Moral High Ground?

A month or so back, Kirk put this post up on his blog. It's haunted me every now and then ever since.

When he put it up, I responded to it in this way:

Kirk, thanks for sharing this, and for loving this young man, and carrying him and his story along with you each day.

I have an aunt who is a lesbian - long time committed relationship with her partner. A friend's uncle is gay, and most likely dieing slowly from HIV AIDS.

It's not worth it to me to take a militant stance on gay marriage or really anything else. It's all about people. We are blinded by the issue and stop seeing the people, and then things get dangerous, and messy, and we get video games that depict Christians laughing as people are slaughtered. I just want to love on people the way Christ loved on me and brought healing in my life. I wrote about that this morning on my blog... sharing the love and mercy that was passed on to me.

Gray areas are clarified and intensified in the cleansing mercy of Christ, the mercy that identifies us all equally as sinners and, if we choose to receive it, equally as saints.


I still feel like this. If we lose the people in the midst of the issue, why bother? The person is so much more important than protecting some sort of moral high ground. I'm tired of a Christianity that is so much more concerned about the way it looks, and the power it has in a culture, than it is about the people of that culture (be it North American or elsewhere). I'm tired of the moral high ground. The high ground is lonely, and there is no variety in the people it contains.

I've been thinking about a comment Jason Upton made in the teaching that Marty loaded onto my ipod from the conference we were at a few weeks ago. Upton was speaking about this striving in the church to be relevant to culture, and he made this observation that has caught at me ever since... "Jesus was not relevant. He was common." Wow. Huge difference. Forget the moral high ground, let's become common and really love people. Maybe if we love them, we can introduce them to the reason for that love. And if not, well, we loved them, and that is never something wasted.

-39 Celsius

That's what the temperature is with wind chill. And I'm about to spend the next hour either walking in it, waiting for a train in it, or riding on a drafty train in it. And the forecast for tomorrow is exactly the same. I've thought about taking the chance and driving, but the roads suck, so it would be a HUGE chance just to prevent my freezing to death. So, outside or on a drafty train for the next hour and a bit.

Have I mentioned that everywhere I'm thinking of moving is either coastal or significantly south of Calgary, or both?

Quiet Weekend

I'm thankful for a relatively quiet weekend. I did little things. I practiced driving (by the way - there could not have been a worse week of weather for me to be attempting to learn to drive a standard - freezing cold, snowing, and icy roads.) Tomorrow I will take the train to work again, because I'm not confident enough yet to drive on major roads in icy conditions. It's going to be -25, but -38 (celsius) with the windchill. Lovely. I don't think I own enough clothing to layer up and keep me warm as I walk from the train to my office.

The Christmasy busyness starts this week with my brother's choir concert. I heard them sing some of the songs tonight, and they sounded good. (He hates choir, by the way. It's a requirement of his program - guitar major - at school. He has to wear this awful lavender colored dress shirt, and he mostly just hates singing. In fact, he has to work to smile during performances so people don't know how painful he finds it.)

I'm meeting tomorrow night with one of the pastors at the church I've settled on attending for this next season while I'm still in Calgary. We're going to talk more formally about how I can be involved with the youth and young adults in the church - how I can help him out since he needs a female leader. (I'm driving there - pray that I won't crash or something!)

And with that, I'm off to read and journal in bed for a bit. I'm tired - seems to be a pretty common state these days. To be honest, winter tends to send all thought and emotion more deeply internal within me, and then I spend half my time exhausted and the other half figuring out what the issues, thoughts and emotions are that are making me so exhausted!

Do Not Drink?

Okay, so I was emailing my friend Marty the other day, and sent him these pictures, because I had told him about them a couple weeks ago, and promised to pass them along. They were taken when I went out to the West Coast at the end of September. They're from the bathroom at the toll booth at the top of the Coquihalla highway...

Okay, you have to wonder... are they having a regular problem with people drinking from the toilets? Someone had to have tried it, or there wouldn't be a sign, right? And are people carrying a mug around, like the sign pictures, just waiting for the opportunity to dip the thing into the toilet and drink their fill?

I've developed a little bit of a reputation the last while for collecting odd signs found in bathrooms, and I didn't even notice this one immediately. My friend was in the stall next to me, and when we had both emerged to wash our hands, she turned to me and asked if I'd noticed the sign. I hadn't so I went back, and immediately cracked up. We ran out to the car quickly, grabbed the camera, and took these pictures.

So, that's my grand advice for the day - Don't drink from the toilet.

In Your Mercy, Hear Our Prayer

Was listening to some music on my ipod on my (very cold) commute into work this morning, and this song came on. It's a Steve Bell song, but one I hadn't heard in quite a while.

It seems to me that the lyrics project a very holistic theology - a concern for the environment, for the poor and brokenhearted, for those we love, and those we don't even know.

I was caught by it this morning, and hope the cry for the mercy of the Father in so many arenas of life will catch your hearts as well.

Hear our Prayer
Music by Steve Bell
Lyric by Steve Bell and Jamie Howison

Now we pray to You Father for peace in the world
For the right use of all You have given
A respect for creation in us be restored
Lord in Your mercy
Hear our prayer

And we pray for the poor of the world everywhere
And for all those who suffer from hunger and fear
For those who are homeless - for those who need care
Lord in Your mercy
Hear our prayer

Now we pray for those close to us, those who have needs
For the friends that we love and for all our families
For these loved ones we pray Jesus grant them Your peace
Lord in Your mercy
Hear our prayer

And we pray for ourselves for forgiveness of sins
For the evil around that is born from within
And we ask You oh God that You heal us again
Lord in Your mercy
Hear our prayer

Now in closing we ask You dear Father on our knees
Lord for mercy on all those we call our enemies
So that all might be one in Your love and Your peace
Lord in Your mercy
Hear our prayer