Getting to the point...

Almost at my 60th birthday. Who'd a thunk it!!!

I have resolutely ignored this blog for quite some time. It seems that the changes in my life have drawn me away from introspection here, as they've drawn me to introspection elsewhere.

It has been more than a year since I last worked regularly and I have been trying to balance the future such that I can retire on my birthday. Not necessarily quit looking for work, but perhaps learn to live on my two small pensions so that I don't have to work.

It would be nice to take seasonal work at a place like labour ready so that I could show up those weeks when I wanted to, and not those times when I don't. Perhaps that sounds a little Utopian.

So, just as a for instance, I will need about six hundred dollars over the next four months for the equipment that will get me on the road to Halifax this summer. That would be about a hundred hours of work, given that a portion of what I earn must be paid into my bankruptcy. In the same vein, our church is suffering some significant financial hardships, and if I put in ten hours a month specifically to help out there, I think I would feel pretty good about the work regardless of what it was.

Mind, all of this is just a bit of where my thoughts have been going these past few months. I suppose, more on that in subsequent postings.

Fall

A week ago my old Norco Sasquatch helped me make up my mind to buy a new bike by delivering to me flats, both front and rear, three miles from home. In the rain. Bugger!!! and the decision was made.

I went into Local Ride in Maple Ridge and bought a new Giant Seek 2 hybrid bike. About $730 all in. When out of work, it is never the right time to have that chunky an expense. Oh well, whats done is done.

All of the reviews on this bike are good, excepting one flaw. The tires are shit! No money to pick up good ones, so...

My riding from Monday thru Thursday was wonderful. Narrow 700 series tires that roll so easily. Gears that shift properly and a chain that doesn't regularly slip off the sprockets, worth every penny.

And then came Thursday evening and I was riding to church. Back flat! Oh well, I thought, I'll just walk it this short mile to the gas station and patch and inflate and still be on time. Except...the tires have skinny valve stems and no adaptors to use a gas station pump. I chained it to a post and bussed to church. Thankfully the bike was still there when Vera took me to pick it up with her van. Friday I started to fix the tube and found that it had nine holes in it. Most not a result of glass, but a consequence of them being arguably the cheapest bike tubes ever. Very grumpy!!!

So, today I'm off to the library by bus and tomorrow to church same way and on Monday I'll shell out one hundred and thirty dollars for a pair of Continental Gator Skins, which hopefully keep me flat free.

I did think of putting the cash into a cheap car, but felt that someone poor like me shouldn't be taking on two fifty a month in insurance and gas/maintenance costs.

Off to the library.

Letting go

I bused downtown yesterday and spent most of the trip reflecting on how ubiquitous the use of electronic devices has become. Of the fifteen other riders on the bus, all but two were listening to music or texting or talking on their phones. The two not so engaged were South Asian women in their late sixties.

I cancelled my cell phone about two months ago and have not missed it at all. Mind you, I have had much grief from my daughter, Alley, who carries on at great length about the dangers that being cell less opens me up to. What if you are hit by a car, dad, and they don't stop? What if someone robs you? What if you get lost? Good Grief!!! hmm, I'm only fifty-nine and not yet senile, darling. Sometimes I wonder how are children really do see us.

I have an i-pod with several thousand songs on it and half a dozen university level courses and a couple of books and the bible. In the summer when I lie on the deck at my townhouse and soak up the sun I enjoy listening to bits and pieces of the materiel on it. Otherwise, I don't use it much. Playing voyeur on a bus is much more entertaining than listening to stuff that I have already heard on my i-pod.

When I bike I enjoy the, sort of, silence of the wheels running over the road. And of course, the road is a dangerous place for cyclists, and music devices don't make that less so.

I do wonder, at times, if I am cutting my self off from life. Or, perhaps, just letting go...

Fall is coming

It is a cold and rainy day in Pitt Meadows. I know that we will probably have another six weeks or so of fine fall weather, but walking up to the bus stop this morning and getting about town in this drizzle left me feeling as though winter was in the offing.

Yesterday was Jessie's 22nd birthday. Where, oh where, does the time go?

Yesterday was also a full eight months since I had my last cigarette. I still have cravings, especially in graphic dreams about having a smoke and early in the morning. I am very much looking forward to the 30th of December, which will mark one year without.

Biking continues. I am averaging about 25 miles a day. Feel pretty good, though I suspect the rainy season will put a real damper on my enthusiasm.

Well, enough for now.

Almost halfway through August...where does the time go?

It has been six weeks now that I have been off work and I am enjoying the slow pace of my days. The anti-depressants seem to be working, though there are residual symptoms of my depression that have persisted beyond the pills kicking in. Mostly manageable, though I am wondering, when the time comes to return to working, how well I will manage...

I have managed to keep to my schedule of biking twenty-five to thirty miles every day. The ache in my thighs has diminished and my breathing is good, but I am not certain that I will be able to get up to the average of one hundred and twenty miles a day, three times a week, that I figure will let me know that I can seriously plan to bike down to Nova Scotia next year to visit Jessie.

It is interesting to me that when I think of this 7000 plus kilometer trip, I think of it as a pilgrimage of sorts. Getting away from the daily noise of my life, entering into the solitude of the road and journeying, all hint of a promise of more than a physical effort. I do wonder if I am strong enough, mentally and spiritually, for such an effort.

Well, enough for now...

Taking up bike riding

It is now eleven days since I have become a bike person. In the Pitt Meadows/Maple Ridge area the appellation, "bike person," is quite negative. Not surprisingly a good number of our poor residents ride bikes and they have gotten hung with a bum rap in terms of being seen as undesirables. It is fairly easy to differentiate between urban riders and poor folks: most of the former are wearing spandex riding gear and helmets and most of the latter aren't. My observations are that while there is a certain amount of drug dealing and such going on from the backs of bikes, most of the folks who are riding them in our community are doing so out of necessity and as a byproduct of that are displaying a desirable element of the diversity within our society.

I have managed to keep to the twenty or twenty-five kilometers a day goal that I set for myself when I started riding. My butt is no longer suffering, but my thighs are pretty sore. Over all I am feeling pretty good. Next week I will try to go 30 K every second day.

Almost the end of July and much has happened since my last post. I am halfway through eight weeks off on medical EI. Thank God for Canada's Employment Insurance program! The first three weeks were pretty much waiting for my increased medication to kick in. Finally happened and i slept well for the first time this year. Mind you, that sleeping well involved eight hours each night and then a roll-over and another three or four hours. Well, after a week of that I settled into about seven hours a night.

I had been using Dick's van until the 19th, when he decided that his nephew from Alberta needed it more than I did. Talk about having to bite the bullet as far as being poor goes. NO CAR!!!! Wow, first time without one since I was nineteen.

So, I dragged out the ten year old, never ridden more than a total of twenty kilometers by me, 5 years used when I got it, mountain bike. And I have ridden. I think that I am averaging about twenty-five kilometers a day and apart from a sore butt and the amount of sweat I'm pouring out there are no ill effects.

I hate to admit it, but I am now starting to have Bicycle Fantasies. Yes, Virginia, there are such things. Mostly they revolve around the thought of biking down to visit Jessie next summer. Eight thousand kilometers must surely equal fantasy. On the other hand, I have gotten a couple of books out of the library that were written by folks who have done the trip, and I've cruised the MEC catalogue looking at stuff....hmm.

Well enough of this for now. Must ride off to the library.

back again

Here it is, almost halfway through June. Whew! where does the time go?

There has been so much rain over the past four weeks that the cranberries are coming on really slow. I suspect we will get a less than great crop this year.

My efforts of addressing reality through the use of anti-depressants is not succeeding. The quack put me on 25mg of paxil, as opposed to the 37.5 last time. The net effect seems to be no significant relief from the lack of sleep or the rather bleak outlook.

My friend, Robert, went into the hospital for a checkup on persistent headaches a few days ago and is now facing surgery to remove a tumour growing on his brain. We never know what is coming around the next corner.

Life, or such...

Back to work, finally!!! I've really enjoyed having the winter off, but getting up in the AM and toodling off to the farm is a real joy.

Things are tight at Sandhill this year, so I am dealing with their stuff on the side as a favour to Dick and am working full time for the neighbour, Hank, at Cloudburst.

Today marks eighty-one days without a cigarette. Should be sailing in the clear by now, but find myself having days where the urge to smoke just rolls on and on.

The not smoking, being on EI, not having the girls living here anymore and trying to adjust to being bankrupt have all led to a return of depression. Ah yes, my old friend!

I first encountered depression in 1999, when work was adding up to about ten hours a day, six days a week, when I was considering filing for bankruptcy for the first time, when Patty and I were separated and moving towards divorce and when she was diagnosed with cancer. A difficult time but six months on Paxil seemed to put things right.

In 2004, the job at the Union was going to hell, I had managed to alienate most of the staff and was awaiting the results of hearings held by the Union and the Public Review Board into charges laid against me by some members my staff. Depression came roaring back into my life and kicked me on my ass for a couple of months before I visited the quack and got some pharmaceutical relief. I had the sense to stay on the pills for a couple of years, but getting fired cost me my health and welfare plan and unemployed people cannot afford the luxury of anti-depressants...so, I weaned off them.

As it turned out, the days at the farm seemed to act as a tonic for whatever ailed me and I suffered no great consequence for coming off the pills.

Now, here I am again. It seems that the evidence of the past ten years is that my psyche is just fine unless confronted with layers of troubles. I suppose that is a lament that a good number of depressed people could hum.

I can't help but wonder where the dividing line is between the depression that I seem to carry as a defining feature of my personality and depression that is worthy of treatment.

It is not such a simple question.

I ordinarily am reserved and something of a loner. My entertainments are reading and TV. I immerse myself in things to do with the Church, but not especially on a social/group scale. I like to hike/walk some and enjoy getting out alone in the canoe. When gas money is there I enjoy nothing as much as getting in the car and driving two or five hundred miles...just for the pleasure of feeling the miles roll by and the scenery unfold. I'm well-read and fairly intelligent, but am insecure in the face of formal education in others and in any event seldom put what I know to good use, it seems. Over and under it all there drifts a light fog of inadequacy and of fear. Depression? Perhaps the matrix within which depression most readily coalesces.

Whatever, I've got a small prescription for a sleeping aid and if that doesn't cure the most troubling of my current symptoms, I guess I'll be back on the most recent brand of pill therapy.

Bugger!!!

a curious thing...

What a curious thing...to be surfing the web and to find that a not so distant past lover has married. We had ended our time-truth is it was our fifth or sixth time together, dotted randomly over the past fourteen years-on a very bad footing. No reason, really, to imagine that there might be a sixth or seventh time...and yet......imagine I have.

Having been seen off with rather stern words, I did not for a moment think to weasel my way back into her affections. Rather I pledged to myself that I would work on those parts of me that could so completely poison a relationship that was, to me, to her and to all who witnessed it, informed by love.

And work I have.

I haven't wasted much time over the past year plus trying to build anything that might replace the relationship that was done in, knowing that the insecurities that bedevilled me then were still about. Yet as I have worked in my life on those areas that so completely wrecked that relationship, I have occasionally indulged in thoughts of a next chance.

Humph.

Well, it is not as though what I intended in taking on this task was contingent on reconciliation as a reward...

But there is this curious thing, this knowing that what should have been, and that until now might still have been, won't be. There is this hurt.

I will pray that marriage brings you all that the best of loves can foster in it, Adriana. Blessings

Accepting the good

One month into a new year and I have passed through it blessed with many opportunities to reflect on years past and hopes for those which may come.

I marked the beginning of this year by quitting smoking. And am happy to say that I am still quit. I cannot count the number of times that I have given up the weed over the years, but feel quite confident that this time the beast is beaten.

EfM resumed after the Christmas break and is enlivening my Christian experience in ever changing ways. What a wonderful thing, to be mentoring others and in doing so to be learning more and more myself.

I am still laid off from the farm and don't expect to be recalled until April. For all that, I go in on a regular basis and keep those things going that must be kept going.

Sheila passed away a couple of weeks ago and Dick is doing well, all things considered, but understandably is not much focused on the day to day of cranberries.

The new reality that came after both of the girls moved out in 2009 is something that has proved quite hard to come to terms with. I am happy that they are out in the world making lives for themselves. Boy though, has their going ever left a hole in my life. I suppose that a good part of not thinking much about dating after my last effort crashed last spring was tied up in doing stuff with the girls or perhaps in focusing on being the center around which their lives revolved. Hmm, that's not right. I was the anchor to which they returned when they needed to be grounded. Now? well, now we do weekly telephone calls and e-mail messaging and such.

The Diocese of New Westminster's, Vision 2018, in which I had a small part is now being implemented. I must say that the excitement that went with building the Plan has been replaced by the slow grind of enacting it. I am beginning to think that the structures of the past may be the greatest impediment to us achieving the future we have mapped out. Hopefully not. Bishop Michael Ingham has some extraordinary talents when it comes to steering a path along rocky and potholed roads. I have great faith in his ability to manage the conflicting needs that we have and to get us to where we say we want to go.

In all of the above I remind myself that there is good. Bemoaning the difficult parts does little good. Accepting the good on the other hand empowers the present and builds foundations for a strong future.

Looking south into the Pitt Polder from Pitt Lake.

What the hell are we doing in Afghanistan

Five Canadian soldiers killed in one week in Afghanistan. Thirty-eight this year. If her majesties loyal opposition had any guts they would bring down the government on the question of whether our troops should be pulled out of that country immediately. I know that a majority of the House of Commons voted to extend our commitment to NATO until 2010, but, we do get to change our minds as circumstances change. And they have changed.

The government of Afghanistan abuses, some say torturers, prisoners. The government of Afghanistan is in place as a result of a rigged election. Relatives of the President of Afghanistan hold key positions in the government of that sorry country. Ministers known to be corrupt have been reappointed subsequent to the election by the President of Afghanistan. As the war escalates more civilians are killed and the citizenry of Afghanistan increasingly sees NATO and their own government as complicit in those deaths. Al Queda may inspire and finance the Taliban, but it is universally accepted that their headquarters are not in Afghanistan but in Pakistan, supposedly a friend of the west, but one which has taken precious little action to strike at the Al Queda leadership. The current sources of the Al Queda threats against the west are in Africa, not Afghanistan. The Taliban and a significant portion of the Afghan people rely on opium poppies to eke out an existence and NATO has targeted this crop and economy without building an infrastructure that will replace it.

Canadian soldiers are dying for absolutely nothing in this country. It is time to bring them home. It is time to walk away.

We are not fighting Al Queda in Afghanistan. We are not fighting to uphold democracy in Afghanistan. We are not fighting so that egalitarian values might be extended to women or Christians or gays or any other group in Afghanistan. We are sure as hell not fighting for a right cause in Afghanistan.

It is time to call in the planes and bring our troops home.

I know what I know

It is the day after Christmas and I am enjoying it by myself. A bit of picking up around the house this morning, a couple of chapters of New Seeds of Contemplation this afternoon, maybe a movie this evening if the DVD player will work (it has a ghost defect that has it working or not with no apparent cause one way or the other).

My previous post, The Christmas Gift, has opened up a wonderful mish-mash of thoughts over the past few days that have quite unexpectedly led me to some enlightening, and interesting and, occasionally, troubling insights into myself.

I have come to a, hence unknown, understanding that I am full of experiences that have lost little of their impact or immediacy as my life has moved along it's path. For all of my smartness, or intelligence, for all of the gifts of understanding that being well-read has brought, I do not think of myself as being much of a thinker.

Hmmm, I'm saying this poorly. What informs my interactions with the world is not what I know in the sense of what I have read or heard, but what I know in the sense of what I have experienced.

There is that lovely line in the Gospel of Luke: "And Mary kept all of these things, reflecting on them in her heart." (NAB)

I seems to me that my development as a spiritual person has been forged in the crucible of experience rather than through the accumulation of knowledge. Whether those experiences are rock my world events like the births of my kids and the deaths of my parents and of my girl's mom, or moments in contemplative prayer, or the day to day happenings that take me out of time as I am touched by others, the result is the same. The experiences become a part of me and I keep them, and increasingly reflect on them in, my heart.

The Education for Ministry program at St. George, has brought this knowledge of self into full flower. After four years of taking the program and half a year of mentoring and all that I have learned in that time, I believe less of our creeds than I would have thought possible while remaining a Christian, yet my faith is greater than it has ever been.

Most of the touchstones of my earlier faith have become quite insignificant.

Was Jesus God? did he do miracles? did he rise from the dead? do you need to be a Christian to be saved? is there life after death? are heaven or hell places?

To all of these and more I am inclined to say no, or at best, it doesn't matter.

Yet for that, I know that my Christian tradition has led me to experiences where I can say..I believe in one God, creator and steward of heaven and earth, most clearly revealed to me through Jesus and existent on earth through this glorious Spirit that invades our hearts and enables our actions.

It seems that in today's world right belief is required to be based on proofs. Whether those proofs are scientific or apologetic or charismatic is not important as long as you can shore up your beliefs with something that can be dressed up as a proof.

I guess that I am out of step. I know what I know to be true. It is a funny world...

The Christmas Gift

The beginning of Christmas week. Where has this year gone? It seems to me that thought comes with more frequency as the years pass.

We have lit the forth Advent Candle at church, the sandwich ministry has served the pre-Christmas December meals, the Live Nativity and the Christmas Pageant were great successes and the presents are wrapped and the cards mailed.

Now, all of these wonderful and necessaries being done, the anticipation of the celebration of the Light come into the world begins to take hold.

This is a wonderful part of my year, when, all of the stuff that precedes Christmas being dealt with, there comes a moment during a day when my heart lets me know that it is opening itself in anticipation of, in yearning for, the gift.

This moment is not only with me at Christmas, what a poor thing that would be. But, while those moments of God revealed within come with pleasing irregularity throughout the year, that moment at Christmas is Christmas.

I do not have the combination of education or skill to explain the nature of this gift, this experience. I suppose, even if I had such talents that I believe God to be inexplicable and the experience of God to be something that cannot be communicated well in words.

Here is the closest that I can come, by describing everyday incidents that mirror and approach the anticipation and then the gift that my faith gives me, always at Christmas, occasionally at other times:

When Laura was pregnant with Eli and her time came around she had a very difficult labour. Hour upon hour in the hospital, me alternately raging at the doctors to do something and fearing that what was happening was not OK and occasionally being possessed by rather unkind thoughts towards the imagined object of the delay (Laura). Always, entwined about this maelstrom of feeling, a space, an until then unknown emptiness, and the anticipation of that space being filled.

And then, after what I recall totalled twenty-three hours of hard labour the fear born of the suddenness of the nurses wheeling Laura down the hall with great speed and the hurried words of another nurse explaining-we'll do a c-section, don't worry, she'll be OK.

In a bit they came and got me and said that Laura was fine and I looked into the plastic box that Eli lay in, pink and wrinkly and still sticky with yellow and red stuff, and the hole inside was filled. God, was it filled. Overflowing, uncontainable, laughing, crying. Joy? Tenderness? Completion? I don't think that there are words to describe that which filled me such that me was no more for those moments.

And it was no less a decade and a half later when Patty brought Jessica, and two years after that, Alley, into the world.

Life is not always about new babies and such, so I'll tell you about the other experience in my life that mirrors the gift of Christmas.

My mom, Fran, had a tough time with cancer at the end of her life. God but it ate her away. At the end mom was in hospice and the family was gathered and the time came around and she took one last breath and was gone.

The nurse came to do her necessaries and, in what seemed like no time at all, the family left.

I sat beside this old woman whose body had borne me, whose arms and warm bosom had comforted me, whose hopes and prayers had lifted me up, and within me a desolate foreboding, a dreadful anticipation of her passing, an overwhelming fear, all of which I had secretly harboured all the days of mom's illness, was subsumed within a flood of joy, of thankfulness, of the rightness of this moment. What filled me was such that for those moments I was no longer me and all that I was was the gift of this woman's life and a companion with her in her passing.

I rested with my mom for a bit until our moment was broken by one of the hospice nurses who came in and, sitting beside me, asked if I was OK. Yes!

Then she took my hand in hers and I was blessed with yet another experience, different, yet the same as that which followed mom's death and which accompanied the births of my children.

And which graces me every Christmas, and sometimes in between.

God bless you all. Merry Christmas

You'll have to click on this photo to make out the detail blending into the road. This Heron is not likely to make it through it's first winter if it keeps up the behaviour it evidenced when I took the photo. First sight of it, it was wandering through a plastic culvert. Wandering is not really editorial. Not an apparent care in the world. Stumbling, squawking, and noisily flapping. Trying, in my opinion to attract every coyote within half a mile. Sheesh!!! After I snapped the photo I walked up to within about four feet, at which point the bird flapped and croaked and then took to the air. Natural selection looking for a place to happen.

It is pretty cold outside these days, at least by west coast standards. Pretty tough times for the homeless who live in our midst.

There is a petition going the rounds at church these days calling on the government to decriminalize prostitution and to criminalize the actions of the Johns who pay for the services of prostitutes. It does seem to me like knee-jerk thinking. The social conditions that foster and sustain the sex trade will not be significantly challenged by changing the laws. As a society we seem incapable of engaging with the underlying conditions that lead men and women into prostitution. Even more incapable of changing the mindset that sanctions the actions of those who use prostitutes. The petition being what it is it is pretty hard to say no to the request to sign. The implication in a no is that one either supports prostitution or sanctions the status quo.

idle thoughts

November is about over and Christmas is near. Whew!!! where has this year gone?

Most of the post-harvest cleanup at the farm is done. Another year...

Alley is off visiting Jessie in Nova Scotia. I'm glad that she could work in the trip before starting a new job. That work-a-day thing pretty much gets in the way of cross country family visits.

I spent the better part of today cleaning the carpets in the house. Well, in truth I cleaned half of them. Moving bookcases and such out of the front room required moving the books and albums and I couldn't resist stopping to look through the old photos and spending more than a few moments delving into books that haven't come to hand for a time. I can hardly call this exercise procrastinating. Or is it that I won't call it such? When pushing 60, one should seek out moments to indulge in visiting memory lane.

Alley is going to move into her new suite in Poco on the fifteenth of December and I will have to get used to being an empty-nester. Should be a challenge. I don't think most of us really engage with the concept of being alone until we are.

Sheila's cancer has moved into yet another nasty stage and this winter will be long for the whole family. I think that she and Dick have been married for almost fifty years. It is a blessing to them both that they are together.

Well, this is bordering on maudlin, so I'll put it to bed and head there myself.

another harvest

This can will hold about 60,000 pounds of cranberries when full. Sounds like a lot. This year harvest came in at about twenty percent less than last year. The joys of farming! We pulled off about two hundred and forty thousand pounds of berries, which is fifty thousand below 2008. Trash and rots were high and the price is low.

Oh well, as farmers are wont to say, next year will be a new year.

I am attending a series of seminars in North Vancouver on Contemplative Prayer. The program rises out of the work of Fr. Thomas Keating, a Trappist monk from Snowmass, Colorado. The material is a loving exposition and extension of an ancient tradition in Christian practice. One of my many guides in recent years has been Thomas Merton, also a Trappist, and the work of Brother Keating encompasses much of the personal journey of Merton.

Given the precarious state of the farm's affairs I have taken a layoff for the balance of the winter. I expect that, in between seeking work, I will spend a good part of the winter doing small stuff at the farm to pass the time and in anticipation of my recall in late winter. Thank God for Canada's Employment Insurance program. I am not certain that the powers that be at EI would understand the concept of me working for no money during a layoff, but just ignoring the day to day necessities on the farm while I await recall seems wrong to me. Of course I will seek a like position in the cranberry community during the winter, but it's not likely that anyone will be hiring before my expected date of recall.

My friend Sheila's cancer has entered a new and difficult stage. She is such a strong person, physically and in faith, and is doing much more than just coping with this new reality. I do wonder at the strength that adversity reveals in folks who are tested beyond what seem bearable limits.

Alley has finished her care aide course and will now begin looking for work in the real world. Jess continues her piano teaching in Sackville, Nova Scotia. She called a couple of days ago to report fresh snow on the ground. I remember the wonders of first snow and am excited that she is experiencing them.

Well, enough of this for now...

The Pastoral Office of Bishop

The Anglican Diocese of New Westminster, as an extension of it's Vision 2018 process, has sponsored a workshop series titled, Church Depot.

Vision 2018, over the past two years, has worked to craft a program that will enable the Diocese to assist parishes to revitalize as they minister to the needs of current members and project the good news of Jesus into our communities. As that work takes place the office of the Diocese will change significantly the ways in which it has administered and supported ministry. After many meetings within the Diocese, a comprehensive exposition of the plan in draft form and a major rewrite after the draft was circulated, the plan was presented to Synod 2009 and approved by an overwhelming majority of delegates.

It is not surprising, given the success of this initiate, that the National Church has now embarked on a similar program titled Vision 2019.

The latest effort of Church Depot was expressed yesterday in the presentation of a seminar, attended by about 150 people, entitled, Cascadia: Spiritual but not Religious.

The hook that the seminar hung on was data that suggested that in the Cascadia area, stretching from Alaska south through to Northern California, an overwhelming majority of people identify themselves as being spiritual but not religious.

The day consisted of keynote statements by two individuals, Patricia O'Connell Killen, who is a member of a Christian tradition and, Kolin Lymworth, self-identified as not belonging to a specific religion but practicing some Buddhist forms and being conversant with many other expressions of what is often called non-traditional spirituality.

The audience broke into small groups for discussion and after lunch the speakers, joined by Bishop Michael, and moderated by Douglas Todd responded to a number of questions and statements from the audience.

Given the self-identification of most participants as Christian, the parameters of the discussion centred on how we (Christians) respond to those who see themselves as being spiritual but not religious. For me, the most remarkable element of the afternoon was the degree of acceptance by most of the speakers of the validity of a wide range of spiritual inclinations and practices outside the Christian tradition.

The day was informative, to say the least.

The remarkable thing about this gathering is that it was initiated through the office of the Bishop. Remarkable because the hierarchy of main-stream Christian churches seldom takes on issues as difficult as the one that titled this seminar. Seldom lets the word ecumenical be stretched to encompass what organized religion often refers to as the fringes of spirituality.

I would argue that this day of learning and of reflection was a critical element of the pastoral office of the Bishop.

A deliberate step in the implementation of Vision 2018.

Following on yesterdays events Bishop Michael visited the Parish of St. George in Maple Ridge for our 10AM service and celebrated with us the baptism of six Christians. As we all reaffirm our baptism at this core service of the church, we coud be said to have actually celebrated the baptism of over one hundred and sixty. A wonderful and uplifting affirmation of who we are as Christians and of the ancient traditions the source of which we remember by carrying them into the present. Another expression of the pastoral office of the Bishop.

During the service Bishop Michael preached on the first reading of today which was taken from the Book of Job. It was as clear and defining an exposition of this wondrous book as I have ever heard. A copy of the sermon can be found at: http://www.stgeorgemr.org/ The teaching office is a significant element of the pastoral office of the Bishop.

Bishop Michael has had so much on his plate over the past several years as the consequences of the Synod decisions to allow same sex blessing have unfolded that those consequences have in many ways overshadowed, though not diminished, his role as pastor to our community. It is my greatest hope that our Bishop, as these, "big," issues are resolved, uses the remaining years of his ministry to practice use of those gifts with which the Spirit has so amply blessed him. The gift he has to reach out and draw in to the center of our community those on the fringes, the gift of speaking with a prophetic voice, the gift of being able to teach, the gift of being able to build healthy communities.

raptors

This is getting to be a bit of a critter blog... This time of the year the weeds begin to die back and all manner of raptors cruise the open areas of our fields looking to snack on moles, voles and mice. Small rodents find a lot of protection under the cranberry vines, but not a great deal of food. The open areas where the weeds flourish have a banquet of seeds grasses and other goodies that attract small mammals building up their winter fat reserves. And so the birds come...