Thanks for stopping by here. Thanks for any time spent reading my rambles. Thanks especially for comments left or comments you meant to leave.
The time’s come for me to close up CV for the season. I’ve got lots to say, lots I’m thinking about, but even more that I’m already saying, stories told in other settings and thoughts best left unshared here. So for now and the foreseeable future I won’t be posting anything new here.
It’s been helpful for me, I hope it’s been interesting or amusing for those who stop by and I hope to have left something of use for my kidlings to refer back to once I’m not around to tell them the same story for the 30th time.
I’ll go out with this and say thanks again for being part of this experience with me… read more…
Last week I was at a gathering for the purpose of talking through issues related to “Doing Hermeneutics in a Postmodern Culture”. There were about a dozen of us there. Most from the Maritimes, one from Ontario, a couple from the U.K. via British Columbia, one from the U.S. and the facilitator/lecturer was from South Africa.
As we talked through the issues it occurred to me that one of the struggles in the Church in the Western world is that we basically have two separate sub-cultures worshipping together in most churches: the Encyclopedias and the Wikipedias. The Encyclopedias are the folks most affected by modernity. For them, it’s about protecting the text, keeping it safe on the reserve shelf so it’s there for everyone to get what they need from it when they need it. The text is set, you don’t change it, you just read it and gather the info you need for your speech, report, exam or general interest. Simply put, information does not change. If it was true yesterday, it is true now and it will be true tomorrow. read more…
I’m chewing on this today and finding it resonate with so much of the geography of where my own walk with Jesus has led me to…
“As Moses found out on the peaks of Mount Sinai, the closer he journeyed to God, the more he was enveloped in mist and “unknowing.” As Aaron discovered at the foot of Mount Sinai, the farther people journeyed from God, the more they became certain what God looks like and cast the golden calf.”
Lately I feel heart-sick over the emails I receive, almost daily, that focus on ‘destiny’, ‘transferring the wealth of the wicked over to the righteous’, ‘revival’ and Christian numerology that reveals an immense boredom with Jesus. He, even more than the elusive Donna to whom I am married, proves to be bigger on the inside than on the out, simple and complex.
I’ve been thinking lately about the tendency we have to want a paint by numbers way to follow Jesus rather than the jazz improv he calls us to.
I love the picture above. I don’t know if Van Gogh would be relieved or a little disappointed to discover that Starry Night was in that mid-range between easy and difficult.
I’ve been thinking lately about the English word, “sin”. I’ve been thinking about what we mean by that word. And it’s funny and sad all at once that just like the word “love”, it has come to mean so many things, has been appropriated by so many, that it almost loses it’s value as an expression of reality.
In the context of the Jesus story it’s especially frustrating as it plays such a key part and yet, as an English word, it fails miserably to convey the real denotation and connotation of the original story-tellers. (I’m not implying that the Jesus story is FICTION by my use of the word “story”.) So how do we now, in an age and culture that knows not sin, convey the message, tell the story, in words and images that reveal the reality behind the expression?
This is a follow up to yesterday.
Clearly, from the responses, yesterday’s post wasn’t of great interest but I’m doing this follow up because, well, I can. 
I’d love to interview my graduating class and write this book. I think we were caught in a cultural “perfect storm” and I’m intrigued by the idea of following up to see how life has unfolded for us. I can only hope it would be half as interesting as Woody’s class.
Enjoy.
Here’s a re-post of a post from a couple years ago. I’m posting it while I’m running as fast as I can to keep up with my life at the moment. I sort of knew it was going to be like this coming back from holidays but circumstances are snowballing quickly and turning the approach of fall into something exciting and overwhelming all at once. And I wouldn’t want it any other way!
In the midst of all this I’ve been feeling a little nostalgic in between projects. Honestly it all started a few weeks ago when I suddenly realized (and I wish this was a joke) how old I was. The elusive Donna just turned my age and will stay that way for a few more months until I crank it up to 46. I was sure I was turning 45 this year. 46. I don’t know why but that seems a whole lot older to me than 45.
We’re also hitting our 25th anniversary this month and we were reminiscing about a 25th anniversary party my brother organized for my parents that I managed to get some credit for. My parents seemed so old at that party and now here I am, it’s not possible that I’m as old as I thought they were then. I don’t feel older and my wife often assures me that I don’t act more mature. Weird. read more…
Hi, swamped with my to-do list at the moment. Will return to regular posting soon. Lots to talk about and stories to tell but no time to do it right now!
I’m following an interesting discussion started by Frank Viola (author of Pagan Christianity, Reimagining the Church, From Here To Eternity). It started over at Out of Ur, a great blog to keep up with, and continues on some of his own blog sites. The comments are as interesting and insightful as the posts themselves.
Frank observes…
“There is a growing phenomenon in the body of Christ today. Alongside of the missional church movement, the emerging church movement, and the house church movement, there is a mode of thinking that I call “postchurch Christianity.” read more…
