Cimplifigh

Oh no.

Its happened again. Another lengthy hiatus from bloggerdom. The only pacification on the frustration a lengthy hiatus like that causes me is that tons of other people stopped blogging while I stopped. When in Rome…

Actually I stopped because of the recession.

Heres what’s new.  Dayna and I remain busy with school (that’s mostly her) and work (that’s mostly me).  Life seems to take a lot of twists and turns.  I would say the last few months have just been. There have been amazing times, and lots of just day to day living stuff.  Blaming apathy on “seasons” of life is no excuse, but I think thats a lot of what i’ve been doing. I think i’ve come to realize a couple things in the last few weeks.  Firstly, for a time it’s ok to want to want to be excited about something.  I haven’t been excited about a ton of stuff for the past while, but I have wanted to want to be.  I don’t ever want to lose that.  Secondly, to get out of just wanting to want to be excited about something requires a hell of a lot of discipline.  That is something I’ve always needed to work on. I revere people who spend every night on there knees, who work out every morning, who walk strongly with Jesus – but I know they didn’t get there overnight.  That makes me happy.  

Finally, I realized that even people who walk strongly with Jesus wait in traffic.  I was waiting in traffic one afternoon, which is something you become a pro at living in Calgary – listing to old school U2 – zoo station to be exact.  One line goes like this:

I’m ready
I’m ready for the gridlock
I’m ready
To take it to the street
I’m ready for the shuffle
Ready for the deal
Ready to let go of the steering wheel
I’m ready
Ready for the crush

Eat your heart out Carrie Underwood. I don’t really know what the song means actually, but while I was sitting there I had this pervading sense that it was ok for me to be in traffic that day.  That all the regular, mundane things that I do some days – they’re ok too.  Just as long as I know that, and press on towards the greater things when they come.  Maybe thats what worship is.  Maybe God loves us to be in traffic, to see what we do with it.

All this being said,                           Dayna and I along with Gord and Janice are going to go crush a U2 concert in Pasadena this weekend. I can’t wait. (But its ok that I have to)

You’re not. Well, at least not compared to these guys.

For this stupid weather to be done with.  Winter is a terrible terrible thing.  Nothing grows, nothing works properly, it`s wasteful, etc,etc. I would actually like to know the amount of resources someone has to use to survive in a colder climate as opposed to someone in a sub-tropical climate.  I bet it`s unreal. Spring, on the other hand. Is beautiful. New life, things growing, mechanically working, shorts, t-shirts, walking at 9:30 pm…the list goes on.  In April Dayna and I are going to get our plants going inside so they are ready to go come May.  I can`t wait to get out there and test my green thumb…Does anyone have experience with growing different types of veggies…So far were planningon carrots, peppers, maybe some beans, and tomatoes.  Tips are welcome.

Oh and speaking of awesome things, THIS is awesome. Gord, this one goes out to you, mostly because I think youre the only one who reads my blog.  And cause you`re a plumber.

I’m supposed to be working right now…

I’ve been reading the essential writings of Mahatma Gandhi.  It’s incredible. I think this guy had some good ideas.  In fact, I think his life more closely resembled Christ’s than many of us “little Christs’”  lives do.  Here’s a few little quotes from the book.

“I want to live at peace with both friend and foe. Though therefore, a Mussalman or a Christian or a Hindu may despise and hate me, I want to love and serve him even as I would love my wife or son though they hate me.”

“The movement of the spinning wheel is an organized attempt to displace machinery from that state of exclusiveness and exploitation and  and to place it in its proper state. Under my scheme, therefore, men in charge of machinery will not think of themselves or even of the nation in which they belong to but of the whole human race. Thus Lancashire man will cease to use their machinery to exploit India and other countries but, on the contrary, they will devise means of enabling India to convert in her own villages her cotton into cloth. Nor will Americans under my scheme seek to enrich themselves by exploiting the other races of earth through their inventive skill.”

“It would make no difference to me if [the oppressor] would stop kicking me or not. What matters to me is that his order is unjust. Slavery consists in submitting to an unjust order, not in suffering ourselves to be kicked. Real courage and humanity consist in not returning a kick for a kick”

“If God who is undefinable can be at all defined, then I should say that God is TRUTH.  It is impossible to reach HIM, that is, TRUTH, except through LOVE. Love can only be expressed fully when man reduces himself to a cipher”

“My study and experience of non-violence have proved to me that it is the greatest force in the world.It is the surest method of discovering the truth, and it is the quickest because there is no other. It works silently, almost imperceptibly, but none the less surely”

Hello out there…

Bloggerdom is intriguing.  It makes me feel really small. Like just now when I logged on to my blog account it said there had been roughly 169000 new posts today.  How many of those get read? I mean, I know all mine do, because the comments keep rolling in (there were too many on the last one so the internet deletes them, thats why it says no comments -FYI) Another way to feel really small is to look at the moon – last night it was so incredibly beautiful, hanging there low in the sky, uninhibited by shadows, in full glory.  I thought to myself as I walked last night – now there’s something trustworthy. That moon has not failed us yet; to rise or to wane or wax or what have you. People through time have used it as light and source for beauty and all kinds of stuff that i’m sure its predictability is good for.  I think i’ll keep trusting the one who made it. 

Also, it’s undamaged by humans….except for a few tracks which I don’t even believe are there, thank you CNN conspiracy documentary (and Donald Rumsfeld)…Nonetheless the unspoilt nature of the moon is something which I don’t think our generation can fully understand.   We live in a world where disregard for our planet is systemic. Check out this link that Gord told me about…it’s the world air traffic for a 24-hour period.  Each yellow dot represents an aircraft. 

http://publicpondering.typepad.com/files/worldairtraffic0-24h.wmv

My first reaction is – cool – and it is.  It’s great on many levels that there is so much connectivity and that we can now know and understand another nation/people’s successes and failures and support each other in the journey. The problem is that when you watch that clip, you can’t even see the U.S or Europe or other major hubs in the world (places with money) because of the sheer volume of aircraft going in and out of them. (Maybe if Jesus watched this he’d be glad because he could still see the places where his heart is)…It is a startling reminder of how the worlds goods/resources have been unequally distributed. To take it further, you can see how the greed/exploitive nature of some countries can have an on others (Air traffic volume I would assume is related to commerce levels).  It makes me think there’s a better way.  

I’ve been surprised by hope lately.  The reason for that is because I think Jesus is starting to expose the darkness in my life for what it really is, and that’s just plainly not the best way to live.  I’ve been surprised by hope because the more i talk with my friends about the Kingdom of God, the more I realize how vast and far-reaching it is; that it could mean re-distribution, freedom from poverty and slavery for the whole cosmos, etc, etc…But it coming on earth as it is in heaven also means a better way to live  for Jon and Dayna, on Feb. 10, 2009, in NW calgary. And THAT excites me.

Combined service and shelter costs for 1 homeless person in BC per year:

$30,000 to $40,000

Cost to the criminal justice system for 1 homeless person per year in BC:

$11,410

Cost for providing social services for 1 homeless person per year in BC:

$7,893

Health care costs for 1 homeless person per year in BC:

$4,714

Breaking down the systems of greed and excessiveness that make people homeless:

Priceless

(Well, actually, there is a price tag, and it’s 33% less than if we do nothing.  It costs 33% less to socially house unemployed people than to leave them to the streets.)

http://www.cbc.ca/fifth/main_nowayhome_cost.html

Joy

is learning to discern that God is up to something, even in this.

Joy

is learning to perceive things that run counter to prevailing wisdom about how the world works.

Joy

is evidence of a particular kind of community.

-Rob Bell (From ‘I will say it again, and again and again) 

Hey hey…

Back from Christmas break. Feels good to be rested a little.  I accomplished a few things over the break, namely I honed a great looking moustache for myself which Dayna loved…then encouraged me to remove – also I finished Surprised by Hope by N.T Wright, a book which I think I will re open many times. Also, Dayna and I covered three provinces, AB, BC, then Saskatchewan.  Good times…For Christmas I got a $100 donation to Samariatan’s Purse for a Biosan Water Filter – these things are amazing…Google it.  Do it, do it, do it now. Five. Four. Three. Two. One.  

Onto important things.  Like pacifism.  Listening to a podcast from Derek Webb and Donald miller (yes, it’s as good as it sounds) has been a great source of joy for me over the past month.  I anticipate them now.  Here are two brilliant guys taking on tough questions, one, very eloquently, down-to-earthy…the other, just plain smart…But not the kind of smart that stops at the head.  The question on the menu today was…Are Christians ever called to ‘just’ violence? Is there a time when we can rightly fight?  I know where I stand on the issue, and I realize it’s a whole can of worms to open, but I really appreciated what these two guys had to say, particularly at one point in the cast.  Don says- it’s hard to justify (new testament-wise) a reason to kill the aggressor, because of what Jesus says, also because the disciples, and Jesus, by example, don’t give a reason for violence…they just die…They lay down their lives, in fact.  Don then says, in reality though, if I have a gun in my hand, and I can pull the trigger on a hundred guys who I know if i don’t will kill ten thousand, I would have a lot of trouble not doing it.  Interesting.

Derek brings up the classic ‘just violence’ argument – what if somebody breaks into your house and is about to harm your family? Since when do we as Christians decide what’s right and what’s wrong based on the most extreme situation we can think of in order to interpret it? He goes on to say, that our conscience as Christians is bound by what the Bible says…we don’t have a choice in the matter based on a given difficult situation or context (i.e. Jim Elliot). We need to base our decision making on faithfulness (How can I be faithful to Jesus in this situation?) we might find the outcome to be different than we think (i.e. Jim Elliot)

Derek (and Shane Claiborne, for that matter) says too that we as Christians need to find creative ways to be non-violent – draw lines in the sand, so to speak.   Have a listen for yourself and tell me what you think.  

Hey.  Check out this vid.  At first I thought this song was a joke (when I heard it on the radio, but its actually got a pretty cool message.  Tell me what you think.

To Beat The Devil   

By Johnny Cash

It was winter time in Nashville, down on music city row.
And I was lookin’ for a place to get myself out of the cold.
To warm the frozen feelin’ that was eatin’ at my soul.
Keep the chilly wind off my guitar. 

My thirsty wanted whisky; my hungry needed beans, 
But it’d been of month of paydays since I’d heard that eagle scream.
So with a stomach full of empty and a pocket full of dreams,
I left my pride and stepped inside a bar.

Actually, I guess you’d could call it a Tavern:
Cigarette smoke to the ceiling and sawdust on the floor;
Friendly shadows.

I saw that there was just one old man sittin’ at the bar.
And in the mirror I could see him checkin’ me and my guitar.
An’ he turned and said: “Come up here boy, and show us what you are.”
I said: “I’m dry.” He bought me a beer.

He nodded at my guitar and said: “It’s a tough life, ain’t it?”
I just looked at him. He said: “You ain’t makin’ any money, are you?”
I said: “You’ve been readin’ my mail.”
He just smiled and said: “Let me see that guitar.
“I’ve got something you oughta hear.”
Then he laid it on me: 

“If you waste your time a-talkin’ to the people who don’t listen,
“To the things that you are sayin’, who do you think’s gonna hear.
“And if you should die explainin’ how the things that they complain about,
“Are things they could be changin’, who do you think’s gonna care?”

There were other lonely singers in a world turned deaf and blind,
Who were crucified for what they tried to show.
And their voices have been scattered by the swirling winds of time.
‘Cos the truth remains that no-one wants to know.

Well, the old man was a stranger, but I’d heard his song before,
Back when failure had me locked out on the wrong side of the door.
When no-one stood behind me but my shadow on the floor,
And lonesome was more than a state of mind.

You see, the devil haunts a hungry man,
If you don’t wanna join him, you got to beat him.
I ain’t sayin’ I beat the devil, but I drank his beer for nothing.
Then I stole his song.

And you still can hear me singin’ to the people who don’t listen,
To the things that I am sayin’, prayin’ someone’s gonna hear.
And I guess I’ll die explaining how the things that they complain about,
Are things they could be changin’, hopin’ someone’s gonna care.

I was born a lonely singer, and I’m bound to die the same,
But I’ve got to feed the hunger in my soul.
And if I never have a nickle, I won’t ever die ashamed.
‘Cos I don’t believe that no-one wants to know