learning

Today was our final day of classroom studying prior to writing the BC Pesticide Applicators Test. Lots of capitals, makes this seem very important. In truth I guess that it is important, though I believe that many of us will continue following the patterns of application that we have learned over the years are effective on our farms, irrespective of what best practices the Ministry of Agriculture teaches.

Tomorrow's test should be interesting. Our instructor has done a great job of highlighting those areas of most importance and I expect we will all pass easily. That being said, there is that little tickle of pre-examination anxiety.

Which ever way it goes, it will be good to get back to the farm on Monday.

I received a terrific package of CD's today from an America outfit called, The Learning Company. I ordered three separate courses on CD, Augustine, an eight hour series of lectures, Religion and Philosophy, which runs to 24 hours, and the Old and New Testaments.

This is getting near to the part of the farm's season where there is a lot of spraying of weeds and the hours walking the fields pass pretty quickly when a good and interesting program is flowing through the headphones. I am really looking forward to working through these courses over the next couple of months.

Well, that is enough of rattling the can for today.

blessings

After church today I headed into BC Children's Hospital to visit with Summer and her folks.

Little Summer, five years old and possessed of a vivacious and outgoing personality, started off Friday little girl perfect and finished the day in a sirens wailing, lights flashing ambulance being transported from the hospital where she had been diagnosed with type one diabetes to Children's, where she was to be treated.

Five years old and in a coma is the shape and size of a parents worst nightmare. The fine folks who make Children's work did their magic and today Summer is back to her old self. A couple of days in for everyone to understand the ins and outs of a diabetic diet, of blood tests and insulin injections and they will all be back home.

So, what are the blessings?

The love that binds Summer's family together. Grandparents who took Logan, her brother in for the duration of the crisis. A medical system that, for all of it's many faults, worked swiftly and compassionately to diagnose and deal with the problem. A faith community that rallied around with it's prayers of support for the family. A society that includes all of the systems needed to deal swiftly with medical problems that in another day would have resulted in a line entry in the family bible, died young. Thank God!

God and suffering

We have come to that time in our fourth year of EfM where we are considering God and suffering. The initial point of departure in the lesson is that the human condition is basically wretched and the question of the lesson is, how does a loving God fit into that reality. Good grief, as dear Charley Brown often said.

We Christians are so caught up in the cross, in the horror of one man's death, that we seem not able to look at the grace of his life. Not willing, also, to look at the grace that has flowed from him and through so many over the last couple of Millenia.

There is no doubting that in life many horrible, sad and damaging events happen to us individually, and also to us as part of the collective that is humankind. These things impact and then affect a significant portion of our psyche and cause a conditioning of our worldview, and so, by extension, develop within us either a reflex to compassion and service born out of grace or a deadening cynicism that draws us inward to an illusion of security and away from the call to form community with all.

To my mind, Jesus saw clearly the evil resident in the latter approach and saw also the liberation, liberation from fear, liberation from despair and liberation from isolation that could be available to those prepared to channel grace, expressed as compassion and service, and allow it to flow out to others.

Suffering is not a theological problem, how we respond to it is. The grandest and the least of all creatures who inhabit this world die in what amounts to, in the long passage of time, just a few short years. How those creatures die does not change the reality that they do die. Nor does the degree of suffering that accompanies their journey from birth to death change the reality of their few short years.

I don't think that one has to believe in the stories that Jesus sits on a throne at the right hand of his father in order to understand that through his death he transcended death. How did he do that? In his death, as in his life, he gave so completely of himself, he loved so wastefully that the penalty imposed upon his material body could not suppress the message of acceptance, of forgiveness, of the universality of grace that defined his existence.

Here today, in every corner of this wonderful world, Jesus lives. He lives in the hearts and the actions of Christians and of non-Christians. He lives in smiles and in gentle touches, in expressions of love freely given and freely accepted and in that innate understanding which most of us possess that our lives, no matter how small they may seem in their details are heroic in their scope.

Having experienced a bit of it myself and witnessed much in others I know that suffering is often present in our lives. I do not believe it is a reflection of some test that God is trying us with. I do not believe that it is punishment for being, "fallen." I do not believe that, in and of itself, it is a particularly important part of our journey. I do believe that how we respond to suffering, especially suffering in others, is at the heart of our Christian experience and at the heart of our salvation.

I truly believe that if Jesus knew of the perversion of his message that is encompassed in the current belief that if you accept Jesus as your personal Lord and Saviour you will inherit an everlasting life in the Kingdom of Heaven he would be moved to tears of grief at how lost we are.

Jesus, in the gospels is repeatedly moved to action by the force of his Father expressing through him. We so often deny that same force as it seeks to express through us. It seems passing strange that we declare ourselves Christians through our judgements in favour of ourselves or against others, rather than through our actions towards others.

Some of my dearest and, at the same time the most helpful guides on my faith journey, Roger Cooper, rector, Melody Goguen, EfM mentor, Michael Ingham, bishop, spend their lives doing the work of God rather than vainly asserting their ownership of Him or His ownership of them. All of them are aware of suffering, all of them are moved to action by the spirit working in them to respond to suffering and all of them are blessed by the blessing that works through them for others.

Education for Ministry is a wonderful program and has been a blessing to me as I have grown in Christ, but on suffering and God the curricula seems to pretty much see only the forest while not noticing the trees.

Winter day on the slough

First day in the water with the new canoe. Boys and their toys.

This WeNoNah Advantage is such a fun boat to fool around in. Light, fast, fairly responsive and very easy to in and out.

We have had a glorious two weeks of warm and sunny at the farm. Lots of dirt moving and now, coming up this week, we will be going to a neighbours farm to lift his prunings and bring them over for planting in our renovation areas. February and March will be very busy months.

Happy days

A happy day, indeed. Today I drove seven hundred and fifty klicks round trip to swap my Clipper Tripper canoe for a Wenonah Advantage. I hate to see the Clipper go but it was just too big to single hand and have fun with at the same time. I believe there were a dozen or more times last year when I wanted to get out on the water and didn't because of the hassle of going solo in a boat not designed for one.

The fellow who traded with me was looking for a canoe that he could get out in with his family and his solo didn't fill the bill. We both came out ahead, though given the relative values of the two boats, if bought new, I likely got the better deal. I can hardly wait for spring and being able to get out on the lake!

I've spent a good bit of time this week reflecting on gratitude.

When I started taking the Education for Ministry program, offered through our church, three and a half years ago I was quite intimidated by the strength of faith that most of the participants displayed. In comparison to them I felt that my faith, especially the ways it displayed itself outwardly, was shallow and ill formed. A fairly ego based view of me/them.

I have been blessed recently with the realization that recognition of the Holy Spirit working through others has little to do with those others and much to do with the Spirit. This realization has allowed me to see the organic nature of the Spirit working in and through all of us in our group and to appreciate how singular a force it is.

My feelings of gratitude at being a part of this small manifestation of God at work is quite overwhelming. There are no small blessings.

Today is St.Valentine's Day. It is pretty much a Hallmark day, but today I enjoyed, during my drive, thinking of all those whom I have been privileged to love or be loved by. I especially think of Jessie and Alley, who, notwithstanding having me as their primary role model, are mostly vibrant and mostly joyous and largely lacking of fear. To be loved by such as them is indeed a blessing.

kedging off

Well, last night at St. George we finished a five session, five week study of chapter one of the Gospel of Mark.

I don't know how many times over the years I have read this book of the bible, more than a dozen, for sure, yet in all those readings I have never appreciated how artfully structured and how full of the good news that first chapter is.

I guess that this is at the heart of learning: new realizations, new understandings, new pathways into the future.

Mark remains my favorite New Testament book and I am happy to be able to say that I read it with more pleasure now than I did when it was my favorite six weeks ago.

The farm is teaching me new lessons also. The joy of filling holes and low spots in the fields over the past month has changed to a daily struggle to get material from the dirt stockpile to the field without bogging down the gator, and then divesting myself of equanimity and dignity in my struggles with slick sloppy mud as I, all to frequently, practice my retrieval techniques.

That would be OK if it were the extent of my mud troubles. It is remarkable just how much of a mess I was able to make while digging an excavator out of a field that I knew going into I shouldn't. When I used to sail we called the technique, kedging. Dig a hole then bury the anchor (with an excavator, the bucket) and laboriously drag yourself out. Big disturbances of the field, the dike and the serenity that is most often my companion in my work. That would be something of a metaphor for life, I guess...

Enough of this, its time to go and fall into a good book.

opening doors

What a glorious week at the farm! Temperatures up to twelve degrees and sunny skies. How good does it get during February? I'd have to say just about this good.

Pruning of the vines is well underway at the farm. Once they are done I'll finish filling holes and leveling some of the dips in the fields prior to infill planting. It is starting to get busy...

EfM tonight is a continuation of our study of twentieth century theologians. I appreciate the call that these scholars feel to study God, but find their efforts quite beyond me. I suspect that this is mostly because of their writings being the fruit of many years, even decades, of education and deep thinking, all of which is then synthesised into a ten or twelve page presentation in the course material.

I listen to a preacher called Chuck Swindoll on the local Christian radio station at 1:30 most days and find his translation of the message of the New Testament into our world most refreshing. One of these days I'll probably go to his web site and find that he embraces within his faith many positions that I don't agree with, but for now I am enjoying his ministry.

This is an interesting point, being drawn to those with whom we agree and turning away from those with whom we don't.

On the weekend I found myself in conversation with a person who thought that same-sex marriage was wrong. My mental reaction was immediate and the argumentative neurons were firing pretty quickly. Fortunately I put the brakes on my tongue and thought about how my companion had phrased the position I was about to react to. Having thought it out for a few moments I came to the conclusion that, though I didn't agree with this position, I wasn't offended by the way in which it was offered and, having already made my position clear, I didn't have to argue further. Interestingly I have replayed the conversation since and it may be shaping some parts of my position. Now, if only I can repeat this in other conversational areas, I may just enter that realm where civil discourse is the norm.

Well, the timer has run and that's the call to dinner. Later.