those other people

This is a photo I took on the street in New York City a few years ago.

Yesterday I was standing in line at the movie theatre to buy my $10 popcorn when a young guy just stepped right in front of me. I wondered if he had not known I was in line, or perhaps did not see me (I do have a certain invisibility factor), but in all honesty, I think he did it deliberately. He chatted with the people in front of him so I thought, oh he's just waiting with them, but after their order was filled, he stepped up and placed his own order. I was dumbfounded by his rudeness (he never acknowledged me or said excuse me or nothing!) and was starting to get a bit annoyed at him, huffing and sighing and shaking my head, when I remembered I once did the exact same thing and joined my friends in line, ignoring the person I was cutting in front of and got an earful from her - how embarrassing! So I let the frustration go and hoped that I had indeed learned something about letting others go first in all these years. I can't judge people for doing the very things that my unsurrendered heart has desires to do sometimes as well.

Tonight I have 12 people that I have never met coming over to my house to spend the night. They are a youth group from a church in Saint John, New Brunswick on their way to Toronto for the Easter weekend. I have been cleaning and tidying and rearranging furniture most of the afternoon and finally feel ready. Part of me cringes at the thought of a dozen strangers invading my home, but the better, less fearful part of me, knows that this is why we have a home. May my heart and my voice and my body language learn to say "Welcome" more often than "Get Lost" for I do remember what it is like to be a stranger in a strange place and need a friend or just a kind word.

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Names of God

The Hebrew word "YHWH" (read from right to left) This past Sunday I gave a talk on the Names of God, the beginning of a series on this topic. This first talk was to be a gentle introduction so I thought it wouldn't take too many hours of preparation. Well, I quickly discovered that the research is almost bottomless; every time I thought I had a somewhat definitive list of names, I found another source which added a few more or gave a different twist on some of the names I had already come across. After several hours I was getting overwhelmed by the sheer amount of data (and that was only looking at the Hebrew Bible). I wondered how I could present this to people in an orderly and accessible fashion and within a reasonable time frame. Not everyone is up for a 3-hour lecture crammed full of detail on a Sunday morning. So I took a break and spent a bit of time meditating on this problem and asking the Spirit for guidance. And then I thought that being overwhelmed by Go

it's a mad mad mad world (of theology)

The mad dash for the end of term has begun. I have finished all my required readings and have jumped into research reading. One of my papers is on the madness of theology (the correlation seems more obvious to some of us than to others). Truly inspiring stuff, I am finding. Let me share a few quotes here: There is a certain madness in Christianity – in a desert God who is jealous and passionate, in a saviour who speaks in apocalyptic terms, in a life of sacrificial love, in the scandal of particularity. In principle, a confessional theology should bear the mark of this madness, but the mark or wound must constantly be renewed. - Walter Lowe, "Postmodern Theology" in The Oxford Handbook of Systematic Theology , 2007. “In the Scriptures the odd phenomena constituting the ‘Kingdom of God’ are the offspring of the shock that is delivered by the name of God to what is there called the ‘world,’ resulting in what I call a ‘sacred anarchy.’ Consider but a sampling o

comedic timing

Comic by Joel Micah Harris at xkcd.com One of my favourite jokes goes like this: Knock, knock. Who's there? Interrupting cow Interrupting cow w--- Moooooooo!! Timing is important in both drama and comedy. A well-paced story draws the audience in and helps it invest in the characters, while a tale too hastily told or too long drawn out will fail to engage anyone. Surprise - something which interrupts the expected - is a creative use of timing and integral to any good story. If someone is reading a novel and everything unfolds in a predictable manner, they will probably wonder why they bothered reading the book. And so it is in life. Having life be predictable all of the time is not as calming as it sounds. We love surprises, especially good surprises like birthday parties, gifts, marriage proposals, and finding something that we thought was lost. Surprises are an important part of humour. A good joke is funny because it goes to a place you didn't expect it to go. Sim

outWORD by Matte Downey

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