Why we speak...

I came across these two quotes in Shane Claiborne's book, "The Irresistible Revolution: Living as an Ordinary Radical" and was quite struck by them.

Sometimes we speak to change the world; other times we speak to keep the world from changing us. (p.123)

Our programs revolve around the needs and gifts in our community and are always changing. They never define us, for we set out not to start programs but simply to be good neighbors. (p. 125)

(By the way, if you can pick this book up, I reccommend it. Claiborne simply tells stories, make suggestions, talks about the community he's involved in, and what he believes following Christ should actually look like. My friends Andy and Marty were raving about it after reading only a chapter or two each, so I picked it up and haven't regretted it.)

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.