1 Hour Late For Church…
Holy shift Batman! Have you ever tried to tail a car? I don’t mean in an entirely creepy way, just like you’re following someone to a place you’ve never been. How does it feel when they go through a yellow light, and you’re stuck behind, or make a turn you’re not sure you can make, […]
Continue reading...The Spectacle
Thursday, March 1, 2012
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In case you missed it, or deemed it irrelevant, last weeks cultural landscape featured the final and preeminent American arts industry awards show – the Oscars. I happened to be somewhere near a TV for part of the run-up to the show itself, and was struck by how many different meanings there can be for […]
Continue reading...Ash Wednesday
Sunday, February 26, 2012
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Well now…it seems that a very important day in the Liturgical Calender has come and gone, hardly making a ripple on the surface of the culture. I am (of course?) referring to Ash Wednesday, the day that launches us into Lent. What is Ash Wednesday about, and why haven’t the greeting card companies picked up […]
Continue reading...The warmth of Winter…
Friday, February 3, 2012
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Our culture tends to have a difficult relationship with the season of winter. Most view it as a reality that must be suffered through (or avoided) in order to make it to the more enjoyable months of the year. Recently I read a book which has shifted my perception of winter from a season frozen […]
Continue reading...The Radical Alternative to "Up-ing"…
Sunday, January 29, 2012
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A couple of months ago a good friend of mine was let go by the company he had worked at for several years. It was a fairly abrupt action, without any performance issues – essentially an act of “financial necessity” on the part of the employer. In the course of telling me the story, he […]
Continue reading..."Why, God, why?"
Friday, January 20, 2012
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I read a story this past week about an American athlete whose career was being presented as a “comeback”. This person runs the hurdles; an event in which the margin for error is extremely slight. Despite consistently performing at a world champion standard, and having every reason to expect to do the same at the […]
Continue reading...The Big Debate…
Saturday, January 14, 2012
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“Science without religion is lame, religion without science is blind.– Albert Einstein It seems that we can’t get more than three verses into the “Big Story” before we come to a Big Debate. Ah well…if we are probing the things that matter, we must come sooner or later (in this case sooner) to things that remind […]
Continue reading...Stories, the guiding narrative…
Sunday, January 8, 2012
One of my favourite images about the power of stories comes, as I heard it told, from the Aboriginal peoples of Australia. The tradition of this people group is an aural rather than written one, and because of how deeply connected their lives are to nature, much of the most important information that needs to […]
Continue reading...Today's service is at 7pm!!
Sunday, January 1, 2012
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I had a conversation recently with a well known Canadian painter and film maker about the power of words of blessing in our lives. We were talking about identity – what it takes to sort our who you are, to hold onto that while also making space for the “other”, how this all plays into […]
Continue reading...Can we learn to wait instead of consume?
Saturday, December 10, 2011
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When it comes to music in shopping malls, the human race can be divided into two groups: those that notice the music and those that don’t. I’m in the first group. I not only notice it, I listen to it, and then suffer from having it stuck in my head until I find some way […]
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Wednesday, March 7, 2012
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