Travelling with Gershom

As I have mentioned in two earlier posts, I have been learning to trust God over the last few months. While there has been much happening in my life this past twelve months, two events have precipitated some anxiety and worry for me (and those around me). As anyone who has been overseas for an extended period can tell you, moving back to your home country is a stressful event, even when you are ready and as mentally prepared to return as we were. Getting settled back in the house, straightening out school for our youngest, taking on new roles at work, managing an overall reduction in salary, it all adds up pretty quickly. But that was going reasonably well. Then the unexpected happened: I was out of a job. Now the worry levels rose to new heights, especially given the economic situation the world is in. What is most interesting about this time is that God used people I knew to direct me to himself. The earliest instances of this I have commented on earlier, and you can read about it he

In the Lord of the Rings trilogy my favourite character was Aragorn, the ranger from the north descended from the kings of former times, a man who is brave, noble, and loyal. In the recent movies, he was wonderfully portrayed by Viggo Mortensen, who brought Aragorn to life in full. I have been watching season one of ROME this week, and feel about Lucius Vorenus much as I do about Aragorn. Kevin McKidd ably plays Vorenus as a man who is out of his time in many ways. His bravery is not in doubt, a heroic soldier in the 13th Legion. His also loyal, to his leader, to Rome, and mostly to his old friend Titus Pullo. Deeply moral, he is often conflicted about things in the deeply immoral world he lives in. Vorenus' character often gets him into trouble, as his behaviour is often at odds with the culture. Both Aragorn and Vorenus remind me of the things I aspired to as a young man and try to live up to today. A passion for justice, and compassion for others. A sense of duty, and doing one&

Whenever my wife or I have to travel on business and have to away from each other for more than a few days, we find the time apart difficult. And when these mercifully infrequent trips occur, as one is at the moment, we try and connect for a few minutes by telephone each day. Busy-ness and time differences can make it challenging to get more than a few minutes to talk at the end of someone's day, so we always try to cut to the chase and talk about the most important thing. You know what I mean...the daily routine of our lives. In those moments we reconnect by recounting our days, and we feel like we have been part of the other's life even while we have been apart. We commiserate, advise, celebrate, share news, and so on, nothing special...but actually very special. The stuff of our day to day existence - work, conversations, struggles, victories - is what makes up our lives. We share it when we are together, when we come home at the end of the day, and by sharing it when we are

It seems to be very popular to complain about Christians and their intolerance, and to cite religion generally (and often Christianity in particular) as a source of evil in the world. This opinion is expressed in books and blogs, the media, and in private conversations. As a Christian, let me expound a little on this view of Christians. Most of the time, the complaint is deserved. We behave badly, in a non-Christian manner, and end up defaming Christ. This is partly due to human weakness - is there any leader or follower of a political or social movement who has not fallen or failed in one way or another? - but in some (and the most important) instances it is more than that.  We all expect people to lose their temper, make mistakes, and the like. The real problem is that when we are presented with an issue like abortion or gay marriage we fail to think first and respond later. In fact, I would go farther: we fail to think. Following Christ is not about a set of rules and regulations th

I just finished two excellent books, which, when I started out, didn't seem related at all. The first, Michael Pollan's  In Defense of Food , is an entertaining and fascinating look at the impact of science, business, and journalism on what we eat. The second is Born to Run , by Christopher McDougall, an examination of the nature of humanity wrapped in an adventure story. Both Pollan and McDougall are fine writers, able and engaging storytellers dealing with a complex central argument in a compelling way. Pollan tackles food science and the food industry, McDougall sports medicine and sports footwear.  In its opening section, In Defense of Food traces the rise of nutritionism, evaluating food in terms of its component micro-parts - vitamins, nutrients, antioxidants, and the like - the reductionist view of what we eat. Next, Pollan considers what we eat and why we eat it, cataloguing the Western diet and gradual industrialization of food. Finally, he offers what he calls "p

Reason #1: Better Source Material Dan Brown is not a good writer. He is a very good storyteller, especially when all the action takes place in one day. Angels & Demons is a much better story and is better told than The Da Vinci Code. Reason #2: A Stronger Supporting Cast In The Da Vinci Code, Paul Bettany steals the movie as the murderous monk Silas, even though the cast features Ian McKellen, Jean Reno, Jurgen Prochnow, and Alfred Molina. The supporting players in Angels & Demons all put in very good performances, and manage to heighten intrique and interest in a film that badly needs it due to the sleepwalking Tom Hanks. The police officers played by Pierfrancesco Favino, Thure Lindhart, and David Pasquesi are excellent, as are the always reliable Stellan Skarsgard as the head of the Swiss Guard and Armin Mueller-Stahl as Cardinal Strauss. And Ewan McGregor puts in a solid performance in the critical role of the Camerlengo. Reason #3: Less Controversy, More S

By now, you have likely seen Susan Boyle from Britain's Got Talent (if you've been wandering on the outer fringes of Borneo for the last 10 days, click here to see it). The 47-year old was laughed at when she came out on stage and announced her dream of being a singer, hoping to be as successful as Elaine Paige. One young woman in the audience smirked and derisively rolled her eyes. Why this reaction? Susan is not beautiful, slim, young, blonde, or any of the other things we have been conditioned to associate with the music industry, or with the entertainment industry generally. It is that simple. She didn't fit the picture - Christina, Britney, Madonna, Beyonce, and the like - so people expected her to be an untalented joke. And then she sang, and blew the room away. Susan Boyle is a wonderful singer. But what if she wasn't? What if she was tone deaf? Or if she had simply walked off the stage in the face of the reception she received? There probably would not have bee

My dear wife sent me a note in response to my last post. Trudy reminded me of something important: when strangers speak to us, we have an opportunity to brighten their day. And while she was too gracious to say it, we have an obligation to interact with them, to love them. The flip side to the problem of uncensored self-exposure discussed earlier is unreflective withdrawal. I forget that we are all wounded (me included), and that grace received must become grace extended. Too often I retreat, preferring to escape the situation than to engage in it. While he probably wasn't thinking of all this (though maybe a variation of it), Wordsworth comments on the source of both sides of the problem, and their solution, in the fourth book of his long autobiographical poem The Prelude : When from our better selves we have too long Been parted by the hurrying world, and droop, Sick of its business, of its pleasures tired, How gracious, how benign, is Solitude; How potent a mere image of her swa

Why do people I have never met insist on telling me things I don't need or want to know about? Picking up the Globe and the Telegram at a local convenience store yesterday, the clerk told me about asking for an ID from a guy who had been trying to buy beer a few minutes earlier. His response was "You've got to be freaking kiddin' me!" Of course, neither he nor she said the euphemistic "freaking". Two things. First, why does she think I am interested? If this had happened just this once, I could ignore it. But it occurs from time to time, enough to be annoying. I must look like my day will be incomplete without tales of sales-clerkian tragedy. This is a look I will learn to eradicate from my repertoire of facial expressions. Perhaps Tim Roth can help! Second, why is it okay to use the F word with someone you've never met? I hope it isn't the case that I invite this as well, and that it says more about the other person than about me. It certainly

I mentioned in a recent post that I would be looking at two questions: what does it mean to trust God?, and how do I trust God? I started exploring this in Matthew's gospel, specifically the sixth chapter. In verses 25 through 34, Matthew records Jesus as teaching about worry. Or more exactly, about not worrying. In this passage, Jesus tells us "do not worry about your life, what you will eat or what you will drink; nor about your body, what you will put on." He goes on to say that God "knows that you need all things" and if we "seek first the kingdom of God and His righteousness...all these things shall be added to you." (Yes, I am using the New King James translation, a slightly modified version of the original King James, which is, of course, the Bible Jesus used!) Sounds like good advice. So how do I stop worrying? I think the clue lies at the beginning of this section: "Therefore I say to you, do not worry about your life..." "There

Several times in the last few weeks I have come across something exhorting us - well, me - to live more simply. Most of this advice has been prompted by the economy, but it seems to me that to be truly worthwhile any advice must be grounded in something less volatile than the Dow Jones. Ben Witherington recently posted a discussion on the economic situation that gets down to fundamentals. Witherington does not exempt Christians from contributing to our current economic woes, by living beyond our means and opting into the consumer culture (in other words, by being greedy), and he reminds us of several principles that God calls us to live by. It is good reading, and not just for Christians. It's the first and fourth principles I want to address here. That "the earth is the Lord's and all that is therein" and "the purpose of hard work is to save all we can, so we can also give all we can" are inseparable, I think. If we are good stewards of what God has g

I am reading a wonderful book that offers a view of the Palestinian issue that few of us in the West get to see, at least not often. Sari Nusseibeh , a professor of philosophy and president of Al-Quds University in Jerusalem, has written an autobiography that spans not only his life but also delves into the history of his family, and that of the Palestinian struggle. Once Upon a Country: A Palestinian Life is an exceptionally interesting overview of the last 50 years in Israel and the occupied territories, and tells a story that is personal, political, and poignant. In the book, I have just reached the late 1980s, when tension boils over into the intifada , a mass uprising against the Israelis by farmers, students, children, and others. Over the course of the uprising, from 1987-1993, about 1,300 Palestinians and 160 Israelis were killed by the other side, and another 1,000 Palestinians were killed by other Palestinians as suspected collaborators and traitors, although not all of the

The other night we were watching Episode 9 of Band of Brothers , the excellent HBO series based on the equally excellent book by Stephen Ambrose . Entitled "Why We Fight", the troopers of the 506th Parachute Infantry Regiment come across a concentration camp as they move through southern Germany, in Bavaria. It reminded me of our visit to Dachau this past summer. We spent several days in Austria in July, flying into Munich and driving south to Bad Gastein, in the Austrian Alps. We made a detour when we left Munich, spending a few hours at Dachau. We had planned this before we left Doha, thinking this was an important place to visit. We were right. I didn't know much about Dachau beyond the name and the fact that it was a concentration camp. It was, I learned, the first concentration camp, opened only weeks after Hitler became Chancellor of Germany, used initially for political enemies but very soon after some of the "undesirables". Entering the camp is

I am not surprised that a local clothing store is going out of business. It is called Hostyle. Seriously. Now, maybe it is intended to be "hos-tyle", which has its problems, but I really think it is "ho-style". And there are about 70 young people lined up outside its doors, being let in one at a time, to buy the marked-down goods inside. Apparently there weren't enough customers to keep the store open at regular prices, but it's now cheap enough to get them blocking the sidewalks of Water Street. To buy discounted footwear and t-shirts from Hostyle. If what we wear and where we buy it tells people something about us, then these kids are saying something they might not intend. It would be bad enough if they were paying full price, but to wait until it's as cheap as possible, well, let's just say that in the movies, the high-end call girl is usually seen more positively than the run-of-the-mill streetwalker.