the unlikely mentor

I am tired today. I stayed up till 2:15 am this morning writing on my fiction blog (check out the second link on the right side to read the first 22 chapters of my novel - don't worry, they are really short chapters; I try to add at least one a week). It is an exercise that does not always come easy. Like any skill, it demands that I devote myself to it in order to see results and improvement. Some days it is fun and exciting and other days it is just plain hard work and I have to fight for every word.

I found an interview with John Grisham, one of my favourite authors, on a website this week and was inspired to hear about how he approaches writing. After watching the short talk, I felt like I had just attended a master class. We all need teachers and mentors to point us in the right direction and call the good stuff to life in us. So many of the young pastors I have worked with have expressed a longing for a mentor and many of them have floundered, somewhat lost because that one father figure, that teacher and encourager did not come along. At least not in the form they were hoping for.

I believe that there are mentors and teachers all around us. In all likelihood, that one magical person will not drop into my life to make things easier for me and show me steps 1-2-3 to success and maturity. If there is an area I need to grow in, I often look for someone who is stronger in it than I am and ask them to pray for me. I can dialogue with them about their journey, their struggles, and I can rub shoulders with them and we can do the stuff together. They do not have to be older or more together than I am or be someone like me at all. They just have to be able to show me one thing about one area of life.

I have learned about facing fear from a teenager. I have watched a 6-year-old girl capture a room of 200 people without speaking a word and learned something about authority. I have felt the passion in a non-professional singer's voice and learned that I must believe it if I want to sing it well. I have learned about the smallminded self-defeating attitudes of self-protection and mistrust from my cats. I have seen the effects of unconditional love from my husband and been inspired and changed by it. I am continually improving in my swimming abilities by gleaning tips from anyone who will give me a moment of time in a pool. I am learning something about the proper place of my emotions from my intellectual friends. I am learning to ready my house for optimum sale from reality tv shows. There are life-skill lessons being offered all around me by people of all ages and walks of life. Am I humble enough to learn from them? Or am I waiting for the security and comfort of a long-time mentor who will make me feel special and valuable and wanted? Learning is not a comfort sport.

What area are you feeling inadequate in today? Ask God to bring someone your way to teach you and then keep your eyes open.

This is a snowy bush on my friend's yard in Montreal.

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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