My name is Jordon and I need help

Driving home from Waskesiu yesterday, Wendy asked me what I was thinking and I couldn't tell her the truth. I was trying to name off all of the NFL's starting, backup, and third string quarterbacks of all 30 teams from memory. The scary thing is that not only did I name them, I also was running scenerios of what would happen if Daunte Cullpepper signed with different teams.

I may be a NFL-aholic. Of course it isn't my fault and I can quit at anytime but I blame the NFL Network. No person can handle that much NFL without being changed but here I am, absorbing hour after hour of Deion Sanders trying to be funny and wondering if an insightful thought will ever come from his mouth (not yet anyways).

Last night I actually came home, flipped through the channels and decided the best thing to watch was video footage of the Houston Texans mini-camp. For the love of Gary Kubiak, what was I thinking? Even the Houston Texans don't like the Houston Texans.

Other signs of NFL-aholism...

• I own two Rodney Peete Pro Set Rookie Cards
• I have fond memories of watching Steve DeBerg compete in the NFL Quarterback Challenge.
• I cried while watching America's Game and I am a Canadian.
• I keep my NFL "Duke" football on my night table.
• I named a previous dog of ours Elway.
• Many of my fondest memories involve Monday Night Football.
• I have the NFL Films sountrack on my iPod and I occasionally sneak it on Wendy's iPod.
• I consider the NFL Draft to be on the same par as Christmas, Easter, and my wedding anniversary in terms of holidays.
• I watched the Nebraska spring game this year.

I am a man screaming out for help and I have to deal with this... right after I watch the reply of the NFL Europa game of the week.

Technorati tags: NFL, football, NFL Network, Houston Texans, Gary Kubiak, Steve DeBerg

Easter Monday

Some Easter thoughts...

• While I did try to avoid partisan politics this Lent season (and it was worth it), my more serious disciple was to reflect and try to deal with some of the emotions I feel on a daily basis at work.  I did some exercises, journalled them, and talked them over which was good for me.  Looking back at it, the one characteristic that I struggle with the most are those that are self-centred to the extreme, regardless of race, class, or education.  It has always bugged me as it an antithesis of community which I value very highly.  I am working on some exercises to help with my attitude as that is probably the best short term solution.  Eliminating self-centred people will probably take a little longer and of course the first one who needs to be dealt with is me.
• Speaking of work, Easter Sunday was both long and fun.  I thought it would be nice to make sure we had some chocolates to hand out to the residents, so did some other co-workers so there was a LOT of chocolate to be given out to the residents and kids who came for our meal time.  Long in that there was a lot of people all day along around.  I was tired enough that when I got home for work last night, I slept to this morning.  So much for Easter supper, I was out of it.
• Of course this morning after all of the sleep and a thermos of coffee, I was like a hummingbird and I was flying all over the place.
• On Friday night I was at Jerry Reimer's 60th birthday party and I felt horrible.  My feet and my hands hurt so badly from the neuropathy that I couldn't stand it.  I had heard of Neuragen before but saw an ad in the paper.  Wendy went out and got some for me at Shoppers Drug Mart and I whined about the price but I was hurting so bad, I wasn't going to take it back.  So I put some on where it hurt and it stopped hurting, I waited for the pain to return as it always has.  It didn't which blew me away.  You just drop it on where it hurts and the pain goes away.  When I am in pain, it takes about 3 minutes for me to figure out all of the places to put it but then it is sleep, wonderful uninterupted sleep.  I almost forgot what that feels like.  It says no more than five times a day but I just need it at night when trying to sleep.  During the day, I am active enough that it doesn't really bother me.  Apparently this naturopathy stuff does work.  More on its effectiveness with diabetics here.
• We are closer to purchasing a car today.  Lee and Wendy went test driving while I worked.  Edmunds.com makes life a lot easier for us used car buyers.  Tomorrow will be D-Day if all works out well.
• Bishop N.T. Wright in the Guardian ::

2007 Draggins Rod & Custom Car Show

Easter weekend was the 47th Annual Draggins Rod & Custom Car Show which like most people in Saskatoon, we try to attend. This year Wendy had to work later so Mark and I headed over and she met up with us later. I grabbed the camera and posted a bunch of photos on Flickr. Mark was in his glory. For a kid that loves Hot Wheels, this is his favorite event of the year. When we went, the crowds were just dying down for the night and several car owners chatted with Mark and let him get a closer look which he was thrilled with. He also walked away with some promotional material from some of the racing teams. There were a couple of cars that caught my imagination but I think I would look pretty good driving this around town.

Related:

• 2006 Draggins Rod & Custom Car Show Photos
• 2005 Draggins Rod & Custom Car Show Photos

Hypocrisy

Warren Kinsella has a good post on spirituality, praxis, and politics.  He starts it with this

In the shadow of Easter, on a miserly, cold Sunday, the subject of today's sermon is an old one: hypocrisy.

and finishes with this

Sitting in church, I am reminded of that political trusim every once in a while. Look! There's the scary-angry parent who literally punched a wall at the community centre, in front of a bunch of little kids, when their misbehaving kid was asked to leave. There's the one who tells other parents not to let their kids play with the kids whose mother they hate. There's the guy who uses big words to hide the fact that he is a sexist bully, and that he never actually completed a university degree. There's one who terminated a pregnancy because she wanted a different gender than the one she was getting. There's one (or two) with a shady past, and who isn't permitted to set foot in the United States as a consequence, but who formulates elaborate stories to cover it all up. There's the ones who monkey around on the side, then march to a pew with unsuspecting spouse and children every Sunday morning. It's the same in your place of worship, I'll bet. Same everywhere.

What's my point? My point is that the rhetoric about the separation of church and state is overblown. Precisely the same kinds of people fill the church pews and the leather-lined legislature seats, with the only difference being that the latter get more ink than the former. But both exhibit symptoms of the same virus, which is rank, stomach-churning hypocrisy.

While watching the documentry Scared Sacred by Velcrow Ripper (second only to Rip Torn as the best name ever) last night, I was reminded that in the middle of the worst situations that mankind faces, there are also stories of hope.  The stomach churning hypocrisy will always be there but there are always those that seem to show up and want to challenge it and change the system for the better.  Yes, some people "get as mad as hell" and take power sometimes but that is only part of the story.  If Velcrow Ripper can find hope in Ground Zeroes around the world, I think it can be found everywhere, even in churches and politics.

Technorati Tags : hope, Scared+Sacred, hypocrisy, faith, politics

Contextless Links

• Crime pays poorly and it is because of the red tape
• Blogs aren't exactly destroying mainstream media
• Kester Brewin on the Judas that we never knew
• Maggi Dawn on Misquoting Jesus :: When I lost my naive faith, I had the good fortune of coming to land in a place where the Bible is taken in the context of reason and "tradition" (by which I mean the history and practice of the Church, not "traditionalism"), and consequently the inaccuracies, mistakes, inconsistencies and unknowns of the Biblical record do not necessitate an abandonment of faith.  It intrigues me why people continue working, in a negative way, against a faith they have lost. Where does the energy come from? And what kind of a mission is it to spend your life disproving something? Once you've disproved something, surely there are more interesting projects to move on to? All the same, I sympathise with people like Ehrman who do lose their faith, because I've walked close to that line myself, and see close-up the crisis that ensues when someone who has carved out their life around a profession that goes hand in hand with a belief system that subsequently crumbles.
• The Book of Bart :: Bart Ehrman's take on Scripture
• Jason Evans has a beautiful reflection on Mark Palmer's life :: Palmer developed community by developing people. I wish I could have the time he had throughout the day. Alas, I live in So.Cal. and I have to work full-time. But this is really only an excuse. The truth is, I envy the way Palmer valued people, saw potential and capacity in everyone and always could listen... I like to talk way too much. Mark developed a sense of community amongst those that called LP their church by helping all who participated to see their value within the community. By focusing on an individual that individual discovered their place at the table, as part of a family... I want to do that for my community.
• The Archbishop of Canterbury's Easter Message via :: The mystery of Christian faith is really something we can’t ever put into words because it is about so many things that are all true all at once, but we can only talk about them one at a time. Advent and Christmas and Good Friday and Easter and Pentecost, Baptism and Communion and birth and death are all packed up together, inseparably. But whether in our words or in the course of the Christian year, we usually have to pull them apart and take them in some kind of series. And it’s good that we do, since we have to give ourselves a chance to think things through carefully and to experience the time it takes to get from old to new, from death to life.  But once in a while something happens that pushes it all together again, confusingly and wonderfully, telling us that Advent is already, eternally, overtaken by Christmas, Lent by Easter, death by life. God is always there ahead of us, his future already part of the present. I think that was the gift – or one of the many gifts – I received from our brothers and sisters in Sudan. Yes, we ought as a rule to take things at their proper pace, one thing at a time. But let’s not forget that God is already ahead of us; that there really is an ‘alleluia dimension’ in the very heart of Lent and Passiontide. And the people who can tell us that are people like the Sudanese, who have, quite simply, met the Risen Lord in the darkest times.

So much for being relaxed

Back to work today and tomorrow...  Happy Easter to everyone.

Technorati Tags : work, Easter

First night of summer

Today is a holiday in Saskatchewan which means I get it off.  Oddly enough Easter Sunday is not a holiday here so I will be working.

We didn't take in a Good Friday service for the first time in my life today.  Wendy was sick to her stomach all last night and I was up while she was tossing and turning.  We decided to sleep in.

Lee pestered us to take us out for lunch but Poverino's was closed so Lee, Wendy, Mark, and I took off to Credit Union Centre for the Draggin's Rod and Custom Car Show.  I don't know how many cars and hot rods were there but probably around 200 and some from as far away as Chicago.  We went last year and we all had our favorites.  For Mark, it was like walking through a world where all of his Hot Wheels have come to life.  Not only that but they gave all the kids a free Hot Wheels car as they went in so he was even more pumped up if that was possible.  More muscle cars this year than older hot rods and we had a good time.  The highlight for me was they had the ultimate man's shed with it's own urinal in the main area.  Not that I thought it was that cool but the stunned and horrified look on Wendy's face was priceless.  A lot of stock cars that race at Bridge City Speedway were on hand.  All of them had promotional stuff for the new track which got Lee and I interested in checking it out.  Thanks to Becky and Dave, I find myself watching some NASCAR. 

By the time we got home, there was a Star Trek film fest on and Wendy and I watched Star Trek V and VI together.

Finally, we wandered outside for the first nice night of spring and started a fire in the firepit as we burned part of the fence that was smashed by the stolen truck that slammed into the front lawn this winter.

While most of you are borned out of your mind after reading this, I realized while watching William Shatner save the universe how incredibly relaxed I was.  During all of the weeks and months that I was sick last year, I never, ever felt relaxed or at ease.  I was either focused on being in pain or the lack of work and being broke.  I never felt relaxed.  Today was the first time in a year where my mind was shut off and totally disengaged.  I felt relaxed.  It felt good.

Technorati Tags : fire, summer, Saskatoon, Star+Trek

The Third Word

"Women, behold thy son!"..."Behold thy mother!" John 19:26-27 (KJV)

From Stanley Hauerwas' Cross Shattered Christ

...Indeed I think we can only appreciate Jesus' commending Mary to the beloved disciple, as well as his charge to the disciples to regard Mary as his mother, when we recognize that Mary is not another mother.  Rather, Mary is the firstborn of a new creation.  Without Mary's response "Here am I" to Gabriel, our salvation would not be.  Raneiro Cantalamessa quite rightly, therefore, entitled his book on Mary, Mary: Mirror of the Church.

Cantalamessa, moreover makes the fascinating observation that in the New Testament Jesus is often designated or assumed to be the new Adam, the new Moses, or the new David, but he is never called the new Abraham.  Cantalamessa suggests that the reason Jesus is not associated  with Abraham is very simple -- Mary is our Abraham.  Just as Abraham did not resist God's call to leave his father's country to a new land, so Mary did not resist God's declaration that she would bear a child through the power of the Holy Spirit.  Abraham's faith foreshadows Mary's "Here am I" because just as we are Abraham's children through faith, so we become children of the new age inaugurated in Christ through Mary's faithfulness.

God restrained Abraham's blow that would have sacrificed Isaac, but the Father does not hold back from the sacrifice of Mary's son.  Jesus' command that Mary should "behold your son" is to ask Mary to see the one born of her body was born to be sacrificed so that we might live.  As Gregory of Nyssa put it, "If one examines the mystery, one will prefer to say not that his death was a consequence of his birth, but that the birth was undertaken so that we could die."  When God tested Abraham by commanding the sacrifice of Isaac, Abraham's "Here I am" (Genesis 22:1) did not result in Isaac's death.  Mary's "Here am I," however could not save her son from being the one born to die on a cross.

In the eleventh chapter of the book of Hebrews we are reminded that "by faith" did our foremothers and fathers live.  Yet Mary, true daughter of Israel, was tested as no one in Israel had ever been tested.  Jesus' "behold your son" asked Mary to witness the immolation of the Son, to enter into the darkness that is the cross, yet to hold fast to the promises she had received from the Spirit that this is the one that will scatter the proud, bring down the powerful from their thrones, fill the hungry with good things, and fulfill the promises made the Abraham and his descendants.  Her son, the Messiah, will do all this from the cross.

Jesus charges Mary to regard as her own, her true family, the "disciple whom he loved."  Drawing disciples into the church, Mary shares her faith, making possible our faith.  At this moment, at the foot of the cross, we are drawn into the mystery of salvation through the beginning of the church.  Mary, the new Eve, becomes for us the firstborn of a new reality, of a new family, that only God could create.  Augustine observed that the God who created us without us refuses to save us without us.  Mary is the first great representative of that "us."  Accordingly Mary, the Jew, in a singular fashion becomes for us the forerunner of our faith, making it impossible for Christians to forget that without God's promises to Israel our faith is in vain.

When Christians repress the role of Mary in our salvation we are tempted to forget that God remains faithful to his people, the Jews.  Our saviour was born of Mary, making us, like the Jews, a bodily people who live by faith in the One who asks us to behold his crucified body.

Jesus, therefore, commands the disciple, his beloved disciple, not to regard Mary as Jesus' mother but rather recognize that Mary is "your mother."  Mary's peculiar role in our salvation does not mean that she is separate from the church.  Rather, Mary's role in our salvation is singular because, beginning with the beloved disciple, she is made a member of the church.  Mary is one of us, which means that the distance between her and us is that constituted by both her and our distance between Trinity and us, that is, between creatures and Creator. 

Technorati Tags : Christ, cross, Easter, Mary, theology, Stanley+Hauerwas

Interview with Stanley Hauerwas

This comes from Rick Bennett's blog, one of those weblogs that if you don't read it, you should be reading it. He linked to this interview with theologian Stanley Hauerwas about the Cross Shattered Christ.  Below is a portion of it.

One of the most challenging chapters was the one on the words "My God, my God, why have you forsaken me?" You say the words "shatter our attempts to understand God in human terms."

It shows that Christ does experience the darkness of being completely alienated from the Father.

So one person of the Trinity could feel completely alienated from the other?

Yes. And that means there is a time when we cannot approach God through Christ, because Christ was completely abandoned. That is a chilling, chilling notion: that there is a time when we cannot reach God through Christ. I think that's what that means.

You say it reveals that "our assumption that God must possess the sovereign power to make everything turn out all right for us, at least in the long run," is idolatry.

It's idolatry to think that to be a Christian means this is all going to work out well for me. That's not what God is in the business of being God for. The idea that Jesus' whole project was to make sure my life would be OK is a far too narcissistic account of the crucifixion.

It also touches on the age-old theodicy question: Do you believe God is simultaneously all-powerful and all-good?

I believe that whatever it means for God to be all-powerful and all-good "names" the fact that God could not be other than the Father to the Son, who submits himself entirely to sin. You never start with an abstract notion of omnipotence or all-powerful in a way that those words become self-defining separate from Christology.

So we have to accept God first, and not certain words in the language?

That's right. That was what Karl Barth well understood.

You say we try to explain the "why have you forsaken me?" phrase to "protect God from making a fool out of God." Why do we have such a problem with these words?

Because we want God not to be the God we find in Christ. We want God to be the great all-powerful daddy, who makes sure our lives will not have to be lives of suffering. It's an idolatrous position.

So we shouldn't expect God to do anything about our suffering?

We know God has done something about our suffering--it's called the cross. It gives us the resources to have even our suffering be a service to God and God's kingdom.

Technorati Tags : Stanley+Hauerwas, cross, Christ, Easter

The Second Word

"Truly I tell you, today you will be with me in Paradise" Luke 23:43

 

From Chapter two of the Cross Shattered Christ by Stanley Hauerwas

We may be Christians, but we fear the habits of our imaginations, and too often the way we live betrays our fear that we are but bubbles on a stormy sea.  The weather of an aimless universe produced us, and that same weather will kill us.  We worry that we will die without a trace because there will be no one to apprehend or remember the trace we were.  As a result we live desperate, deadly lives in the hope we will not be forgotten.  We take comfort, for example  that we are citizens of the greatest, most powerful nation in the history of the world.  Doing so, we are tempted to support exercises of American might and wealth that may be unjust but are assumed to be necessary to secure our nation's power.  To be a citizen of such a nation at least suggests our lives will not be forgotten.  When the history is written, America, like Rome, cannot be forgotten, as Americans we will have a place in history.  Is it any wonder that a people so formed believe that what is happening in this man Jesus' life is something about our significance?  Is it any wonder that we find the lean and gaunt account of the life and crucifixion of Christ so unsatisfying?

 

Accordingly it is almost impossible for us not to identify with the thief's request.  Please, dear Jesus, remember us.  Insure that our lives will have significance so that we will be more than bubbles on the foam of life.  Jesus' crucified companion, however does not ask to be remembered so his life will have significance.  Rather he asks, as the Psalms taught Israel to ask, to be remembered when Jesus comes into his kingdom.    Such a request makes sense only if Jesus--a man undergoing the same crucifixion the thief suffers--can fulfill such a request.  We desperately ask to be remembered, fearing we are nothing.  In contrast this thief confidently asks to be remembered because he recognizes the One who can remember.

Some of you will read the reference to America and think that is me making a political statement by quoting this section but it isn't.  I cringed typing it is as I didn't want to make that at all.  The same could be said for any country or people group.  I think of the cathedrals of downtown Saskatoon and all western cities and look up and hear the cries of people wanting to build something bigger than themselves in the same desire to be remembered.  The same desire to make an impact.  As I read this, I looked around at my own life and even this blog and I asked the question, how much of what I am do is trying to find signficance instead of looking towards the One who can remember...

 

Technorati Tags : Cross+Shattered+Christ, Stanley+Hauerwas, Easter, cross, Jesus

 

The First Word

"Father, forgive them; for they do not know what they are doing." Luke 23:34

 

From Chapter One of the Cross Shattered Christ by Stanley Hauerwas

It is also a stark reminder that these words are not first and foremost about us; about our petty sinfulness.  It is the Second Person of the Trinity who asks, "Father, forgive them for they know what they do."  The Son intimately addresses the Father.  We look away, embarrassed by a love so publicly displayed.  According to Herbert McCabe, these words, "Father, forgive," are nothing less than the interior life of the Triune God made visible to the eyes of faith.  The Son asks the Father to forgive, a forgiveness unimaginable if this is all about us and our struggle to comprehend the meaning of our lives in the face of death.  By this deed, by this word, Jesus rules out all speculative theories that seek to subject these words and this death to our understanding what is required for reconciliation of the world.  In von Balthasar's words:

Over against such free-wheeling speculation in empty space it should not only be remembered that God is his (ever-free!) sovereignty the absolute ground and meaning of his own action, so that only foolishness can cause us to neglect his actual deeds, in favor of scouting round for other possibilities of acting.  But, more than this, we must state positively that to be it that to be in solidarity with the lost is something greater than just dying for them in an externally representative manner.  It is more than so announcing the Word of God that this proclamation through the opposition it arouses among sinners, happens to lead to a violent death... for the redeeming act consist in a wholly unique bearing of the total sin of the world by the Father's wholly unique Son, whose God manhood is alone capable of such an office.

Is it any wonder we find Good Friday so shattering?  On this day and with these words, "Father, forgive them; for they do not know what they are doing," all our presumptions about God and the salvation wrought by God are rendered presumptuous.  Moreover, that is how we discover that what happens on the cross is really about us, but the "what" that is about us challenges our presumptions about what kind of salvation we need.  Through the cross of Christ we are drawn into the mystery of the Trinity.  That is God's work on our behalf.  We are made members of a kingdom governed by a politics of forgiveness and redemption.  The world is offered an alternative unimaginable by our sin-determined fantasies.

Technorati Tags : Holy+Week, Easter, Stanley+Hauerwas

Holy Week

No contextless links this week.  Instead I am going to blog about some things I have been mediatating on after reading and re-reading Stanley Hauerwas' book, Cross-Shattered Christ: Meditations On The Seven Last Words.  Some longer essays that I am working on may make their way online as well but for the next little while this place will be set aside for some inner thoughts of mine that are slowly being extroverted.  That and it is raining in Saskatoon so my plans for the yard today are delayed until it dries up (nothing that fancy... we have a fire pit in the backyard and Mark has been wanting a fire to roast some marshmellows on for a while.  I was planning to burn the old fence section.  The yard is too damp.  Lawnchairs would sink right into the ground).

 

Technorati Tags : Stanley+Hauerwas, Holy+Week, Easter

Reflections on a Sunday night

Another day, another couple of dollars from work.  I wish I could say it was quiet today but it wasn't.  Wendy was working at Safeway, I was working at CBiT so Lee and Mark hung out and bonded.  I work tomorrow and then I have Tuesday and Wednesday off work.  Oddly enough we are closed Good Friday but open on Easter Sunday.  I am not sure how many people are shopping Easter Sunday but all of the malls are closed in Saskatoon that day.

 

The snow is finally gone from the yard.  The driveway is still a mud pit but we should be able to start working on the lawn in a week or so.  I don't rake the yard, I just set the mower right down and mow it all up.  Last year I mulched all year so I am wondering if I should just mulch up the dead grass and leave it on the lawn instead of collecting it up.  Our soil is so clay filled, all organic matter that can be used, should be used.  Decisions, decisions...

 

The annoying task of the year is repairing the smashed four foot section of fence.  I have a massive rotting tree stump that is right beside that fence so digging another post hole will be as much fun as having a new hole drilled in my head.  It is right at the corner of our lawn so you know if I don't do anything, everyone will cut across it.

 

Technorati Tags : Sunday, lawn, landscaping

Upcoming.org

I am not sure why no one outside of tech circles is talking about or using Upcoming.org but it is incredibly cool, especially when a lot of you in a certain city (or metro) are using it.  Basically it allows you to promote and find interesting events that are in your city and also find out what your friends are attending.  My user profile can be found here (Wendy has one here) and enclosed are a list of events that we are planning to attend over the next short while.

I am not sure I would want to promote every single church service but it is also a great place to list big Sunday's (Christmas Eve, Easter) and also some other big events like when Lakeview Church brought in Tony Campolo a couple years ago.  Just don't spam it. 

You can also add a badge to your own weblog or site, just like the one to your right.

Technorati Tags : Upcoming.org, Yahoo!, calendar

Easter Sunday at Lakeland Church

Wendy is working tonight, Mark is in bed, and Lee is playing a game in my old office (okay, I am a little bitter about losing "my space"). I am spending the evening going through about 10 gigs of photos on my hard drive and just thinking about the memories of what was behind them. A lot of the pictures are of Lakeland Church and it is hard to believe that this will be Easter #9 that we will be spending together. It's amazing to think of what God has done in the lives of the church as individuals and as a collective. Of course with church, we are never done yet we often feel the hand of the Holy Spirit ever so often that lets us know that we are not alone and we are on the right track, even if the track is a difficult one.

Looking back at a couple years of our journey, I decided to upgrade the church's Flickr account to a Flickr Pro account. There was a lot more then ten megabytes of things God was doing at the church and in our community and I decided to get some more space and not keep losing our old pictures as we ran out of space. I am now in the process of uploading and categorizing three years of church life. I won't be done tonight but I will post some links when it starts to come together. Like the rest of our church, we are a work in progress.

Link

Good Friday

Wendy is at work. Lee is still in bed. Mark is at the babysitters and I am just getting ready to head out the door to go to Spiritwood for the Stations of the Cross service that is held every year on Good Friday with our friends at the Roman Catholic, United, and Anglican congregations. It's a cold morning, probably the coldest Good Friday morning that we have ever done this for but I think it will be good regardless. It has always been an excellent spiritual exercise for me and I think this will be no different.

I haven't decided yet but I think I am going to take Mark to Draggin's Rod and Custom Car Show tonight. It is every Easter Weekend at Credit Union Centre. Sounds like a good father and son activity. Will post some pictures over at Flickr when I get a chance of both events.

Contextless Links

• Cohousing Communities List
• Jared Diamond, Easter Island's End
• Search the Missional Church via Google
• Quebec dams open to attack, probe suggests :: Really, really open.
• Container reuse - green homes with a difference
• Just because everyone agrees, it doesn't make it right
• The church and morality
• It's over...
• Paul Martin's defence of Bill C-38 (pdf)
  

Collapse: How Societies Choose to Fail or Succeed by Jared Diamond

I am reading Jared Diamond's large book Collapse. Excellent book and I have been learning a lot about societal collapse, both ancient (Easter Island) and current (Montana of all places). Here are my early observations....

• It is always a combination of factors that start with a reliance on a particular activity that other factors turn unsustainable.
• What seems sustainable now will often have long term consequences later (mining in Montana has had a terrible impact on water quality and a legacy of now decrepit dams full of toxic waste).
• We living in a much more complicated and integrated world that we can imagine. The downfall of some of the Polynesian Islands was not just environmental factors of their own land but also their trading partners.
• Radical shifts needed to survive are often ignored in favor of war.
  

While reading about Montana, I realized that in their efforts to save their traditional way of life, they are actually going to kill it as the world changes around them. It was reminiscent of a line from former Saskatchewan Finance Minister Janice McKinnon's book that in the Devine's government's efforts to preserve the rural way of life, they may have accelerated it's demise.

I also kept thinking of the church. The decline of the church culture (or church civilization) reminds me of Montana. 100 years ago it was at the top of the (western) world and through a combination of several factors things started to unravel (some as a result of the church and others as a change in the enviromental factors). In efforts to save it, we may end up speeding its demise. While Baptists and Methodists are hardly at war, the war between conservative and liberal Christians increases, not to say with the battle between conservatives and Sponge Bob.

Link

Site Updates

I am done my site updates. I am sad to announce that minty will not be coming back but there has been a couple tweaks that I thought I would point out.

1. The syndication feed has been upgraded from RSS 0.91 to Atom. This means that those of you who are using Bloglines will be able to see the inline links. Most current RSS readers do read Atom feeds now. If yours does not, let me know and I will see what I can do to provide a RSS feed as well.
2. My e-mail address is migrating on the site and in real life from coop AT jordoncooper.com to jordoncooper AT gmail.com. The reason.... 500-1000 spam a day. Gmail does a great job filtering spam and I am having my coop AT jordoncooper.com e-mail forwarded for the near future at least.
3. A new footer is on every page with an updated Creative Commons license.
4. About 200 new quotations in the quotes area.
5. Elimination of some of the buttons on the site and replaced with text links.
6. I am using Technorati's really cool trackback feature to check out what is being posted about individual links. I will post the instructions for it as soon as del.icio.us gets back on line and I can find it.
   

That out of the way, I rather enjoyed the comments in our little get to know each other thread. I did forgot to mention that I did steal the idea from Adam Cleveland. I think I had it in an earlier version of the post but Blogger died on me. No excuses though and here is the credit and love link to that Princeton don.

A lot of stuff was brought up and I thought I would reply to some of them in this post. I'll leave the comments open on this one if you have any feedback.

1. Why the Blogger comments? For 95% of the comments on the site, having them on is not a problem but a couple of comments really bothered me. They weren't attacks on me but were quite personal attacks on some friends. The attacks are never by friends or people that I would call part of the community and as far as I know, they never came back but some people were hurt by them and I didn't really like that. When your site is called jordoncooper.com and your name is... well Jordon Cooper, I don't want my name and site to be a place where friends get attacked. The other occasion was on November 11th and there were a couple comments mocking Canadian troops and our military history. Not only were they incredibly ignorant but how do you mock veterans who fought and died at Vimy, Ortona, Juno, Holland, Korea and a lot of smaller battles all across Europe and Asia. During that time I was working two jobs and at the church and I was too physically tired to want to even look at this site and e-mail. Meg Hourihan, the co-founder of Blogger and publisher of Megnut, posted her thoughts on comments here that kind of articulates what I was thinking. Blogger allows me to turn off the comments and allows me to spend that time with Wendy and Mark and not have to be worried if someone makes a personal attack on a friend. That being said, I have been turning them on more lately and I have had a lot of fun with them.
2. Some have asked why I don't post more about my own spiritual journey here. Good question. I used to, up to last Easter. That weekend it came apparent that the person who had molested Wendy was going through our weblog archives and using her and mine blog to hurt her. For a long time both of our blog archives were taken offline and probably 200 entries were removed that dealt with personal parts of our lives were removed. In the process a lot of that stuff was removed. There are those in our lives that have expressed a hatred and a desire to do harm to us and we do keep that in mind while posting. The other reason is that I am a pastor and I don't talk a lot about Lakeland Church here on this blog because it is often blogged over at our church weblog. This fact I can blame on technology. I used to double post more often when I was using w.bloggar as it had a multiple post function. Sadly it does not support the Blogger link field so I never use it anymore. That means that I double post rarely and a lot of the great community parts of church life are at the church's weblog. Finally, my life has sucked the last 12 months. I have an ulcer, am taking a lot of advise from a spiritual advisor, and I don't like to talk about a lot of really depressing aspects of it right now. I find it hard to talk about with friends let alone a place where my enemies hang out. Am hoping things turn around by 2008.
   
3. Why Blogger? I like it and the box that my site is hosted on is both free, fast, reliable, and a Windows machine. Have thought about moving to MT or WordPress but I enjoy Blogger right now. They also gave me a hoodie.
4. Why so much politics? I have grown up around politics. In many ways the politics was a safer place for me than the church during a period in my life. I have always followed politics yet at the same time find myself following Stanley Hauerwas (and I think Jesus' view of politics). I don't take politics that seriously and probably far less seriously than what comes across here on this blog. My friend Rudy Carrasco has a great line in a IM conversation when we were chatting about this issue, "Someone's got to govern the place." He is right but I don't take a lot that goes on in Regina, Ottawa, or for that matter Washington that some of my readers do If you want to know what I think about politics, here is what William H. Willimon and Stanley Hauerwas have to say. They articulate some of what I believe in pages 51 to 54 in Where Resident Aliens Live. (hyperlinks are my edits)

   When politics is brought to the attention of Jesus (Luke 20:20-26), the whole discussion is portrayed with such jocularity as to suggest that we are to take none of this with seriousness. When wanting to trap Jesus and hand him over to the police (Luke 20:20), they ask Jesus, "Should we pay taxes to Caesar or not?" (Not that was our question, not Jesus'.)
   
   Jesus answers (Luke 20:24), "Who's got a quarter?"
   
   (Note that Jesus' pockets are empty.)
   
   When a coin is produced, Jesus asks, "Whose picture is on it?"
   
   We answer, "George Washington."
   
   "Well, if he needs the stuff so badly as to put his picture on it, then give it to him, " says Jesus. "But you be careful and don't give to Caesar what belongs to God."
   
   Okay. We give up. Should we pay taxes to Caesar or not?
   
   From this we learn that a primary biblical way or treating politics is as a joke. Certainly, politicians can make much mischief, but it would be a liturgical and ethical mistake to take them too seriously. Idolatry is as big a problem for democracies as for non-democracies.
   
   Continuing the political fun into the book of Acts, we find an assortment of pagan bureaucrats and functionaries parading through, none of whom is pictured with much sympathy by Luke. Felix, Agrippa, Bernice and all the rest of the beneficiaries of some of the most eloquent apostolic testimony, and absolutely none of them ever gets the point. Acts depicts a church busily interfacing with the world, always probing, always on the move, always willing talk to anyone--even a pagan Roman bureaucrat--who will listen. However, the results of such political witness and public hearings are slim. About the best one can expect from such political action, according to the Acts of the Apostles, is the liberal, open-minded liberal sigh: "Well, this dialogue is awfully interesting. We'll just have to hear more about this sometime." But never conversion. And in the end, the politicians react to the church in the typical Gentile way--Paul is executed in Rome.
   
   From these stories in Acts we derive a number of principles for Christian engagement with politics.
   
   1. We must never give Caesar more than his due. Never take Caesar or his solutions with too much seriousness.
   
   2. Christians are in the world; therefore, we run various skirmishes into the political world. We are every bit as "public" and "political" as anyone, even more so.
   
   3. However, do not expect much from politics. Invariably, politicians tend to be totalitarian--be they the democrastically elected type or the socialist collectiveist type--because bureaucrats are bureaucrats. That is, most bureaucrats, down deep, act as if there were no God. They have an infinite means to co-opting and corrupting the gospel. Be careful around managers. A bureaucrats self-interest is larger than yours.
   
   4. In the end, no matter how congenial the conversation, no matter how many concessions we win from politics, the bottom line for the way the world congregates and unifies people is violence. Politics and violence go together. Violence tends to be the predominant means for establishing community in a world that knows not a God who calls a family named church.
   
   Perhaps this is what Fuller Seminary's Miroslav Volf means when he speaks of the Christian difference with the world being a "soft difference". Volf says that "soft" difference does not mean "weak" We really do have fundamental differences with the way the world orders itself. However, our difference is not a difference that is open to threats or coercion. Our difference does not mean that we think that the world is more evil than we, that we think that we are redeemed and the world is fallen. We believe that the world and the church are both fallen and redeemed by the cross of Christ. It is just that church knows this and is attempting to live in the light of that knowledge, whereas the world does not know this. Perhaps the world's lack of knowledge is the fault of the church, rather than the error of the world. How vibrant, engaging, and enticing has been the witness of the church to the world? Jesus has clearly entrusted he salvation of the world to the church rather than to the world.
   
   "The soft difference is the missionary side of the following in the footsteps of the crucified Messiah. It is not an optional extra but part of Christian identity itself," says Volf. In being missionaries in the world of politics, we realize that we are in a particularly dangerous location, considering the political history of this century, a place that, time and again, has perverted and co-opted the Christian faith for its unglodly purposes. Yet "politics" is not a monolithic place, and "politics" is also meant to come under the Lordship of Christ. And he will rule until he has brought all things under feet (Hebrews 2:8), the same feet that all kings are commanded to kiss (Psalms 2:4).

All is not well

Some points from The Present Future

• The collapse of the church of the church culture can be demonstrated in several ways. One is through demographics. The percentage of Americans who claim to go to church each week has hung in the 40 to 43 percent range for thirty years. But I ask you, do you really believe those numbers? I recently asked a group of pastors in a conference setting whether any of them living a community where 40 percent of the population shows up at church on Sunday. Only one raised his hand. A study conducted in the late 1990s suggested Americcans might be lying about their churchgoing habits to pollsters... A friend of mine in a Southern Bible Belt town called every church in his town after Easter in 2001 and reported only about 25 percent of the town attended church--on Easter.
• The further down you go in the generational food chain, the lower the percentage each succeeding generation reports going to church. The drop is from 52 percent of builders and seniors to only 36 percent of gen Xers. What does this spell for the church in the future? Armed with this information, of course, churches are launching an all out effort to reach gen Xers. I wish! Most churches have actually written them off, waiting for them to grow up and learn to like what the church has to offer.
• ...Dwanson McAllister, national youth ministry specialist, says that 90 percent of kids active in high school youth groups do no go to church by the time they are sophomores in college. One-third of these will never return. This rate of disconnection indicates a dilemma far more serious than mere youthful rebellion.
• A growing number of people are leaving the institutional church for a new reason. They are not leaving because they have lost faith. They are leaving the church to preserve their faith.... David Barrett author of the World Christian Encyclopedia, estimates that there are about 112 million "churchless Christians" worldwide, about 5 percent of all adherent, but he projects that number will double in the next twenty years.
  

Link

Take care to avoid the Easter trap set by modernity

On Holy Saturday it can seem the gods of sex, money and war have triumphed but they should beware by N.T. Wright

We have connived at our own belittling. It's a natural reaction. The big dogs in the street have barked at us and we have shrunk back into our safe little worlds. The big boys in the playground have sneered at us and we have become embarrassed about our faith and hope, as if they were a sordid little secret. The god of money gets cross with us if we propose remitting Third World debt. The god of war is furious if we challenge the Iraq war. (An unknown e-mail correspondent from Alabama called me anti-American the other day, and when, perhaps foolishly, I challenged this trivialisation she snapped back that I was obviously not self-aware. Nice to be psychoanalysed from thousands of miles away on the basis of a newspaper report.) The god of sex has some interesting names to call us if we insist on maintaining the morality common to millennia of Jews, Christians, Muslims and many others.

The self-appointed cultural guardians of late modernity mock us if we challenge all three of these false gods, since to question the first two makes us look "radical" and to challenge the third today seems "conservative" - and everybody knows that our current left-right spectrum is a Law of the Medes and Persians, written in the stars, fixed and unalterable. Meanwhile the Church, like so many of its older buildings, seems to be saying to the passer-by: "Not much happening here. Just a quiet, sad little place for quiet, sad little people." A bit like the women at the tomb on the evening of Good Friday. A bit like the silent, waiting garden on Holy Saturday.

But what the sniggering Sadducees never bargained for, what the viciously efficient pagan soldiers never anticipated, what never entered the head of our barking, sneering late-modern culture, was that the God of life and love and new possibilities might do a new thing. The interpretation of Easter itself has been scrunched into the trap laid by modernity, and the Church has gone along with it. Either Easter becomes a happy little ending for an otherwise sad story, or it's about bunnies and daffodils, or it's the bald affirmation that there is after all a life after death. Modernity can cope with all those (hardly surprising, since it generated them in the first place). None of them would have made any sense to the first Christians, least of all the last: almost everyone believed in life after death, but Easter meant life after "life after death" - a new bodily existence after a period of being bodily dead.

What neither modernity nor cynical postmodernity can cope with - and hence what they, like the cultural thought police of the first century, stamp on whenever they see it - is the suggestion that the gloom of Good Friday and the lull of Holy Saturday are the prelude to a new kind of life. This sort of life bursts out and challenges all our power systems (in an electronically manipulated democracy, power follows money and the media), and declares once more the shockingly unfashionable truth that Jesus is Lord.

The Politics of the Church

One of the things that has always bothered me about the discussion about the war in Iraq is how in the church, there was a lot of political and partisan discussion but not a lot of theological discussion about it. When I read this quote from Hauerwas and Willimon in Where Resident Aliens Live: Exercises for Christian Practice it reminded me that it is those questions that need to be asked first in the church and the political ones second. Theology and our political beliefs are often held as separate things but shouldn't my theology have a say in the kind of world that God is calling me to create. It calls me from my own selfishness (what will this candidate do for me) to looking at what kind of world are we called live in and change.

The question is, How can the church be enculturated as a people capable of surviving in a culture that tempts us to forget that we our   selves, as the church, are a culture? How can our cuIture be an alternative to the cultures in which we find ourselves? Of course, there may be continuities between the culture that is the church and the culture in which we find ourselves. Cultural continuity, however, cannot be guaranteed, or desired, for much depends on how open a surrounding culture is to those who worship God. This continuity is something that the church discovers because it first knows who it is.

We recognize that part of the difficulty in coming to terms with resident aliens is that there seems to be such a distance between the churches that exist and the church we are calling into existence. People think that we are asking the church to be the Amish of Pennsylvania.

While we have great respect for the Amish of Pennsylvania, that is not who we are asking the church to be. We are after all mainstream Methodists. We believe that God has not abandoned even mainstream Methodists, as we possess habits-if we had the courage to draw upon them-that would provide exactly the kind of inculturation in the church we think necessary to sustain us in the fight.

For example, Stanley remembers a talk he heard long ago by an official of the World Council of Churches concerning the Orthodox response to the Communist party takeover in Russia. Few churches had more accommodated themselves to their social roles than had Russian Orthodoxy. One would have thought that the whole task of the Orthodox Church of Russia was to underwrite the rule of the czars. Obviously, its social reality was more complex than that, but there can be no question that the Russian Orthodox Church, at least in its official positions, was deeply accommodated to the rule of the czars. Its alleged "mystical worship" meant that there was very little sense of social engagement of the church in matters having to do with politics and economics. So when the Communists took power, here was a church peculiarly ill suited to resist the powers that be.

There was one Russian Orthodox habit, however, that brought the church out of the church. Before the Eucharist, the priest was expected to go to the porch of the church and ring a handbell. The bell was to indicate to the people in the village that the celebration was beginning. The early Communist regime, however, as part of its anti-religious campaign, outlawed the traditional public ringing of the bell. Finally, the world had impin'ged on the church, and through that impingement the Orthodox discovered that the God they worshiped was indeed the God of the world. orthodox priests, unfailingly traditionalist by nature, doggedly continued to stand on the porch, ringing their little bells, finding church impossible without the ringing of the bell. The state reacted by slaughtering and jailing priests by the thousands. Refusing to give up the ringing of the bell, Orthodoxy confronted its nation's rulers with a determination that they did not know they had. God, in God's mysterious ways, had made the Orthodox more faithful than they had ever wanted to be. Thank God for the Communists who figured out a way to make the church the Church.

In a similar fashion, we believe God is helping us discover the significance of the everyday practices of the church that are necessary to help us in the fight. For example, consider the fact that the church still requires people to be gathered in order to worship God. We are called out of our homes, out of our neighborhoods, out of our cities, to be gathered together as a people capable of worshiping God. That we do not worship God in our homes is a sign that we understand that the family can be as destructive as it can be sustaining. The church calls the family into question exactly to the extent that the church insists on educating our children that their loyalty to God is primary even to their loyalty to their family. We insist on telling our people that, as a gathered people on Sunday, the unity of the church is more determinative than the unity that the nation supplies.

Again, such a practice is the simple act of learning to pray to God. Learning to pray is the way Christians discover how to speak. The primary language of the church is the language of prayer-because in prayer the practice and the language are inseparable. Of course, it is not easy to learn to pray well. And that is why we do well to imitate those who have prayed before us. So we say prayers whose words we may not even well understand because in the saying we discover that we have become part of an understanding we can only later make our own. So by becoming skilled speakers of that language called Christian, through prayer we discover the skills necessary for Christians not only to survive but also to resist the world that would destroy us.

Accordingly, Christians cannot easily go to war against other nations in which we might be asked to kill Christians. How can we get up from the table of unity and be willing to kill one another in the name of loyalties that are not loyalties to Christ? What would it mean to rise from the table of unity we call Eucharist and kill one another in the name of national loyalties? Is it any wonder that the world does not take Christians seriously when we do so-because the world knows in effect we are the world's not God's.

A Christian's fight against war in many ways is too easy a target. Everyone is against war, but often Chris tians are against war for the wrong reasons. We have been taught to think that war is so terrible no Christian could be for it. The deep difficulty with war for the Christian is not that it is so terrible but that it destroys the unity of the Body of Christ. Indeed, part of being resident aliens is helping Christians to challenge the sentimentalities of liberal democratic polities, which presume that war must be some kind of misunder standing that got out of control. War is the enemy of Christians because war urges us to sacrifice our chilens live, explore the development of those practices, those disciplines that might enable us to be the sort of people who have the resources to say, No, even to so great a moral project as war.

In the early Middle Ages, the great Burgundian monastery of Cluny launched an experiment with its feudal neighbors-landowners around the monastery who were always warring with one another. The arrangement, known as the "truce of God," was that all hostilities should be restricted to three days in the week (Monday to Wednesday). The experiment did not last long and, in retrospect, it may appear a bit silly. But it is more than a comical bit of medieval eccentricity. Behind it lay the honest insight that for baptized Christians, sharers in the Body of Christ, to be in a state of war with one another was ridiculous. We believe that the Burgundians, with their great respect for the power of the symbolic, were on to something. After all, three days a week without war may not be everything, but one has to start somewhere.

Stanley has a poster on his office door that is sponsored by the Mennonite Central Committee. The poster reads: "A Modest Proposal for Peace-let the Christians of the world agree that they will not kill each other." Some might think that an insufficient gesture, somewhat akin to the Burgundian plan for three days a week without war. But what could be more radical than a Christian's unwillingness to kill other Christians because we understand that as a gathered people we are bound in a deeper unity than that which comes through family, neighborhood, or nation?

Imagine, in the international war against Iraq, if some Episcopalian, having seen Bishop Edmund Browning celebrating the Eucharist at the Anglican church in Baghdad, had said, "I will do my duty. for George Bush and Exxon in fighting Iraq, but I will not do anything that might endanger the lives of my fellow Anglicans in Baghdad." That you cannot even conceive of such a person is an indictment upon the church we have created, and one of the reasons why we need resident aliens.

At the end of John's gospel, in John 20, the Risen Christ appears to his disciples. Thomas, having missed the appearance, tells the others that he will not believe in the resurrection unless he touches the very wounds of the Risen Christ. When Christ urges Thomas to be "not faithless but believing," Thomas cries out, "My Lord and my God!" Raymond Brown notes that Thomas's confession may be used by John, not only to express belief in the resurrection but also to make a political claim. Dominus et Deus noster was the title the emperor Domitian com manded every resident of the Empire to honor. "Lord and Our God" was the royal ascription in use about the time John was written. With brilliant irony John has transformed a phrase associated with the imperial worship of power and gloIy, through Thomass confession, to the Risen, crucified Christ. The one who still bears the scars ofignominy-the worst the Emperor could do to a rivalis the one who is now hailed by his church as our Lord and our God.

Think of Easter as a political rally. Think of Sunday worship, our handling of the broken body and the shed blood, as our attempt to get our politics right.

Maple Leaf's Skate for Easter Seals

I posted a fairly harsh commentary about the Toronto Maple Leaf's decision to cancel their annual skate with the kids for Easter Seals. Fellow Hockey Pundit Chris Corrigan posted his story when he was nine years old. It is about everything that is right about hockey then and is wrong about it now.

One of my greatest memories of Maple Leaf Gardnes was skating in an Easter Seals Skatathon when I was 9 years old. Bobby Orr was there, and as we skated around the rink he made sure to skate one full lap with each kid. Even though he had retired by then, he was still an idol of mine and it was an unbelieveable thrill to skate with him on the ice at the Gardens at age nine, just shooting the breeze like a couple of old friends. True story:
"You play hockey?" he asked me.
"Sure, house league."
"What number do you wear?"
I smile. "Four," I say becasue it was true.
He smiles too.
Can you imagine that?

A very cool story and it is sad that Maple Leaf fans won't be able to tell those stories anymore. Stupid move by Leafs management.

It makes sense

Warren Kinsella writes about Easter weekend at his house.

For fun, we let the kids sleep in a big tent in the boys' room tonight. After story time, the conversation turned to non-secular matters. Our four-year-old, who has the makings of a Jesuit, related the story of the Last Supper, which he called "Jesus' last meal before the bad guys killed him."
When I asked him how many other people were with Jesus at said "last meal," he replied three.
"Three?"
"Yes, Daddy. The three musketeers."
Which, when you think of it, now explains the little bit of swordplay that took place at Gethsemane. The ear of the high priest's slave was lopped off by one of the Musketeers, not one of the disciples. Mystery solved.

Easter

Had a wonderful afternoon and evening with family at the Reimer's. Here are some great pictures of the Easter Egg Hunt after supper.

Again...

Got home late last night, didn't clean out the van completely, went out this morning to find out that my wallet and Palm 125 and some other stuff were stolen from the van. Having my ID stolen is particularily annoying. Tonight I had to go down to the City of Saskatoon's Police Station to fill out a report. As I went in the cop of duty was stressed. In the lobby was a women who had done a lot of drugs and had been reportedly raped. She appeared schizophrenic and even talked of being demon possessed and cursed. She was delussional but in obvious emotional pain.

Later another man walked out. Smelling of booze and body odour he was met by a women who kept desparately asking for a smoke. As he came out he told her that she was going to get beaten when they got home and she obediantly followed him out the door.

The cop on duty dealt with them and some other upset women in an interview room but I couldn't help but think of him being a metaphor for a wider world. So many things wrong and despite his best efforts he couldn't do nearly as much as what needed to be done.

Over the last hour I had a chance to talk to a part of society that I am not a part of. I don't see a lot of heroin track marks on my friends or hear them talk of the police plan to kill them (we had to stay in front of the camera as the police wouldn't kill her in front of a camera). Here I am a pastor, to quote PBS, an "agent of grace" yet even in my own life, grace goes to the middle upper class, those who are a lot safer then those I talked to while waiting for a police officer. I was just reading Brian McLaren's chapter on salvation in "Adventures in Missing the Point" and I am haunted right now by Tony Campolo's reply that is something like, "Brian spends a lot of time preaching to middle upper class educated people". That may or may not be true of Brian but it is of me. Campolo's point was clear in my life tonight.

The thief that took my wallet and Palm 125 got a couple hundred dollars that I can't afford but in return I got a glimpse of a world that needs Easter more than ever.

Good Friday

Wendy, Mark and I took two trips from Saskatoon to Spiritwood and back yesterday. The morning was spent walking the Stations of the Cross with the other churches in Spiritwood. It had a sombre and sacred feel. I have never taken part in one before but it was a very different and good experience. It was done at noon and we drove back home which seems a little odd but Mark was overtired and we know from experience that he won't nap in a strange place, he will want to play. We drove home, puttered around the house for a little while and then got some Slurpees and then hit the road north again. The church was holding an Easter musical that managed to pack the church out with strangers. The musical was written by Linda Pilling who had the entire church involved. The best part of the night for me was a rather simple accoustic song that they sang while a nail was being pounded into the cross. It was the right song and the right reminder of how horrible the cruxifiction was.

Good Friday

I hope everyone has a blessed Good Friday. We are off to Spiritwood for the Stations of the Cross this morning and then back tonight for the Easter Cantata. Will post again tomorrow.