6 Weeks: Part 1

So it's time for me to break the ice and write my first post. Let me start out by referencing something my roommate said to me today. He kindly pointed out that in just over 6 weeks from now, I will no longer be his roommate.

I am extremely excited!

You see, in six weeks I'll be packing up my belongings and moving to a city that is unfamiliar to me in order to continue my pursuit of an undergraduate degree. I've enrolled at University of Victoria where I hope to finish my degree in Political Science while pursuing a minor in Social Justice Studies.

It's not that I won't miss this place. I agonize over the idea of leaving this city prematurely. I feel as though I've just come to a place where I can start calling Vancouver home. I have a lovely community here who continue to teach me so much about the world, I live in the best house with the most amazing people, and I feel as if I've only begun to explore this place that I call home. But man, is it ever exciting to leave.

I've been putting off school for far too long now. When I finished my spring semester at community college and got a job in fundraising, it was only supposed to last the summer. I'm now in my second summer at this job and although I love the clients I work for and the people I work with, I need out of this job. It alone has been the biggest stress of my life as I have moved up and down that corporate ladder disguised as a tree full of hippies and good ideals. Not to mention the fact that a 40 hour work weeks get monotonous, stale, and utterly exhausting. Maybe I'm in the wrong job but at least in school my entire schedule changes every four months and with each change comes a change in focus.

I'm also very excited for a fresh start. I've been through a lot over the past few years and each time my life is faced with crisis, I've felt the urge to leave and start over somewhere new. I've done this in the past, it's how I ended up in BC in the first place. A combination of stagnancy, heart break, and wanderlust drew me to the west coast and it was here that I discovered new adventures, friends, and a whole wealth of knowledge and understanding of myself. I feel as though I've come to that place again. Victoria will be a chance for me to start afresh, meet new people, experience new things, and discover a whole lot more about myself and the world I live in.

How is this not one of the most exciting moments of my life?

Part 2 comes soon.

Stories Collide. Pt. 1

What is reality, what shapes it, and how do I understand my experiences? These questions have been prodding me towards story. Story has been a journey of a thousand miles, begun a long time ago. I grew up a scientific modernist giving lip-service to the possibility of the supernatural, then passing through fundamentalist, and into “biblical”, now I find myself somewhere in a matrix of post-modern/modern/undecided/conglomerate. What I have learned through this development is that the story one lives into shapes all arguments, experience, actions, and epistemology.

I was blessed with a lot of dissonance in my life. I grew up in a “Christian North American” story. It was a story that held to a scientific modernist understanding of the world, but refused to take it to the extreme of excluding the supernatural. This, however, was brutally interrupted by a jaunt to a post-religious/secular/European worldview and story when I lived in England; I was twelve and thirteen years old. The stories clashed, I was too young to understand the significance of such an experience. It is hard to describe the clash of story, they do not battle openly with argumentation that is easy to follow, but a feeling is evident. A feeling of being unsettled. A story is supposed to follow a plot, but when the first story is interrupted and a second story enters in the middle, there is a sense of loss. The flow is incomplete, there is no past and the present seems to have no grounding.

Upon returning to North America, I attempted to pick up my old story, but it was now disjointed. One attempts to reconcile the themes, motifs, and symbols of a different story. It was with this muddled story I entered Bible College. Little did I know I was about to disturb my story in unimaginable ways. Coming from the Christian Reformed Story, I entered the Anabaptist Story. I attempted to “argue” the stories, but I ran into the same problem as before, stories do not respond well to argument. They are different with different pasts. Instead, stories syncretise, usually to the detriment of both. Stories have a funny way of picking the worst of both, rather than the best. It is not that the best parts cannot come together to make a better story, but that takes active participation by the character (you and me). I saw an example of bad syncretism in East Africa where Christianity comes with consumerism, modernity, and hyper-spirituality, but does not get rid of the tribalism, thus blending the negatives (tribalism, consumerism, and modernity) and the positive seem negligible (loyalty, direction, hope). Similar awful syncretism led me to a brief period as a fundamentalist. I syncretised the scientific absolutism of modernism with the Bible. It resulted with a “data quest” into the Bible. I attempted to pull out the absolutes. (This is my critique of Systematic Theology, even when not “fundamentalist”, it is a syncretism of a scientific method with a story. It does not ask the questions of the story, rather it imposes the questions of another story – Greek influenced scientific thought – onto the biblical story).

In reaction to fundamentalism, I attempted to become a purist. For a few years, I attempted to understand the biblical story, attempting to read it on its own terms. This was going well, but then I went to East Africa. This cross-cultural experience rattled my “bible only” conception of truth and reality. The “same” Christian stories clashed, this shook my naïve understanding that one’s private experience is able to arrive at a purist Biblical understanding. Rather one’s private experience and story will completely subvert the entire story. Our private experiences ultimately determine our stories, what flows in and that which is discarded. I came to this conclusion as I sat across from another reading the same text, we both claimed it as authoritative, and we would come to completely different understandings, each significantly shaped by our cultures. The common ground seemed negligible compared to the differences. Everything is relative. Thus ended my purist pursuit.

Where does one go from complete relativity? N.T. Wright goes to critical realism, a noble option, but a method still rooted in a Greek history. Others walk forward into post-modernity with their arm open come what may. Yet others revert, either back into modernity, fundamentalism and its syncretism, or even to a pre-modern-esque type of understanding. This is the crossroads many of us encounter; it is a crossroad I continue to navigate. It is here Story becomes significant. Newbigin’s book “The Gospel in a Pluralist Society” argues for the church as the agent telling the Gospel story and thus persuading the world. Here Duncan’s articulation of Gospel becomes incredibly important; for if Gospel is a part of the story it can be persuasive and syncretised into our stories becoming a story changer. However, if it is a coercive, totalizing, story it co-opts our stories and leads to bad syncretism.

I am attempting to create some hermeneutics for myself as I wallow through this nebulous crossroad. First, honesty. It does me no good to neglect my past or the biases I know I hold. I must be as honest as possible, lay my cards out and attempt to proceed with all the guidance there. Second, virtue. What do I want to become? What do I want my story to look like? Here I lay down my card of compassion. If it is not compassionate, I ought to consider alternatives. Third, story. I must continually remind myself not to argue myself into the “correct” option, because by doing so I have already been co-opted by one story, that of rational argumentation arising out of the modernist era I grew up in (thus following the first hermeneutic). I must continually open myself to persuasion. What story persuades me to follow hermeneutic two? Fourth, keep the biblical text as authoritative. Thus, as the stories blend together I want the narrative of scripture to have significant weight, specifically life, death, and resurrection, as living, dying, and rising throughout my life, even daily, and hopefully in the cosmos, lead me towards greater compassion (hermeneutic two). Fifth, choose wisely. The ability to choose, to choose what is authoritative, choosing the story one lives into, choosing to ones hermeneutics, I must choose contemplatively.

With that, I find myself at the point of syncretising stories. None of them can be “taken out” as they have all entered into my story, but I can mix and mould. I can choose the back-story of the Bible. Therefore, I can incorporate the Gospel (as Duncan articulated) into my story. I can affirm the story of modernism, its conclusion, and collapse into post-modernism. I can look relativism in the face and walk forward with the most persuasive story I can compile, given my experience, which includes the Gospel and compassion. Further, when I am confronted with other stories, such as in East-Africa, I can affirm the parts that blend, while persuading the parts that clash. This has significant influence on my thoughts on pluralism, because if I truly believe that the story I tell and the parts I have chosen to incorporate, it is honestly the best possible story and the most persuasive, there is reduced fear of bad syncretism if I choose to tackle it head-on.

Some of those reading this might be more than a little bit uncomfortable with my choice of words, specifically syncretism. But you see, I have no choice but to syncretise if I wanted out of (or to change) my original story. Since I cannot erase my past and my mode of though, remembering my first story was that of a scientific modernist in North America and NOT a first century Jew in Palestine, I must syncretise the stories I encounter. If I want to change story it involves delicate syncretism. Or to use more “Christian” words I might choose “conversion”, understanding conversion to be the continued gradual change of my story into one I desire.

“To be, or not to be…” - By Amy Ris

“If it’s meant to be, it will happen,” said the esthetician doing my nails this afternoon. I think this is probably the nicest sounding load of garbage I have ever heard. First of all, it doesn’t grammatically make sense. Globally, it doesn’t make sense in our world. Because what if “it” never happens? And “if it’s meant to be,” does that mean we simply sit back to watch and wait to see if we are one of the lucky ones who are meant-to-be-ers? And if we pour everything into making “it” happen ourselves, doesn’t that destroy the ethereal nature of the phrase “if it’s meant to be…”

For me, this phrase then leads into the discussion of how involved God is in our own, personal lives. Does he personally direct single people to find each other? Or do people find each other? And what about single people that don’t actually want to stay single? Can we simply say to them, “I guess it’s just not meant to be…”? How about a woman who can’t have kids even though it is her greatest heart’s desire? Is it simply just not “meant to be”?

And who are we to say what’s to be or not to be? That’s my question…

I am curious to know if you have ever said or heard this phrase and your own response to it within the context of faith and trust in God’s direction in our lives...

Duncan says the issue of how do we talk about these things with each other is as important as our theology...

Why is it so difficult to do these conversations well?

CYOA: Psalm 139 - Waking Up on the Wrong Side of the Bed

This weeks CYOA is Psalm 139.
You have searched me, LORD,
and you know me.
2 You know when I sit and when I rise;
you perceive my thoughts from afar.
3 You discern my going out and my lying down;
you are familiar with all my ways.
4 Before a word is on my tongue
you, LORD, know it completely.
5 You hem me in behind and before,
and you lay your hand upon me.
6 Such knowledge is too wonderful for me,
too lofty for me to attain.
7 Where can I go from your Spirit?
Where can I flee from your presence?
8 If I go up to the heavens, you are there;
if I make my bed in the depths, you are there.
9 If I rise on the wings of the dawn,
if I settle on the far side of the sea,
10 even there your hand will guide me,
your right hand will hold me fast.
11 If I say, “Surely the darkness will hide me
and the light become night around me,”
12 even the darkness will not be dark to you;
the night will shine like the day,
for darkness is as light to you.
13 For you created my inmost being;
you knit me together in my mother’s womb.
14 I praise you because I am fearfully and wonderfully made;
your works are wonderful,
I know that full well.
15 My frame was not hidden from you
when I was made in the secret place,
when I was woven together in the depths of the earth.
16 Your eyes saw my unformed body;
all the days ordained for me were written in your book
before one of them came to be.
17 How precious to me are your thoughts,[a] God!
How vast is the sum of them!
18 Were I to count them,
they would outnumber the grains of sand—
when I awake, I am still with you.
19 If only you, God, would slay the wicked!
Away from me, you who are bloodthirsty!
20 They speak of you with evil intent;
your adversaries misuse your name.
21 Do I not hate those who hate you, LORD,
and abhor those who are in rebellion against you?
22 I have nothing but hatred for them;
I count them my enemies.
23 Search me, God, and know my heart;
test me and know my anxious thoughts.
24 See if there is any offensive way in me,
and lead me in the way everlasting.
I am not feeling it. To be honest for a few days now I have not been feeling it. It is not truth for me today or yesterday for that matter. By the end of yesterday, my answer to “How are you?” was “I woke up on the wrong side of the bed this morning.” That is not to say anything horrible happened, but on the flip side, it seemed like nothing good happened either. I went through the monotony of my life with no passion. Lethargy, apathetic, depressed, hopeless, frustrated, and generally down, would be my description of the last few days. Days like this suck.

Now I sit here reading Psalm 139 and it could not be further from my experience. As I read this psalm, the refrain that keeps revolving in my mind is “wow I am not experiencing that”. I do not perceive God knowing all my thoughts. I am not experiencing a presence that I desire to flee or hide. I do not desire God to slay the wicked. I cannot relate to the sentiment of this text at all. It seems distant, removed, and elusive. My experience and the experience recorded are vastly different and I am unsure how to bridge that gap.

In days gone by, I have had people challenge my pessimism and reliance on my own experience through statements such as “experience does not equate to truth” or “you need to focus on the truth (in some abstract way) and then it will become your reality”. At this moment, that way of thinking seems unappealing and almost humorous in its absurdity. It seems incongruous because I cannot escape my reality or emotion without becoming more Gnostic or Stoic than I think Christianity is meant to be. So I am left here sitting in dissonance. The text I desire to make authoritative in my life is saying one thing, and I am here occupying space and time in a seemingly parallel and unrelated reality. Somehow I need to bridge that gap, but for now I am left wallowing in cognitive dissonance. I have been growing more familiar with this space of late.

Maybe, however, this is the proper place to be. If theology and philosophy have always been processes through which humanity has interpret the world and our (humanity’s and my own) experience, then I am currently in the best possible place to be to rethink, experience, and reframe the world in a new way. Maybe this is the place I ought to crave if I want to imagine the world differently.