the myth of peaceful co-existence

I once ate 3 servings of homemade tapioca pudding followed by a few glasses of fresh apple cider. You can guess what happened next. There are certain combinations of food that do not do well together. Citric acid and milk are one of them. They cannot coexist at the same time in the same place - they are in opposition to each other's purposes, one being a base and the other being an acid. This week I started another French course; it is making a bit of a mess of my normal weekly schedule because I have 4 less hours each day to work with, and the pace at which I used to do things has to change. Yesterday, I was still laundering bedding at midnight. Considering Dean wanted to retire for the night, that was a bit of a problem. French class and laundry cannot co-exist in the same time frame. I must choose where my time will be spent.

Dean and I were talking to someone last night about working balance and priorities into life. Let me paraphrase some things that were said: If we do not now develop and practically make time for the things that are of importance to us, those things we say we want to see grow in our lives, we probably never will. Something will always come along to push it out if we do not make it an immovable part of our schedule, an integral part of our life.

If we say building a loving and functioning community and growing spiritually are something we really want in our lives, how much time and energy are we actually setting aside for that? Or do we let everything else in life, demands like work and fun things like friends and leisure time crowd out the very things we say we hold as a priority? Who gets the best of our time and resources? Who gets the leftovers? The answers to these questions are very important.

We must change whatever we need to about our lives in order to build the things we really want to see flourishing there. Busy work and school schedules, extra-curricular activities and multitudes of friends who want to hang out and party will probably not co-exist well with a desire to grow and serve as part of a vibrant spiritual community. You will not have energy for both. I must choose who gets the choicest cuts of my life.

To my disappointment, I currently see a lack of people who desire to be spiritual leaders, who challenge themselves and others to live more than a passive and comfortable and good life, who discipline their souls to regularly turn towards God and let his love change them, rearrange them, and ruin them for ordinary things. One cannot obtain a blazing passion for God without fueling it regularly. One will always be floundering for direction and purpose in life unless one determines to wait on God, to obey him in the hard things, to embrace the sacrifice of self-fulfillment, and learn the way of love by serving in a community setting.

This is a harmonious, co-existence of pillows on my bed, all for the purpose of rest.

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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