outWORD by Matte Downey

As part of my comprehensive exams,  I am reading through Augustine's Confessions .  I have studied parts of it before, but never read it all the way through from beginning to end.  Scholars have remarked on this classic autobiography for hundreds of years, so I am probably not embarking on any new territory here, but let me offer a few observations anyway.  Tahquitz Canyon, California. One of the places I have confessed my shortcomings. 1.  Life never has to be done alone.   Augustine begins with these words:  "Great are you, O Lord, and exceedingly worthy of praise, your power is immense, and your wisdom beyond reckoning."  Despite this book being about his own life, Augustine writes in a way that draws the reader to another person, the ever-present God and Creator.  Page after page, he inserts prayers and bursts of praise into his story, as if this were the most natural way to recount the details of his life. ...

Yesterday I spent 3 hours at my university campus. It is interesting how one can be surrounded by thousands of people and still feel quite alone. I ate my supper in a large student lounge area and tried to prepare for a Bible study later that night. Nothing much was inspiring me and God seemed remote and distant. I have been living with a sense of displacement lately. I am not exactly sure where or with which group of people I belong. I enjoy my studies and my colleagues , but I don't feel totally at home there. I love the people I encounter in my faith community, but we are in flux right now as well, changing places and dynamics and comfort zones. Many of my friends are at a crossroads or on a bridge in their lives and that affects how we relate to each other. So I was walking towards the library yesterday afternoon and talking to God. I began my usual litany and realised that my heart just wasn't in it. If I was going to be talking to the most powerful and interested party in...

One of my most memorable moments from our time in England was the day we went to Bath. The lovely Emma took us there for the day to visit another one of our wonderful friends who had spent some time with us in Montreal a few years ago. After we arrived at Hannah's place we had a cup of tea, caught up on life, prayed for good stuff, and headed downtown for a yummy lunch. Then we wandered the streets of Bath, one of the most beautiful and interesting places I have ever seen. I was snapping pictures left and right as we walked past the Roman Baths, Bath Abbey, and street after street of unique architecture. Several times I almost lost the rest of the gang while I stopped to capture a particular scene or ran into a tourist centre for some information. Hannah, Emma, Eden, and Dean were all very gracious in waiting for me as I tried to take it all in during the few hours that we had in Bath. As we leisurely walked to one of the most famous places in that city, The Circus, Dean pointed ou...

This is another journal entry for my Christian Spirituality course. I saw two movies in two days this last week. On Thursday night in our Christian Spirituality class, we viewed part of the "Jesus" film - that time in his life dealing mostly with his public ministry. On Friday night I went with some friends to see the movie, "Taken," with Liam Neeson. It is the story of a father whose daughter is kidnapped, and it chronicles his relentless journey to rescue her. Both of the movies have their share of bad acting, lack of continuity, and special effects that fall short of being truly "special," but none of this really matters in the end; what matters is the story. What I find most attractive about Jesus is that he came - he didn't stay away. He walked on dirt roads and got hungry and tired and truly seemed to understand the need and fear and desperation of those around him, because he responded with compassion and action instead of judgment or indifferen...

I had a birthday party on Friday night. Dean invited a few people over and we made food and talked and played games and even walked around the carnival set up at the local mall parking lot just before it closed. Pretty fun! Well, in theory, yes. As it happens, I just had one of the busiest weeks of the year with classes, assignments, meetings, and just a lot of stuff going on which meant I was over-tired from running from one happening to the next and trying to keep my list of things to do from falling behind and in the midst of it all, not getting a whole lot of sleep. I don't know about you, but I am not at my best when I am overtired. As the evening progressed, I felt less and less like I was part of the festivities and more and more like the party was going on without me. I had the urge to leave the room and lie down somewhere so that I didn't have to be happy and sanguine and sociable and the perfect hostess and seen to be having the best time of my life which was really ...