We are a collective, begun in a coffee shop during the summer of 2011.
Three unemployed Bible College graduates sat and wallowed away an
afternoon. It was the beginning of something... an idea that turned into
a blog. It would be a place where we could vent, express, create,
dream, question, and discuss. After the first year, we expanded to seven
contributing authors. More than a random assortment of people, we are a
community of cultural rebels, working out our commitment to each other
online as life drags us in different directions. Smoke, Mirrors, and
Cigarettes has become a place to interact intellectually and creatively
with each other and the world around us. It is through this collective
that we attempt to navigate a wild and confusing world. We hope you join
us on this voyage! Welcome to Smoke, Mirrors, and Cigarettes.
I love theology and thinking about problems or ideas, which is at least part of the reason I went to Bible college and huge reason why I stayed and another huge reason why I started my masters (2011). But I am uncertain what I am going to do with all this thinking and theology... Teach? It's an option... write? I'm working on that here. I love creativity: writing, photography, video, painting, drawing etc. I love the church even when I hate it and I love it enough to be honest. Churches need honest people but too often they want safe people that fit into their theological box. It is my experience that this is across all denominations and "non denominations."
This blog is a place where we can be honest and hopefully bring some difficult and unusual conversation to our communities in a relevant and productive fashion.
A good friend once asked me why I pursued a Bible degree. Jokingly I said, “I used to like the Bible”. When I began the degree, I would have said that it was because I highly value Christian education and could see my self in no other line of work than ministry and professional Christianity. For the longest time, all I wanted to do was be a missionary. I was raised in church, was on every committee and participated in every event. It only made sense to attend Bible College and be trained for church work. After spending eight months overseas, I came to recognize that the raw missionary life was not spiritually, physically or emotionally sustainable for me. I spent my final year at college wrestling to understand this experience, deconstructing God, others and myself. I am now in a mystical and intellectual pursuit to reconcile God with experience. To me, participating in this blog is to wrestle publicly, to invite discussion and to
search for gold in our caves.
Bible College can only be described as an accident. High school, university, a business degree; that was the original plan. The detour occurred after a party while walking with a friend. "Bible College in BC?" My response, "BC has good skiing, I'm coming". Before I knew it four years had flown by. I loved it, I was good at it, and the skiing was indeed amazing. What I learned...well you can
read my posts. What I found out...I do not "fit" the normal Christian world. What I think...I think a lot...and my ideas are not always welcomed. This is probably why I became good friends with Duncan and Danielle, they not only put up with my ideas but encourage them. Where am I now...working for an NGO. Where am I going from here...more NGO work, policy, law, maybe returning to academia, who knows the world is my oyster (although sometimes it is a depressing oyster).
When people learn that I went to Bible College, they often ask, “Are you still… er… you know… religious?” I usually respond by sheepishly explaining how I’m not as religious as I am spiritual – or something – then begin to mutter on about how I may be a Christian but that most Christians would not call me a Christian and finally end my confused explanation with an all too predictable, “you know?” Truth is, I don’t know. I have no clue how to respond to that question. I have been religious all my life, while rejecting the idea of me being religious. I have always been ashamed of my religion, or spirituality, or whatever you want to call it. It was not until recently that I have learned to embrace my spirituality, and the flat out rejection of it. It is in this embrace that I have learned to love reading books I do not understand, listening to music I can not count, hanging with people who are out of my league, living experiences that were thought to be forbidden and working with that which is broken. I hope that
my contributions to this blog offer a way, for both you and I, to navigate and explore this new found embrace. (Follow me
@mantoulinmusic)
I met Danielle and Silas in my first year out of high school. I did a year at Columbia Bible College with these folks, and loved my time there. Even though I loved that year, I knew that the wonderfulness I experienced in this “Christian bubble” would have to come to a close. After Bible college, I did a degree, starting in Environmental Sciences, and ending in Agricultural Sciences (or at least as agricultural as UBC can be… I can explain what I mean in another blog post…).
Over the years my thoughts on God and faith and Christianity have migrated away from the conventional Christian church ideology to… somewhere else. Somewhere else, left field, out to lunch, in between, progressive, heretic. Whatever you want to call it, I find myself uncomfortable with the associations lots of people (myself included) make with the term “Christian”, but also I think there is some truth in Christian theology. I’m not ready to throw the baby out with the bathwater, as the saying goes... So here I am, reading and
writing this blog to explore what it means to keep the baby and not the bathwater; because no one likes tepid bathwater.
Finding myself in a “life transition,” I figure I might as well follow in the footsteps of my husband (Duncan) and start blogging. Luckily for me, this one has already been started. Once, twice, maybe three times a musician, I am interested in the role of music and how we look at the world through this medium. I am also currently exploring what makes us “Canadian” and how that specifically influences the way I experience and interpret the world. But most of all, I am interested in dreaming dreams. In the last few years of my life, I have settled into the daily-ness of life and yet I cannot shake the dreams I dream. Feeling as though I had lost my way for a bit, I am emerging as a hopeful woman who wants to find some good in the world and sing
(or blog) all about it.
The original plan was not Bible College but somehow I ended up at one in Canada, of all places. Now I am attending seminary in Portland because I love God so much... or education... (which is why I would be in Ravenclaw). Grad school is a bit different than I had expected, still feeling on the outside as I am not married, in full-time ministry, or over the age of 30, or male. But I love it! And I love what I get to study, discovering God through the voices at the margins. In the end, this year continues a journey of personal deconstruction as I recognize and am faced with my desperate need for community and God. Honestly, my hope for joining this blog is a simple one, to find
my voice as a writer and to embrace it instead of rejecting it as I have done for the majority of my academic career. I hope to focus on reflections from school, the margins and what I’m learning as I step into the adventure of intentional community living. (also I’m on the twitter @cait_kellogg)
Guest Posts!
Read them here. If you have something you would like to post or a long response to something we post. Let us know. We would be pleased to publish it for you.
