outWORD by Matte Downey

It is a windy day today. This afternoon I took a long walk which included stops at the grocery store, the bank, the pharmacy, and the dry cleaner. At one point I thought I was going to lose a pair of pants as the wind lifted the plastic dry cleaner bag above my head, but I managed to get everything safely home, including my hair. Things have been moving quite quickly in the past few days - it feels like a bit of a whirlwind. On Tuesday I submitted a thesis on behalf of a colleague who is no longer living in Montreal, and while I was printing out the multiple copies at the library and annoying a few people who were queued up after me, I received an email that let me know my own thesis had just been approved by my second supervisor and was good to go! The next morning I did one last proofread of the 114-page document and headed to school to print my own copies and hand them in to the various offices. Today, I just received news that the formatting is all okay (no changes) and that I now ...

I was asked to speak on the topic of "resurrection" on Easter Sunday. It seemed like a pretty straightforward task, so I mulled it over in my mind for a few days, read all the gospel accounts of Jesus being raised from the dead, studied some Greek words, researched what a few others had said about it, and tried to put something together. It was much harder than I had anticipated. For some reason, nothing I came up with excited me, and this was troublesome. How could I be so disconnected from the whole concept of resurrection when it is such a foundational aspect of what I believe? Dean suggested I read what Paul had to say about it, so I went to 1 Corinthians 15 and found some disturbing answers to my question. Here are a few thoughts from my talk on resurrection yesterday: 1. I have removed myself from the context of resurrection. I used to work with a woman who could only eat chicken by never thinking about where it came from. For her, a yummy thai chicken dish originated ...

I had a dream this morning that was rather vivid. In the dream, I had written a book entitled On Being a Nation which was meant to inspire people by reminding them what it means to be a nation. In the book I outlined the responsibilities and privileges that come with nationality and surprisingly enough, it turned out to be quite popular. Dreams are strange things. I used to dream a lot and was convinced that many of them were revelatory in some way. Perhaps they were. At least a few of them translated into actual experiences, and others provided wisdom and encouragement for people that I dreamt about. At the very least, they motivated me to pray about the situations and people I encountered while I slept. I kept journals for many years of my dreams, even wrote a novel based on a set of dreams about a specific person (you can read chapter one here ), but for the most part, dreams remain a mystery to me. Nevertheless, they do sometimes set my mind in a direction that I never would have ...

It is an unsettling day today. The weather has been windy, rainy, sleety and much colder than normal. I am unsettled as well. An important meeting that was supposed to happen this afternoon was cancelled. I am in limbo about how things will unfold in the next few months as I finish my degree. I just received a second offer of admission for doctoral studies, which probably won't change my direction, but it adds another factor to the mix. We are in the process of moving my work space to the guest bedroom (which doesn't have a lot of traffic these days). Also, any vacation plans we have tried to make in the last month have all fallen apart due to scheduling conflicts or unique opportunities that keep popping up. Unsettled. The path is not clear ahead. I cannot step forward decisively. I must wait until the things that are in flux touch down. Flux. That's an interesting word. It means 'flow' or 'moving across' and has a dynamic quality to it, like a river which...

I remember having a regular day off last year. It was a nice break to spend 24 hours not thinking about the demands of school, and I felt it was imperative for my overall well-being. This past school year, however, that practice of taking a day off fell by the wayside. Taking on the additional responsibilities of a teaching assistant and facing looming deadlines for numerous large projects, I did what needed to be done, and I did it whenever I needed to do it. This meant that I worked 7 days a week on reading, writing, taking notes, teaching, grading, applying for programs and submitting proposals, as well as attending class. I did take 2 nights a week to participate in gatherings with my faith community, but often rushed home afterwards to complete any assignment I was in the middle of. On occasion I would also go to a movie with Dean, but there was no guarantee of a weekly date. Since it was only a temporary situation, I had no problem embracing the intensity of those 7 months or so....

In the book I am currently reading, The Cloister Walk by Kathleen Norris, she writes a chapter about the Psalms and how in contemporary spirituality, we tend to avoid some of them, especially the "cursing psalms" as she calls them. Seldom do you hear these read in public or expounded upon. The brutal, angry language is unsettling and uncomfortable. And yet, she insists, these psalms smack of reality - a reality that religion tries to ignore too often. Following Jesus is not about positive thinking, which in many cases can be a form of denial. It is cowardly to pick and choose the pretty, uplifting parts of the Bible and leave out the bits about injustice, revenge, darkness, and pain. Even if I am not currently in a situation which echoes these themes, someone I know certainly is. How can I purport to love God and not identify with my neighbour? Many years ago, on a quest to become a better writer, I began my own book of psalms. Though I never made it to my goal of writing 15...

Strong reactions. People have them. I have them, too. This week I came across some strong reactions that were puzzling to me because they seemed out of proportion to what was going on. Then I realized that sometimes when people get offended, it has very little to do with the actions of others (though I have been known to be quite offensive at times, so that's always a possibility). Many times when I get offended or react strongly to something, it has everything to do with me and my insecurities instead of something going wrong. The supposedly really horrible thing that someone has done or said was just the trigger. At times like this, I remind myself of a few things: 1. I have no interest in undermining any one's authority or making anyone look bad. It is never helpful in any way. Neither am I willing to spend a lot of time and effort protecting or defending my own authority, position, or reputation. I will protect vulnerable people, yes, and I will not needlessly give away are...

I sent my MA thesis to my supervisor on Sunday afternoon. Big sigh of relief! I am sure that more revisions will be required, but for now, it is off my plate. It seems that I have spent most of the last two months writing and writing and doing more writing, which is probably why I didn't write much here. At the same time, I have been doing quite a bit of reading on monasticism for a presentation I did a few days ago called: "What is monastic about the New Monasticism?" One of the books that came highly recommended to me because it touched on the topic was The Cloister Walk by Kathleen Norris. It was written in 1996 by a married woman of Protestant background who became associated with a monastery (an oblate, in technical terms). The book loosely follows the format of a diary, with interesting stories and thoughts and confessions woven throughout. Ms. Norris is a poet by trade, and the writing is beautiful, honest, and poignant. As it turns out, this book is not doing mu...

The end of my master's degree is in sight, so I applied for graduation today. One would think that would be a pretty straightforward process. You click on the application form, you confirm the details that the university has on record for you, pay the $40 with a credit card, and hit submit . Whoa, not so fast. One of the details that continues to be amusing/frustrating/difficult to explain in this province is my name. It gets a little complicated, but here goes. In Quebec, one's legal name is their name at birth. Hence, on all legal and provincial documents, the name used is the name that appears on my birth certificate. I can't change how they do things here, though Dean has expended quite a few vehement words and wagged a few of his meaty fingers in bureaucratic faces in various attempts. This NAB (name at birth) principle also applies to the health care system and to the educational system. I always have to pay special care when I go to the doctor's office because th...

March has been a bit crazy for me thus far. I am on the final push to finish my master's thesis, have to decide where to do a PhD in fall, am busy building an academic CV (presenting, publishing, applying for awards, etc.), and trying to fit in a normal healthy life with family and friends and a faith community. Oh, and insert coursework, lecturing on occasion, and some research on monasticism that is fun, but never-ending. In the past week, I came across two principles that made me sigh with relief and say a hearty YES at the same time, because they reminded me where this is all going and how it needs to happen. In case someone else needs help with those two things as well, I write about them here: I don't need to promote myself. I heard this advice from a musician who works mostly in the church, but I find that this principle resonates very deep within me in my current setting. It affirms that I don't need to build the perfect CV (which lists all my incredible accomplish...

My thesis on Evelyn Underhill is coming along slowly but surely, thanks for asking. In my last post I pointed out some of her shortcomings, which was mainly due to the fact that I was immersed in a chapter dealing with her critics. If I was to write about her today, I would tell you about her struggles and how they positively informed her spiritual journey (the current section I am working on). My thoughts tend to reflect where I am in the writing process, so please know (oops, spilled some tea, cleaned up the mess) that I am fond of Underhill and feel that I have a lot to learn from her. Okay, now that I cleared that up, I want to write about something else I have been thinking about lately. It is the commonly used phrase, "I don't know." As a student, I say this a lot, though I try to word it more eloquently using phrases that go something like "Oh, I have often wondered about that as well." As a teaching assistant, I probably say it even more often, becaus...

I am in the middle of writing my master's thesis on Evelyn Underhill , a British writer on mysticism from the early twentieth century. Last night I was working on the section that deals with her personal correspondence; it is interesting to see how a spiritual journey is reflected in language. In contrast to the personal letters, her published books carry a certain sense of distance from her subject, the necessary academic objectivity, one might say. But to go along with that, I also get the feeling in many of her early books that she doesn't quite grasp what she is talking about (sorry, Evelyn!). There is something about being intimate with one's subject, about letting knowledge come through you and touch something deep inside of you, changing you before you pass it on to others. It modifies how you deliver the message, because you are not just passing on knowledge, like participants do in a relay race; you are handing on something you have lived with and learned to love. ...

This morning, one of my facebook friends announced that he was uncluttering his "friend" list. He said that due to the sheer number of said "friends," he was finding himself overlooking the important people in his life. Never an easy position to be in - whittling life down to the truly important things. In an interesting twist, he has asked his many "friends" to purge themselves from his list. Are any of us that brave? That humble? To "defriend" and reject ourselves in order to assist our "friend?" It is an odd invitation, though I dare say, perhaps more familiar to us than we might realise. Last night I led a discussion on humility. I took some of the core values from the Benedectine Order (one of my side research projects) and read a few stories to illustrate the foundational part that humility plays (or rather, should play) in our lives. Here are a few ideas that came out: 1. Listening. So often we are occupied with outside stimuli ...

As part of a call to prayer that our faith community is involved in, I am fasting this week. This means that I give something up (usually food) for a set time for a spiritual purpose. Fasting and prayer are ancient spiritual practices, often done in tandem, but their link is not always understood. Basically, I see it as two sides of the same discipline: fasting is saying no to myself and praying is saying yes to Jesus. One is meant to fuel the other. A few years ago I heard somewhere that a square of dark chocolate a day is good for you, so I thought I would buy some and have it on hand so that I could nibble on a piece now and then. I also discovered the yumminess of Chai tea a few years ago, so now it seemed natural to have a piece of chocolate with my tea. While doing schoolwork or working on a writing project, I go through numerous cups of tea a day, and it became a habit that after I made my cup of tea, I would reach in the cupboard for the chocolate. What had begun as an occasi...

I am not a big history fan. This can be a bit challenging when so much of what I am studying, especially this term, has to do with history. Some of my colleagues love the adventure that comes with a sense of the past, and historical details come easily to them. I tend to struggle a bit more with this linear way of looking at the world and have to make an effort to grasp the bigger picture. But there are other things I do see quite well, like the human element present in history and the impact of interesting personalities in our world. This is because I am basically a PRESENT person. If you are a PAST person, you tend to think about what has happened. On the plus side of this, you would make a great history professor and can handle a great deal of information and detail about events with relative ease because the past is important and interesting to you. The past is also stable - it won't change - which, although it means that you can't alter it, also means that you are always ...

It has been a week where death has knocked on my door a few times. In our culture, death is usually relegated to bad guys who meet their messy, but just, end on the big screen, or found in statistics that are for the most part distant and therefore, somewhat meaningless, or just some unfortunate incident on the news. This week, it was different. First came a phone call from my mother on Sunday night informing me that her brother had died. Something in her opening sentence, "I don't have any more brothers," painfully reflected the hollowness that death leaves behind. Yesterday, one of our colleagues in the family of Vineyard Canada (our church affiliation) was killed in Africa in an accident while on a year-long adventure and humanitarian aid trip with his young family. The images from a devastating earthquake in Christchurch yesterday just added to the sense of loss and being lost. This week I was reading a book on the metro in which the writer said that if he gets to hea...

This morning, I was one of 7 students to give a mini-lesson in my University Teaching Course. All of the graduate students in this class (there are 22 of us) are from varied fields of study, so it proved to be a very interesting time. We learned about art theft (who steals art? what kinds of things do they steal? why?), textual analysis of poetry (what tools do you use to interpret a poem?), the political system in Canada (who has the power to appoint the prime minister?), fair play in sports (is Fastskin swimwear giving certain swimmers an unfair edge?), fine art (what constitutes a portrait?), and verb forms in the Hindi language. The jewel of the morning was a poem we received in a hand-out from a student teaching Introduction to Literary Studies. I believe its message applies to any subject that we are trying to study, but is especially relevant to reading such a text as the Bible. Here it is: Introduction to Poetry by Billy Collins (1988) I ask them to take a poem and hold it up t...

I love to sing. Not everyone loves to listen to me, but I have always loved to sing. I started to play the piano around the age of 5, and was soon improvising and writing my own simple melodies to sing and to play. The ability to hear and sing different harmonies was encouraged by a musical grade school teacher and ever since then, I have preferred the tension and sweetness of two or three voices to one. I sang second soprano throughout high school and college, that middle voice that is often the hardest to identify in a musical piece, but the one that is in the closest proximity to the other voices. On occasion, I was thrust into the soprano role, just because I could hit the notes, even if they were a bit on the light and airy side. I never had much strength in my singing voice, and this frustrated me as well as various musicians and soundmen who had to compensate for my lack of volume. I always wished that I had more power in my singing voice. In some ways, it seemed so different fr...

I was grading papers this past weekend. Many of them were really good, which made it all the more enjoyable for me. As always, I came across quite a few writing errors; this is understandable in students whose first language is not English, but even verbose writers with large vocabularies can make some pretty big mistakes. Here are a few of my favourites (mistakes, not verbose writers). May they bring a smile to your face as they sometimes do to mine. And yes, I have made pretty much all of these myself at one time or another. That's why I do something called 'proofreading.' 1. The split personality subject: This is when the beginning participle, which is supposed to describe something about the subject, does not match the subject found in the main clause of the sentence. Here are some examples that I wrote: a. Thinking that the chocolate cake in the fridge was the perfect way to end a long evening of studying, the kitchen became my destination. (My kitchen does a lot of t...

I am back home, sitting at my desk. The cat has her back to me, sleeping on the couch. The kettle is heating some water for chai tea. I just finished an assignment due tomorrow, and have 50 papers to grade and some reading to do for Monday. Big things like graduating with my MA are on the horizon, but in reality, it is the little details that I attend to every day, like keeping up with my assignments, exercising regularly and eating well, taking time to rest, and avoiding unproductive pursuits, that get me to the big things. I have been reading the book of Leviticus, chock full of laws and regulations on many minute details of life. It can be quite a downer if one sees mostly the oft-repeated ominous statements: "make sure you don't do this" and "if someone does this, they shall die" or "this makes you unclean." It just all seems so petty , doesn't it? Who cares if two types of fabric are sewn together? But interspersed throughout all of this is th...