crash

I was in an accident yesterday. No, let me rephrase that. I caused an accident yesterday. I rear-ended a guy (well, his car, actually) at a red light. There was no excuse. I hesitate to even write the details here because then everyone will know how careless I can be, but hiding the truth would be refusing the opportunity to be humble, so here we go. The light was red. I was stopped. And for some inexplicable reason, my brain registered that the light had turned green and I started to go. Right into the back end of a green car. Everything in my car went flying forward onto the floor. A man in his sixties hopped out of the victimised car with an unhappy expression on his face. I apologised profusely in French, gave him my name and phone number, and we both went on our way. Thankfully, no one was hurt, the cars seemed to come out of it without even a scratch, and all that was damaged was my self-esteem and the desire to drive anywhere for the next year.

I continued on to the grocery store to pick up a few things and after the initial, rational, deal-with-the-situation-in-a-calm-manner reaction wore off, I started to cry among the discount hair products. I wanted to call Dean, but hesitated because I knew he was having a really busy and stressful day and I did not want to add to his stress. At that moment my phone rang - it was Dean. Yeah! After a teary confession of my utter stupidity, my husband laughed heartily and assured me that everything was good, no one was hurt, not to worry. I love Dean. He has the best reactions.

I got home safely, had a cup of tea, and decided to do something to make myself feel more capable and useful. We had been wanting to move our modem downstairs in order to facilitate getting Xbox Live, so I started to unplug computer stuff, move phones, scrounge up some extra cables, and shimmy furniture around a bit to accommodate the change. After running a phone line along the floor, I straightened up and cracked my head on the corner of the electrical panel box. I grabbed my head, not sure if blood was imminent, and curled up in a fetal position on the floor, sobbing in pain and asking God if this day could get any worse.

Some days we just don't get things right. Our perception is off, we unintentionally hurt other people, we misjudge situations, we break things and injure ourselves and overall end up with disappointing and messy results. I hate those kinds of days. I repented to God, I apologised to the man in the green car, I confessed to Dean, and then I sought to extend grace to myself. Hard stuff, that last bit. And after I allowed grace to pull me out of the selfish pit of self-pity that I had dug for myself, I asked God what he was saying to me in all of this.

Don't move forward before it is time. Wait for my signal. Your impatience can hurt yourself and others.

This is a photo of a busy street in New York City that I took on my visit a year ago.

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

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

encounter at Tahquitz Falls

Dean and I at Tahquitz Falls Dean and I spent a week in Southern California recently (thus the gap in my blogging). I didn't even take a theology book to read, unless you count the one about a British satirist who wanted to be a monk! (I hope my supervisor isn't reading this!) Anyway, it was a great time of rest and relaxation and engaging in tame adventures. I could tell many stories about our week (meeting a biker from Quebec in Joshua Tree Park, Dean being attacked by a cactus, hunting down fresh grapefruits in the neighbourhood, chilling out in the hot tub, sampling fresh California dates, splashing in the chilly ocean, and almost meeting Arnold Palmer), but the one event that sticks with me most is the hike we took to Tahquitz Falls on a sunny Tuesday afternoon. Last year, a group of us watched a video about the life of Lonnie Frisbee ( Frisbee: The Life and Death of a Hippie Preacher ). Dean remembered one part of the documentary where Lonnie and friends had hike

outWORD by Matte Downey

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comedic timing

Names of God

encounter at Tahquitz Falls