What does love, joy, peace, forbearance, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness and self-control look like today? I cannot claim to see it in the mirror and so I look outside of myself and am lost…and at a loss. How can I desire in others what I cannot find within?

Hypocrisy is an immobilizing poison that either paralyzes the body of Christ or lends the energy of excuse to us all who can easily say ‘Why can I not lie when the other over there hates?” etc. We busy ourselves with burying our neighbour in the heavy lead reminders of their evil and in the process bury ourselves as well.

The priest’s vow of chastity is mocked in our culture today as unrealistic and inhuman but it is reflective of a heart that desires only one passion…an all-consuming fire for God.

There is a great irony in the call to holiness. An existence unhindered by any relationship can relate equally to all. A life unhinged from wealth and belongings can give more than the richest man or woman could ever give. A person who willingly walks away from every love is than free to love all through the love of God that fills the void within.

The fruit of the Spirit results from no effort of our own but blossoms in the fertile soil of a soul submissive simply to the will of the one who would see life rather than death. As fruit it grows not for the benefit of the soil or the vine from which it sprouts but for the nourishment and life of the ones we would give it to.

We can nourish other fruit in our lives too…apathy, depression, hate, restlessness, hardheartedness, evil, meanness, and Dionysian excess. While the fruit of the spirit freely given to others leads to life this fruit of our own brokenness leads to poisonous death in the ones who come near…in the ones we force feed it to.

I feel sometimes as if the fruit is rotting on the vine in my life where it sits unharvested…but perhaps if it falls to the earth it will nourish a new crop that will be enjoyed by many.

it is dark in the midst of the day
in this one-bulb home
while thunder plays chase
across a cloud soaked sky

why is it that the solitary
smudge of a dying light
does make the air much darker
than nothing at all?

now if i close my eyes
rain sounds like wind
dancing through long grass
growing in a blissfully empty earth

 

there is dead elm
proud, tall and upright
but still dead
as the sun and the wind
dance love around black branches
oblivious to inviting life
grey naked trunk
aloof to joy
mourns its withering heart
while the world turns forever on

Uranus stared balefully up from black Tartarus
at the pinhole presented forever overhead
heaven once home now hope’s harbor no more

“Tis true I put myself in this pitch walled prison
but it’s the gaolers that keep me held here”

and oh but there’s plenty of them to go ’round
each pay a dollar to see the proud now down
no hellbent harpy could raise such an alarm
as when old sky stretches toward the airy realm
only to be pecked, and scratched and heckled
blind and lost in the heart of the world forever

brilliant blazes sun from on high
crazed jealous maniac carving scorched
path across this china blue sky
seeking who knows what in blind heated rage
lost love, vanquishing foe, or shadows of nothing?
helios in his fury seeks only to engage

while i…i bask in the heat of heaven aloft
too far are flame-tipped tongues to harm
but hurling across the black breach settle soft
a daily effort in ironic anger to be scoffed

With the interesting publicity stunt by 21-year-old former parliamentary page and performance artist Brigitte DePape with her “Stop Harper” sign held silently in the Senate during the throne speech last week I thought I would do a little research. While I am all for peaceful protest and the right to hold a variety of opinions I also appreciate it when people who use facts use them all or provide some context.

DePape trumpets the “fact” that while Harper won the last election he did so without 73 percent of Canadian’s supporting him (I assume she was referring to Canadians who voted because if you didn’t vote you really cannot expect to be heard). I have heard this sort of thing before as an attempt to delegitmize (I just made that word up) a newly elected government and it has always struck me as disingenuous. According to electoral statistics is is closer to 59.48 percent of Canadians that did not vote for the Conservatives (potato/potawto).

If people would carry their commentary to logical conclusions they would also be willing to note that 69.37 percent of voters did not vote for the NDP; 82.19 percent of people did not vote for the Liberals; 93.96 percent of people did not vote for the Bloc and 96.19 percent of people did not vote for the Green Party.

My point? No party had a majority of Canadians vote for it…but of all of them the Conservatives had the largest percentage of the vote and won the right to lead the country…it’s how our democracy works.

it is the low light of a northern prairie evening
like the glow of lost incandescents nearing nova
clouds of tall ships sail for unknown ports of call
away and away and away plying the deepening blue
and everything is singing songs of praise
to our lady of blessed manageable monotony –
she who is the good of predictable lawnmowers
the hum and drone of lives lived and moving along
as small waves lapping endlessly on the shoreline
shadows stretch lazy toward the coming night
while air is ozone warm and electric with possibilities;
that chaos rides the cumulus
bringing a cleansing crashing
to wipe eye, and ear, and memory clear
leaving the joy of something new and unbeheld

I had coffee with some friends the other day and we began talking about the unusual group which is called the Church. See we had been spending some time together and there was some pretty vulnerable moments as well as some moments filled with compassion and I remarked that I felt like I had just been to church (in a good way).

These moments of vulnerable confession, compassion, forgiveness, contemplation, and discussion are all things we long for and rarely get because they are driven by real, open, honest relationship. One hour on a Sunday morning does not cut it. It does not do it. Sunday morning is a fraction of what our life in Christ is to look like…not the whole thing.

The interesting thing about our time together was that afterward I felt like worshiping God and praying more. I wanted to talk to other people about what I had experienced. When we gather together in vulnerable openness to one-another genuinely seeking after God our desire to connect with others only grows. This is one of the main points of worship and the gathering of the faithful…not so that we can check off another task from our list of righteous requirements but that we would be filled to overflowing and then go and overflow into another’s life.

We chatted about the phenomenon we were experiencing and imagined a two-part skit to best demonstrate the value of gathering as Christians and the relational investment required over time. We imagined in part one of the skit the three of us sitting together having coffee. A sign is held up that says – These three just met. As we are enjoying coffee our conversation is one-dimensional, closed and awkward. It focuses on the weather. When asked how we are doing we respond with fine.

Part two of the skit has the same three people sitting for coffee again but this time the sign held up says four years later. The conversation is open and passionate. It is a discussion of the break down of one person’s marriage, the pain of doubt in another persons life and the struggle of parenting in another. There may be tears and laughter but what is absent are the typical walls. In this setting Saint Paul’s words to the Ephesians come to life as he declares Christ to have torn down the dividing wall of hostility…

Church is an empowered and compassionate gathering of Christians who become the very presence of Christ to one-another. The compelling, empowering, forgiving, loving, confessional, attractive, beautiful, compassionate and very real Christ in our midst. It happens as often as it can. It changes us and the people around us. It cannot help it.

I cannot stress enough the confessional nature of the church. Christ called us to confess our sins to one-another. This is no easy task but in doing so it creates a very compelling atmosphere, one that is vital to the role of the church and her identity as Christ’s body present now in the world.

There is an interesting phenomenon in your average community. There are people everywhere who fear, avoid and even hate your church. This makes absolutely no sense when you affirm and understand the church to be what Christ said it was and is – his presence in this place. So how is it then that increasing numbers of people fear and hate it (even some of those who attend)?

Part of the problem I believe is a lack of confession. Whether we intend it or not our church environments are often places where one enters and feels absolutely alone and unique in their struggles. People can look around and easily get the mistaken impression that everything and everyone is doing great. Everyone smiles politely, some are successful business owners, others have wonderful successful children and grandchildren, still others have phenomenal relationships and the pastors are paragons of faith and discipline. Some are wealthy and therefore must not have any real problems.

You are the only one struggling with your faith, with money, with love, sex and self-hatred, etc. Eventually you leave (or simply become bitter, or both). It is a lot like that first meeting between the three people only it never changes Sunday after Sunday, it is the same awkward conversation about the weather, work and sports or television programming.

This is hardly enough to cause fear though. It might cause in a person a desire to leave but how could it lead to fear and even hate?

Often when people live long enough with the myth that they are the only ones who struggle with a particular sin or brokenness they begin to actually start resenting and even hating others they discover have the same struggles. Sometimes they are even convinced a part of them is sinful that really isn’t but no one ever opened up with them and helped them discover the truth.

First they learn to hate themselves, then they learn to hate others. They become condemning and judgmental and hateful mostly because they condemn, judge and hate themselves. They have never seen confession modeled. No one has stood up in their community, swallowed their fear and said – “I feel I am losing my faith” or “I have been shoplifting for months now” etc. Their sense of isolation creates an atmosphere of condemnation (whether it is intended or not). Healing comes after confession – not before.

If we who strive to follow Christ can come to feel this way in our own sanctuaries how much more than do those we are called to evangelize feel this when they enter or come near?

The power of Christ’s love is magnified when people realize the kind of people he came to save…people just like them…people who need unrestrained forgiveness. When you come to realize that you are not alone in your suffering and need for a Saviour you find hope and a desire to share this community with others. Most importantly you learn to forgive yourself as Christ has forgiven you so that you can offer love and forgiveness to the world around you instead of cold, quiet, condemnation.

This is ultimately the key to the great commandment of Christ that we should love our neighbours as ourselves…we cannot love our neighbours if we do not love ourselves. We cannot forgive our neighbours if we do not forgive ourselves.

The power of a confessional community of faith is that it is radically, fearlessly, vulnerable and offers a kind of crazy compassionate forgiveness only Christ could offer. It is the kind of forgiveness born out of a sacrificial love that takes on death and wins.

each day rises on hopeful legs
to shoulder burden or success
small crises and little triumphs
that make the week wash past
we cogs that spin and grind
we gears that enmesh each other
force the world to turn
and are forced in turn
while the watch runs on
oiled by blood and sacrifice
tears and the sweat of ages
ticking and tocking to time’s end