wear your clothes
on the inside
so the world
sees you naked

place your mask
beneath your face
that teeth when bared
are merely hungry smiles
flashing white
in the unkind air

then
when they look
through your windows
they see the model
of a built-in life

i am
me
me at 5
at my best
skin and bones boy
ruler of his world
alone and in love
with the breeze
and the dead-bright
of blazing summer sun
i am
i am me
without history
naked and running
forward
in the wrong direction

spring is at the heart
of all new things
and the centre
of the youngest of us all
denying everlasting ends
rising slow as new growth
from the fire-blackened
there is no cycle
of life and death and life
there is only the living
overcoming the dying
there is only lusty freshness
sweeping away the stale
like dead leaves on the wind

what if
the words written
the words spoken
towers lifted and fell
loves had and lost
fists flown
like missiles
in an air of hate
lives lived for one
or for none
were but sand
moved by wind
arranged
as nonsense?

It is dark and the world is moving. It is moving along and around and is never still. Much that seems large in the moment fades into a small thing in the future. We have elevated and pondered thoughts of self-awareness and existence to great heights but at the end of the day where does it bring us?

Still we can be compassionate, loving, forgiving, grace-filled people and in this sense stars in a dark universe and I like that thought…if there is no other purpose than to love I accept that above the night.

My dad passed away several months ago but he continues to send me email on investment opportunities and various promising designer pharmaceuticals. The latest email linked to a Fox News article about a work at home mum who earns$10,397 per month – PART TIME and how I too could be as successful.

I would have expected death to be a somewhat more peaceful existence but apparently he has found himself employed in the email equivalent of a call centre hawking goods for suspiciously shady companies. Frankly I would prefer something a little more personal or at least informative…after all if you are going to communicate from the great beyond some insight into what we can all look forward to would be welcome (and lucrative based on the books I have seen).

There is a sad irony here that in death I have more communication with my dad then I ever did in life. Of course I realize the emails are coming from bots associated with his email address but I can’t bring myself to complain to Yahoo because every time I get a message from “Peter Cantelon” it makes me smile and think of him.

In this way death has made communicating with Dad easier and far more positive than the few occasions it happened it life. I realize the profoundly sad attribute of this whole post but you must understand – Dad never had any healthy relationships. I don’t think Dad knew how to form a healthy relationship and so getting random messages from him about various “beneficial” products and services I should consider buying is perhaps the most normal my relationship with him has ever been.

There is not really a point to this post except perhaps that despite everything I love my dad and miss his presence on this planet. I wish I had worked harder to connect with him while he was alive because I have come to realize that there is much we could have shared. 

I will go for now, I can hardly wait to see what he sends me next.

i drowned again last night
the same dark waters
rose and swallowed me whole
and when it got quiet
when i thought it was done
i awoke and i knew
it would happen again
tonight…

I was having a conversation with an exceptionally brilliant friend when my mind bent toward midrash, and mishnah – Hebrew words that represent a tradition Christianity would have done well to continue with. Midrash and mishnah are forms of collecting oral opinion, conversation and rulings of Jewish rabbis through history (this does not do the depth of the words justice but will have to suffice). 

Collections of these things exist in the form of the Babylonian Talmud and others. The Babylonian Talmud is thought to contain the various midrash and mishnah from the Jewish period of Babylonian captivity.

While Christian scholars have certainly worked together throughout history and have come up with some great texts there is not the same sense of tense collaboration nor the same breadth of work available. 

I would suggest the great creeds, catechisms and declarations of Christianity come out of a form of midrash/mishnah which should say something to us of the value of this form of exegetical work. Leaders in the community come together to pray and sweat over Biblical content for the sake of filling the gaps or better understanding the application in the many and myriad circumstances that arise and call for interpretation.

For several centuries our more common form of interpretation has been lecture. One person presenting a personal perspective wrapped in other personal perspectives derived from research and laid upon a biblical foundation (sometimes). 

While this is not always a bad thing it lacks the communal aspect that is implied by midrash/mishnah. The idea of a group of individuals ruminating aloud over the same topic and presenting different perspectives within the same context is intellectually stimulating. It is compelling. The community has authority…history has shown this and communal exegesis can become a powerful form of authority when it comes to understanding scripture.

While there are wonderful collaborations within the academy of Christianity they are more often collections of individual opinions, formed in the rigorous (but dry) halls of theological study, divorced from the passionate context of immediate community which is rife with emotion, tears, laughter, anger, sadness etc.; rife with humanity that is.

This does happen. It actually happens all the time. At seminary we self-proclaimed kings and queens of theology would gather informally in the halls between classes and have at each other in just such fashion. But we never encoded our conversations; we never had an audience. I wish we had. We had these conversations at the intersection of passion – passion for scripture and passion for people and they were messy, beautiful trainwrecks of debate which we should have brought with us into the world and into the churches…but we did not. We left them behind in the halls of academia (often with our very passion) to become a thing of the past, a thing of memory.

I wonder what a Canadian Talmud would look like. I wonder what midrash and mishnah would look like in our context? What would it look like in your community? In your church?

Who could you gather regularly for the sake of hard-edged debate and wrestling over a topic or verse where the only rule is that we enter the ring in love and leave in the same condition? How cool would it be to record and transcribe these engagements for future reference?

It is when the word engages humanity within the context of messy community that powerful and real transformation can occur. 

Often it is the bright and blinding light of another’s opinion (whether agreed to or not) that exposes new or refined truth for yourself. This is the idea of iron sharpening iron where there is bound to be sparks and possibly fire.

The possibilities of such a movement are powerful. One can even see broader possibilities that sound like the beginning of a joke: “a rabbi, a priest, an Imam and a pastor walk into a bar…”

Guelph is a sepia tone song
that echoes in my heart
that echoes in my head
the place where God was Christ
clinging to the cross
and bleeding in my eyes
He lived on the highest hill
as place of pilgrimage
for five year old legs
earnest in desire to kneel and pray
lets offer pine boughs to his mother
her feet fragrant and beautiful
in cold cut marble

Guelph is summer in my heart
singing sunlight in my head
ripple-aired train tracks
oily empty cars for eager eyes
sewers for seeking the dark
in rubber boots with ghosts
crazy roof-bound children
laughing leaping into Speed River
to hide beneath mossy bridges
while the cars pass over our heads
careless and carefree for a time

Guelph is sweat and shaking sadness
of frightened young hands
held together for fearless first time
hands that crept in basement’s dark
fumbling desperate beneath shirts
seeking softer, warmer places
for healing from the corrosive
while wood panel walls looked on
at a new sacrament uncovered
too much power for this fragile flesh

Guelph is Ireland in my heart
Guelph is Italy in my head
it is a never ending ache
of drunken violent languishing love
buried in Catholic conscience
on green hills covered in stones
it is a scream in succumbing silence
of lessons that should never be learned

Guelph is the lost place in my heart
Guelph is the loneliness left behind
in favour of far-flung places
with less flavor than her siren streets
she is holy Ithaca on far
that cannot be found again
unless like lost Ulysses
i cast my aged body on the sea
to sail and survive pointless peril
and find her gone, gone, gone

Guelph is head and heart
Guelph is homecoming on the
ever dark and distant horizon
she knows my sordid secrets
keeps them buried in limestone
beneath strange faces
a vault with just enough room
for what’s left one day

the stale smell of cigarettes
and chasing cheap perfume
coming in on the cold air
bringing memories,
a castaway past
of funeral flower fragrances
honoring the dead to come…

they brings salty smiles
to my fractured stone face