kar0ling

Perhaps not unusually, I approach cliche, pithy reversed sayings with mingled delight and disgust. Oh, how felicitously memorable, how strikingly apt, those aphorisms, like "people don't care how much you know until they know how much you care," and "God doesn't call the qualified, he qualifies the called." One can't be on Facebook long before stumbling across one. But they're just so irritatingly pat, so simplistically tidy. And then there's identity. I was about to speculate maybe it's just evangelicals -- and Mennonites (yes, those are overlapping categories, but they also have distinctions) -- who are so obsessed with hammering it out, but then I recalled the number of times a character fervently declares "I'm a surgeon!" or "I'm a cop!" on Grey's Anatomy and Rookie Blue (yes, my tastes in TV lean strongly toward the soapy), so it seems a desperate need to define our identity and a pathological insecurity ...

I met Jesus in Israel-Palestine a few years ago. I found him not in the rocky, desert ground he trod, nor in the ancient stones of the towns and cities he visited; not in the subterranean grotto in the Church of the Nativity, nor in the mammoth Church of the Holy Sepulchre, encompassing the traditional site of his death and resurrection. No, I met him in the lives of Palestinians who incarnate his spirit, in humble, passionate people who are convinced that love is the only way. I met Jesus in people who spoke like this: “We need to be soaked in the love of Christ. Love is not a hug and a kiss. Love is to seek the life of the other that the cost of one’s own.” --Labib Madanat, coordinator of the Palestinian and Israeli Bible Societies “Love is not an opportunity to overlook justice. Love is an opportunity to pursue justice…. [But] we want to resist any form of evil with the heart and mind of Jesus Christ.… There is no love without justice. And there is no true justice without lov...

After reflecting with one coworker on how often churches in all their forms really mess up and hurt a whole bunch of people in the process -- and how "we gotta do better" -- I stumbled into another conversation with a coworker which highlighted our brokenness, and I suddenly realized what was wrong with my take in the first. I wanted the church to be better at fixing our mistakes, or better yet, at not making them in the first place. But maybe this "fix-it" attitude is partly the reason we keep blowing it again and again! My friend recollected an experience when a church community was in a terrible place: compounded mistakes, hurts, and frustrations had blown up, spewing pain all over all parties. (I'm sure anyone with a long history in the church can think of one, if not several, such occasions in their past.) A new Christian who observed all these goings on responded in an unexpected way. Instead of "you people are a bunch of screw-ups! How could this pos...

What's a pacifist to do with Remembrance Day? I'm not sure. First, I acknowledge with appreciation the fact that Canada celebrates Remembrance Day (not Veterans Day): putting emphasis on remembering conflict, leaving room for all kinds of remembrance; not only of fallen soldiers, but also of civilian lives affected, even lost in the course of armed conflict. So I deem it important to attend a service each year. It's an unfamiliar world to me, the military is, and one whose raison d'etre is contrary to my beliefs, but because of those two factors, it's necessary that I go to a service to dip a toe in the waters of that world. From the far corner of the enormous room where I was standing, the crowd was reasonably ethnically diverse and contained a healthy number of children, given that a long serious service is generally not the most fun activity for a child. From the stage, however, as well as the closing march past, one would think Canada were still the solidly Ang...

To call me a dilettante in politics would be generous. I have opinions in spades, but pay just enough attention to the issues to come off as informed, without ever gaining any depth of understanding of underlying policy. Nevertheless, I attended a political forum today on downtown issues. What I heard affirmed my belief that I really can't get behind any one party -- perhaps a terrible admission to make when I strongly believe people should be informed and vote when given the opportunity. But, I find, I don't really care whose idea it is; if it's a good one, implement it already and enough with the partisanship! The politicians, of course, danced around all the questions, slighting each others' record whenever possible, speaking in generalities and platitudes, harping on certain platform issues regardless of their relevance to constituent question. As one of the moderators said at the end of the debate, "Ten years from now, we'll be back here, deb...

It's high time for another post, but the creeping dark says I ought to retire sooner rather than later. Faced with the option of tooting my own horn for a gratuitous post or thowing out a flippant observation, I'll go with the latter. You know you're in Montreal when... ...the trendy young woman on the subway wearing a shapely dress, beret, and retro schoolteacher heels has a fur stole around her neck -- identifiably mink by its beady eyes and little feet. It made me smile. Somehow, I can't imagine those little eyes going over well anywhere else in North America, at least, not south of the Arctic Circle, where I suspect the heels might be out of place. It's fascinating how Quebec is so distinctly different from the rest of Canada above and beyond the diversity from one region to the next.

Shane Claiborne has not become famous for nothing. He's a great speaker, pulling together the best pithy quotes from MLK Jr., Mother Teresa, Karl Barth, and who knows who else. He spoke a lot about the Amish tonight at Knox United's ecumenical event. Probably pandering to the crowd, knowing there were many Mennonites there. Whenever I hear a non-Mennonite speak about Anabaptists that way -- with admiration -- I think, boy, we have a lot to learn from ourselves! Which is not to say we don't have plenty to learn from other traditions, because we certainly do, but it seems we've lost as many good things as we've kept. What captured me most from Shane's talk tonight was his line, "the church has lost its imagination." Referencing Romans 12:2, "Do not conform to the pattern of this world, but be transformed by the renewing of your mind," he urged us to recapture imagination, to find new ways of not conforming to the world's ways. Creativity; a...