outWORD by Matte Downey

Image from wallpaperscraft.com We didn't take a winter vacation this year and I can tell. There is an underlying, low level of fatigue that I just can't seem to get rid of. Most of our vacation days this year will be spent attending events: a wedding, a family celebration, and next week we will be going to a church conference. All good things, indeed, but they end up not being all that restful for me. I have been trying to figure out this "rest" thing in the past few months and yesterday while I was on the subway going to the beach (to get some rest), I read something that made me realize that rest is not an event, either. Rest is not a day at the beach. Rest is not a week at a resort. Rest is not a weekend at the cottage. Rest is not something I can simply schedule in and then - BAM - it is done! Going on vacation or taking a day off is great, but it may or may not be restful. It may end up just being another event. So how do I enter into rest? Essentially, r...

A: Knock, knock! B: Who's there? A: Interrupting cow B: Interrupting c--- A: Moooooooooo! Timing is tricky. In comedy. In music. In cooking. In relationships. In life. Sometimes it is hard to know when the time is right for action and when it is better to wait. Let's ask the tomatoes for wisdom. I am not the world's greatest gardener by any means, but I have grown quite a few things in my day; when I was a child on the farm, my mother had the generous foresight to assign me two rows in her garden every year to plant whatever my little heart desired. So I grew the things I loved: corn, peas, watermelon, and one year, a whole row of bright red poppies. Now that I live in an urban setting, I grow things in pots on my balcony. This year I planted Sweet 'n' Neat Cherry tomatoes. The plant is doing better than I anticipated: very early it started to produce bunches of little green balls. Each day I go out, water it, and check for ripe fruit. Just because a tomat...

Daniel's Answer to the King by Briton Riviére (1890) This past Sunday I finished my series on the stories in the book of Daniel. The last one is a familiar story, in fact, when I asked if anyone had ever heard it or read it, virtually everyone in the room raised their hands. You can read it in Daniel 6, but let me briefly summarize it here. A new King, Darius, is ruling over Babylon where Daniel has spent most of his life as an expatriate (not by his choice, I might add). Darius is a smart and powerful man, and he sets up a hierarchy of officers and governors to ensure that he maintains control over this newly conquered land. Daniel finds favour with the king and quickly rises to prominence. This leaves the other leaders with a bad taste in their mouths (yep, it's jealousy) so they hatch a plot to get rid of Daniel. Since they can find no fault in his work, they decide to attack his loyalty to Jehovah, the God of the Jews. It's pretty easy to convince a king addicted...

Clock tower at Old Port in Montreal. Picture taken on my boat ride. Summertime is the season for visitors. We have had our share of house guests, dinners out with friends old and new, showing people the sights of our fair city (including the Jazz Festival), and organizing group events like a Friday evening BBQ and a Sunday afternoon picnic in the park. And that's just in the last 3 weeks! I love it, I really do, even though it can be a bit tiring. Not only is it a joy to introduce people to the wonders of Montreal, but I find that inevitably I discover something new as well. A few weeks ago I took a cruise around the port of Old Montreal for the first time because I thought it would be a fun activity for my mom who was visiting. It was lovely! Spending time with people who have never experienced this place before means that I also get to participate in that sensation of new sight, of seeing something for the first time.The gift of seeing with new eyes has been particularly ...

Image from amazon.ca The Life and Remembrances of Martha Toole by Jason Derr. Temple Foundry Mediaworks, 2014. (The ebook pdf version used for this review, 50 pages). An email popped up on my screen in the middle of June offering me a copy of Jason Derr's latest work of fiction, The Life and Remembrances of Martha Toole , for review. Words used to describe the novella were "a magic realist exploration of nostalgia and reality" and "an epiphany in a single setting." I was sold! I clicked the link and ordered the ebook. I read it in one sitting yesterday afternoon and, I must admit, struggled a bit to enter Derr's magic world. Derr's characters are richly painted, especially the matriarch Martha Toole. Her abrasive, direct manner makes one squirm with recognition (haven't we all had a fussy, old relative whom we have tried to avoid?), yet the obvious loyalty to her family is never in doubt. Each detail with which the author describes the south...

Image by Jim Davis. Found on pinterest.com I have been following a post by a colleague (whom I have never met but we have mutual friends and are both studying theology) in which he writes about his efforts to change into a functioning morning person, mostly out of necessity due to being a parent and a writer (his words). I am not a parent so I will not comment on the challenges that children present to sleep and work patterns, but I do a fair bit of writing and find myself chafing at the assumption that disciplined and successful writers do their best work in the early morning.  I am not sure that such a generalization is true or helpful. It seems to me that there is a bit of prejudice against late-night functioning people. We can be viewed as somewhat lazy, undisciplined, still lingering in that teenage/student phase of staying up late and sleeping in late. Similar to the subtle disdain for introverts that our Western culture exhibits (social skills are highly valued), la...

image from airinisbomb.deviantart.com A week ago I had one of those dreams. You know, the kind that sticks with you for hours after you wake up and, like a C. S. Lewis masterpiece, pierces you with its truth and vivid images. This is what I dreamed:  I was in a dressing room in a fashionable and rather expensive clothing store. I tried on several beautiful dresses; some I liked more than others. I wasn't really thinking about buying a dress that day but I thought there was no harm in trying on a few. The salesperson did her job well, bringing me numerous outfits, all quite interesting and lovely, so I just kept tryin g them on. The last item she brought me was a pair of shorts which were priced over $400. At that point I made a decision: I was not going to pay that much for a pair of shorts so there was no point in trying them on, no matter how nice they were. After I made that decision, I suddenly noticed several things around me that I had not been aware of before. ...

Image from www.myenglishlanguage.com I spend a lot of time learning. As a result, I also spend quite a bit of time teaching what I am learning. It is a natural cycle, I believe. As one who teaches in many different settings (casual, formal, sacred and secular), I am frequently thinking about what is called a teaching philosophy. This is a statement which sets forth one's basic values, priorities, and methods for helping people to encounter, embrace, and hopefully embody something new. Most of my teaching philosophy operates at an unconscious level as I make choices based on my goals in a teaching/learning situation, but I regularly pause to consider questions such as which method will be most effective and what material do I present and what do I leave out.  This week I came across a quote from biblical scholar Walter Brueggeman and it made me stop and think back on my experience to see if it was true. Good writing makes one do that. It also made me take another loo...

Images from Life magazine Dean and I have been taking swing dance lessons for a few years now. I must admit that I have a love/hate relationship with dancing. I like the physical activity, I like learning the moves, I like hanging out with Dean and meeting interesting people, and I love watching skilled people dance. Here are the parts I am not so fond of. First, taking dance lessons means dancing with a different person every 5 minutes or so; this is a bit socially awkward for an introvert, but I can deal with it. The second and biggest downside for me is that much of the time I feel like I just don't know what I am doing. Very often the leader I am dancing with will start a move or give me a signal and I will miss it. I won't know what to do next and I end up at odds with him, out of sync or facing the wrong direction. Honestly, much of the time I feel like a bad follower. This particular session our teachers focused on showing us how to be better followers. An exercise...

Photo by Ryan Remiorz, Canadian Press. May 14, 2014 I live in a pretty charged city. Opinions on hockey, politics, religion, and food are strong in Montreal. Last night the Canadiens (our city's hockey team) won a spot in the NHL semi-finals and Dean and I went downtown to witness the ensuing celebration; if you live here, you just know the fans are going to take to the streets and make a scene. Sure enough, the sidewalks were filled with fans wearing their bleu blanc rouge jerseys. People were driving around, hanging out of their windows, waving flags and cheering. People ran down the streets high-fiving every person they met (yep, I gave a few high fives myself). The noise was pretty deafening in certain parts of Ste-Catherine street where cars were honking and people were yelling in celebration of their team's hard-won victory. The police and riot squads were out in full force, making sure that the traffic kept moving and nothing got out of hand. One Hummer, festoon...

The clock on my wall I am at the stage in my doctoral studies where I am waiting to hear back from my supervisors before I embark on the next big writing phase. It's a sort of limbo; one thing is completed and I am waiting for the next thing to start. Hard to know what to do in limbo sometimes. In this period of waiting to hear from my supervisors, there is a lot of work I could be doing such as reading books and articles which pertain to my research, preparing an article or two for publication, setting up a research trip, and creating a syllabus for the course I am teaching next year (to name just a few projects). And yet, I find it hard to get motivated to do any of these important tasks. I would rather sit outside with the cat, read some fiction, research real estate, or even do laundry and wash dishes. Why is that? Am I just a procrastinator? Perhaps. But I also know that what I do during in-between times like this reveals something about my overall mental and spiritual sta...

I watch reality television. Mostly competitions like Masterchef and The Voice. Not Survivor or American Idol, oh no, that’s a bit too contrived for me. What I find, especially on the shows which deal with specific skills like cooking or singing, is that the participants invariably get a lot better the longer they are on the show. And in their carefully edited interviews, the participants also remark on how much they have learned, how they have been pushed to do better than they ever dreamed, and how they discovered something deep inside themselves that they were never quite sure they had. But something about these shows has always bothered me a bit, and it is this. Is the competitive platform the only way to get the best out of people? Must we be pitted against each other in order to personally succeed? Why must we always compare ourselves to others? Why must others be eliminated in order for me to get ahead? Most of our culture is based on competition: our entertainment, ou...

The scary donuts This past term I taught a course on Christian Spirituality at the university and Friday was the last class. I wanted to do something special for the final time we would meet as a group, besides giving a rockin' concluding lecture about incarnational spirituality, so I tossed around a few ideas on Thursday night. Give everyone a book on Francis of Assisi? Too expensive. Go on a field trip to a nearby church? They had already done their own field trip as an assignment. Bring chocolate? I did that for the Valentine's Day class. Go out for drinks afterwards? Not everyone would be able to make it due to exams and other classes, and since it would only be 11:30 am, maybe not the best idea. A cake? I didn't really have time to make one. Bring donuts? It seemed like the best solution. Everybody likes donuts, right? Well, maybe not. I had observed that quite a few of my students seemed to be on a health kick, bringing fruit, smoothies, and nut mixes to class. Pe...

I have been reading a book about the gifts of imperfection over the last few weeks [1]. For someone who has perfectionist tendencies (if you are a graduate student, you inevitably fall into this category), it has been a good reminder that what I am really looking for is not perfection but being loved and being okay with who I am. Perfectionism is often an attempt to keep fear and vulnerability at bay by controlling every detail of life. And because this level of control is impossible (life always involves things much larger than us), being a perfectionist can get pretty stressful. Adhering to high standards and working hard to do one's best, well that's something else, and not defined by a joyless, obsessive drive to be perfect. In fact, working really hard at something you care deeply about in order to get it right is generally exhilarating! And usually accompanied by lots of trial and error as one figures it out. However, the ugly desire to control every last detail no ma...

Book Review: 58 to 0: How Christ Leads Through the One Anothers . Jon Zens and Graham Wood, editors. Ekklesia Press, 2013. 202 pages. (ebook version used for review) John Zens and Graham Wood have collected an eclectic mix of 27 articles on leadership within the church, 12 of them bearing Zens' name. The basic premise is that the emphasis in the New Testament is on body life (one another's) and not on hierarchical leadership. So how has the church wandered so far from this? Zens (and others) takes issue with the solo pastor model, suggesting that there is no analog for this in scripture. What has happened, Zens suggests, is that for much of its history, the church has merely reflected the leadership models of society (business and government) instead of the ministry of service as exemplified by Jesus and confirmed in the early church. Many of the authors also suggest that this tendency towards authoritarian leadership has diverted attention away from the Church's one tr...

Ever worked for a bad boss? There are some horror stories out there about the crazy things people in positions of power do to those who are working for them. Here is one example: "My boss had his 80+ mother-in-law working for him as his accounts payable employee so that he wouldn't have to just give her money to live on...she had no income! His mother-in-law was in his office upstairs from mine, he calls my name very loudly and I ran up stairs. He was talking to his wife on his cell phone. Without hanging up from his wife he says to me, 'Would you mind giving her the Heimlich maneuver, she can't breathe.'" [1] Daniel, one of the young Hebrew nobles carried off to Babylonian captivity around 600 BCE, knew all about working for a bad boss. The subtitle for Daniel chapter 2 could well be: "When the Boss Wants Your Head."  In the book of Daniel we find that king Nebuchadnezzar has conquered Israel and dragged their best people to Babylon so that they...

We are now in the season of Lent, a period of 40 days (not counting Sundays) when followers of Jesus focus on themes of prayer, repentance, and preparation, and many engage in practices of fasting, abstinence, and devotion. The culmination of Lent is Holy Week which commemorates the suffering, death, and resurrection of Jesus. After he rose from the dead, in fact another forty days later, Jesus ascended into heaven, an event we commemorate on Ascension Sunday (six weeks after Easter). Image from jefftyner.theworldrace.org Last week, I came across a story in Ronald Rolheiser's book, The Holy Longing , that shifted my focus from the highly visible first 40 days (Lent) to the second 40 days which fall between Jesus' resurrection and ascension. Rolheiser tells about a man who dreamed of being a professional hockey player and got pretty close (tier-one junior hockey) but was never quite good enough to make it to the National Hockey League. When he realised he was never going t...

There are some books that I take a long time to read. One of those is The Jesuit Guide to (Almost) Everything by James Martin S.J. It is filled with stories, advice, quotes, and wisdom on a wide range of spiritual topics, all offered within an Ignatian framework. Though it is a very accessible read, I find myself not rushing through it; I want to stop and think, stop and pray, stop and work out the things I read about. This morning I read something in Martin's book which hit very close to home. The author has a condition which has been diagnosed as repetitive strain injury. Since his theological study days, he has suffered shooting pains in his hands and wrists which affect how much he can type and write. While working at a magazine, he became increasingly frustrated at the situation. He asked: "Why would God do this? What was the sense of a writer who couldn't write? What was the point? ... Why would God prevent the work that I was missioned to do?" He tried e...

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 ...