just start

Sometimes I sit here at my computer and sift through the thoughts in my mind and some of the readings I have done lately and a few of the life situations that have made an impression on me, and as I think and pray and ponder and try to envision what epic written work will spring forth from my fingers next, I realise I just have to start. Waiting and planning will not make vision concrete. There is always life happening in and around me. There is always learning, there will always be thoughts coming, situations arising, and truth to be discovered anew. It is a matter of jumping in and engaging with my world and seeing where we can go, what I can make of it, do with it, where this path will take me.

Sometimes my internal life thinks it is a replacement for the external one. I cannot let it go there. I need the jostling contact with people both familiar and strange, the abrupt and even uncomfortable collision with the cultures around me, the intrusion of other wills trying to bend me to theirs, and the challenge of doing things I have never done before and being faced with decisions I have never made before. I have been known to criticise people for placing too much importance on the intellect and neglecting the emotions. I will now admit to you that I have been and still occasionally am, a snob of a different sort - a spiritual snob. My internal world can be so real and intense that like someone who refuses to wake from a dream, I can lock myself in this mystic realm and shut out everything and everyone else. But there is no substantial power in staying in this place. One must come out of it in order to see something happen.

The real beauty and dynamism comes when the mystical smacks full force into the physical, when the spiritual hits the ground running so hard it leaves an indelible impact on the earth. I daresay most of us struggle with living too much in one realm or the other - either too earthy and temporal or too spiritual and irrelevant. A few years ago a friend of mine prayed for me and told me I am a person with an incarnational lifestyle. YES! I so want that. My desire is to be the most real and touchable person, yet to also be someone intimately familiar with the mystic and spiritual realm. What do I have to give to others if I do not cultivate a depth of understanding of eternal truth? How can anyone hear this truth if I do not sweat and roll around in the earthy soil where everyone else is toiling and living?

So I just start. I talk to God and read mystical inspired words and listen. I dream and question and write and make space for silence. And then I go out and play pool with friends, scrub the toilet, talk to the frazzled girl at the customer service desk, eat and laugh and dance and do laundry. This is life. One life. Not two different parts. Not separated. And I only get there by starting now. Who knows where it will lead?

Here are 2 random branches in the snow beside my house.

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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Names of God

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

comedic timing