation

St. Patrick (ca. 377)

Summer Relationships

In the summer sunshine heat and stresses of life, deep relationships, like swimming pools, are very welcome gifts. Yet sometimes the soil from normal plunge and frolic along with life's debris and wind's litter can blow in seed-keys, flower-petals, leaves. Normal care and upkeep with necessary extrications and clarifying conditioners can keep friendships in good repair. Then once again can come times of refreshing.

English Garden

Watch the video

I love the riot and confusion of an English garden. Not quite where I want it to be yet, but getting there.

Rake Farm, Glaisdale, North Yorkshire; home of Elizabeth (nee Pennock) Leng.

Ancestors

For several generations the Pennock family lived at Limber Hill, between Glaisdale and Egton, North Riding of Yorkshire. These derelict building may date to the 1600's.

An old sampler created by ancestor Eizabeth (nee Pennock)Leng, of Rake Farm, Glaisdale, in the North Riding of Yorkshire.

Where do the weeks go? Holidays soon - and then more time . . . The pic is from a recent trip to Iona, Scotland, looking out towards the Isle of Mull.

Been reading a great book, reflecting on old age, by Ronald Blythe - The View in Winter. It is a timeless and moving study of the perplexities of living to a great old age, as related by a wide range of men an women: miners, villagers, doctors, teachers, craftsmen, soldiers, priests, the widowed and long-retired. Their voices are set in the context of what literature, art, religion and medicine over the centuries have said about ageing. The result is an acclaimed and compelling reflection on an inevitable aspect of our human experience.

Thots of Ireland

Thots of Ireland

From a recent trip to Ireland. An experiment in uploading video. It's way too long - but it shows me what I can do and how a blog can develop - and also include amazing video log (vlog) possibilities. I don't think I can post a video directly via Blogger - but I've come 'through the back door' using another program - i.e. via http://blip.tv/.

Watch the video

So, here we go and one can only hope it all improves as we go ! I want this blog to be simply an eclectic gathering and random scattering of some of my thots, pics, videos and reflections, 360 degree observations of life and love, in the depths, breadths and heights of discovery and sharing . . . perhaps of interest to no one more than myself. But then, maybe others might be stimulated to smile and resonate, in some ways, with me.