It's not about pedestals. It's not about turning a blind eye to a person's faults or weaknesses. It's about defining a person by something other than the things they are ashamed of.
But until that person does the same they will tend to think you have romanticised them. I mean, they've seen it all before, someone who was smitten until they knew the full story. As the truth comes out everything just falls apart. And that's what they expected. They never felt like they deserved to be treated as something special anyway.
I don't mind being misunderstood. I have stood the test of time before. Goodness is stronger than evil, and love stronger than hate. This I learned not from poetry but from life.
you keep telling me i'm beautiful
but i feel a little less so each time
your love is so colorful
it flashes like a neon sign
but i finally drove out where
the sky is dark enuf to see stars
and i found i missed no one
just listening to the swishing of distant cars
– Ani DiFranco

“It seems like all of us have an emptiness inside of us. You see it all the time when people are dating, they're always looking for somebody to complete them. They're looking for the person that will make them whole. But there's nobody out there that will make you whole, there's nobody who will fill that emptiness. All of us will always carry it with us. But that's okay. I mean if that was filled, if we were complete, if we were perfect then what would be have to live for? If we were like that life would be meaningless, we'd just die.”
“Well, I don't know… I wouldn't use the language of emptiness. I think it's more about intimacy. It's not so much about arriving at a point of being where that hole is filled, it's about engaging in a continual process of becoming. Because I think I've found a love that fills that hole. But I've got all sorts of things to live for, it's like I've only just come alive. What I engage in now is an ever deeper movement into intimacy. It's like Till We Have Faces: first we discover our face, we discover who we truly are and then we begin a true journey in loving and being loved. Of course until we discover our faces we will always be left with that emptiness.”
I saw well why the gods do not speak to us openly, nor let us answer. Till that word can be dug out of us, why should they hear the babble that we think we mean? How can they meet us face to face till we have faces?
C.S. Lewis – Till We Have Faces

Only in television commercials did Superman ever walk again.
In reality he wiggled his toes, breathed a few hours without a machine, and died.
All of us are prone to embracing fantasy, until fantasy itself becomes our reality.
“This is where I want to be, this is so much better.”
Soon the world of my own construction is the world God once pronounced good and I myself am the divine.
It is ironic that in such a situation the visionaries (the seers and prophets) are said to be blind. Dismissed as those who chase utopian pipe-dreams, those who do not take into consideration the true nature of reality.
Yet the prophets are those who have not only escaped fantasy but discovered a greater reality. They realise a truer way of being than those who have spent their lives fleeing that which is instead of facing it and discovering that which will be.

I support the idea of “wet” shelters and safe-injection sites. I support giving out condoms to prostitutes. I think that they are all part of the larger picture that is necessary in a society that has embraced harm-reduction as the model under which it operates. Thus for every dry shelter we need a wet shelter, for every drug treatment program we need a safe-injection site or needle exchange program, for every organisation that helps prostitutes flee the sex trade we need an organisation that helps prostitutes survive within the sex trade. Our society is structured around band-aid solutions and so we need everything we can to prevent people from abuse or illness or death. We recognise that we're not doing anything really effective at the level of the big picture and so we focus in on helping people survive in the immediate present.
However, I notice that, in the circles in which I move, a lot of Christians that I talk to favour safe-injection sites while opposing abortion clinics. Now, I've been thinking about this quite a bit over the last few weeks and I think that this is actually a double standard.
The same arguments that these Christians have embraced in the areas of homelessness, addiction and prostitution are arguments they have rejected when it comes to abortion. Abortions will continue to happen regardless. Abortion clinics are places where women can go and have an abortion without risking infection, serious injury or death. Therefore, even somebody who believes that a fetus is a living person, should, based on the arguments mentioned above, support abortion clinics. From that perspective a child is dying but the mother's life is being saved.
Funny how Christians seem more ready to humanise drug-addicts than they are to humanise women.
Here's the thing though. I am not entirely convinced that the harm-reduction model as a whole should be so fully embraced by Christians. I believe that harm-reduction is a necessary model for secular society but I believe that Christians should be addressing things at a much deeper, more big picture, level. If Christianity is about becoming fully human, than we should be offering something completely different than all these options. What may end up being the best approach in secular society does not have to be the best Christianity has to offer. Unfortunately, as with pretty much every other area of life, North American Christians seem to have lost any sense of their distinct identity.

Intelligent Christians are often the most dangerous.
Christians who have excelled in a particular discipline (Law, Engineering, Computer Science, whatever) often assume that they are equally qualified to speak authoritatively on matters of scripture or faith. Sure maybe they got gold stars in Sunday school, heck, maybe they even kicked a little ass in youth group Bible studies, but that certainly does NOT qualify them to assume they have a superior understanding of scripture or faith. Maybe they can form arguments that sound more persuasive, or appear more convincing than most people they encounter (maybe they're even more convincing than… drum roll… their pastor!) but, once again, this doesn't mean that they are right.
In fact, they are often quite wrong. And the consequences of their actions are often quite devastating (it's tempting to think all the Christians who support Bush are just high school drop-outs but we all know that's not true).
Now I'm not saying that all Christians need to throw their brains out the window when it comes to matters of faith. I'm actually saying the opposite. Christians need to treat their faith with the same respect that they treat the other disciplines. Christians need to start giving more credit to those who are scholars in the field of faith. Of course the fact that most Christians don't even have a clue about who such scholars are just shows how little respect they have (and the fact that people like Tim LaHaye or Bruce Wilkinson are considered experts is another shining proof).
Okay, you got straight-As in university. That's great, congratulations. Just don't assume that means you know anything about the Bible… or God… or the faith you profess to follow.

I pledge that I never will tie myself to parties who want to destroy Christianity… We want to fill our culture again with the Christian Spirit… we want to burn out all the recent immoral developments in literature, in the theatre, and in the press – in short, we want to burn out the poison of immorality which has entered into our whole life and culture as a result of liberal excess during past years.
If I didn't know better I would think this was a quote from George W. Bush. If he never said exactly these words I would think it was for reasons such as these that all those southern evangelicals voted him back into power.
Only it wasn't George W. who said this.
Adolf Hitler said this in 1922.
That's right. The German Christians who supported the Third Reich have a whole lot in common with the American Christians who support Bush.
Oh, and I should add that the same applies to those Canadian Christians who think it's their duty to vote for the Conservative Party.

I think we're supposed to be remembering something…
Oh right.
Today let's remember that war is the only way to peace.
Today let's remember that we need to attack a country to defend it… from itself.
Today let's remember that killing people is the only way to set them free.
Today let's remember that we need to sacrifice our children in order to protect them.
Today let's celebrate Hiroshima. Let's raise our glasses to the Enola Gay and thank God for all the lives she saved.
Today let's remember that we need to be willing to do it all again.
Isn't this why Remembrance day was established? Lest we forget.
__
*Latin saying: May the evil foretold not come to pass.

There's an old saying in Tennessee – I know it's in Texas, probably in Tennessee – that says, fool me once, shame on – shame on you. Fool me – you can't get fooled again.
– George W. Bush
Ah, George, but they did get fooled again. Shame on all of us.
~
To judge all Christians on the basis of those who voted for Bush is analogous to judging all Americans based on the fact that the majority of them voted Bush – not once but twice. Yes, there are a lot of people who call themselves Christians that do insane things (like support the Bush regime), but that doesn't mean Christianity itself is being truly represented by those people. And yes, there are a lot of Americans who do obnoxious things (like support Bush's war in Iraq) but that doesn't mean all Americans are truly represented by those people. And I would push it one step farther. To support Bush is actually fundamentally opposed to Christianity. Not that I'm saying all Christians need to get out and vote for the liberals or some fringe party. What I am saying is that it seems to me that most Christians have lost their understanding of their distinct political identity. Christians have tended to take the approach that they need to vote for “the least of the evils”. Sure, all candidates won't agree with everything they agree with, so they just try to find the candidate that is the most similar to their morals. Now it seems like most Christians in North America think that morals strictly deal with things related to sex, and drugs, and prayer in school. So they see a guy like George W. and vote for him. Other Christians (definitely the minority) realise that morals are far more about things like economics and war so they tend to vote for other parties – and instead of risking splitting the vote, they vote for Kerry. You know, take the least of the evils. Of course, when that's your approach you still just end up with… evil. I'd say this approach became popular around the 40s and 50s (thank you Reinhold Niebuhr, you lead the church into exile). Pick up pretty much any Chomsky book and you'll be able to judge its efficacy.
Of course a third group of Christians realise this and tend to retreat into an apolitical stance. Better not to get involved at all. Keep your own hands clean and try to save as many souls as you can while the world goes to hell.
The problem with all these positions is they misunderstand the nature of Christianity. Christianity is inherently political. It was never about souls going to heaven while the world burns. It's about transforming the world here and now. Jesus was a political figure, Paul's gospel had devastating political consequences and the message of the prophets in the Old Testament returns over and over again to political issues.
But Christianity is not political in the ways any of these people have imagined.
North American Christians need to rediscover their true political identity. Probably a good first step is to rediscover Jesus. After all, I think it's Jesus that all these people are either completely abusing or completely ignoring.
Rarely is the question asked: Is our children learning?
– George W. Bush
I don't know about our children but our church sure as hell is not.

It's funny how people can impact our lives and we can completely forget them or even the fact that they transformed us.
My mom was emailing me a recipe for Rhubarb Rolls and she tells me this story.
“When you were young, around nine months old, a couple from the States came to London because the husband needed brain surgery. They needed a place to stay and contacted our church so Pa said they could stay with us. The wife spent most of her time at the hospital with her husband but his parents had come up as well. They were an old country couple and had a bunch of kids of their own. He just loved babies and spent hours with you on the living room floor. Holding your hands and walking you back and forth, back and forth. Really, he taught you how to walk. At nine months too. That's a pretty young age.”
I imagine an old man with rough knotted fingers and cheeks that feel like sandpaper. A body that bears the marks of years of hard labour coupled with a gentle eyes and a gentle touch.
Of course, I really don't remember anything about him at all. He came and went. And I've been walking ever since.
Thanks, old man.