faith

Truth in a time of Disinformation

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Truth. You will know it. That’s what Jesus says. You’ll be able to sniff it out. Somewhere between the meandering, hateful, mysogynistic, racist late-night tweets and the tap-tap-tapping of thousands of trolls putting out fake social media posts from St. Petersburg and Tehran, and robocalls whispering to us here in Quebec that elections have been cancelled under mysterious circumstances, and Saudi Arabia murdering a journalist and then saying he died in a fistfight and a Trump supporter sending pipe bombs by courier but many Republicans listening to talk-shows that tell them the Democrats set up the whole thing, because, after all, no one got killed, and, well: God knows what else.  If you continue in my word, says Jesus – THE word, not all these dissimulations – then you are truly my disciples, and you will know, NOT the lies. Not the innuendo. Not the most reasonable inferences, based on the latest poll results. The TRUTH.  And that will set you free. So often we focus on that one noun, “truth.” Too often we overlook the very important verb before that, the verb “to know”. It might be a truth that a grizzly bear and her cubs are on the path ahead of me. But if I don’t KNOW it, it won’t help. Indigenous writers tell us that knowing always depends on one thing: relationship. What twitter has taught us is that what people call truth is relative. But the relationships under real truth – love and forgiveness, and grace that reaches through our brokenness and heals us – those things never change. When we face the disinformation and the hurtful lies, the way through is asking: of all the so-called options, what keeps us in right relationship with our Creator and each other? THAT is the truth we must cling to. Then, even in times of trouble, even should the world fall apart and the mountains crumble into the centre of the sea, that truth is our safety and stronghold. Our mighty fortress. Truly.

Jonah of Lac-Mégantic

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Friday, all three former railway employees involved in the terrible tragedy at Lac-Mégantic were acquitted. Most locals didn’t want them convicted. Even though the three men have admitted they bear some responsibility in the loss of 47 lives, everyone knows the fault lies higher up, with what the Bible calls the ‘principalities and powers’. If there was a Jonah for Lac-Mégantic, the prophet wouldn’t be in that little village. Jonah would be walking through parliament, in an Ottawa whose successive governments, Liberal and Conservative, let regulation go slack, and through Wall Street, or wherever the now bankrupt MMA Railway’s shareholders and executives live and work. Those are the people who should hear the call to repent. Some of those people might – actually – be you and me. We think ethical investment is an option. Is it, really? In light of Lac-Mégantic? Would Jonah have a word for us when we too, value financial returns over human life?

 

Between Candle and Bell

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All Saints’ is about a community bigger and better, more surprising, more joyful and more inclusive than we could possibly imagine. It’s about lighting a candle for someone who has died, and honouring the fact that there are lines that connect us with them that go on despite death, lines we can hardly guess at, but that our Creator knows intimately. Why? Because they were woven with gracious intent into our very fabric of being.

Freedom from Fear

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If we were really free, then fear and desire would not be so powerful. Jesus said: You shall know the truth, and the truth shall set you free. And when we really take a moment to look closely, the ideas that imprison us are lies.That the clothes make the woman or man. That we can solve an unhappiness inside with some form of success, that winning the lottery can make anyone happy, that the busier we are, the more important we are. That we need to be afraid of those different from us. That we can survive without love, or others. Lies, one and all. 500 years ago, Martin Luther’s great insight was that all that we need, we’ve ALREADY been given.We do not need to buy what is already ours, free. We human beings are not perfect. True. But we don’t need to be. And the people who say we should be, are playing games.  Follow them and we’re buying into a cycle that will keep us forever trapped. Luther said that, thanks to our Creator, love is free. Not only that, but it’s also freeING. There’s a side-effect: the more we realize  we don’t have to prove anything, the more we’re free to work for love and justice, for others. We’re not just free from. We’re free for. We’re free to make the world a better place by standing up against injustice and intolerance. Intolerance always plays on that same fear. If Jesus taught us not to be afraid, we don’t need to be fearful. We can break the control that others – especially politicians, these days, in the United States but also here in Quebec – try to have over us, using our fears.

Here’s to a positive, difficult non-rationality

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Voters these days seem more and more lazy and irrational. We are addicted to the easy sugar of slogans and of self-serving lies. Through history, to our shame, Christians have also been dangerously irrational. But always, thankfully, some of the faithful have also been NON-rational – not IRRational, – but non-rational, in a positive and difficult, discipleship, way; that is, revelatory, narrative and reaching for a dream that may never be realized, but makes life better in the meantime. Loving your neighbour, doing good for no return, giving up privilege for the sake of those who have none – these are also non-rational actions. They follow a dream of service, not selfishness. Luther wrote: ‘We are God’s work, and God’s poem. God himself is the Poet; we are the verses God creates (LW 7:366)”.  When we embrace this kind of non-rational openness, we open ourselves, not to slogans and lies, but to art, visions, and transformative dreams.

Anything can be Written like Scripture

Here are three examples I wrote for students. The assignment is to write a forgery, using a contemporary subject, of a fragment of a Gospel or of a scriptural apocalypse. The students are supposed to pay attention to the aims, the characteristic language, the themes and the style of the originals, and mimic those. These are my three!

A “Lord of the Rings/Hobbit” themed story, based on Luke 22:24 and following (a fragment from a Gospel)

 

A dispute arose among the travellers to Mordor about which of them was the greatest. The elves said: “We are immortal, and surely there is no greatness more desirable than this.” The dwarves said: “We are strong, and connected to the earth. Nothing is greater than the earth and its treasures.” The men and women kept silent, for they did not know what to say – they were weaker than the dwarves and short-lived: a man’s span is four-score and ten at most. But Gandalf called them together and said to them: “The lords of the Sauron lord it over their subjects. But it is not to be so among you. And then he took Frodo, the hobbit, by hand, and led him into the middle of the circle. “Rather,” Gandalf went on, “the greatest among you must become as the smallest, and the strongest as the weakest. It is the hobbit who is the greatest, for he will save us all.”

 

A Justin Trudeau political story based on Revelation 10: 1-10

And I saw a mighty lord coming down from the mountains of British Columbia, his smile like sunshine and a rainbow banner over his head; his face was that of an angel, and his body that of an athlete. He held a scroll in his right hand, and an eagle-feather from the First Nations in his hair, and when I inquired of my guide what the parchment might be, the guide said to me: “It is the last will and testament of his father, the Trudeau-who-was-before.” And setting his right foot on the sea of the Juan de Fuca strait, and his left foot on the land of Departure Bay, he gave a great shout, like the call of a grizzly bear. And as he shouted a sentence in both English and French, the three main political parties shuddered, and the fourth, a green beaver, hiccupped. And at the sound, I was about to write what I had heard, but the guide said to me: “Do not write what was just uttered. Rather, seal it up, and leave it for the second term.” And then the leader, who had a maple leaf across his chest and the words “Justin” over his forehead, held out his hand with the scroll upon it. And there was, I saw, also blood upon his head, and the guide said to me “That is the blood of the battles that are to come.” And then the guide said, “take the parchment from his hand.” And I did, and it looked handsome, but burnt my skin, like fire.

 

A personal family story based on Matthew 5, the beatitudes

When my grandmother saw the crowds of neighbours, she went up into the kitchen, and she sat down, and her daughters came to her. And she began to speak to them, and taught them, saying:

Blessed are you if you remember what you are worth, for no man will ever give you a value you do not give yourself.

Blessed are you when you suffer, as you will, for suffering builds character, and those whom adversity does not destroy, it strengthens

Blessed are you when you earn your own money. Keep some to the side, for the rainy days will come soon and often, and the dawning ease of childhood is short-lived

Blessed are you when you take up the cause of the poor and those with illnesses of the mind; there, but for the grace of God, go all of us.

Blessed are you when you remember me, and your father, and my parents, and your father’s parents, for you will remember then that you are rooted in a name and a tradition

Blessed are you when you put your hands into the soil, for you will be connected to what we are made of, and the matter to which we all return.

You are like a windmill on the farm. If no wind blows, the windmill cannot turn, and you cannot produce energy, or draw water. So always turn your face toward the winds of the spirit, and feel them in you, and you will be happy.

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Twilight of the Gods

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Yesterday I enjoyed (yes, enjoyed!) the marathon, 5 1/2 hr final segment of Wagner’s Ring Opera. The staging at Toronto’s C.O.C. was part “Mad Men”, part industrial grunge. In the last scene, the chorus – mostly men & some women, ALL in business suits – watched as flames engulfed the world, the twilight of the gods brought on by their short-sighted, avaricious greed. Important, up-to-date social commentary. At the opera. Who would have guessed?

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Mapping with our Feet, Session 3: the desire for transformation

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In February 2017, Bishop Michael Pryse invited me to be the keynote speaker for the Bishops’ Retreat for Clergy, held at Niagara Falls ON. This is the third of the three sessions (the first is at somethinggrand.ca). To enter the powerpoint PDF, click on the link below!

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Mapping with our Feet: Session 2

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In Feb 2017 I was invited by Bishop Michael Pryse to be the keynote speaker at the Bishops’ Retreat for Clergy, held at Niagara Falls. This is the second of my three presentations (the first is at somethinggrand.ca). To enter this PDF powerpoint, click the link below!

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