Why not?

As of tomorrow, we enter the last month of 2011. A year marked by the motto "why not?" as established last new years in New York. A trip which was made possible by the phrase it was to inspire. It has been a year of travel, transition, creativity, and new endeavours.  Do a super intense internship? Why not? Be homeless for the summer? Why not? Embrace unemployment? Why not? Start a blog? Why not? Write a book? Why not? Shoot a painting? Why not? Start Grad School? Why Not? Move to Vancouver? Why not? Occupy Everywhere? Why not? Stay up all night doing home work? Why not?

In the course of these adventures I have discovered many excellent responses to our courageous question which launched us daringly into many new, difficult, challenging, and rewarding circumstances... However, as I begin to reflect on a year that has been filled with extremes and as I anticipate rest, renewal and rejoicing over the Christmas season, I am moved almost immediately to nostalgia. It has been a year of life shared deeply, with deep friends. Beginning as we slept 3 or 4 to a bed stumbling on top of each other in a tiny apartment in New York, an experience I'm we were sure had deepened or destroyed our relationships, to graduation, to Israel, to unemployment, from artistic endeavours, new jobs, to weddings, to new schools... memories have congealed into a glassy rose coloured past to be reminisced over as we return to favourite restaurants, share a cigar, and in either slurred or perfectly enunciated speech share the deep love and respect we hold for each other. Friendship is about life lived together and that is something that has happened significantly and deeply this year.

The questions to be answered in the coming month is what will next years motto be? How do our relationships transition as life moves us to different place? Will there be the new friends that we will journey, laugh and cry with, and how will they change us?

I anticipate this Christmas season as being celebratory with with old friends and new, with family, with wine, with food and champagne...

May we celebrate both the glory and misery of our lives, holding hands and cuddled together,
with shouting, laughter and tears,
with kisses and hugs,
with both hope and sorrow, grieving and joy...
May there always be pizza...
May water turn into wine...
May death give way to new life...
May life be lived together...
Amen.

God is in the Wind

It was a windy weekend all over the Pacific North West and across Western Canada. It was a wind that was omnipresent in my life. Be it the hurried jaunts outside while working on Saturday, the avalanche reports I read as I look forward to ski season, the news segments capturing headlines, or the experience of sitting on the pier in Bellingham Saturday night being buffeted by the wind.

Here are some of the impacts this wind:

It was a wind that tied me to my past:
“Commuters in Calgary struggled to get to work downtown on Monday after a severe windstorm swept through southern Alberta Sunday, prompting officials to shuthttp://www.blogger.com/img/blank.gif the city’s core to traffic as glass and debris rained down on the streets.”
“A strong low-pressure system combined with a Chinook blowing east from the mountains produced sustained winds of 77 km/h, with gusts reaching 144 km/h in Claresholm, equivalent to a Category 1 hurricane, says CBC meteorologist Johanna Wagstaffe.”
This is a reflection of where I am from, my hometown, and a meteorological phenomenon with which I am accustomed.

A wind some are blaming on Global warming:
“That same storm caused some damage & a lot of power outages here in BC when it blew through Saturday. Welcome to the world of global warming. More severe storms of greater power are one of the first effects we were warned about.” (CBC news Comments)
This ever-present, ominous, reality that is so easy to ignore because of its magnitude, rears its head again.
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Joy, recreation, and danger are tied to this wind, via avalanche danger:
“Increasing moderate rain or snow in the north Cascades spread southward Sunday afternoon and night along with briefly strong winds and significant cooling. Although in most locations the new snow bonded well to the old refreezing surface, this weather produced a general increase in the danger...especially on higher elevation lee slopes in the northern Cascades where greatest snowfall was received.”

My physical experience of the wind occurred with a group of friends Saturday night. After good food and causing an ongoing disruption in the restaurant because of gregarious laughter, we went to the pier in Bellingham. The wind shook the dock. The waves crashed over the lower sections, and I was struck by the silence of the wind. It makes no noise as it moves. There is the crash of the waves, the howling around one’s head, and the rustle of clothing, but the wind itself is silent. I fell into awe as I realized there are immense power, incredible potential, unfathomable persistence, and causative uncertainty in the wind.

Elijah experienced God in the still small voice; I experienced God this weekend in that wind. The diverse nature of it, the way it affected so many areas of my life, the destructive potential, the silence of it, the macro and the micro, the tie to past and present, and the friendship I experienced while being buffeted from all sides by that Godly wind.

Black Friday!

Nothing brings people together on the holidays like shopping. First we consume food together and then we consume electronics, shoes, clothes etc... It is really unbelievable to me that American Thanksgiving and Christmas are immediately followed by such sales that we are sparked into frenzied blitz of consumption (Black Friday and Boxing Day).

I am at home... by myself... not shopping...

As I am writing this post I am considering dressing all in black and drawing dollar signs on my eyelids and going and lurching around Best Buy blinking at people. But I will probably just stay home and do homeworkish type stuff... do some dishes and such.

I would be a terrible consumer on Black Friday... I hate line ups. We went to see Sarah Slean in concert on Wednesday and since it was general seating we arrived early to line up for good seats. Despite having to switch lines to pick up are tickets we managed to get in early and score 4th row seats for a great show. However, waiting outside in the cold in a line up was awful. It was like nightmare. I hate waiting in lines. Its the only thing about grocery stores I don't like. If I am there with someone I will almost always abandon them in the line and do anything else. Clearly, this demonstrates a level of dysfunctional impatience on my part, which is perhaps characteristic of our generation.... However, I continue to find it bemusing that it is in particular line ups that bring it out in me. It is sort of a claustrophobic panic that sets in... I am perfectly capable of waiting in other situations but put me in a line up and my mental health deteriorates faster than jackrabbit. Even thinking about it makes me anxious and uncomfortable. I wish I could tell you when this started for me, but I'm not sure. The bad news is I think it is getting worse.

Maybe this is why I have been a bit depressed recently. Life feels a bit like a giant line up - except I've lost track of what we're waiting for, or if I want to buy anything... and the weather has turned cold...

So I'm not sure I want what we're lining up for but I'm also rather afraid of getting out of line... if only I had a bit of candy... just a few Swedish berries... God help me if I become diabetic...

Wearing a Mustache to Work, Post-Unemployment Reflections

I am now a Community Development Worker with the Diversity Education and Resource Services Program in the Multicultural and Immigrant Services Department of Abbotsford Community Services. What do I do?

I cut comics out of newspapers. Not only do I get to read the newspaper for work (we call it media analysis), I get to plan and facilitate diversity workshops for schools and other professionals. I work on interfaith bridging events with community members from different faith groups. I compose and edit documents. My co-workers and I meet with a youth committee and empower them to plan events where they and their peers can respond to discrimination. These are just the highlights.

I have spent the last few weeks becoming acquainted with this new position, and I love everything about it. I feel like I am in college without being graded (which is one of the best things I could possibly imagine)! I work with a team of three others who love their work and are incredibly affirming and encouraging. I am learning new things every day about people in different faith groups, marginalized populations, Canadian immigration, population demographics, non-profit organizations, and how to foster inclusive community. I have received so much positive feedback from my co-workers that all I want to do is invest more in our community.

Unemployment seems so distant. Not long ago, I was trapped in job searching defeat and focus-less existence. Post-unemployment, especially satisfactory post-unemployment, is a stage I had only dreamed of reaching last June. My journey to this new position has been quite interesting. Upon graduation, I travelled for a month. I returned to full time unemployment. To my delight, I was hired mid-summer as a car detailer. To my dismay I was fired a week later. But a local grocery store took pity on me, hired me to work in their kitchen and helped me restore a smidgen of hope. There I made wonderful new friends. Out of the blue, I was called for an interview and offered a career. Now I have a desk by a window, an email signature with three different logos and a confidentiality clause and my absolute favourite… business cards.

The transition from unemployment hopelessness and loathing my degree to job satisfaction and using my degree is shocking me still. I was convinced that my degree was useless in the secular world but I have been proved wrong…

A friend mentioned to me the other week that he hoped this job would be redeeming. Not that it would justify what I have lived but that it would be restorative. That in this position I would be able to bring my thoughts and experiences to the table and use them constructively rather than be brought down by them. I truly hope that this will be so.

Why fishermen?

Do you know why Jesus says, "Follow me and I will make you fishers of men..." (Mk. 1:17, Matt. 4:19)

I did not catch this reference until today. It was just one of Jesus' strange metaphors. Upon discovering the reference I was both excited and disappointed. Disappointed because in 26 years no one has ever mentioned this ever in any context. Excited because it makes increases the power of the statement by about 10 fold and make's the disciples following Jesus far more clear. Here is the reference:

Jeremiah 16
14 "Therefore, behold, the days are coming, declares the LORD, when it shall no longer be said, 'As the LORD lives who brought up the people of Israel out of the land of Egypt,' 15but 'As the LORD lives who brought up the people of Israel out of the north country and out of all the countries where he had driven them.' For I will bring them back to their own land that I gave to their fathers.

16"Behold, I am sending for many fishers, declares the LORD, and they shall catch them. And afterward I will send for many hunters, and they shall hunt them from every mountain and every hill, and out of the clefts of the rocks.17For my eyes are on all their ways. They are not hidden from me, nor is their iniquity concealed from my eyes.18But first I will doubly repay their iniquity and their sin, because they have polluted my land with the carcasses of their detestable idols, and have filled my inheritance with their abominations."

So while I think there is a level of ambiguity as to whether the fishers and hunters are positive or negative, that is to say a rescue or a judgement... Nevertheless I am convinced that this is the passage that Jesus is making reference to and that it was understood in a Messianic, bringing the people out of exile sense. So therefore, "Follow me and I will make you fisher of men..." is a messianic claim and direct invitation to a participatory ending the exile and establishing God's kingdom as foretold in the prophets. Now that sounds a lot more tempting than following weird metaphor guy...

I have done no research on this beyond just looking at the text. Has anyone else researched this? Any tidbits to add? Or reasons why this doesn't work?

CYOA - Ephesians 1: Better Late Than Never?

My reflections on the Bible this week are not directly related to Ephesians 1. Many of my past CYOA posts have revealed that I am not keen on Bible reading due to my past experience of giving relationship with Christ highest priority in my daily life (which looked like Bible reading, practicing spiritual disciplines and engaging in Christian community) and experiencing an utterly withdrawn God. Since this experience, I have no longer desired to give this relationship with Christ highest priority in the same fashion. Hence, I have been nearly boycotting the Bible.

But recently, I have been thinking about whether or not a relationship with Christ can take place outside of common/suggested Christian practices – or at least if it is okay for a time.

Miranda Lambert wrote a country song titled Heart Like Mine, and as cheesy as it may be, to a degree, I identify.

Even though I hate to admit it

Sometimes I smoke cigarettes

Christian folks say I should quit it

I just smile and say “God bless”

‘Cause I heard Jesus, He drank wine

And I bet we’d get along just fine

He could calm a storm and heal the blind

And I bet He’d understand a heart like mine

To be clear, I am far from walking away from this faith. But I am exploring if and how it can look different. I am not ready to start a church based on the theology of Danielle and who I hope Christ is or who I want him to be. Nor am I ready to start a church without Bibles in the pews. Yet I am wondering how to be faithful where I am. And if my opinions/experiences of faith, religion, and Jesus are of any worth when I do not read the Bible daily?

These are the thoughts that flooded my mind as I attempted to think about reading Ephesians 1 this past week.

Selling Your Birthright

I have been watching #OccupyWallStreet be evicted and their camp destroyed. I feel the hope that this camp represented for me drain from my body. I remember the fear and discomfort I felt as we tried navigate New York under lock down on New Years last year. The Occupy movement has inhabited insistently the limits of freedom in our society and as they are evicted and their camp and property destroyed and so with it the illusion of freedom we thought we had, we thought we believed in, we thought was at the core of our identity. It turns out inconvenient freedom has been sold perhaps for as little as a bowl of soup. The NYPD has sold out freedom for a paycheque. I have been increasingly frustrated over the past few week to the point of miserable apathy at the quickness that Vancouver also has quickly and easily sold our birthright of freedom, we have been intimidated by tragedy and fear into sacrificing freedom. We do not seem to understand precedents are laid or broken based on this. We do not understand that silencing the voice of Occupy is effectively cutting out our own vocal chords in any and all future occasions. It is devastating to me the degree to which we have bought into the power systems and structures of our countries and are happily prepared to sell the freedoms of others for our own comfort. I am sad that I am so apathetic of our power systems and political structures I have failed to energize either myself or others to fight our slow slide toward totalitarianism. We have sold ourselves for soup. I am embarrassed. I am terrified. There is something very Machiavellian about the way that our Governments have dealt with Occupy. Our law has become complex enough and our freedoms expendable enough and loopholes large and plentiful enough that it is relatively simple to enforce and not enforce law as convenient by those in power in order to gain whatever result is desired. Its also helpful when you have a police force to violently enforce whatever you order without any immediate accountability.

Recently I have heard a lot of disturbing thing about a crime bill that Harper is trying to push through. Can anyone tell me more about it?