Happy New Year

December 31st, 2008. Another year is gone. And what a good year it has been.
Youngest daughter, Alley, graduated this year, eldest daughter, Jessie started her first year of music studies at college, son Eli took some steps towards stabilizing his life in Victoria, my relationships at work and at church carried me through some challenging times and over and through it all the Spirit guided me. A very good year.
Not being much of a socializer on New Year's Eve I have spent the last few hours reading, A Wing and a Prayer, by Katharine Jefferts Schori. An amazing and inspiring woman. The scope of her vision as a bishop and her ability to articulate that vision in examples drawing from folks who's lives have intersected with her lifeline, from you and me, is quite breathtaking.
As I read this book two thoughts kept running through my head...first that a bishop is truly a servant of the servants of the people of God and also that for one who thinks as Ms. Schori does to be elected bishop must only be possible through the intervention of the Holy Spirit. She is neither conventional nor orthodox. We, Christians, have been liberated from the vicissitudes of the fates by the message of hope and that hope is so well presented in the life of Katharine Schori.
In one of my earliest posts I said that this journey that I am on had no sign posts and no mileage markers. I see now that such is not the case. Whether in the form of Kent Haruf, or Robert Frost or Anna Akhmatova or Katharine Schori, whether in the music of Alan Jackson or Anton Dvoric or Leonard Cohen, whether in the Bible or the Koran or in the Vedas, the sign posts that guide me on this journey are everywhere. Especially in the hearts of those who come into my life.
I wish all who may read this a new year filled with challenges and trials such that who you are capable of being is forged not in the complacency of everyday predictability by in the crucible of change charged by the diversity and wonder of this beautiful world. Happy New Year.

Quitting smoking

Eight o'clock tonight will mark three full days without a cigarette. Not that I'm counting...much.
I can remember my first cigarette. I was eleven years old and we lived in Barrie, Ontario. Four of us had walked, on a Saturday afternoon in late spring, up to the end of our street and then, from where it ended, up the hill that rose beyond town. In a small copse of trees we sat in a circle and passed around a Lucky Strike. I coughed and I sputtered and I knew with absolute certainty that I was a smoker. I guess I was patterned by my dad who was a pack a day man.
I can remember thinking in my early twenties that I was going to quit pretty soon. And at times in each of the succeeding decades of my life.
I can remember hiking on Mount St. Paul up near the summit of the Alaska Highway, and climbing the Hermit in Glacier National Park and cross country skiing five miles outside of Faro, Yukon, and in each instance dropping to my knees at some point early on in the trip and puking from shortness of breath, from thirty fags a day. Boyo, smoking and the great outdoors only go together in the commercials that sell smokes.
Although, truth be told, I also remember, while on backwoods hikes, finding some small cover in rough and rainy country and bending in to roll a smoke and light it and deeply enjoy the warmth of that small comforting rush of nicotine.

It seems to me that I've quit smoking now four or five times. That does not include the countless times that I've packed in the habit for a day or a week. As Mark Twain wrote, quitting smoking is easy, I've done it a thousand times.

Every time that I have started smoking again that first smoke has tasted like the first one I ever had. Ummm. It has also tasted as though I had been waiting for it for each of the days that I had been without.

My dad spent the last twelve years of his life in Memorial Pavilion, a VA hospital in Victoria, suffering from emphysema and recurrent congestive heart failure and all of the other diseases that are so often the legacy of a life time of smoking.

When he finally passed at 79 years of age he was years beyond when he'd begun to wish he was dead. A hard way to go. Strangely, not once during his illness did I think of quitting myself.

So, why now. Well, I feel the effects of the habit more now that I'm pushing into the last quarter of my fifties than ever before, I watch my youngest suck back more of these things than I do and feel guilty at the example I've given her and I guess I feel that I want to have the extra energy that has always been in my life when I'm not smoking.

All of that being said, the habit of smoking is harder to give up than just the physical addiction to nicotine. I do miss them.

If you've read this, say a small prayer for my continued success.

Christmas day, 2008. My girls are still snuggled down after a late night that ended with church at midnight. In a couple of hours they will be up, the presents will be opened and the day will settle into the annual ritual of passing the time between morning services and Christmas dinner.

The St. George Education for Ministry group has broken for the holidays and will not get back together until January 8th. I am, with a group of five others, half way through year four of the program. We also have eight participants spread between years one two and three. The Rector of St. George, Roger Cooper, is our mentor and last year Melody Goguen, who finished her year four while I was in year one, took mentor training and joined in to work with Roger in guiding us along our path.

This program, developed out of the University of the South in Sewanee, Tennessee, has had a wonderful impact on my faith journey. The most obvious effect of the course has been a new and deeper understanding of the bible, of the progression of creeds that have developed since the beginning of the church and of our story as Anglicans.

As much as I love the learning, the greatest impact of EfM on my faith has been the spiritual growth that has come to me through the process of theological reflection that we follow and through our worship together during each session. The other members of the group are imbued with such a deep and wholesome faith that I sometimes feel that I don't belong amongst them. Only sometimes though. I believe that I am brought to this gathering to learn from these fine folks, and being bathed in the reflection of the Holy Spirit working through them is an experience that transcends learning.

I wonder where the Spirit will lead me after this fourth year is finished?

Well, I hear stirrings from the girl's rooms. Merry Christmas to all who may chance upon this.

Peace

A big snow day at the farm. White blanketing the fields and the dikes. Heading in this morning a coyote popped up out of a ditch to watch me drive by. Heavy winter coat, and a neck ruff standing up with a frosting of snow crystals beading the ends of the fur. I marvel that after thirteen years of riding a desk for the union I find myself working in such close proximity to nature. (not that I'm suggesting that the strange environment in which office workers toil is not, in it's own way, nature)

Yesterday we had our annual Christmas Pageant at St. George's. New costumes, new painting on the back panel and a lot of new kids having a great time. Last night was our lessons and carols service. Only about forty came out in the sloppy streets weather but the joy that comes with this reading of the birth story, each reading followed by a carol, was wonderful.

I re-read, Sing a New Song, this morning. The book paints a flattering portrait of each of four Anglican bishops who have served in British Columbia. The section on Michael Ingham, the current bishop of The Diocese of New Westminster, contains an elegant exposition of the the call that Michael has lived out since being called to the priesthood and, latterly, to serve as our bishop.

The great controversy in our Anglican community here in New Westminster, and by extension the perceived central matter of Bishop Michael's tenure is so often identified as being the Synod's decision to bless same sex relationships and the Bishop's implementation of that decision. Whether this decision is validated by the test of time is any one's guess, though I pray that it is.

For myself, I see the true legacy of his calling to be his work on liturgical change in our communion, on interfaith dialogue, on an open expression that the Spirit moves through different peoples and cultures in forms other than Jesus Christ and on his inclusiveness with children and youth. As important a step forward in our faith journey as validation of committed relationships in the gay community is, it is only a small piece of this wonderful man's ministry.

Community makes this a life filled with grace.

This is the way that we get the fertilizer onto the fields. Our little EX 60 picks up a four hundred pound bag and slings it around to me. The helicopter drops a bucket close by and hovers above while the excavator operator gets the bag close to the bucket and then I fine tune the bottom of the bag and I pull the cord and direct the contents into the bucket. The EX swings west and the chopper takes the load up to the east. And then we go again until all dozen or so bags are up and on. About ten or twelve years ago the farm was using a tractor with forklift attachment to lift the bags and the helicopter lost lift coming in and crashed. No one was seriously injured but the copter was a write-off.

We have a funeral at the church today. A sad event for the family and community, made especially difficult by the season of rebirth that it falls during. We Christians are big on celebrating death as a transition to the Kingdom of God, but that doesn't take away the loss that the transition represents.

Now here's a nice photo of fresh snow on the mountains and of cranberry fields deep in dormancy. A chilly late fall day when working steady keeps one warm and the pay cheques coming.

What one doesn't see in this photo is how that glorious day impacted those in our community not fortunate enough to rise from a warm bed, eat a healthy meal and head off to a good paying job that keeps a roof over one's head.

This evening in our community a small group of folks headed down to the area of town known as the ghetto and set up a couple of tables from which they served cabbage rolls and mac and cheese and buns and sandwiches to a band of hungry souls to whom cold crisp days mean long and sometimes deadly nights.

Here are men and women who stand about with the light snow blowing on them, eating what may be their only hot meal of the day. Here are a couple of kids with their dad who say please and thank you and who tonight will get to snuggle down with a full belly. Here are people who will slip the chocolate bar in their pocket and save it, perhaps for those lonely hours between three and six in the morning when the cold will not allow sleep and the sugar fix might help them get through until another dawn.

Life on the street.

If Jesus came back to earth tonight I know that he would be standing behind a table on some lonely street corner ladling hot food onto paper plates and passing the time with folks for whom an after dinner smoke is so much more than a middle class addiction.

I'm thinking that the if in the above paragraph is a word that I wrote without looking in my heart.

Tonight, in a poor section of our small town, I saw Jesus alive in the hearts of those who came to help and of those who accepted that help. He didn't go away two thousand years ago. He was there then; he is here today.

Winter, going on for night, in Pitt Meadows. Cold. Damp cold, not cold cold. Coyotes off beyond these trees singing at the moon. Yip yip, yap and those thin howls that carry none of the hair rising up on the nape of the neck that the wolves could raise when I lived on the shore of Marsh Lake in the Yukon.

Darkness carries so many meanings in the human story. Dark bad. Dark evil. Dark scary...Then there is the peace of a dark and quiet place. The warmth that flows inside when darkness falls on a summer night. Wasn't it Kurt Vonnegut who wrote that wonderful book, Mother Night?

There was an interesting shade of darkness in Newsweek online today. One of their stories was centered around whether the bible was opposed to gay marriage. Neither a light or dark story, that, just pretty silly. Why would the Jewish scripture speak to gay marriage when the culture apparently abhorred the homosexual act?

The darkness ran through most of the comments that had been posted about the story. Idiot, ignorant, heretic, were just a few of the tone setting labels thrown out by many of the correspondents. Why so much fear over this condition that many men and women live in? I hardly ever see such vitriol over adultery or any of the other common, "sins," that are strewn across the paths of the faithful.

That may not sound very dark to most folks, but to me the fear that those labels and the context in which they were used carries in them is that which is truly dark.

Why is it that many conservative Christians don't hear echos of the crowd shouting, crucify him! crucify him! in their own pronouncements. Why is it that so many of the faithful don't remember that those who did crucify Jesus were the most conservative and fundamentalist believers in Jewish society. Some pretty strong parallels in this.

I guess I'll close this with a thought about one of the most judgemental things that we Christian's put out: hate the sin, love the sinner. Where on earth, or in heaven for that matter, does this hackneyed phrase come from. It puffs the say er up with a sense of superiority in that they can identify a sin, something that I always thought God could take care of as one of his or her prerogatives and it extends a saccharin, cloying superiority out to that supposed sinner with the false and fatuous, I love you even though your actions aren't worthy of love.

We are a strange group...

As winter settles in at the farm and work slows there, things pick up at home. For the young folks in my life the run up to Christmas is all about winding up the fall semester at college and planning for seasonal parties and gatherings with friends and reaching out to those who have slipped into the backgrounds of their lives. For a parent of those youngsters life seems to be about trying to manage the ensuing chaos. With some time over to reflect on the joys of the season.

I am re-reading a book given to me about eight years ago by a woman whom I met while I was taking an Alpha course at St. Patrick's Roman Catholic church in Maple Ridge. Mary Zanata was such a welcoming guide in my journey back to the church. In her late seventies at the time, she was tireless in living out her call to reach out to those trying to find their way back onto the path of an interrupted faith journey.

The book, by John Bevere, has the rather lurid title of, The Bait of Satan. The title doesn't do justice to the contents, which I think would be of value to every one, particularly Christians. The heart of the message in the book is that we must not take offence. The biblical antecedents of this message are well known to most Christian's, but John has written a book that wonderfully leads the reader through the ways in which we burden our souls and poison our hearts by holding in ourselves the hurts and judgements that rise in us daily. He offers good solid advice about how to continue to reach out with Christian love to those by whom we have been hurt, rejected or judged and how to do so while at the same time letting go of all of the feelings of being offended that rise in most of us when we are hurt. A wonderful book that I am reading with new eyes.

Just prior to picking up this book to read, I read one by Jimmy Carter, called Our Endangered Values. A compellingly lucid exposition on how conservative American Christian organizations have gone political and how they have used politics and, in turn, been used by politicians, to advance what in many cases are regressive and damaging civil changes. Carter speaks clearly from a perspective developed throughout a life of service to his country and faith. While he may not always be right in what he says there is a chord of truth that rings through his writing that is clear and pure.

Life, or something like it

What a glorious day to work on a farm. Well, work is a bit of a misnomer. I spent about seven hours walking sprinkler lines and checking to see how many of the sprinkler heads were knocked off during harvest. Twenty-three lines at about nine hundred feet each in length. Slow steady work, pausing regularly to note broken heads or stakes on the clipboard. It is hard to believe that a fellow gets paid to do this. The day only got up to about six degrees Celsius, but with a steady gait I kept warm. Next week when it is pouring down rain I'll be out there fixing them. I suppose I'll be singing a different song then.

Last night we had a service of remembrance at our church which is sponsored annually by the Ridge Meadows Hospice Society. I so enjoy this evening as a time to gather in community with folks who have suffered the loss of a loved one during the year past or who set aside this one night to take the few minutes during the service to draw near to those who are no longer here. Granted, one doesn't need a service to do this, but the sharing of the quiet, of the candle lighting and of the peaceful setting is a wonderful tonic.

Love

Spent a portion of today listening to a recording of Michael Enright reading, The Gift of the Magi. William Sidney Porter, writing as O. Henry, had the gentlest of touches when it came to conveying the deepest emotions that reside at the heart of the human condition.

I have to admit that I often get emotions and feelings quite confused. I suspect that my somewhat dysfunctional love life, as played out over the course of my adult life, is the clearest evidence of this.

Love is quite simple when viewed in the guise of my two daughters, my son, my faith, and any number of dogs that I have had over the years.

It is quite another question when it is the love of romance. Hmmm..I'm sidetracking with that statement. I do romance quite well, thank you; it is the place beyond romance and infatuation that tends to hold reefs and other dangers that my ship has regularly run aground on.

Well, I am a work in progress and with luck will make some in this area. Living alone is not a bad thing, but I much prefer two over one. Then there is the niggling suspicion that is growing in me that I am becoming shopworn goods.

Huh, aren't those empowering thoughts?

I have always most enjoyed the older translation of Paul's 1st letter to the Corinthians where the modern word love was translated as charity.

We modern folk have as many meanings for the word love as can be imagined, or perhaps as are necessary to make it mean what we need it to mean at a given moment. Charity on the other hand is an almost universal expression of opening oneself up to another. Replace the word love with the word charity in 1 Corinthians 13 and you get an ideal to aspire to that is so radical and so apparently unattainable, yet that every heart has a niche waiting for for and that every heart instantly recognizes.

God, what a rambler.