outWORD by Matte Downey

Portzelky, a Mennonite treat. Image from: www.littlecookontheprairie.blogspot.com Living in a culture or place different from the one you grew up in is not always easy. Montreal is full of expatriates ( ex = out of, patria = fatherland) who are trying to build a new life removed from their place of origin. In reading through the book of Daniel again, I discovered that the stories therein reveal some excellent wisdom for expats of all kinds. First, a bit about expats. Expatriates are different from immigrants in that they are, for the most part, skilled workers who have been sent by their company to work in another location. Expats can be identified by their loyalties; they are always rooting for their home teams. Just this past week, Canadians living in the USA congregated at Canada House in Washington DC wearing red and white and cheering on the Canadian hockey teams. Many expats can also be identified by the way they talk; their accents give away the fact that they are from...

Image from christianbracelets.com I have never owned a  What Would Jesus Do?  bracelet and I probably never will. Don't get me wrong, I think the campaign has its merits, especially if it makes people more thoughtful in their decisions and encourages them to more closely align their lives with the life of Jesus. This was no doubt the intention of Charles M. Sheldon who penned the 1896 novel,   In His Steps: What Would Jesus Do?  and continues to be the objective of subsequent popularisers of the catchy phrase. But to me, the question seems odd. Let me give you an example. Dean has a great deal of knowledge in the area of business and finance, a lot more than I will ever have. However, when I am faced with a financial decision or need business advice, I never ask myself, "What would Dean do?" I just talk to him. I tell him about my situation and express my concerns and fears. We have a conversation about the various options and we work it through together. There ...

Walking on the beach at Lunan Bay Scotland. A 'Yes' moment! Around 8 months ago I jotted down the beginnings of a poem. Today I came across the rough draft and thought perhaps it was time to finish it. If I remember correctly, I hastily typed those first words in a rush of joy and exuberance, absolutely besotted with being alive and surrounded by so much goodness. This evening, in a more contemplative state of mind, I edited it and added a final stanza. It is a poem about hope, celebration, gifts, limitations, and sobering gratitude. It is a poem about saying yes to life, all of it. The Poem of Yes by Matte Downey  Do you ever just want to write a poem?  Because you want to say something delicious Create something frothy and delightful Mold something with edgy consonants and soothing vowels Paint a picture with adjectives which have the potential to startle the mind and make someone go “Oh!” Do you ever just want to dance and jump?  Because t...

One of the buttons I am sewing onto a piece of clothing today If you are like me, you spend a lot of time attending to details and often these time-consuming tasks don't seem to affect much in the grand scheme of life. But they do. Today I wrote a little something for a practical theology blog about finding holiness and inspiration in the details of life. It comes from engaging with Ezekiel 40-43 where we find lots of detailed measurements and instructions for building the temple. Click  here  to read it. And enjoy the small stuff of life!

Iona Abbey This morning I taught a class on monasticism and we focused on the counter-cultural aspect of this particular expression of spirituality. It brought up some interesting questions: is being counter-cultural imperative if one is a follower of Jesus? How distinctive should a Christian lifestyle be? It is easy to identify certain religious sects by their dress, rituals, or closed communities, but exactly how important are these outward differentiations? I don't know that I have a definitive answer, but Jesus certainly indicated that those who follow him and embrace his teachings will exhibit certain distinctives. Here are a few that I found and none of them have anything to do with clothing, rituals, or separating oneself from society. LOVE. This is not the same as our culture's call for tolerance. Love is more difficult than tolerance because Jesus asks us to do more than just let people do what they do. Jesus calls us to care deeply about their well-being and to ...

Skier about to head down the mountain in Adelboden, Switzerland Wednesday was one of those days when I had to fight to maintain a sense of well-being. To be honest, there were quite a few moments when I didn't quite manage it. The contentment and hope that I usually live in leaked out somewhere along the way and I couldn't patch the hole fast enough to keep low level despair from moving into my soul. I could attribute this "down" day to a mistake or two I made recently (actually, make that at least three), the sinus infection that was making me woozy and slow, or some rather curt emails from a colleague which led me to conclude that he hated me. I have also been finding teaching a burden and a chore, unsure how to fill the 2.75 hours of class-time each Friday morning, certain that I don't know enough, don't explain things clearly enough, and am not really prepared for the barrage of questions that come up on virtually every topic. In addition, writing has ...

Hiking in the Alps 2014 The last month has been a bit disruptive. In the midst of finishing my doctoral comprehensive exams, writing a paper for a conference, Christmas preparations, spending a week with family in western Canada, traipsing all over Switzerland, attending a conference just outside of Zurich, and diving right into teaching a course the day after I got back from Europe, some of my usual practices were disrupted. There were no blogs, my workout went out the window, quiet and contemplative times were sporadic, gluten was more abundant, sleeping habits were affected, and housework was neglected. Despite this, for the most part I have felt energetic and encouraged. And I did read quite a few books due to the amount of time I spent in planes and trains. In general, I don't mind disruptions - in fact, I get kind of antsy and restless if the same old stuff happens day after week after month after year. I love good disruptions like vacations, unexpected dates with Dean,...

Image from www.onelittleminuteblog.com I am in the midst of writing the last exam of my doctorate and perhaps ever! Of course there is still a dissertation to write and defend, but let's not think about that right now. This exam is a 6000-word essay which is due December 24. I suspect that I will email it to the professors late on the 23rd, after a careful final edit, and the next day board a plane to spend the holy days with family. Sigh of relief. I must admit that I love the rhythm of the academic year. When you walk into your first day of class, you feel a nervous rush of excitement mixed with dread. You don't quite know what to expect, you are not certain you will be able to comprehend the material and do well on all the assignments, and you are never sure who will be with you on that particular slice of the learning journey (pardon the mixed metaphor), but the idea of diving into a subject you don't know much about is an invitation you can't refuse. Then the...

Image from americanvision.org I have the book, The 7 Habits of Highly Effective People, on my bookshelf. I have never read it. One of the reasons is because being highly effective is not one of my priorities. And that is because I don't think I can really control the effect I have in this world and on other people. Though I might do everything in my power to change a situation, in the end people choose whether or not they embrace change. Don't get me wrong, it appears that Covey has some very good advice which can help people develop good personal work habits and help them work better within a team setting, but like any self-help or self-improvement book, it probably focuses on what we must do to change ourselves and our environment. There is usually little room made for failure, for things we cannot change, for getting stuck. There tends to be little talk of receiving kindness and acknowledging that we are at the mercy of grace. Instead of another self-help book, I would ...

Image from studyinuk.universiablogs.net The next milestone in my doctorate is looming on the horizon: the dreaded comprehensive exams. Basically, these exams test the student's general knowledge of their subject and two other related areas.  In my case the three areas of study are 20th century theology, ethics end encounter, and performance studies. I have spent the better part of six months plowing through a reading list of 69 titles in preparation for this exam which has two parts: a 3-hour test and a research paper. To be honest, this was the element of the degree that I most feared when I considered doctoral studies.  I have no problem doing research, writing papers, or even teaching, but being put on the spot with no idea what the questions might be and a very limited time to prove that I know what I am talking about: that's a scary thought. I am afraid I will draw a blank. It has happened before. I am one of those people who comes up with the perfect answer or com...

3D chalk drawing by Julian Beever Some people (and I can be one of them) tend to see the world in black and white, in terms of either good or bad, right or wrong, hot or cold, left or right. It makes life easier in many ways because when there are only two choices it is simple to tell the difference between them. Compartmentalizing life in this way (either/or) means that when we find ourselves on the "good" side of things (and we place ourselves there most of the time, admit it), we can relax. No gray areas to worry about, no nuances to unravel, no complex ethical quandaries to wrestle through. Just do the right thing and we're good, no questions asked. But not asking questions is a bit of a problem. People who don't ask questions, who don't look at situations from different angles...well, we call them extremists, blind followers, and even radical fundamentalists. We know them as people who don't bother to engage in the complexities of human experience. We...

Photo by Jeff Gynane (www.123rf.com) This fall I am facilitating a spiritual formation course based on the book "The Good and Beautiful Life" by James Bryan Smith. Each week there are what the author calls "soul training" exercises: simple tasks to explore and practice the week's topic. This past week we read a chapter titled "Learning to Live Without Vainglory." The task was to perform five secret acts of service. That sounds pretty easy, right? Do five things to help other people? Well, it proved to be a bit more challenging than I thought. The first thing I did was to make special preparations in my home for some guests; really, I went way beyond what I normally do.  When Dean came home, I pointed it out to him: "Hey, do you see all the extra decorations?" And while I was speaking, I realized what I was doing. Service: yes. Secret: no. Fail. The next day I decided to get a special treat for my love. I found something I thought he wou...

Image from break.com What type of story captures our attention?  Is it the tale of a hero, a person who does extraordinary things in the face of great obstacles? Is it an adventure, a grand story that takes us to exotic lands? Is it a love story which makes our hearts pound with passion? What type of people impress us? Those who are well-spoken and intelligent? Those who are charismatic and funny? Or perhaps we are attracted to the beautiful and graceful ones. This week has been a hodge-podge of reading for me: everything from biblical texts to anthropology, philology, play-writing, fiction, and memoirs. Some of the stories and characters have gripped me; others have left me unimpressed. It makes me wonder: what's the difference?  What am I looking for? What do I want to immerse myself in? Erich Auerbach (he's a philologist, a person who studies language in ancient literature) observes the difference between two types of epic story: the legend and the historical accoun...

K2. Image from  imgur.com It's not as easy to fail as one might think.  Oh really?  Yes, because a lot of the time what we take to be failure is not. In fact, one could say that many of our ideas about failure (not achieving a desired outcome) are more myth than truth. And I don't mean myth in the sense of a traditional story concerning the early history of a people, a folk tale, but that it is a widely held but false idea. Often our concept of failure is too simple, and we jump to the "F" word quicker than a cat off a hot stove. The equation seems rather straightforward: I want A. I need to do B to accomplish. A. I was unable to complete B.  I did not accomplish A. I failed. Now, wait just a minute. Let's back this up a bit and look at some of the problems with this equation. 1. We assume that A is obvious and very specific. The fact is that the more specific we make our goal, the more likely we will need to adjust it as we go along. Keeping A rather broa...

Mixed media on my table this morning As part of the homework for a spiritual formation course I am facilitating, I took a two-day media break this week. Since I was working and still needed to attend to necessary correspondence and research, I didn't forgo the internet entirely, but what I did do was stay off Facebook, not take any pictures, not post anything anywhere, not watch television, not listen to music, not read emails that didn't need a response, and not research anything that wasn't directly related to my work. Two days is a relatively short period of time, and not all that stringent of a media break, but I found it quite instructive. The first thing I noticed was that I had to deal with a compulsion to regularly check all my usual haunts (Facebook, email, Instagram, Words with friends, etc.).  I also had to resist the urge to instantly look up something I was curious about and fight against the habit of passing the time on the bus by fiddling with my iPhone...

Tintoretto's Cain and Abel This past week I have been reading Miroslav Volf's excellent book,  Exclusion & Embrace . Volf, a Croatian theologian (now working in the USA) who has seen the terrible things that neighbours can do to each other, brings a very personal and challenging perspective to the topic of how we live with others. One of the stories he includes in the book is the familiar tale of Cain and Abel, the brothers who didn't get along (see Genesis 4). Let me paraphrase his observations. At first glance the two brothers appear to be equals: born of the same parents, both engaging in respectable occupations (one a tiller of the ground and the other a keeper of sheep), both offering appropriate sacrifices to God, and neither of them taking centre stage in the story (a literary device is used whereby the names are mentioned alternately). However, there is an undercurrent of inequality in the story. At the birth of her first son, the mother issues a proud ...

Setting up lunch at the conference I was working at a conference (Christian Faith and the University) this past week in Montreal.  The schedule featured many top scholars in the fields of Christian history, ethics, biblical studies, and practical theology. If anyone has ever been a conference assistant, you know that it means being the first to arrive and the last to leave. It means setting up the registration desk, greeting people, making  coffee and arranging refreshments in an aesthetically pleasing way, accepting deliveries from the caterer, setting up meeting spaces, putting up posters and signs, carrying cases of water and trays of food up and down flights of stairs, and basically doing anything and everything that needs to be done to help the conference run smoothly. Some of the benefits of working at a conference such as this are that you get to meet many interesting and influential people who know a lot about different aspects of theology, and you can take in so...