winter is death to the warm ones
cold cold cold
white and black and grey and brown
the world is hiding inside
all their burdens on their backs
while i am alone
blissfully
apocalyptically
alone
with the frozen skies
with their frozen eyes
staring down in mute contemplation
and my breath hangs like a memory
fading from view

One of my neighbours sits in the dark at night. I know this because periodically I see the light orange glow of his cigarette. He just sits there. There is no one else. No laptop. No television. Sometimes a radio but rarely. Hour upon hour upon hour through the evening into the early dawn he will sit there and smoke and do nothing and smoke.

This bothers me. I am not sure why. It has the hallmark of some sort of revolt. A kind of quiet personal uprising against those inside. There are several family members that are contained within the home…sometimes they come out but only during the day, the night is his domain.

I am bothered because it is anachronistic behaviour to me. I don’t understand it and I like to understand people and their behaviours. I consider it a personal hobby.

Perhaps I am annoyed because it seems pointless. Of course I realize I have absolutely no right to dictate how he lives but I try to put myself in his shoes spending my existence living in the dark periodically exposed to the vision of others when I stop to light a cigarette and than back to my darkness. It is as though he cannot stand being inside. Perhaps he does not like his family.

I live near a lot of smokers. I grew up in a house of smoke and have loads of relatives who smoke and while I once tried it never appealed to me. I am thankful for these things. It is a kind of enslavement I can ill afford. So expensive and costly in other ways as well.

I am annoyed that all of my smoking neighbours need to go outside to smoke. It seems like every 10 minutes the doors open, shut and then the prevailing winds see fit to direct all the exhaust through my open windows. It makes me gag. C’est la vie. I am looking forward to winter…cold, crisp, frigid, smokeless winter.

I prefer the kind of addictions that don’t harm other people except as I try to think of one I am at a loss? Porn? Victimizes women. Alcohol? Tends to kill people. Gambling? Much harm has been done by desperate gamblers to the people around them. Food? The cost to the public health care system for obesity related illnesses is enormous. Sex? The people who are objectified and thrown away in the process would tell you it is not a harmless addiction.

I guess there are no harmless addictions.

An ambulance just drove by. It was not in a hurry. That is either good news or bad news.

It is a warm evening as I sit out here out front and write. There is a soft breeze and my daughter is next to me eating her fourth or fifth bowl of homemade soup. She has been trying to get me to guess whether she drinks from her spoon or the bowl based solely on sound. She is a very cool young lady and I love her a great deal. She never runs down. She just stops. In the evening when she grudgingly lays down in bed she simply stops…then 8 to 10 hours later she starts again.

Well, enough with the random writing. I am beginning to think I may be addicted to writing. Perhaps that is an addiction that is harmless. I don’t know – I imagine it could be harmful too given half the chance.

I am not sure if I have ever been busier than I am these days. I am writing loads which is always amazing both professionally and personally, i don’t think a day in the week goes by where I don’t do something work related. The amazing thing is I am really enjoying it.

I need to be busy otherwise the slack time threatens to become a black hole of nothingness for me. I know it does not work that way for everyone but it does for me…there must be pace and rhythm to my life and these days there is an abundance of it.

Add to this single parenting responsibilities every other week and it can be a little breathless.

I do try to squeeze in a little “me time” which typically is quiet time reading or writing, sitting in a cafe somewhere having a coffee and generally seeking a little isolation.

Despite my job I am actually wired as an introvert (INFP according to Meyers-Briggs). I get energized by being alone and crave those moments. I am not sure if I am a natural introvert or if early life socialized me that way. There are times when I feel more extroverted than introverted – for instance I love the chaos and craziness of our Corn & Apple Festival. I love the crush of humanity and the fact that the festival brings massive amounts of money into our community which benefits everyone somehow or other.

Unlike the average introvert I deeply appreciate being around other people but I do not have a lot of depth to most of my relationships…their are a lot of acquaintances but few friends really…and I don’t mind this.

it is quiet
and i
i am quiet too
quiet
i am quiet
as the heart of a hurricane
still…
emptiness surrounded
by oblivion

the first link

that one

we forge

on our own

the rest

that come

they forge

themselves

alone

I enjoy social media quite a bit…this is no secret. I enjoy watching Twitter, Facebook, local blogs etc. and they never fail to provide a level of entertainment I cannot get on television.

Social media, Facebook in particular, makes me feel a little like an anthropologist hiding in a blind somewhere watching a group of people working out their day to day lives online.

There are all kinds of people in the online world…

The Info Nuts a.k.a The Opinionated – those who feel their opinions are so valuable they simply must share them with the world (I fit into this category).

The Relationship Mongers – who like post about every nasty detail of their current relationship and then when it ends continue but along a decidedly more negative tangent – these tend to be high school kids but adults have been know to tread these waters too.

The Online Gamers – who only seem to exist for the sake of Scrabble and Farmville, etc.

The Stalkers – who have Facebook profiles (often more than one) and friends but never post a thing because they are primarily focused on keeping an eye on everybody else.

The Accomplishistas – those whose sole raison d’etre is to inform you of every successful thing they’ve done every second of the day a.k.a. “just got up and successfully walked to the bathroom, whew!” or “have taken 6,454 breaths since yesterday…striving for 10,000 wish me luck”

The Gossips – they generally write a lot about everybody but themselves. Their posts are usually in the form of sly observances like “Heeey!! Saw you out jogging. Were those the new $350 Nikes on your feet? Man I wish I had those…good for you ;-), or “I was out walking through backyards the other day and noticed some baby clothes on your clothesline – anything you want to share (wink, wink, teehee)”.

The Evangelists – Not necessarily religious but often they are, the evangelist has whole-heartedly bought into some sort of life philosophy (or diet) and absolutely needs/requires you to do the same. The evangelist loves to post quotes from their primary inspiration.

The Optimists – kitten hugging, life loving, rainbow farting optimists who can’t stop loving life and everything about it (I actually don’t mind these folks…they make me smile).

The Grumps – these are the same people you often find in coffee shops who have migrated online. They are human versions of Eeyore and Marvin the Paranoid Android all rolled up into a single ball. They exist for a sole purpose – to let you and I know just how absolutely horrible life is (especially to them). It’s too hot in the summer, too cold in the winter, too average in the fall too wet in the spring. Every politician is evil, every party is corrupt (their favorite words are every, always, and never). They are the ones who cannot post a single positive statement without the word “But” in it somewhere…”thankful for central air conditioning BUT wish the power bill wasn’t so high” or “Thankful for the trip to Europe BUT wish I didn’t have to fly economy” etc.

Let us park on the grumps (sometimes I wish we could literally park on the grumps until I realize how ironic that statement is). The grumps are the ones I find most fascinating…they seem to hate everything; which given the sheer magnitude of everything is a real accomplishment when you think about it. Not only do they love to hate everything they also have a remedy for everything they hate as well. They don’t seem to realize that they are the one’s The Stones were writing about…they are the ones who “can’t get no satisfaction…”.

I read an article the other day that talked about bitterness and negativity and it specifically noted that such attitudes can actually ruin your health and shorten your lifespan. The link to the article is here: http://www.cnn.com/2011/HEALTH/08/17/bitter.resentful.ep/

It hardly seems worth all the effort when you think about it and of course they are likely to respond with “if you don’t like it stop reading my posts” to which we may cheerfully respond “hey great idea!” and promptly ‘Hide’ them from our feeds. This becomes annoying to the grump on many levels because despite the fact that they claim to hate everyone they cannot exist without everyone because there’s no point to grumping if no one is listening. 🙂

At the end of the day no one is purely any one of these categories – we tend to be a blend depending upon what life is doing for and to us at any given moment. Still – we will often have a dominant category. Which are you?

I was reading an interesting article on CNN.com and it got me wondering. What is the difference between sin and addiction? Is all addiction sin? Is all sin addiction? Is there an overlap between the two? To what degree are people responsible for sin that results from addiction?

So many questions that get to the heart of the nature of sin and our broken nature. There are so many addictions – gambling, alcohol, drugs, porn, smoking, gossip, lying, spending, violence etc. While all addictions seem to start with a willful act on the part of the addict something about the addict and their wiring/environment compels them into addiction where others are not.

I can stand in a casino for hours with no compulsion to gamble, even dropping the odd loonie into a slot machine while all around me there are people on the verge of losing homes and businesses to an addiction.

When we talk of sin we talk of two things at once – we are speaking of the willful act of rebellion against God and we are speaking of our very nature which drives us to those willful acts. Are we addicted to sin?

What is the response to an addiction? Is it different than the response to a willful act of rebellion? Do we treat them the same? We catch a child with a cigarette in a moment of curious experimentation and we discipline them to drive home the fact that the decision to smoke is wrong because it harms both yourself and others. Do we take that same person 12 years later who has become an addict and continue to discipline them? Does it work to do so? Is our response to sin any different?

The thing with sin is that discipline may prevent certain expressions of it in the future but it will not prevent it as an addiction from taking over every person’s life to one degree or another – it is the nature of the broken human. So how do we deal with something endemic to who we are?

Now I am aware of our need to rely upon the grace, love and atoning forgiveness of Christ in relation to our sin and our relationship with God. I am not, in this instance, speaking of our response to and from God so much as our response to and from one-another (as if they can be separated). How are we to respond to the reality of the sin addiction in one another?

How does the heroin junkie respond to and help the morphine addict? How does the gambling addict respond to and help the gossip addict? Are we to discipline and punish one-another for our addictions or is there perhaps another way?

Just some things to ponder.

With the recent phone hacking scandal in the British media and the more than century old News of the World collapsing under the weight of its own immorality many are rightfully starting to ask tough questions of the media.

In Canada recently CTV news Quebec City bureau chief Kai Nagata resigned his plum position because he felt he could no longer keep himself out of the news. He needed to get involved.

Last week’s decision by Sun Media to pull out of the Ontario Press Council, a media watch dog, has left many people there wondering if there is such a thing as impartiality in the media.

Media has become increasingly unpopular in our culture as people begin to question whether any organization can hold them accountable. To put it succinctly as a popular graphic novel once asked “who’s watching the watchmen?”

We in the fourth estate have enormous power but we often fail to recognize it (or more frighteningly we recognize it all too well). Our words shape opinion, political decisions and ultimately lives and so it is important for each journalist to respect the pen they wield as it were.

Back in the Stone Age when I was in journalism school we really were taught to strive for objectivity and impartiality in our hard news stories and save opinion for columns and editorials (like this). I know that is difficult to believe because I have heard and read so many comments over the years that tell me the general public does not for a second believe the media is either impartial or objective.

Frankly we in the media have not given many the opportunity to believe we are fair and unbiased when news agencies and media outlets regularly and publically declare a political position in the left or the right and then begin demonizing one another.

So with all that in mind I suppose it is important that you all know that we are in fact biased. We are not impartial and we are not objective. This is because every journalist is shaped by a life of experience and it becomes the filter through which we see the world.

That being said it is a mistake to assume for a second that we cannot still strive for the more noble ideals of objectivity and impartiality. While we may never fully attain to the goal we must seek it if we are to offer any value to the culture we are placed within.

So back to the question of who’s watching the watchmen? You are of course. We all are. You keep us honest by not falling prey to apathy. You keep us on track by writing your letters and having the courage to tell us when you believe we got it right and when we got it wrong.

Good media is a part of the community, seeking to engage in dialogue with its readers so that we might sharpen and improve one-another. Ultimately we become the ears, eyes and mouthpieces of a community and so must reflect every facet of the gem that is our towns, cities and nation.

Remember to keep us honest, watch us carefully and tell us what you think.

quiet calls the middling one
he who is lost in the crowds
but sad in the empty halls
for lack of people to run from
what a thing
to yearn for what you hate

For some people the title of this blog is offensive; others may feel a sense of relief. I am not personally fond of it but it is what came to mind after i stumbled into a new book entitled Am I Really A Christian? by Mike McKinley. The title really should be You’re Not a Christian If… because that is the way every chapter’s title starts. The chapters in the book are:

– Forward by Kirk Cameron
– Introduction: Is this book mean spirited?
– You are not a Christian just because you say that you are
– You are not a Christian if you haven’t been born again
– You are not a Christian just because you like Jesus
– You are not a Christian if you enjoy sin
– You are not a Christian if you don’t love other people
– You are not a Christian if you love your stuff
– Can I ever really know if I am a Christian?
– A little help from your friends

The cynic in me wonders why there isn’t a final chapter entitled “You’re Not a Christian if you are Human” but I must resist such cynical attitudes and give the book the benefit of the doubt. I have not read it so I am treading thin ice here…I will read it because I am curious as to whether this book is helpful despite the chapter titles or if it is simply a huge pharasaic stumbling block.

Clearly this book is not meant to evangelize because anyone seeing the title Am I Really a Christian? who answers with “No – in fact I am Hindu/Muslim/Jew (fill in the blank)” is ever going to read it. I am never going to read a book entitled Am I Really A Muslim? because I strongly suspect that I am not and would rather not spend $12 to have what I already know confirmed.

So here we have a book that seems to be capitalizing on the insecurities of Christians and the deep question that is often asked “Am I really saved?”.

You can tell from the tone of my writing that I have already pre-judged this book as something I suspect is both unhelpful and pointing people in the wrong direction (toward works). You will find that I am often that way and I apologize and will work hard at improving. In the meantime I am curious to know if anyone has read this book.

I really want people to let me know what they think of these titles? Do they say anything to you?

I will taint your opinions in advance by offering some of my own, once again stressing that I have not read the book and so am being unfair.

The chapter title – You’re not a Christian if you enjoy sin bugs me. It seems to me a great deal of sin (perhaps all of sin) is entered into because people like to sin, dare i say people love to sin, in fact we know that sin is woven into the fibre of our beings. I know I should not enjoy sin but I can honestly say there are few instances of sin in my life that I was dragged kicking and screaming into sin against my will.

You’re not a Christian if you don’t love other people…hmmm…this one bothers me too. Look – I try to love other people and I think I do a pretty good job most times. But I confess there are some people that I find tough to love. Heck sometimes I struggle to love myself. So when I read this chapter title it makes me wonder again of the book should have been titled You’re Not a Christian if You’re Not Jesus.

At any rate there’s my observational rant. Stay tuned for the book review. I may even email the author and ask for some feedback…his bio makes me think he’s a nice guy really and not out to scare the pants off Christians (or the salvation into them).