The Write Side of the Page

All Beautiful the March of Days

2017-09-07T11:29:00.000-03:00

When I was driving to work this morning I had this realization, I had not once looked at the speedometer as I drove. But when I checked it in that moment I was driving 50 km/h. I played with this fact, because I also drive through an 80 zone, so I did not check, waited, checked, yup, I was driving 80. It has become so natural for me to drive this route that I do it automatically.

There is so much in my life that I seem to do automatically. Some days I am in the shower and I wonder, did I wash my hair – and yes, I did. There are a ton of things I do the same way over and over without thinking about it.

And then there are those moments when you wake up in the morning and reality slaps you rudely across both cheeks in the form of frost.

The seasons always seem to surprise me. You would think after nearly half a century of summers ending in nights too cold to sit outside that it would no longer shock, but it does.

So why is that. Perhaps most of you out there reading this are fine with the change of seasons. Perhaps you are okay that soon the invisible mystery of breath will be solidified before your very eyes. Maybe you don’t even mind that it rains for months in the spring… But for me, even the hint of a change from summer is unwelcome. I never get used to cold.

The title of this column comes from an old hymn. Perhaps you have sung it in a church before? The opening verse, written by Frances Whitmarsh While in 1912 reads like this:

All beautiful the march of days, as seasons come and go;

The Hand that shaped the rose hath wrought the crystal of the snow;

Hath sent the hoary frost of Heav'n, the flowing waters sealed,

And laid a silent loveliness on hill and wood and field.

I wish I was there. I really do. I know the changing leaves are going to be phenomenal. I know the cool nights make sleep easier. I know Pumpkin Spice Lattes are back at Starbucks. And yet, I am pining for 30 degrees and sunshine.

My attitude, although probably familiar, is wrong.

I know this for certain because I have tried in all other aspects of life to adopt a more relaxed and spiritual attitude to letting things be what they are. When we accept life and live in the moment it is easy to find oneself surrounded by beauty.

Embracing life in its fullness, the good and the bad, the cold and the hot, is a spiritual practice. It is an important way to be. I just find it hard.

The Bible starts… our religious manual as Christians starts… with this long convoluted creation story. So over the last 4000 or so years of collecting religious stories the agreed upon starting place is creation. Everyone should read that first. And to be fair, not a lot of the first bit matters. I don't care if stars came before sea or vice versa. But the message of the Biblical account does matter. The point matters.

So do you know what is said over and over and over in that story? The one repeated truth? “And it was good!” God created trees and they were good, God created swamps and they were good, God created… wait for it… snow… and it was good.”

So, back to work, back to school, back to coats and shoes with laces. Soon the shoveling, but first the turkey… life has seasons. And we need to embrace them and live in them and love them. Even when it is hard. There is beauty in everything.

TERRORISTS

2017-06-26T11:30:00.000-03:00

Karl Marx once famously quipped that religion is the opium of the people,

By that he was saying that religion is used to keep people happy, to keep them complacent, and to keep them in line.

Basically, if you be good and follow the rules and do not stir up any trouble, you are being faithful to God, who is in charge anyway, and you will be rewarded beyond your wildest dreams in the afterlife.

To be fair, Marx was right that too often this is what religion becomes. I saw it growing up where some of the more strict baptists I knew believed the world to be a vale of tears from which they would one day be rescued. And when you see this life as a place you need to be rescued from, what difference does anything really make? Why recycle for example, if there is no value to this world. Why worry about the environment? Why try to change things?

As long as you are good, follow the rules, confess your faith… you will be rescued from the hell that is life on earth.

If you are a Christian I am thinking this might not sound all that crazy. There is at least a part of that way of thinking built into every denominations way of understanding the faith. I just don’t think that most of us are so black and white anymore. But when someone dies we console each other with the thought that they are in heaven, and we make half hearted jokes about getting rewarded for our good behaviour.

I feel that sometimes we conveniently forget our own foibles when we look out into the world and condemn others.

So I want to suggest to you that when a fundamentalist does something terrible, when there are suicide bombers, when there are death threats, whenever religious extremism resorts to violence, their thinking is not very far off from our own.

Religious extremists come in many forms, don’t forget. There was that guy in Norway who shot all the teenagers, there was Timothy McVeigh in the states, I could do you a whole long list. But here is an interesting fact as reported by the Globe and Mail, 90% of the worlds terrorist attacks are performed by non Muslims, while the number one, overwhelmingly, targeted group of terrorism, is Muslims.

Terrorism, Murder, even rudeness have their genesis in this idea I have been talking about, that this world, these people, life itself, is only temporary. That there is something better waiting on the other side.

But for some reason we convince ourselves that Islamic extremists who are willing to strap a bomb on themselves, or open fire on strangers are completely crazy for thinking their reward is in heaven.

It is also a very Christian way to think. Think of the crusades, for example.

Think of Waco, the Jonestown Murders, even Charles Manson. These people all felt that death was preferable because it would usher in salvation. And they are all Christian.

Which brings me to the latest bit of London terror, the attack on the Finsbury Park Mosque. The media plays it up as if this guy was mentally ill and that is why he did it, which certainly is true. But he was also anti Muslim, and Christian.

I know I am circling around a topic without naming it. So here it is, the only true religious value is love. That is it, pure and simple. And the worst, the absolute worst people in the world for disregarding this truth are Christians - the people who claim to follow a person whose one message was that all of religious truth can be boiled down to “love God, love others, love yourself.”

That is not opiate stuff - that is not get into heaven stuff - that is hard truth, and hard work. And the first step to getting back in track is to admit that we are the ones who got off track in the first place, just saying.

THE NEWSPAPER INJUNCTION

2016-07-05T14:41:00.000-03:00

Karl Barth, a famous and influential theologian of the modern world, once said that a preacher needs to preach with the Bible in one hand and a newspaper in the other. In other words, one has to pay attention to the world and the word at the same time – and try to make sense of how they fit together.

So I would like to offer an opinion. It is solely my own. But I make it while keeping those two documents fresh in my mind.

For the last three months I have driven some 22,000 kilometres across Canada to the Yukon and then across the United States from Alaska through to Maine. I have seen many things, but what I saw the most of is people. People with outrageous accents, people with many different skin tones, people who were rich, people who were poor, people who wore tank tops and people who wore cowboy hats. You get the idea…

What I also saw is that they all go to Tim Horton’s for a coffee, they all get a doughnut at Dunkin’s, they all seem worried about self image, and most cannot drive. In other words – there are very few things that make us different compared to the things that make us the same. I am not sure whether that is a newspaper or bible type realization; perhaps a bit of both.

But then I read comments on social networking about how Trudeau is ruining the world by bringing Syrians into Canada. Or I see news articles about how Britain is leaving the European Union. I listen to campaign speeches by Donald Trump. I see so much in the news about differences – about making sure we remember it is us versus them. Whether them is a different religion, skin tone, sexuality, or nationality… there always has to be a them.

I lived with a Syrian for a week in Ontario during June. He made me think that I need to re-think what nice, calm, and hospitable means. It was Ramadan and he was fasting, He was a corporate lawyer in Syria, and here he was working in the 35-degree sun putting up canvas tents for weddings while not eating or drinking, and still being pleasant and hospitable. I get angry when I skip breakfast.

It was the same story over and over. I almost never met someone who was not just like me, and who was not happy and nice. And the people I met who seemed ornery, I am pretty sure it was because their dog just died, or someone else had treated them badly, or a whole slew of problems all of which I have too.

Wasn’t it Jesus who tried to help Jews, Samaritans, Roman’s and Greeks alike? Did he say to the Pharisees; no I will not heal you? Did he ever turn someone away? How about Paul who said that there are neither slave no free, Jew nor Greek, but all are one? Or the simple judge not lest ye be judged of my grandmother’s admonition.

I know that many, many people have weighed in around Brexit, Trump, Syrians and the like. I know that you have all heard the love your neighbour shtick. Even the there but for the grace of God go I statement makes most of us pause and think. But these columns have a specific audience. If you are reading them, you already are interested in religion and the faith. Perhaps you go to church or temple or synagogue. So I just want to remind you that we need to take the newspaper with a grain of salt. We need to take the Bible as a tool. We need to balance the reality of the world with the values of our faith. And we need to actually look at the people around us.

We are all in this together

Life and Death in Lent

2016-02-25T11:39:00.000-04:00

Religion Today - Moncton Times & Transcript - February 20th 2016

The reason for Lent is, in fact, preparing for the reality of death. Good Friday is when Jesus dies horribly. The thing is, as a lot of people will tell you, we have a tendency to skip over Good Friday and move right on to Easter- the festival of light and life which declares that even death is not the end and Jesus magically returns from the grave.

Perhaps it is only natural – but we are much fonder of life than we are of death.

There is even a term, and it came up recently, “The sanctity of life” when the news started once more talking about assisted suicide. Life is holy, goes the saying, and so it should be protected at all costs. Life – apparently – is more important than all of the miraculously wonderful things that go into living.

Here is the thing. I spent a morning talking to a man who recently lost his wife. Well – she recently died after a horrific eight-month journey into hell with the rare Jakob Creutzfeldt Disease, or as we think of it, the human version of Mad Cow Disease.

Now, she had a DNR, do not resuscitate order, and they had all talked about how she did not want so-called “heroic” measures taken. But the problem came when she slipped into a coma from which she would never recover – and did not die.

The decision was taken to stop everything that was helping to keeping her alive. Which meant to take out the feeding tube. What followed was four days of starving to death…

I know, this is not a very happy topic… the thing is, I had never really thought about the fact that what actually happens is that you stop feeding them and then let them starve. It seems a horrible way to die, even if you are incurably sick already.

It was one of his final statements that stuck with me and provoked this article. “We talk about preserving the sanctity of life, but we do not talk about the sanctity of death.”

After his wife’s unnecessary suffering he became even more keenly aware of the fact that the more humane solution would have been to help her die quicker, sooner, closer to when her actual life ended.

Currently, he is a fervent advocate of the Death with Dignity movement, and a strong supporter of what the news, unfortunately, calls physician-assisted suicide but which George calls physician-assisted passing over to the great next adventure.

His argument is an interesting one – why do we think being born is a gift from god, but dying is not? Why do we think that life is to be protected at all costs, even when it is no longer worth living? Why would ending the life of a person who is brain dead, in a coma, with no chance of recovery because holes have been eaten out of their brain be called murder and come with a 17-year jail sentence?

Is it not more likely that the moral and religious answer to what would Jesus do would be to administer enough morphine to stop her heart in a second?

That too would be a tough choice to make, a tough moment of courage and letting go. But it would be the humane thing to do – and is, in fact, the human thing to do when a horse breaks their leg or a dog gets cancer. Is it more important to help a pet not suffer than a beloved family member?

Lent is a time when we think about the deeper questions of faith and what it is that keeps us from being the best possible people we can be. The truth is that Jesus saw death as the best possible way to make his point about love and life. Maybe we can stop being so afraid of death. Perhaps it is time to celebrate everything that goes into making us who we are – including our death.

TRANSFIGURATION

2016-01-18T16:12:00.002-04:00

There is this story in the Bible – part of the Jesus Saga, which has become known as the Transfiguration.

Here it is in a nutshell: Jesus grabs a couple of his friends and they head up a mountain to pray. While they are there Jesus starts to glow and suddenly there are two other people there – Moses and Elijah and the three of them talk. Then Moses and Elijah fade away leaving Jesus alone with the three disciples. They want to stay. They want to erect some sort of monument. But Jesus tells them it is time to head to Jerusalem and perhaps death.

There is so much going on with this brief story – even if we completely ignore the radioactively glowing Jesus in the centre of the room.

As Jesus life unfolds this is a major turning point in the stories told about him because it separates the before and after in such a concrete way.

You can look at this a number of ways, before this moment Jesus was perhaps a little closed in terms of revealing his identity… he always put off questions and said, I’m not great, God is great. But here he is revealed as somehow special.

Secondly, before this moment Jesus was always focused on the here and now, healing and teaching, going walkabout through Israel. All of a sudden he turns his eyes towards Jerusalem, to be poetic like the Gospel writer Luke. Now he starts talking about his death, and what will come of that.

Thirdly, Jesus came to reform religion. He has some new ideas… and appearing with Moses and Elijah makes him the third in a series of reformers: Moses changed the faith when he led the people to the Promised Land and established them as a nation instead of a wandering people. Elijah represents the prophets and the way Judaism changed when it became more of an established religion with religious leaders. Now there is Jesus, who has come to change it again…

See, this episode, as it is written, has a very important task of changing the focus of Jesus life. It is, one in a series of four episodes: the birth story, the baptism story, the transfiguration, the death… Each of these is meant to illustrate how Jesus was exceptional.

Moments of change – moments of transformation – and moments that happen to all of us.

This is the fourth, and most important reason the story is told: it is about us.

Transfiguration is what happens at those crucial moments in life when everything changes. We might not be up on a mountain, but think about the birth of a child, or graduating from college, getting fired and having to reinvent ourselves… there are these moments when change is forced upon us and we all of a sudden face the future with certainty and clarity of understanding.

This is what I am discovering more and more as I read stories from the Bible and think about why someone wrote them down. What is it about this story that is meant to be passed on and is important for us? Because there is always a reason, always a connecting point that illustrates some great wisdom which would make our lives better.

This is something I wish I knew before now – we are not going to stay the same… life changes us. Life moulds us into something different at crucial moments and we are no longer the same person.

Too often we are like the disciples, wanting to hold on to the past even in the face of obvious evidence that things need to be different. Too often we have change swirling around us and try desperately to hold on to the past with the delusional belief that everything should stay the same.

The story of Jesus is the story of a man who accepted that God leads in different directions and in each moment accepted that and moved on faithfully into the future. From Carpenter, to Preacher, To Martyr.

Hopefully life has a nicer ending for us, but we still need to accept that transfiguration is possible, and when the moment is right, embrace what God is calling you to be.

ASKING FOR HELP

2016-01-18T16:11:00.000-04:00

There are those that believe a preacher simply preaches the message she needs to hear. Perhaps there is some truth to this, and perhaps a writer only writes what they need to read… but are any of you stressed this season?

I wish I was not – I truly do, I wish that Christmas was all magic and that winter was all wonderland. I wish that school breaks brought nothing but the joy I remember from childhood and that gifts magically appeared under the tree. I wish I was always on the same page with everyone and I wish that I could just be helpful and caring and loving to everyone.

I am, however, having trouble with all of these things.

There are days when I think I must be the only one who allows negativity to get the better of me, or the only one who over reacts and causes fights with people. It helps a little to know I am not the only one, though. So I imagine there are a few others like me out there – maybe because I need to.

I blame the Bible! Okay, this may seem like a stretch but hear me out… I try to live my life following in the footsteps and teaching of Jesus and all those wise prophets and holy folks from the Bible.

Somewhere along the line Sunday school or sermons left the impression on me that to be holy, to be good, one had to be without sin. If I want to be Jesus I have to love and accept everyone, right? I never feel anger or worry or fear, I never fight with anyone and I respect my parents, widows and orphans while healing the sick and finding the lost, and then I am a good person.

Like many religious people I have suffered from a black and white way of looking at the world. As an aside, google this, it is fascinating, the more religious you are the less you are the more you suffer from this… And so if I could not be perfect, I have failed, right?

The problem is, being depressed, asking for help, getting angry are all very real parts of the religious journey, even for our Biblical heroes. The prophet Elijah threw in the towel and went to hide in a cave and be alone because of the pressure he was under. Jonah was afraid to go and preach in Ninevah. Jesus himself left the crowds and tried to hide by walking along the seashore, got angry at temple salesmen and Samaritan women, and felt completely out of his depth when begging God to let him live in the Garden of Gethsemane. Islam has its own version of all of this when you consider that the Prophet Mohammed needed to get away from everyone regularly and headed to the cave at Mira. In fact, it was there that Gabriel gave him the Qur’an.

But this is not the way we usually look at our biblical figures. We usually see them as strong and sure role models who call us to be just like them and leave our worries behind. And when we buy into that it is only going to make it worse.

I know this is not very Christmassy, but I think the whole Christmas season builds stress in some of us and so I am hoping that maybe this helps a few people think about it a different way. Jesus was not born into a world to be perfect, he was born into an imperfect world as an imperfect person who happened to have a plan to help us do this life thing better.

If we let go of the myth that we, and everything else, can be perfect, perhaps we will be able to find it easier to deal with the negative emotions of the season.

Remembrance Day

2015-11-17T10:23:00.002-04:00

My grandfather fought and was wounded in World War II. He landed at Dieppe with the North Shore Regiment. I happen to come from a family where my father, grandfather, and pretty much someone from every generation as you go back was a soldier. I even started my illustrious adult life heading down that path.

On the other hand, my grandfather was a teacher, my father was a doctor, I am a minister and a writer, and if you go back through each generation of Anningsons you will find a lot of similar professions weaving their way through our ranks.

Remembrance Day is always a curious mix to me – there is the fact that we are remembering specific events, there is the fact that we are thankful for soldiers who decide to risk their lives to protect their culture, family, and country both now and then, there is the idea that we wish we really could beat those swords into ploughshares and forget about war, there is the reality of those among us who have seen too much and done too much to ever forget.

Life is filled with these sort of tensions the way we balance remembering and honouring, the way we balance war and peace. The tensions are what make us human while at the same time making it easier to fight on Facebook.

Remembrance Day is a civic holiday – it has nothing to do with church and religion (it also has nothing to do with shopping and decorating, people have to let that go) but at the same time, it has everything to do with faith.

In our own Islamic-Judeo-Christian tradition we are a people of the story. History and its unfolding are what bring us closer to God and help us understand God’s will. Remember your ancestor Abraham is the type of thing you will read all over the place if you pick up the Bible. Do not forget what God did at… name a place, Bethlehem, the Red Sea, in the Land of Canaan, when the Babylonians came…

From a religious point of view we define ourselves from where we came from. We are the people who follow Jesus who lived 2000 years ago. He was a Jew and knew God because of what God had done for the people of Israel for 2000 years before us.

It is not just church that sees the world this way. To be Canadian is to remember Cabot discovering things, Samuel de Champlain settling here, the depression and cooperative movement, and how our troops were the scariest thing the Germans ever saw. Kilts and Bagpipes will bring fear to anyone on a battlefield. These are all things that define us as Canadian – and come from our history.

So how do we be respectful to the idea of Remembrance Day while still holding everything else in our minds? That is a question that church is very adept at answering – we do it all the time. The past is the past; we remember it for the people who made the best decisions possible in the time. We also remember those decisions hoping that we can make better ones now.

We do not always do it – witness the Iraq war which almost no one sees as a good idea any more… But for what it is worth, a lot of people went into it with the right motivations, especially those on the ground who lost their lives. Same is true in Afghanistan – where over history everyone has learned it is a really bad idea to fight a ground war and we probably should have talked to the Russians before we went in… but the soldiers we remember on November 11^th, they were the ones who were trying to make a difference and make the world better for Canadians and Afghanis alike.

To be faithful is to live out the ideals that God values – to try and make the world a better place – to try and promote love and hope. In the end that is what we remember – that is what my grandfather fought for.

Getting Ahead by Losing it All

2015-10-20T10:41:00.000-03:00

Just when you thought reality could not get any more like the science fiction of the 1950’s and 60’s scientists in Russia and a surgeon from Italy have announced that the first head transplant will be happening early in 2017.

Actually they say it is a body transplant. They are giving the head a new body to control.

I have not heard any of the backlash or religious arguments yet – but I am sure they will come as we think about this. It is a most intriguing idea, one that has been around since we talked about cryogenically preserving brains and then giving them new bodies when the science caught up.

Just the idea that they call it a body transplant shows a bias. People are saying the head, and really they are saying the brain, is what makes us who we are.

Does it?

I don’t have a definitive answer to this, but there is a lot of argument and theory over the last thousand years that shows it is an important question. We could start with René Descartes who famously intoned, “Cogito, Ergo Sum” which means I think, therefore I am. In a nutshell Descartes was saying the only thing we can trust is our own mind – that is how we know we are alive, because we are thinking.

But what of this mysterious idea of the soul? Is there something about the human body, some physical and spiritual aspect that both connects us to God and survives after death? And if so, what is it and where is it?

In the ancient Greek world the soul was thought to be the home of the emotions, and of such concepts as right and wrong. Things like love and courage came from the soul while rational thought came from the mind. Later we would speak of emotions as being matters of the heart – so are brain and heart two separate parts of what makes a person who they are?

It was Thomas Aquinas sometime in the 1200’s who came up with the idea that the soul survives death – that it is somehow part of the divine, of God, and it is how we go on after we die. For Aquinas the soul was not a physical thing but a spiritual thing – maybe a spark of divine energy that exists in us for a while before returning to heaven?

Modern Neuroscience is convinced that everything we are and do and feel comes from the brain; that everything is rational thought and so something like love is actually just our brain doing a cost effect benefit analysis really quickly and telling us the reasons we should like this other person outweigh the reasons we should not. It is not a very romantic view.

I have heard it argued that the appendix is the soul. No one really knows why we have one. Of course, mine got inflamed and was removed so if that is true then I am in trouble.

Go ahead and do some research; every religion talks of the soul, every person struggles with what makes us unique… is it really just our brain? Can you put my brain into another body and still have me be Brett? If so I am choosing Channum Tating.

But what if it is more than that? Am I more than the sum of everything I think? Does my body, my heart, my emotions come from somewhere else? What if all the different pieces are what makes me me? What if the soul is in the heart? Or the stomach? Or anywhere else but the head?

I guess we will see in 2017….

The More Things Change

2015-09-21T12:34:00.000-03:00

Have you ever sat at your dining room table and looked at the things on it and wondered... wondered what the archaeologists are going to dig up in 500 years?

I may, admittedly, spend too much time in museums or at King's Landing – but I am forever thinking about what people will think in the future. Why Tupperware, for example. I can picture it now, “they made this throwaway material and then stored food in it” “What, there are so many better ways to store food.” “I know, right!”

Imagine the fun someone is going to have figuring out just what the hell a Keurig is.

It also may be a product of being a little older when I ended up with young children. I get asked on a daily basis questions such as did they have cars when you were little. People tell me I should answer honestly, but I find it more fun to describe in great detail the horse and buggy I supposedly owned and how when I was little the world was black and white because they had not invented colour yet.

But you can see it right? Whether you are 15 or a hundred you can see how much things have changed, can you not? In university I typed my assignments on a typewriter. I first learned to dial on a rotary telephone. I did not even hear of the internet until I was in the workforce. I can name a hundred things I had, or did, or ate that people no longer do. And my kids cannot even picture some of what I am talking about without an example.

The above five paragraphs are a metaphor – an example – that I want you to keep in your mind because it is very visual and very true. We can all imagine how much the world has changed in terms of what is physically in the world.

Now, take one step to the left and ask yourself, is that not true for how we think and feel as well?

When I was growing up I knew for certain that I would get a job. Hell, I could get any job I wanted. When I grew up it was expected that you were going to fall and break your arm. No one was going to stop you from getting on that damn spinning death trap on the playground. When I grew up I never met anyone that was not Caucasian. I may have never met anyone who did not have Scottish blood in their veins somewhere. Whenever an adult talked I listened and did whatever they said. I was out from dawn to dusk without my parents even asking where I was.

But there was more to it. Men and Women did different jobs. Your type of job was determined by what class you belonged to. Everything from swearing to j-walking was so taboo that you felt as if you were a gangster when you did it. Only men and women fell in love with each other. You had kids. You belonged to the boy scouts, the PTA, the Rotary club, the masons or a bowling league. There were not a whole lot of surprises waiting on the horizon – or at least, that is what you were led to believe.

We knew what we owned and we knew who we were. Believe it or not, it was more black and white. Now... take one more step off of that track to the left and let's think about God.

Within the last forty years, within the last 10 years, within the last 2 years, a lot has changed.

Why is it we are so sure that whatever it is the church and God were about 2000 years ago has not changed? Why do we think that the faith that was good enough for my grandfather is good enough for me? The television he had is certainly not good enough for me. His attitudes towards women and sexuality are certainly not good enough for me. Why is his faith good enough for me?

Everything evolves. Our understanding of the universe and of society. I just think we should be more willing and open when it comes to how the church and faith and our relationship to God evolves. What would happen if we just let go?

WHY IS IT RAINING

2015-08-25T10:47:00.002-03:00

As I write this I am finishing all of my work for the week. It is Weds morning. My kids are with their grandparents for the rest of the week. My significant other is off work. What a glorious time it would be at Kouchibouguac frolicking in the waves and reading on the sand...

But it is raining. People say it will rain all week. These people have no souls.

Do you, like me, ever find life not working out how you planned? Ever wonder if the universe has it in for you? Have you ever wanted to go to the beach without your kids for once and had it rain all week? Sure you have. Were you ever disappointed by it? Sure you were. Ever wonder about the ontological significance to whether predestination or omniscience is to blame for the rain fall? Sure you have... you just didn't realize it.

Why is it that we spend so much time worrying about why things happen, especially the things that are so out of our control that we cannot possible affect them? That big sentence up there, it means, did God do this or was it supposed to happen this way for a reason, and we all say that from time to time. We all ask, Why? But seriously, how am I going to answer the question as to why it is raining this week, and why do I bother struggling with it?

So, for just a second, allow me to play the part of the universe, of God, of the one on the other end of this questioning and ask you a question. Is the beach the only thing worth doing? Why for once don't you just roll with the punches?

How is this for a twist on the book of Job or on Jesus famous speech about considering the flowers of the field – those passages intended to get across that old chestnut of wisdom, you have to roll with the punches.

You might recognize here that some of us have bigger problems than rain on a beach day. Some of us have very real problems like lightning striking the house and burning it to the ground, or an inoperable tumour, or the sudden downturn of the economic picture making your job redundant. In those cases we usually ask the same question – why is this happening to me? What did I do to deserve this? Why would God allow this? I think you understand where I am going.

If I could only impart one bit of wisdom on my children, this is it... Roll with the punches. If you want to be even cuter about it, then if life hands you lemons go ahead and make lemonade. If I wanted to be more philosophical about it I would offer this:

There is no pattern to the universe except the natural unfolding of events. Nowhere in the Bible, Qua-ran, Wisdom of Buddha or anywhere else does it suggest that the book of life is written from the beginning and ever unchanging. We made that up. Sure, there are short term plans in those books, God decides the save the Israelites from Egypt and raises up Moses to be a leader, so the story goes. But that is a 40 year sequence, not the point of the universe.

What matters is that random things happen and faith, courage, and sheer force of will are required to roll with the punches. Not only that, but we should stop making so many plans. Wake up in the morning, see what happens, and do what feels right. If we lived that way then the rain would not matter nearly as much.

It is not raining today for any divine reason. It is because of air currents, the moons pull on the oceans, the circulation of water vapour around the world; and that system does not care one whit whether I want to go to the beach or not. Of course, it is good for the flowers.

- Brett Anningson is the Protestant Chaplain at the University of New Brunswick, a freelance writer and blogger, editor of Arabella: Canadian Art and Architecture and is passionate about finding ways to understand faith in modern culture.

Speaking of Sex....

2015-05-19T08:58:00.000-03:00

I was reading about a taboo subject today – sex! And particularly about the Christian understanding of sex. You all know what it is. Sex is bad. Or at the very least the slippery slope to sin. But have you ever wondered why we feel that way?

After all, it seems pretty much hardwired into us that it both feels good, and is necessary to make more of us. But that is the problem, when it feels good we think we are doing something wrong.

The person to blame for this is Augustine. He was one of the original, and earliest writers about what Christianity should look like. He was a Bishop in Africa some 300 years after Jesus. He wrote these massive books on the church, on faith, on belief, and his writings became the norm for our thinking about church.

But he had issues. Most of them having to do with sex. He had a mistress. He had boyfriends. He had an illegitimate child. He got in more trouble than all of these fallen mega church pastor's put together. And the root of his trouble was sex. Or at least, that is what he felt. He could not control his temptations.

And so he developed something you have heard of, but was never, and is not, in the Bible. Original Sin.

Yup, Augustine made that up to explain why he could not stop having affairs. Original Sin was lust, and lust was injected into us as unborn children because we were conceived through, gasp, sex. This was not natural, as most biologists would feel, but a result of the disobedience of Adam and Eve.

Therefore every single person is born sinful – and every single person is incapable of controlling or accepting their sinful sexual urges.

This is a brief history lesson and ancient theological explanation but I just want you to have some background for the idea that our Christian views on sex and sexuality are actually crazy. They are not from the Bible, they are not from Jesus, they are probably not even from the Holy Spirit, they are from some guilt driven sense of remorse in one man's writing.

The absolute only thing Jesus ever says about sex is that if you are married, you should not have sex with someone else. That is it, the entire ethical standpoint of Jesus Christ as to what is good and bad about sex.

The fact that we took Augustine's views on sex and made them doctrine is the equivalent of taking Charles Manson's views on group dynamics and making them the law in terms of how we build churches. It is crazy.

I have felt this for a long time, but now a woman named Debra Hirsch has written a book called Redeeming Sex. In it she points out that all of this is based on the physical aspects of sex and ignores the emotional and spiritual component – it ignores how sex can be an act of love, of passion, of intimacy which brings two people together in an extremely close and loving way.

She argues for us to start over. For us to realize that everything the church taught about sexuality for the last 1500 years has been based on Augustine's guilt.

It is hard to change your belief about something mid stream. I doubt we can really start over. But it is certainly worth starting to admit that some of what we think is just weird. How can sex be something so terrible if it creates such cute babies, for example?

Even if we could just start to make the change to thinking, sex is natural and everyone does it, that might begin to swing the pendulum. Who knows what we could do if we stopped fighting about this!

Change as Rest

2015-04-17T09:21:00.000-03:00

The times they are a changing – sorry about that; I felt the need to insert a little Dylan into your day. But they are. Even if it keeps snowing – the seasons have changed.

In the church world, it is now post Easter. Which is the most exciting time in the church world because almost nothing happens! Exciting? You bet! Advent, Christmas, Epiphany, Lent, Easter – all of these are high holy days with lots and lots happening. We run through the life of Jesus, metaphorically, in a few scant months and throw ourselves into our faith. There are feasts and fasting, studies and practices... it is work.

I suppose it may be a chicken and egg sort of argument, how our society got on to this rhythmic movement through the year – maybe the church invented it and the civic world took it over, maybe church just adapted the way most people lived their lives... but it is not just in church circles that the times are changing – it is a universal Canadian phenomenon.

This week most University campuses will begin exams – or finish classes. And by the end of the month everyone will go home and find a summer job – perhaps a summer romance – perhaps move back in with their parents and realize how much things have changed....

And what about retired people who now have to open cottages, plant gardens, clean up lawns...

Life has a rhythm and we here in Canada certainly fall prey to it more than some other people – because we have the two main seasons – one where it is too cold to be outside without intention, and one where it is too warm to want to be inside since we spent the last 6 months there.

And life changes because of it. Things slow down, people change focus, and we really do try to make the most of everything around us.

Or at least – that is what I always thought, and what I always hoped. I have lived in a few different ways in the past year, even worked the most minimum wage job you can get – three months in a call centre. Because I had to. Because I chose to walk away from active ministry for a while and get a change of perspective after 20 years in the church.

But again, this is what I am saying, there is a rhythm - a different time and place for everything.

Long long ago some court prophet wrote a poem about it which crept into the religious texts of the day – for everything there is a season, and a time for everything under heaven – a time to live, a time to die, a time for sunshine and a time for snow, a time for ice cream and a time for tea.....

And it is wisdom, deep deep wisdom straight from the soul. A change is as good as a rest goes the current slogan, which it is most certainly not, but there is wisdom there too. We all need the changes that a different season, a different place, a different perspective grant us. The definition of insanity is to do the same thing over and over and expect different results – so take advantage of whatever changes are coming with this seasonal shift from cold to hot and do something different!

You see, that is the thing, faith is not about some pie in the sky different way of living, it is about seeing the world around you for what it is and living with intention. So embrace the changes, be open to the spirit, and live with intention!

Brett Anningson Brett Anningson is the chaplain at University of New Brunswick and is passionate about progressive Christianity and relating faith to modern culture.

Out of Sight Out of Mind

2015-03-19T11:46:00.002-03:00

I wonder how Lent is going.

The church I have been attending was closed for a snowstorm, then had an anniversary service, and now I am not there because of March Break. So... I have really forgotten about Lent this year. It is an honest question for me. I have not spoken to anyone or heard anything about the observance – and to be fair, I think it has been getting less and less each year.

I read a book about being a Buddhist in a non Buddhist country this past week that had a lot of insight that seemed to apply to us as Christians. It basically talked about how easy it is to be reminded to meditate when you live in a country where there is a Buddha on every corner, a prayer flag from every tree...

But in secular Canada you could go days, perhaps even weeks without seeing the Buddha anywhere – so what is going to remind you to meditate?

Sounds familiar... out of sight out of mind applies to Jesus as well I imagine.

Which is what Lent was about lo those many long years ago. A period of time, 40 days long, where we were constantly reminded to pray, to think about Jesus, to make religion the centre of our lives. Part of it was publicly marking yourself as Christian, ashes and austerity. Part of it was giving up something you loved so that every time you wanted it, like chocolate, you were reminded that God was more important than, gasp, chocolate.

I have noticed this so acutely this year when I am not working in a church. It is the first time in 20 years. I have never experienced a high holy season in my adult life as anything but a minister and it is eye opening. The stuff I just assumed you all thought about – you never do. Nothing is out there in the real world reminding people it is Lent. In fact, it is quite the opposite, We are reminded that spring is coming, that it is March Break, that the Easter Bunny is bringing chocolate, that we need a new car – anything but that we should think about God.

In Thailand if you look up you will see a prayer flag. If you are in a store there will be an alter with some incense and the Buddha. Go into any restaurant in Asia, in fact, and you will find the waving cat ushering wealth and good fortune through the door.

Anyone remember the last time they saw a crucifix in public? How about a picture of the last supper or the words of a prayer?

I am not talking about evangelism. I seriously do not care if anyone becomes Christian. I don't think we need to be forcing any type of faith on anyone. But I have known lots of people who have spent serious time in Asia – and that is not the point there at all. In fact, they would rather you did NOT become Buddhist, and no one is ever going to ask you about it. But THEY are Buddhist and so they have a statue of Buddha. Or Hindi and thus Ghanesh is welcoming people at their alter. Or what have you... but us... we are ashamed.

Or at least, that is my best guest. Christians seem to actively work at being not Christian, at hiding who we are, of making sure there are no religious artifacts or artwork to remind us. And so if you do not go to church...

So seriously. Anyone celebrating Lent? I mean, an hour after church is over? Anyone remember their faith on a day to day basis? Or is it out of sight out of mind. And if that is the case, what can we do about it?

RIDING THE WAVE

2014-11-25T10:14:00.000-04:00

Moncton Times &Transcript Faith Today, Sat Nov 23rd 2015

I watched a movie last night in which the main character did not believe in God. That actually had very little to do with the plot, it was simply part of who he was – and it played off the fact that his best friend was religious.

So when one said, you gotta thank God because we are so blessed – the other says – you gotta do what now? I worked hard for this!

It is one of the questions I have heard played out the most between people who are religious and people who are not. Whether what we have is a gift from God or the result of our hard work. And it plays out in many, many ways.

Did you meet the love of your life by random happenstance, or were you destined to be together? Did your praying for success help you to get to the top of the business ladder or was it the devotion to your job? Did you get sick because God is punishing you or because you smoke a pack a day?

One of the things I find interesting about all of this is that the people involved in these type of discussions, or arguments, are often talking past each other. They are assuming that one person is saying something so different, so black and white, that they cannot agree.

For example – do you think God is a puppet master and you have no free will, no choice, God controls you through telepathy? Not many people in the world really believe that I bet. But all of a sudden when someone says that God has blessed them with a new job that is what I start thinking in my head. I instantly jump to the conclusion that they believe something that is so far opposite of me that there is no way we can come to a common ground.

I have said before that I think language and communication are a big problem in religion. Now I am taking it a step further and saying that preconceptions are a big problem. We think we know what someone is saying or thinking or believing when we hear the way they speak. That happens because WE have a preconceived notion of what the words mean that the other person probably does not share.

What is heaven? Do you know how many answers there are to that question? What is an Angel? What does it mean to have faith? How does God act in the world? What is God? If we really took the time to stop and think we would realize that there are as many different definitions of simple terms as there are people with a mind to think them up.

For some people heaven is a place in the clouds with white buildings and golden streets, for others they are picturing open fields and sunny skies, some people are simply picturing a roof over their heads and food to eat. And heaven is populated with everything in between. So when someone says the word – what do they mean?

Back to our guy in the movie. He was fighting against his friend's belief that everything happens for a reason. And he was right to do so. Some things just happen. But neither position is right in its extreme – all of life is not random luck – some of it seems to follow some purpose or higher power. There are times I do things without knowing why and it turns out it was very important, like phone someone randomly only to find out they are going through a hard time.

All of this is just to again say don't think you have all the answers – and certainly stop thinking you know what the people you argue with mean. Truth is we are all on a journey of discovery and the world has no easy answers, we ride the wave the best we can.

Thanksgiving Hangover

2014-10-20T11:14:00.002-03:00

I do not know if any of you have ever watched the show Undercover Boss Canada. I never had until thanksgiving weekend when I took in a couple of episodes and was actually pretty drawn into the story. The idea is that a CEO of a company goes undercover for a week as one of the front line workers. So, the Jiffy Lube guy goes and changes car oil with a fake identity, and the CEO of Toronto Transit goes and does overnight bus maintenance.

It is an interesting show to watch because we get it. We know that to own a company, to run a company, has nothing to do with whether or not you can change the oil. We know that customer service is not something a CEO is ever trained to do. And we also know, or assume, that management has no idea what labour actually does.

Turns out that assumption is pretty true.

Now, I found it interesting to watch on Thanksgiving because they also tell you a bit about the stories of these front-line workers as the show unfolds, and you realize how thankful they are for their jobs, their lives, the simple pleasures of life, despite how horrible their situation might be.

People forced to work far away from families. People making 18 thousand a year and putting 12-hour passion filled days in trying to make other people happy. People working two or three jobs to take care of sick children or elderly parents.

Life is hard.

But the thing is, most people are thankful for what they have. Most people love their family and their life and even their job. I know there are days – we all have them – when we would like to quit and walk out, or when we fight, or when it just seems too much. But they are just days... just moments in an eternity of moments.

I do not believe all the platitudes of religion. All those cheesy phrases like God never gives you more than you can handle are to be honest, full of crap. Life gives you more than you can handle and we often forget to be thankful. That is why we have a whole day set aside to remind us....

And I saw lots of people post lists on Facebook about what they were thankful for. People getting together with family and friends and enjoying a feast and remembering the good things. But this is Tuesday. And we are into the post-thanksgiving hangover of sliding into despair.

Christmas is looming with its stress and bills, the days are getting darker and the weather colder, how long are you going to remember to be thankful? Perhaps as long as we, usually, keep New Years resolutions...

If you take a casual look at the characters in the Bible from Adam through Abraham right up to the Apostles you will notice something really counter-cultural. Something that goes against the way we celebrate thanksgiving... first off, it was daily. People woke up and thanked God, they had lunch and thanked God, they went to sleep and thanked God.

Secondly, and more importantly, it was bizarrely linked to real life, not to happiness. The ancient people of the world were more likely to thank God for the hurricane destroying their thatch hut because it taught them the valuable lesson to build with wood. Thank you God for making me stub my toe so now I will watch where I am going. Thank you God for making me old so I can slow down and appreciate different things....

A way of understanding thankfulness and life that is no longer ours.

Just for the record I also do not think God causes hurricanes or puts the door jam in the way of our foot. I think that was the way people thought back then, but we know better. But what I am saying is that life is an adventure, good and bad, and that when we are finished with the Turkey we should still go on saying thanks;but not just for the good things, we should be saying thanks for every experience that propels us through this wonderful journey from cradle to grave. Because life is meant to be lived thankfully.

SPEAKING IN TONGUES

2014-02-27T13:02:00.000-04:00

Faith Today - Moncton Times & Transcript - February 22 2014

Did you ever say anything and then realize you don’t exactly know what you are saying? I have done that, said a difficult word in a sentence assuming I knew what I was trying to get across but actually misusing the word, like “exasperated” or something like that.

But what about saying a whole sentence without really knowing what you are saying?

I find that a lot with religion, I can express things to you in words that are either so specifically complicated that you would have no idea what I am saying, or so religiously vague that you cannot figure out what I believe.

The first is just using formal language, and is easily translated: The Eschaton will mark the parousia of the Christ figure incarnate. (Jesus will show up again in the flesh at the second coming).

But the second is impossible to translate and therefore far more dangerous: I am saved by the blood of the lamb.

I am not necessarily saying that this sentence might not be true for you, I am saying it is really hard to understand what you mean: saved from what? Saved for what? Saved by what exactly? Saved how? Why did this happen? Did it have to happen? What difference does it make?

Now, I am not trying to get anyone angry. I am just pointing out that religious people seem to say a lot of things that they believe, and when they say them, they assume everyone listening thinks exactly like they do...

If I said to you I was making spaghetti sauce, what immediately comes to mind? Probably a tomato based sauce of some kind.... but... it might be pesto, it might be a white sauce, it might have beef, it might have sausage, does it use basil or oregano, red or white wine... etc...

So why do you not think if I say “saved” that there are as many different ideas in people’s mind as to what the word means?

Us churchy people can fall prey to doing this constantly: sin, grace, faith, heaven, salvation, blessing, holy, Christ, God; as near as I can tell there are thousands of definitions and concepts wrapped up in just that short list of terms.

If I said to you my eternal salvation is guaranteed by the grace of God, which lifts me from my sinful nature; I could mean anything in the world by that.

I am making a plea here for the simplification of language when it comes to beliefs. When I express my faith

in the way that normal people talk does it make it any less powerful?

And then, perhaps, we would actually fight less between ourselves. We could also fight less with all those people who say church is irrelevant in the modern world, because I am pretty sure most of them make that claim because they have no idea what we are saying.

See, I always end up in a fight with the “I am saved by the blood of the lamb” people because the terms I use are different than theirs. Well, to be fair, my beliefs are “slightly” different as well; but if we could simplify terms we would be so much closer.

I would express the closest sentiment I had in this way: Jesus taught me a better way to live which allows me to follow a path in life that will accomplish something for the good of us all.

My sentence is still open to interpretation, but I think you can more quickly see what I am trying to say.

Take another one, “God’s grace has caused this to happen” really, how? And what exactly is God’s grace? What does it mean if God causes things to happen in our lives?

“I think this happened for a reason” is easier for everyone, both inside and outside of the church to talk about together. You can still ask a lot of questions like do things really happen for a reason, why? But at the same time, the conversation is open and free to everyone.

I know that there are a million things that separate us from each other. I know that religion has always been a big one for the human race. But I think we are getting further and further apart without actually understanding why. Perhaps something as simple as dropping the code words and expressing ourselves from our heart would help.

Invitations

2014-01-20T11:50:00.000-04:00

Let’s talk about determination. Or perhaps causative affect. Make that free will. So many ways to talk about one thing... do things happen for a reason?

The problem for me started in University back in the 80’s when I was studying Biblical History. The Bible is written, for the most part, as a time line going in linear progression from the beginning to the end of the world.

The idea that the people who were writing the Bible had was that God has a plan.

I had never thought of it that way before, like, a long term plan. Sure, God wanted me to be good tomorrow and to grow up and do something, but a plan for the universe?

When you think about it this is such a comforting thought. It is big, it is huge, God has a plan, who am I to think I can understand it... so when the river floods or the child dies, it is for a reason; God’s reason.; and serves a purpose.

See, on one level I understand this and have trouble coming up with working alternative ideas. But on the other... nothing makes me angrier than the sugary syrupy way we use this idea when talking to people in crisis.

Don’t worry, God needed another angel... really? God doesn’t have enough angels? God couldn’t “make” another angel? Angels are somehow composed of baby DNA? What kind of crap is this?

You have cancer? Don’t worry, it is part of the plan. It is? What kind of plan requires me to lose hair, get sicker than I have ever been, and statistically, probably, die a lot earlier than I expected?

So I know I have offended most people by now, but really, stop and think about it. The idea that there is a definitive plan in which everything fits just does not explain the reality we live in or adequately explain the pain and suffering. No being who is defined as love would use babies to make angels.

And it is not your fault. Even in seminary until recently, like I am trying to explain, that was the only conclusion which could be drawn.

So, religious studies in my undergrad was about time and plans but by the end of my grad studies it had started to be about relationship. Faith was about our relationship with God, church was about our relationship with God and each other while life was about managing all our relationships.

And for twenty years I have tried to put the two together, to varying effect. One of the places I got most often was to say, there is a plan, but stuff happens. That is a concept that works well with my observations of my own life, regardless of whether it is large or small. My plan for tomorrow is to go to the beach but it rains.

That is not really God, it is random. I get sick and lose a month of work it is not really part of the plan but a random piece of reality.

Then, this week, someone added a thought in a conversation that changes everything for me. I offer it to you now, knowing that I don’t really know how it is going to change my concepts, but knowing that it does. God does not plan, God invites.

So life is what it is, and we are invited to see it differently. Pain is awful and we are invited to take comfort in God. Tragedy strike and somehow we are invited to have hope.

There is no forcing, there is no plan, there is a journey and we are invited to join with the holy that is around and within it and live.

And you know what? Your arm did not break so that you would miss the piano recital because God wanted you to be at the superstore when the guy had a heart attack so you could do CPR. All those things just happened, and the reasons were obvious, don’t stand on the rocker to change the light bulb, and you were hungry. But we are invited to see how to make the best of every situation.

That is faith.

Happy Holidays!

2013-12-10T12:56:00.002-04:00

Happy Holidays!

I don’t mind when people say that to me. After all, December is the season of Holidays! There is a reason that Christians celebrate this high holy feast in December, but it might not be what you think.

So here is a quick rundown so you can see just how chock full of religious significance this month is. On

The Buddhists celebrate Bodhi day on December 6^th, the day when Gautama Buddha attained enlightenment while sitting under a Bodhi Tree.

December 21^st is the Pagan and Wiccan celebration of Yule, the shortest day of the year and traditionally when the sun child was reborn.

The solstice is also celebrated in the Chinese Festival Dongzhi, the Hopi festival of Soyal, and the Persian Zoroastrian festival of Yalda.

December begins with Hanukkah, the Jewish festival of lights and ends with Hogmanay, the Scottish Festival of the New Year.

Christians celebrate Christmas because it is the day when the Ancient Romans celebrated Saturnalia, the return of the Sun.

Even the Secular Humanists celebrate Christmas as some sort of festival of the best of human nature.

All in all Happy Holidays seems like a very appropriate response to all of this. I have in fact left a few out. And there are some like the Hindu Diwali or the Muslim Eid-al Fitr that occur on different calendars than ours and so sometimes happen in December and sometimes not.

These people who stand up and fight for putting Christ back in Christmas are seeing the trees instead of the forest.

What is really happening here is a very human reaction to the dark. We all remember it from when we were kids and the lights went off... we need assurance that they will go on again. Well, the world gets colder and darker, and then, one day, the light comes back on... and we celebrate.

Freud and Jung would have called it something buried in our subconscious, a human reaction to bad things by believing in good things.

So think about winter festivals as times of hope. Things can get better. Life will return. Goodness will triumph... this is the root message of every festival. And, in case you did not recognize it, the main message of Jesus.

I realize that some people feel a sort of empirical triumphalism about Christianity and want the entire world to convert. I do not personally feel there is any reason for this, but I am not really trying to focus there. Instead I am trying to say that this is a time of year we should celebrate with each other.

There is literally no one who does not celebrate something in December. Now that Christmas has been so fully embraced by the secular world and is seen as a sort of Charles Dickens ode to the goodness of people, everyone celebrates.

What is not to like about new life? What is not to like about turning the corner and the days getting longer?

What is not to like about gift giving and feasting and celebrating?

Don’t get me wrong, I actually love winter and it has become so short these days that we really have nothing to complain about. But I also think that human beings should celebrate whenever possible. I think it makes us better people to be able to look on the bright side or to be able to see darkness and say, you know what, let’s have a party anyway.

It is after all what Canadians do best.

So I love that all of the holidays coincide with the darkest days and the colder weather. It really feels right to me. And if anyone wants to say Happy Holidays I will just assume they mean them all.

On Sin and Love

2013-10-01T11:37:00.001-03:00

Faith Today - Moncton Times and Transcript

Recently a young gay man has featured in the Fredericton news for claiming to have been dismissed from a church job because of his sexuality. It sure sounds like he was right, and beyond that, it sounds like why he was really let go has to do with fear of homosexuality.

It is hard to know, I think the journalists covering it are trying to be impartial, but to be fair, it is a heated issue, everyone is self-protective, and most issues in life are not black and white.

What I want to argue against is the whole “hate the sin, love the sinner” attitude that a lot of people seem to adopt as a strategy. As you might expect, I disagree with it.

First and foremost, If you are really arguing from a biblical perspective, or more importantly a literalist interpretation of believing the Bible is the absolute truth, where do you find it ever saying such a nonsensical statement.

The closest I can find would be in Matthew where Jesus is supposed to have told us to love our enemies… but it says nothing about sin, and it does not say our enemies are sinful… quite the opposite, it says they are fellow humans worthy of love.

Even if you take a proof text that includes most of the words of the phrase: “Let love be genuine. Abhor what is evil; hold fast to what is good” which we find in Paul’s letter to the church of Rome (12:9) it is surely a stretch to say this has anything to do with other people’s actions.

Far to the opposite point of view, Jesus says quite explicitly to the gathered mob, “whichever of you is without sin, go ahead, cast the first stone and kill this woman” when an adulterer is confronted.

Have you ever tried to make a list of what is sinful according to the Bible? I guarantee you are included, no matter who you are. After all, it is sinful to eat lobster, and to wear cotton/rayon blends. It is sinful to charge interest on a loan and to turn your lights on during the Sabbath. The list goes on and on and in fact includes something for everyone.

The whole point of Jesus’ little diatribe was that he knew there was not one person who could cast the stone, nor could any of us. My point being, we are all sinners so that is a whole lot of hatred going on if we truly believe that all of this is a sin.

But more important is cultural context. Do you know why it is a sin to eat a lobster? Because the Israelites lived in the desert, that is the only reason. I once ordered a bowl of seafood chowder in the rain forest of Guatemala. I knew better, but I was tired of chicken and corn tortillas for every meal. I was sick for a week. If you have no refrigeration, and live in the hot, hot sun, stay away from seafood. In fact, to keep you alive, I am going to make that a religious rule, voila, it is a sin to eat lobster.

God, Moses, Jesus, none of them have anything against eating lobster, it was just a rule that made sense 4000 years ago.

Same as the whole Fish on Friday idea of the Catholic Church; it was a petition to the Pope by almost bankrupt fishermen that got that onto the religious books.

Sorry, I don’t mean to make anyone mad, but use common sense, when we decide that actions are sinful, we truly are picking and choosing what we dislike from the Bible. All of us do it, we focus on what we want and forget about the rest.

I wager that there is not a single thing that God actually finds sinful except not loving each other. In fact, when asked to boil it all down, Jesus said, love yourself, love God, love everyone else… do this and you are fine… and guess what… I can do that while being in love with a man, eating lobster, in my mixed fabric shirt.

Heaven and the Banquet

2013-08-28T11:25:00.000-03:00

I knew a guy who once told me that if he could ask someone one question, he could get a handle on their religion. That one question was, what do you think happens after you die?

It is a pretty good question to be sure; sort of like an ultimate what do you think religion is about question. There are those who think that we get some sort of ultimate reward in the afterlife for our good deeds in this life. There are those that think we just get another different type of life, hopefully reunited with family and friends. There are those that think we are reincarnated and come back to try to get it right in this life. There are those who think nothing happens, we go into the ground and rot. And there is everything in between.

You see, it is a good question because it affects everything about how we live. Why are we doing things in this life? Is it so as to earn a reward? Is it because we realize life is short and we want to make it the best we can? Is it so that we do not come back as a slug?

You get the idea. It is a simple question in a sense and it affects our entire belief structure. Now, before we go further you should know that whether you are United, Catholic, Baptist, Muslim or a Secular Humanist the person who you find sitting next to you does not believe the same thing as you.

We are all different when it comes to life after death and that is because there is absolutely nothing that can be known 100 percent about what happens. Each generation has come up with ideas that reflect what they think perfection looks like… so the Vikings thought heaven would be endless glorious battle in which no one dies and everyone parties during the night. Poor peasants who had nothing imagined a world with streets paved with gold. Lonely people want to be reunited with all their loved ones…

But all of these ideas are simply that, ideas we have about what perfection would be like

I just got back from a monumental road trip with three young children to Walt Disney World. I have been to Disney more times than a lot of people, it was a family favourite and my father owns a house in Florida. For me, Disney World is the ultimate vacation. I love the fantasy of it all, I love the architecture and the way it is laid out… I go there again and again. But I know lots of people who do not like it at all, they think it is crowded and fake seeming, overwhelming and childish.

The exact same place could be described a thousand ways by a thousand guests. And the description, as well as our relation to it, changes depending on whether or not we like it. So too our conception of the afterlife is just that, our conception, what brings us joy, what we aim at.

Jesus once told a parable about banquets, and about how we should be humble and think very hard about who we invite and why. I think that he was making exactly this point about how different people have different things going on their lives, different beliefs and different needs… but we cannot think that we are better than them, and we cannot think that we are right.

As I get older and wiser I have come to realize that at one time or another I have been wrong about just about everything. Luckily I have been right a bit too… but mostly wrong. We need to be open to that, we need to realize that we cannot judge people on their beliefs, and we need to start accepting that the reasons behind what we do and think are important. But more importantly, they tell us more about who we are than about God or faith.

Complaining

2013-07-23T10:30:00.000-03:00

So how about this weather huh? If I hear one more person complain that it is too hot I am going to lose it. It was too cold a few months ago, and it is too wet, or too dry, or too meh no matter what day it is. It seems that there is nothing more normal than complaining about the weather.

In general, even, complaining seems to be taking over as the normal way of being. I do not know how many of you are on Social Media platforms such as Facebook or Twitter; but I have noticed a sharp rise in the amount of complaining people do. If it is not the weather someone is complaining about work, or about the behaviour of friends, or the government.

Some of these complaints, even all of these complaints, may be valid. By that I mean to say that the particulars may be true, that the weather may be hot or that your friends may have acted dumb… but the real question is what is it doing to you to complain all the time.

Taking a global look at it the Bible starts with this story of the creation of plants, animals, sun moon and stars, even human beings; and each time the thing is made, they are declared to be “good.” So from this perspective everything that is part of the created order is good already, so who are we to complain about it?

But even more so, I see the entire ministry of Jesus as being about bringing abundant life to people. It was about teaching us to live in a loving grateful way that realized just how blessed we are. In fact he would take the people that most people felt were outsiders and remind them that their lives had value – he would look at the rich people and remind them to feel blessed.

And he taught it is simple traditional ways too, saying grace before a meal, or praying at the end of the day to say thank you.

See, I really feel that attitude is everything when it comes to life. I suspect that part of what Sunday school, church, the Bible, Jesus and the whole lot of them were trying to instill in me was an attitude shift… one towards good news, towards gratefulness, towards love, towards happiness.

One of the traditional mantras of Buddhism is that all of life is suffering. You may have heard that before. But the thing is we westerners take that the wrong way. Sure, life is suffering because there is always pain… but the idea of Buddhism is to rise above the suffering, to detach one’s self from the suffering, and to come to know peace.

I see religious teaching whether we are talking Islamic, Buddhist, or Christian as being a sort of “yes, but” reaction to the world. Yes, there are always going to be things wrong, but there are always going to be second chances, and things that make up for it.

And again, what matters is attitude. David played music and danced when he was happy, Jesus went to parties and ate and drank with friends over good conversation, the apostles went out fishing together when they were bored. All of them seized the opportunities to get the best out of the situation, and they had fun, they enjoyed life, and lived it.

At one point Jesus says, so the record says, “I came that you might have life, and have it abundantly.” So the real question is how are you celebrating the abundance of your life?

Parables

2013-06-24T11:04:00.003-03:00

Faith Today - Moncton Times and Transcript

What is a parable? What are they for?

This week I am at a series of lectures on the parables by two scholars. Bernard Brandon Scott is up from the United States, changing our perception of the Biblical Parables and Alyda Faber is helping us explore parables in modern film.

Here is a quick talking point for you to consider: the movement Jesus was part of used parables to shock people, to make them think differently, to upset them and make them laugh.

Some couple of thousand years later, we have heard those parables so many times that we do not hear them in any way close to the way they were intended. Not only that, but the church has softened the edges, has taken away the humour, has made them so they hardly affect us at all except to think they are like proverbs, words of wisdom...

But they are not.

A parable is supposed to be a trap door in a much travelled sidewalk.

And I guess the thing is we are so familiar with some of these stories that we have lost the impact. I mean, whether you go to church or not you are probably familiar with the Good Samaritan and you probably understand it to mean that we are supposed to take care of everyone.

What would it mean of the story was not meant that way at all? What would it have to say to shock you and make you think about life differently?

Remember the parable of prodigal son. A father had two sons, the younger of whom was unhappy with life on the farm and asked for the inheritance early only to waste it on bad decisions and partying. When the money ran out he took a chance and decided to ask to come home and was welcomed graciously.

In British Columbia there was a father who owned a farm, became quite wealthy and had two sons. One used the money and did good things in the community, became quite well known and made a difference. The younger son was Robert Pickton and murdered countless women, burying their bodies on the farm.

There is a parable in there, is there not?

One of the things that may be hampering the church in our era is the fact that we seem irrelevant. People think we are simply peddling information that they can get other places better, or we are so old fashioned that we do not matter in a technological modern world.

And we have done this to ourselves. We have never come to terms with who we were meant to be... The troublemakers, the sarcastic background commentators, the ones who looked at the government, the scientists, the bankers, the leaders and said... "Yeah right..."

Maybe we need to be telling new stories, shocking people by holding up the familiar and the modern and asking, is it still true... Should Robert Pickton be forgiven?

So this is a call to reclaim the use of parables, not as familiar Internet memes, but as rebellious interjection, shocking stories that change people. When we learn to tell it that way again, we will make a difference.

Happiness

2013-05-14T11:31:00.002-03:00

Faith Today - Moncton Times and Transcript - May 11 2013

All of my life has been a search for happiness.

That may sound simple enough, and true enough, that is covers most of us, right? I mean who of us does not want to be happy?

I even categorize this as the chief aim of my religious quest. I feel that Jesus came so that we might have life, and have it abundantly. And that means sucking the marrow out of life. So I have tried to always be eating in new restaurants, always travelling, always setting off on new adventures in search of happiness.

I pretty much have felt that this was the meaning of life.

Then someone wisely said to me, in one of those glum moments when I was feeling sorry for myself, that I am never going to find it.

“What?” I screamed, “of course I will, how dare you tell me I cannot be happy!” to which the reply came, but when these things make you happy, what happens when they stop?

When… they… stop? What happens when the lobster dinner is over, when the sun has set on the beach, when the night in the hotel is over, when the basketball game ends? Do you feel happy? And the answer, for me, honestly, is that I do not. I was happy while doing it, but that feeling is tied to the activity, to the action, to the moment.

Maybe you all know this. I feel like I should have got it long before I did. But the point of life is abundance; it is fulfillment; it is joy… which is not the same as happiness.

In the very first pages of the Bible we are reading about the concept of joy. God makes all these things, so the story goes, and each creation brings a sense of joy, of completeness. At the end of the day, with the feet up on the coffee table, God says, “This is good!”

So much so that morning brings a chance to do it all again!

When Jesus was talking about Abundant Life, I now understand that he was not talking about hang gliding and beach vacations. He was talking about a sense of joy and fulfillment that lasts. One of the main reasons I go to church is that I have always thought the teachings of religion, the ideas Jesus had on living, would make me happy. Turns out I was right, but wrong in so many ways.

So here is the secret… what we need to do is to turn it around, things do not bring happiness, we need to find happiness in things.

Just do not tell the advertising people this. There are billions of dollars being spent to convince you that happiness is found in a new car, a new rug, a new flavour of chocolate bar…

Well, what if it is the other way around. If you go looking for happiness, for joy, in everything you do, you will find it. This is approach I am working on. So I go for a walk in the sunshine and look for birds singing, I sit and stare at the falling rain and listen to the music, I eat a meal and taste every bite…

In other words, I am convinced that the world, as God said, is GOOD! And I go trying to find the good in everything. It is not easy, and there are certainly days and things that happen that bring back the depression I constantly fight against.

But I am no longer looking for the one thing that will finally make me happy. I realize nothing ever will. Happiness is something I was created with, and I need first to find it within me.

Maybe we all can.

New Life

2013-04-08T09:39:00.001-03:00

I have some colleagues who claim a bump in attendance this Easter.

Not the regular, more people than every other Sunday except Christmas Eve; but rather, more people than last Easter. I do not know if this is a phenomenon that is repeated in other United Churches or even other denominations this year; but it does give one cause to think.

Someone claimed that the media attention given to the new Pope points to a similar conclusion… are people getting interested in religion again?

I knew a man, a minister, who has been one for a very long time. In fact, of clergy I have heard of he has been doing it the longest, and he pointed out that in his lifetime there have been cycles, up and down; from the relatively non-religious days before the Second World War, through the religious days of the 1950’s, The loss of authority and religious belief of the 60’s etc… up and down.

He is not alone in this belief, in fact, experts agree that there are larger cycles as well. Some, like Karen Armstrong, argue for massive 500 year cycles, or perhaps even longer. The reality they point to is the fact that we are a people who move through our beliefs.

Humans come to know a truth, then we think about it long and hard and abandon it, then we realize we are living without a part of ourselves and embrace it. That is just who we are.

The thing is, all of the 1900’s, all of these relatively small changes we saw over the last 100 years, are all part of a larger cycle of change that we are in the midst of which is only half way done. Take our side of the religious coin alone, and think about Christianity over the last 4000 years.

First there was this belief that there was a god for everything, sheep and farming, rains and sunshine. Then, somewhere, there was this period of religious and social upheaval that led to monotheism, the belief that there was one, all powerful, God who controlled everything. That lasted for a few generations and along came another period of upheaval and change which eventually brought about Jesus and the idea that God is not distant and all powerful but relational and here with us. Then at the turn of the last century this began to change again.

It started changing with the industrial revolution, it changed when more people moved to cities than lived in the country, it changed when we published books, started scientific inquiry and built computers… it has been changing for a while….

Sorry to wax so philosophical, but I am fresh off a month of thinking about what Easter means to us here in the modern scientific skeptical age. It is hard to figure that out, because we truly do live in an age of not yet… the religion that was the cornerstone of our great, great, grandparents; that led to the idea that Christians would conquer and convert the world, that was sure life here had meaning because it would continue in heaven… that religion has been dying a slow death for a hundred years. And here we are a decade into the next hundred and we truly have no idea what it will be like 5, 10, 100 years down the road.

I write these columns to make people think. And for so long I have been hearing about the death of the church; I have been hearing that people are not religious anymore and that the ideas we hold are quaint. But that is not true. We are just changing.

Some people hate it and are holding on with clenched teeth to the traditions. Some people are afraid and do not know what to do. Some people are exploring what needs to change and what makes sense today.

So perhaps things are coming around. Perhaps we are on the other side of the current age of lack of faith and things really are going to start growing again.

Whatever the case, I write these columns in the hopes that you will join the last group, those who want to think about what next. Those that want to work at making sense of what we have been handed. Easter is about new life and I believe there is new life for the religions of the world, for the faithful… I just don’t know what it will look like.

Lying Has Real Consequences

2013-01-28T11:01:00.003-04:00

Faith Today - Moncton Times and Transcript - January 26th 2013

{as an aside I want to point out that what I publish on this site are the articles before they go through the editing process at the paper - it is possible that some things have changed in the print version...}

There is a phrase I never heard until I moved to New Brunswick. I am not sure if it was made up here, or if other people just believe it and do not say it out loud, “It is better to ask forgiveness than to get permission.”

I do not know where people got the idea that this is true, but it clearly is not. In no moral universe is it okay to do whatever you think is best and then hope everyone will forgive you.

In fact, quite the opposite is true; one should be doing almost everything out in the open, and for the good of the community, not for your own ends.

I guess this is part of what bothers me about Lance Armstrong. I don’t care if he is sorry. I don’t care if he is contrite. I don’t care if he confesses. I care that he cheated and lied.

See, when I was growing up we had a thing called consequences. I know it is out of vogue now, what with the millennial generation and generation Y thinking they are the most important on the planet; what with the era of self-entitlement we live in; what with the impunity we see everyone from politicians to movie stars act with, but once upon a time you did the right thing, or else.

And you did not need religious or moral reasons; you actually were afraid of letting people down. It actually meant something when your parents said they were disappointed in you. When someone punished you, taking away privileges, or god forbid, taking you out back to get a switch, you pretty much figured you deserved it.

So what happened to us? Did we get stupid? Bill Clinton has an affair and says he is sorry. Stephen Harper changes his mind on most election promises and says he is sorry. Lance Armstrong rigs athletics for decades and says he is sorry. And we say, well, people will be people; and we back them up.

Oprah Winfrey thinks Lance Armstrong is still a hero. That is an actual headline. Why? What is heroic about using drugs to compete and then lying about it?

I know even the Roman Catholics have slacked off the rules of confession, sin, and the whole nine yards; but once upon a time it seemed to me they had a pretty good system worked out that made a lot of sense. You could sin, you could do bad things, up to a point, and be forgiven if you were honestly sorry. Of course, that meant admitting you were wrong to a priest and then doing penance, or paying the consequences for your sins.

The catch was you had to be truly sorry, you had to be truly honest, and you had to pay for it. On top of that, in the good old days, there were deadly sins; which is to say there were things you could do that there was no way to say you were sorry for, that you had to work really hard to overcome: these so called Capitol Sins: Lust, Greed, Gluttony Envy, Pride, Sloth and Wrath were seen to be the root of all other sins, and so, soul destroying.

As an aside I would wager Lance is guilty of at least three of these.

So no, going on Oprah and saying you are sorry does not cut it.

But more to the point, for the rest of us as well, doing what we want to do and then saying we are sorry does not cut it either. There is no possible time when it is better to ask forgiveness than to never have done anything wrong at all.

In fact, there is something really wrong with a culture that thinks act first and think of the consequences later is a good way to go. We need to really look at what we are doing to ourselves and the values we are engendering in the kids we are bringing up. We need to start saying that there are serious consequences for making the wrong choice.

And if Lance is guilty of anything, he is guilty of proving me wrong and showing to the world that almost anything is all right if we say we are sorry. I am afraid of where all this leads.