Rhythm of the Rain
I had a test to write last night, online, but to get access to it, I needed a CD. When I was ready to write the test, I couldn't find the CD. It was in fact, in my office, at the church, but I couldn't drive there because my car was parked in and I wasn't going to wake up my roommate. So I walked there, twenty minutes each way would be a good way to clear my mind, if for no other reason than to prepare for the test.

When I left on my walk, it's was misty and perhaps drizzling, but otherwise a pleasant night. Not long into my walk however, it stared to rain, enough to make normal people run for cover or turn back, but I had to write this test, and I can handle rain. As I got closer to the church, and my warm dry office, I thought back to my days as a tobacco primer, when often we would also have to work in the rain.

My brother and I were in agreement, that on these days it was better to have lunch in the field, or not at all. Even though we were wearing rainsuits, we were still quickly soaking wet, and a lunch break would only indulge in temporary dryness, making the rest of the day more miserable. When we were working, and when I was walking, there was acceptance, "I'm wet, but that's fine, because I've got to keep going." In the warm dry shed where we ate lunch, as in my office, was when the discomfort of the whole thing set in. Guys would peel off wet clothing and/or change into drier clothes. That dry comfort reminded us of how uncomfortable we were in the wet.

Comfort is fine, except that the temporary comfort, even luxury, of removing the wet clothes, only heightened the discomfort of resuming labour in the wet conditions. Once we had experienced dryness, the wetness that was already uncomfortable, was even more despised. On the field or on the sidewalk, I had gradually become accustomed to the discomfort, allowing myself to trudge forward.

I was looking for a spiritual metaphor in this, good pastors are always looking for sermon illustrations, but I was looking in the wrong direction. I wanted to find an example that glorified my "farm-boy, work with what's dealt to you" attitude. The revelation came however, when I looked at it the other way.

We face a lot of crap, and we often tire of dealing with it, so we get used to it. We go through our lives gradually deadening our senses to the evils and injustices around us. But it is when we step into the warm and dry atmosphere of spiritual renewal that we are reminded of the state of the world around us. Through prayer, reading of Scriptures and experiencing Jesus, we should be so uncomfortable with the injustices of our society that we no longer accept the status quo.

I invite you to step into the dry, peel off those wet clothes, those blinders to evil and take others with you into your place of dry.

   [ posted by William @ 9:19 AM ]

This Bandwidth is Made for You and Me

I've been thinking for quite a while now that we need to use new media to convey our ideas. People leave traditional churches because of boredom, and an institution that refuses to meet their present needs in the present world.

This article from USA Today is a perfect example of what I've been saying all along. Here's an excerpt for those who don't want to read the whole thing:

Let's say that Jesus, back in his day, had an Internet to use. With limited funds, a small cult following and only 12 employees, he makes a short film called The Sermon on the Mount, and posts it on his Web site: www.theothercheek.org.
Because of the power of an original and wonderful idea, the Sermon races around the Internet in viral waves. The link to view the film is passed person-to-person by e-mail, attached to notes saying, "Check this out!" The Thessalonians don't have to wait for snail mail from Paul, they get the word instantly.
As mainstream pundits and windy senators rail that too much media power rests in too few hands, the Sermon rockets out of the fringes and is viewed by a bigger audience worldwide than any media company could gather. The millions who see the Sermon also click to read more on Jesus' blog.

The Net has helped instantly propagate lots of meaningless tripe before: dancing babies, Paris Hilton sex videos, lists of cute things 6-year-olds supposedly said about heaven or parents or quantum theory.

Maybe I should have bought a digital video camera instead of a still camera.
Thanks to Justin from Seattle for the link.

   [ posted by William @ 12:43 PM ]

Three Movies, Three Reviews
My roommate took last week as an opportunity to head up to the cottage, so I took the opportunity to invite my youth group over to my place for swimming and movies. One of the girls in my youth group that lives nearby has a pool and a hot-tub, so we went there first. It turns out that only the girls showed up, so the swimming consisted of me and six girls in a pool, with all of them making fun of my farmer's tan, which is sadly actually a golfer's tan. Earlier, I had gone into Stratford to rent some movies for the night. I tried to choose a good spectrum of movies for them. With the help of a Blockbuster employee, I picked the three movies and came home. Of course with all girls, they chose the girliest of the three. Wanting to get my money's worth, I watched the other two before I returned them as well.

Confessions of a Teenage Drama Queen - This was the girliest of the movies, so was of course their first choice. I expected bad acting, predictable lines, annoyingly bad music, etc. and I was hoping that the charms of Lindsay Lohan would make it semi worth my time. The movie was cheesy, but I could embrace the cheesiness of it. I laughed, I ridiculed, and I laughed again. Certainly not worth watching the second time, but it was enjoyable the first time. The acting was good, the lines held their own, and the music was almost fun. Lindsay Lohan did great in her debut, but looked quite young.

50 First Dates - This was supposed to be my middle of the road movie, appealing to both guys and girls. I watched it alone, and really liked it. It was funny in an Adam Sandler way, and held its own as a romantic comedy. These movies are not designed to withstand intellectual critique, but when I find flaws, it can ruin the movie for me. In the movie, the girl has a condition where every morning her memory starts fresh, because her mind is incapable of converting short term memory into long term memory as she sleeps. For a while, her family hides it from her and plays along every day. It's Hawaii, so weather wouldn't alert her of changing seasons. However, there are other things that would clue her in that it wasn't the same day anymore, being a girl and all.

Second Hand Lions - This was supposed to be the guy movie, and came highly recommended by the Blockbuster girl, but I was thoroughly disappointed. The previews looked good, but it performed poorly at the box office, and I had kinda forgotten about it. The idea is that a boy is forced to move in with his uncles. I wasn't convinced by the acting, the weak action scenes, or by the overly sappy and predictable story line. I liked the idea of the story, but some parts of it were just so poorly done that I couldn't take it seriously.

At the time, I was disappointed that they chose the girly one, but the others wouldn't have been as enjoyable as that one.

   [ posted by William @ 11:27 AM ]

Brief Progress
I'm in the middle of doing laundry. As I was folding my whites, I realized that maybe I should throw out a few pairs of underwear. Now, this is a classic accusation that men do not throw out their gitch. For me, growing up, when my mom did my laundry, I never knew which ones got thrown out, I just knew that I had clean underwear where I once had dirty ones. Now, that decision process falls on me. My line of thinking has always been that if something still does the job, it's still good. Now, these shorts had started to rip a long time ago, and if it wasn't for my tendency to push off doing laundry until all possible clothing options had been exercised, they would have been retired. Today, I looked at them coming out of the drier, and I said, "You no longer meet my expectations," and I retired them, two pairs in fact. What does this mean? That I'll have to buy a new set, that I'll have to do laundry more often? It means that I've learned to do something that I couldn't before, it means progress.

   [ posted by William @ 11:22 AM ]

We're All Crazy Mennonites, Emulating an Amish Paradise
I recently attended a seminar in Aylmer, Ontario sponsored by Health Canada designed to inform those working as support workers with Mexican Mennonites. While I am not specifically a care-giver to local Mexican Mennonite communities, I am a Mexican Mennonite (MM) myself, and am deeply interested in the long term well-being of "my people". Over the course of the afternoon, we heard the results of much scholarly research on "their" way of life, and how it's influenced by religion, politics, social climate, etc. Armed with a greater understanding, we were all supposed to leave there with a more solid grasp of what benefits "them" the most.

Before we broke for lunch, the lecturer opened the floor to questions. At this point, I was ready to leave, partly because I was hungry, and partly because I hate public question sessions. I'm an idealist, and like to think everyone follows the same rational as I do, so when something runs counter to that, I feel awkward, angry and fidgety (can someone prescribe some medication for that?). Of course, I wouldn't be talking about this if there hadn't been a question that bothered me, and here it is.

A woman raised her hand and said (paraphrased), "Don't you think that the MMs could learn a lot from the Amish, who share many similar opinions (ie. connection with agriculture, strict moral code, traditional way of living, etc.) but are held in high regard by the public?"

This bothered me on many different levels. This woman was demonstrating to me a fundamental misunderstanding so pervasive that I think it hindered her ability as a support giver/worker.

1. You can't teach a whole people lessons like that. How do you communicate that message to all MMs in the area? Conservative estimates were that 25,000 MMs live within an hour drive of Aylmer (where the session was held). There is no inherent leadership or organizational structure to use to convey this message (the Old Colony church is not a constant presence in the lives of most new immigrant MM families). There is no media by which these lessons can be carried.

2. The Amish had fundamentally different beginnings in this country. The Amish were in initial settlers in many parts of Waterloo, Wellington, Perth counties, etc. Thus, they were given free land and have had time to establish themselves as landowners and producing members of society. MMs come here with a strong desire to farm, so strong that they take farm jobs that established Canadians do not want. They arrive here with nothing, and while they can receive help in the way of social assistance, they have no way of acquiring farms. They come here poor, and they stay poor. There are many aspects of poverty that make many people uncomfortable, and in that context, also more judgmental.

3. People that idealize Amish lifestyle, generally don't know much about it. Amish are well known for having a good work ethic and for their love of the land, as are MMs. MMs are despised for having male dominated families, living by archaic traditional rules, and having bad hygiene, but none of those things are uncharacteristic of Amish communities as well. I love the Amish, I do. I wave when they ride by me on the roads, I buy food and books from them, and I defend them in academic circles. However, it's easy to see a religious/ethnic group as quaint when they live off somewhere else, but when they are in your face (ie. in your schools, in your neighbourhoods, in your restaurants) it's tougher to see them as quaint.

Because people generally view a group as good (ie. the Amish) or as bad (ie. MMs) doesn't mean that they are necessarily based on solid evidence, or that those feelings can be carried over. The solution is not to get the whole group to act in a way as to be accepted as a whole. What has to happen, is that individuals need to stop doing the things that bring on "persecution" (assuming of course that the "persecution" is warranted) and society in general needs to set aside negative stereotypes.

   [ posted by William @ 12:54 AM ]

As Promised
I promised earlier to post some of the pictures from the wedding. Here they are. Click on them to view a slightyly larger version:

I'm the one first without the suit jacket, and then the one on the far left.

These are pics I took myself. I'm pretty happy how they turned out.

This is a pose that the photographer suggested, but closer would have been better.

   [ posted by William @ 8:28 PM ]

In the big inning, ...
I play baseball, not very well, but I play. Until this year, my competitive baseball resume consisted only of church league softball, where I had won two different league championships with the two different teams that I had played on. It was no secret that I wasn't a key contributor to the success of those teams. While I delivered key hits at points, and key catches from time to time, I merely held my own, and no more.

This year, I made the switch to a more competitive league, and a fastball one at that. The team that I am on now is officially the men's baseball team for the church that I pastor. However, in a relatively frequent apparent contradiction, the team is made up of guys who drink, swear and who talk sexually all the time. These are not the kind of guys that I grew up with, and I certainly didn't have a lot of friends like this in college or high school. Combining my different lifestyle, with my inability to play the game at a highly competitive level, I expected to not fit in here as well. I enjoy baseball though, and I didn't sense much immediate discrimination, so I played along, and joined the guys for beers after the game (I don't drink any, I'm just there to shoot the breeze with them). I fit in now, and I enjoy the games and much of the post-game ritual.

There has been some concern voiced recently that a team of guys that swear as much as they do, etc. are a bad reflection on the church. I was asked my opinion on that matter. I said that I see no connection between playing baseball and being a Christian, so the complaint is irrelevant. I've since done some more thinking about it. Surely I would have more fun with a bunch of guys more similar to my own set of beliefs, who told my type of jokes, and who drank less if at all, but I've come to embrace where I am at.
- Other teams don't swear as much, but there are more than one player in the league who has a jersey number 69, and there is a team called the Hooters. Surely if we would censor out all aspects of the league that are un-Christian, those things would disappear as well.
- Jesus didn't play baseball, but if he did, his team would likely resemble the 12 disciples who came from all walks of life, most of them with rough and tumble pasts.
- I am a minister (professionally, but we as Christians are all called to minister) and even in the holiest of places, my church, I have to minister, why should I expect not to do so on the baseball diamond.
- Churches could learn a lot from my baseball team. I shouldn't fit in there, but I do. I live differently and would prefer them to live more like me, but they accept me. They offer me non-alcoholic drinks, they laugh at my jokes, and they forgive my misgivings, on and off the field. Do we as Christians do the same? What if they felt as accepted in my church, as I do around their cooler of beer?
- Being a Christian doesn't make you a good baseball player, in fact, it should make you a worse baseball player. Giving help to the needy and hope to the downtrodden are at the core of Jesus' teachings. Who is more needy and downtrodden than the team that gets beat 17-2?
I like the idea of church league baseball, and I also like the idea of Calvin's Geneva, but for us to try to create a utopian state, where everyone loves each other, and fun is had by all, is unrealistic. It's baseball, teams win and teams lose, umps make bad calls, and players make bad plays, and because of those things, people get upset. It's not my place to tell other people how to get upset, but to show them a better way to respond.

   [ posted by William @ 11:55 AM ]

Weddings and Lessons Learned
My brother got married this weekend, and I was in his wedding party, so I had a busy weekend. I learned a few things along the way.

1. My little brother (the one that's 15, not the one that got married, but was also in the wedding party) is a little man now. My oldest sister got married when I was 14, and I was in the wedding party, and seeing him in a tux for the first time, with a professional hair style for the first time, reminded me of being the wedding party then. We got some good pics of the three brothers in our rented tuxes, I'll post them when I get the digital copies of them.

2. People love weddings. My brother handed out quite a few wedding invitations, and we had to seat a lot of people. Sure we like to share in the joy of couples as they commit to one another, but a lot of people didn't even talk to the couple over the course of the day, and seemed to still enjoy it all.

3. It's really fun to drive big trucks. For the wedding we rented to Dodge Ram pick-ups. Since my brother isn't 25 or over, and I am, both trucks were under my name, which afforded me the right to drive them a fair bit. I just wished someone had pulled up beside me and asked, "Does that thing have a hemi?" To which I would have responded, "You're about to find out!"

4. I still look really good in a tux (those pics to come as well). I know, everyone does, but hey, it's fun to look good like that, even if it means a $130 rental charge.

   [ posted by William @ 3:17 PM ]

Why Can't You Just Shut Up?!
I'm taking a night class this semester, RS 100E, Biblical Studies I: Old Testament. Yes, two full years after I should have graduated, I'm still in school, and still taking 100 level classes. It's a good class, meaning a good prof, with some good students. Summer classes tend to have more engineering and math students in them, and they tend to think along the same lines, or at least use the same logic, that I do. There however one thing that ruins the class, or should I say one person. For the sake of anonymity, let's call this person Syrel. Syrel is an older student, 30 something, slowly beginning re-entry into the academic world. Syrel talks a lot, and I've narrowed it down to three reasons, 1) because Syrel has been away for too long and forgot that people aren't supposed to talk that much in class, 2) Syrel thinks that Syrel is the only one in the class, or 3) Syrel is the oldest person in the class, and feels that the oldest person in the class should grace the rest of us with their wisdom. The problem is that we can all tell, from the questions asked and the points offered up, that Syrel is not all that bright.

I am not a model student, and more participation would be good, I know, but I usually prefer to sit there, absorb what the prof is saying, then leave. Any unnecessary interuptions delay my leaving the class. Every time Syrel talks, I want to explode. I'm angry that my class time is being wasted, I feel awkward that someone so stupid is speaking in public, and I'm frustrated that even I could give the answer Syrel's asking for (even though I'd prefer to deliver the answer with a two-by-four to the forehead).

In our last class, we were discussing Old Testament Wisdom literature, and Proverbs in particular. We were discussing Proverbs 17:27-28. The prof said how, based on this passage, it is unclear whether a person being silent is wise or a fool. After a few other students added comments, I said, "I guess the only thing that's clear from this, is that it's only a fool that talks to much." As everyone started to laugh, I quickly thought, "I wonder if I'm the only one who's thinking about Sryel right now?" And then, in a moment so ironic, I couldn't have scripted it myself, Syrel spoke up, and said, "I always thought that people that talked a lot were wise because they had more to say." I hope I wasn't the only one that caught that irony. I felt standing up and yelling "You thought wrong!", like in the Back to the Future 3.

   [ posted by William @ 10:44 AM ]

This Bible Has 22 Minutes
There is a tradition within some Amish and Old Order Mennonite churches that pastors will occasionally preach a sermon starting at Genesis, and go right through until they are at Revelation. I thought I would try my hand at this, and while it was far more difficult than I imagined, here is a small part of it.

Genesis 1:1 starts with "In the beginning, God created the heavens and the earth." In the beginning? The beginning of what? Is it the beginning of human existence? It can’t be that, humans don’t show up until the sixth day. Is it the beginning of the world? Well, the universe and everything in it, are all part of this creation process. It's just the beginning. There seems to be something missing in the next half of the sentence as well. God created the heavens and the earth? Who is God? Well, God is God!
In a scientific world, we want our sentences to be more complete, to not leave things out, but Genesis 1:1 is not a scientific statement, it is a social one. Here, we are being introduced to God.
If you had never read the Bible before, if you didn't know anything about God or Christianity, after reading this first sentence, you would. God is introduced to us in the Bible, as the Creator of all things.

   [ posted by William @ 12:49 PM ]

Rewards and Tests
My new job as Youth Pastor has thrust me into the once despised role of heart-break consultant. The pain and confusion are tough to walk through with someone, but there are a few things that make it worse.

1.) They'll likely say how wrong the old quote, "'tis better to have loved and lost, then to never have loved." I hate that situation. I personally agree with statement, of course when someone is in the depths of the lost part of it, they don't want to debate it. Essentially what they're doing is minimizing the pain of others, ie. those who have never loved, namely me.

2.) I'll be in a situation where I'll feel the pressure to reassure them based on their qualities that they'll find someone else, no problem, but as a pastor, it's my job to talk about God's divine plan in this. In various conversations with other people, when my displeasure of my perpetual bachelorhood is discussed, people often say something like, "Will, you're a great guy, God has someone amazing in store for you." I hate hearing that, so I hate saying it. I think it's crap! God doesn't reward me for being a nice guy, for being a caring and sensitive friend to males and females alike (I'm not bragging, I'm speaking hypothetically), that kind of lifestyle is it's own reward. I'm not a reward for some girl out there who's lived a good life, just like a guy with a shadier past isn't a punishment for some girl who's made questionable choices.

I'll be honest, being single at my age, when a lot of my friends are marrying, and my own plans of having kids is running short on time, is no bowl of cherries, but I don't need to look too far to find people struggling way worse than me, and maybe we have this whole incentive system upside down. In many third world cultures, they see tests and trials coming from God only to the strong, whereas the weak are the ones with easy lives. Maybe it's all a test, maybe my "reward" for sticking through it, is to stick through it longer, where others couldn't.

I don't want to come off as some suffering saint, a tragic victim of God's divine chess match. I fail these tests too. In frustration, in boredom, and in selfishness, my actions very often indicated a failed attempt. I am content. I strive to get better, even though there isn't always visible incentive. Living my own life, and advising others, are two different things. While not everyone will see things my way, I cannot give advice that I don't believe.

   [ posted by William @ 1:44 AM ]