On Vision

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.

Sunrise

As the sky changes from black to grey to blue I watch the light sketch out her features. Her brow, her nose, her lips becoming ever clearer. The shadows recede into the folds of the sheets and the storm-cloud of her hair upon the pillow.
When she sleeps she does not hide her face from me.
And for once the sunrise is more beautiful – and sad – than the sunset.

If My Life was a Bob Dylan Song…

I wasn’t far off the Alaskan highway
when I got stuck on the road.
My knee was swollen and my shoulders sore
from carryin’ my load.
There was a reserve to the West but I was headin’ East and I was too tired to care.
I dropped my bag down on the gravel and decided to sleep right there.
But I was still in the mountains and the cold wind came and I hardly shut my eyes.
Too cold to sleep, too tired to move, I watched the grey sunrise.
I was passin’ through.
Tangled up in Blue.

Harm-Reduction and Abortion

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.

Intelligence Does Not Equal Wisdom

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.

Four More Years

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>Absit Omen</i>*

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.

Stripping off the Armour

When I first started journeying with people who have suffered much (and continue to suffer much) I imagined myself as a sort of knight in shining armour. I was riding in to rescue the damsel in distress. I was going to save people. Hell, I was going to save the world.
Thankfully, I learned pretty early on that that’s not who I am. That’s not who any of us are.
“Knight in shining armour? Where the hell were you when everything was happening to me? You never picked me up off the ground. You never stopped him from doing what he did to me. You can’t be my knight in shining armour. You’re seven years too late.”
It’s impossible to be a knight in shining armour to people who are already broken. You can’t save them from being broken… they already are.
Of course once you realise this about one person, and then another, and then another, and then another… you also learn that dreams of saving the world don’t really fit in either.
So then I started thinking, well, I may not be able to save the world but I’ll save myself. At least I’ll absolve myself of complicity. Like Jeremiah I’ll be able to say that the blood of others is not on my hands.
But I can’t save myself. I am too deeply immersed in the systems I was born into. I am too weak, too frail, too blind.
So then I began to view myself as a tragic hero. Someone who does all he can to triumph over the forces around him but in the end the powers that be are too strong and overwhelm him. Yes, I too would “rage, rage into the night”. I would be Tarrou in Camus’ “La Peste”, submersing myself among plague victims, doing what I could to relieve their sufferings, until I too succumbed to the disease.
But I’m no tragic hero. As if this is all so romantic. What I do is not tragic. When people ask about my job with the homeless youth I often just say that I plunged a lot of toilets. Apparently I’m good at that. There’s nothing romantic about plunging toilets. And suffering is only romantic to those who have never experienced it. To those who have, it just… hurts. And I’ve watched a kid get refused entrance to our drop-in on Christmas day. I didn’t even think to try and work it out so that he could come in. I just stood in the door to support my co-worker and dodged when the kid, screaming and crying, spat at me. No, I’m no hero.
But that’s fine. It’s okay that these things are impossible, I don’t need any of them anymore. I don’t need to be something more than I am. I don’t need to be a hero or some sort of tragic icon. And I don’t need to save the world.
No, I’m just going to love people. That’s all. No provisos, expectations or exceptions. And there’s freedom in that. I’ve left my armour on the field, shrugged the world off my shoulder, laughed off the tragic romance, and discovered myself free to love and be loved.
Not that this means that broken people are damned to always being broken, or that we are always damned to weakness or failure. It’s just that all these things are in somebody else’s hands. And the one who holds these things is the one who calls us beloved.

The Loss of the Political

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.