the old bill

God and Godding.... nouns and verbs.

"God, it seems to me,  is a verb, not a noun proper or improper." [Buckminster Fuller].  Caught part of Stuart Kauffman on The Current - talking about our need to redefine the sacred, moving from Creator to Creativity - the total creative process of the universe.  The trouble we have in talking about God, I think, is that in English we really have only two categories Noun or Verb [adjectives and adverbs simply refine/describe the noun or verb].  Religion has talked about God as a noun, not because God is a noun, probably, but because we like nouns, we like to relate to other nouns - they're beings, like us, and we like to think of God as a person.  Science has focussed on verbs, the processes of the universe, the interactions. It's harder for us to feel close to a process, seems kind of impersonal.

But whatever God is, it seems to me, God is both noun and verb, God and Godding, both the creator and the process of creating, the destroyer and the process of destroying, the maintainer and the process of maintaining.  To say I believe in Creativity/Creating but not a Creator seems as silly as saying I believe in a Creator but not in Creativity/Creating.  

When Moses asked the Talking Burning Bush what is your name, the answer he received was either "I am what/who I am" or "I will be what/who I will be" - the verb tense includes both.  Being and becoming.  God is therefore changing, the process of change itself.  Robertson Davies once said something like "If people want to define a god, and then say this god that I have defines I do not believe in - well that's fine.  But that seems rather silly.  It is God who defines me, not the reverse.  God is not the object of any sentence.  God is the subject, and we are the objects."

loving Christmas again

I really want to love Christmas again.  There was a time I did.  I'd love the exploring for the right gift for someone I love. I loved freezing my butt off looking for the right tree, finding ever more handmade decorations.  Putting up the creche with sheep carved by someone who obviously had never seen a sheep.  I loved the energy, the hope.  And I can't quite figure out what happened.

Sometimes I think it was the shift in shopping from creation to retrieval - people putting gifts they wanted on hold, letting you know that the shop would only keep it on hold until the end of the day .... and so madly scurrying off to retrieve it.  Me doing the same, and feigning surprise.  But that's not it.  It's not external.  Sometimes I think it was a series of losses and tough news just before Christmas, but I know in my heart its not that either.

Exhaustion is an interesting word. Comes from Latin for 'drawing off' - like water being drawn off before it arrives at its destination, or, better, a gas escaping, air not going where it should.  It's about the breathing, and instead of inhaling Spirit [= Breath], and using it, the Breath escapes, and we use our own breath, start to draw on it it instead.  I've been breathing wrong, breathing worry, breathing resentment, trying to live in the illusion of  self-reliancy.  And whenever I do that, whenever I breathe in the wrong stuff, my own CO2, I end up in the same place. 

But the breathing is mine to do, one thing that clearly no one else can do for me.  

So my goal for the next 10 days is to breathe deeply, to inhale. Go for a little more oxygen and a little less CO2.

global jam & narrative worship

This evening - and every Thursday [except Christmas & New Years] at 7:00 there's a global music jam session at the church. Since we didn't really have a plan as to how to make the global music thing happen, we decided we'd just start doing it and make up a plan later. The Global Jams are simply gatherings of folk who want to learn/sing global songs - some from More Voices, but also songs that individuals know, songs from their homelands, songs they sang in the camps, songs they've somehow picked up along the way.  We'll also chat, laugh, and have a bite to eat. Everyone is welcome.  Talent is certainly not required [evident by the fact that I'll be there].  Knox is located at 400 Edmonton.  Since most of the building is closed up on Thursday evenings, enter by the yellow door off the back lane.

This Sunday [Dec 14] is Narrative Worship - with a focus on Mary [biblical perspective, legends, Mary in the Qur'an, etc.]  Narrative worship is one of the 4 patterns of worship at Knox - and in this pattern the entire worship service takes the form of the narrative, the story. There is no set form, the story determines the form. We take all the traditional elements of worship, and then fit them somehow into the narrative - kinda like that scene in Apollo 13 when they throw everything on the table and figure out how to make something new out of it. Where does confession fit naturally into the narrative? Etc.  These worship experiences have been really popular - allows us to go deep into the text, the story.  

The other worship patterns, btw, are Traditional, Global and Community [where we meet around tables in the basement].  Not sure where it all leads, but for now, the journey seems to be a good one.

Christmas Eve services are at 7:30 - and while not a global worship per se, it will be a Christmas-around-the-world feeling, a way of connecting with traditions from a variety of cultures.  There's something about Christmas, perhaps even in the romanticization of Christmas, that crosses all cultures - and we want to honour the intercultural nature of our community.  

further adventures of...

Took a wrong turn last night and passed a half ton with a sign on the door saying "J. C. Decks & Carpentry".

Nah, couldn't be. . .

the liberal quandry

Manitoba Liberals are acting a bit odd - whining incessantly about not having a convention / leadership race. Now I know in the best of all worlds that would be a great thing - but do the Liberals really think that a few weeks/months of dueling contenders duking it out, hurling insults at each other, pointing out each others' weaknesses would really help their cause?  The whining and complaining about the process not being democratic and open would seem to me to be best done behind closed doors, not in the media.  Do they not realize what they're doing?  

advent meditation: the birth of story/the story of birth

In the beginning [or should it be "Once upon a time. . . "], there was a story. . .

And God was with the story [no scratch that]

And God was in the story [that’s still not quite it]

And God was the story [yes, that's good]

Everything that exists came through the story - it was only through the story that God created.  Each character, each setting, each creature, each backdrop was created in the story and for the story.  When the time was right, the story started to come together, took shape and form.  Characters emerged,  were introduced - with personalities and names, and with them plots and sub-plots. The storyline began to unfold.

In one form it was the tale of a young woman, Mary the unmarried and unsullied, impregnated by God, while her husband to be, a minor character in the drama,  Joseph the bewildered, stands outside the action  A law abiding man, he follows the rules. And since he was directed to return to Bethlehem for the big census. Just before they get to town Mary’s water broke, and he scrambles but the best he can come up with is temporary shelter in a barn.  And it was there amid the shit and straw, the smells and sounds, that this most holy of births occured,  the story became human, took on form and substance.  She could and did nurse the infant story, all he could do was wrap it in rags and lay it admiringly in a feeding trough. Ironies abound.  The male, symbol of potency in human history a hapless bystander, relegated to the sidelines.  This story is not his to control.

In another form the same characters appear, but the setting is different.  Again there is a census, again Mary is unmarried and expectant, and Joseph this time is more than bewildered, he is embarrassed and ashamed.  He dithers continually on the journey, trying to figure out about how to explain the situation to the censusman  A few miles from Bethlehem Mary goes into labour, and Joseph, now utterly embarrassed, finds a cave to hole up in – then he leaves the scene, goes ahead into town looking for a midwife.  He knocks on door after door until he finds one, but they return to find the Holy Child already born. He’d missed the whole thing.  Different tale, same story, same truth.

God’s own story became human, became us, broke into our own cycles of myths, contained and predictable, broke the spine of our narrative, and like our spiritual father, that bewildered hapless Joe, we emerge as but characters in God’s story. And in this story we live and move and have our being, we live out the narrative, we triumph, we fail, our faults undo us and grace restores us, we live the story scene by scene but we don't know the ending, we don't even understand all the nuances of the plot. 

We have entered again the season called “Coming” [why we would keep the Latin word "Advent" is a mystery – perhaps we prefer the obfuscation]…. But what exactly is it that is coming? 

That's the essential point of the season of Coming. We don’t know.  It is not ours to know.  We are characters not authors, it is ours to live page by page [and that is challenge enough]. As characters we can influence plot but not control it.  The wonder of the Christmas story is not that we tell it, but that it tells us, and in its telling we are again born a divine-banal hybrid, wrapped in rags by our own ineptitude, yet held and nursed by radiance, so that once again, refreshed and awakened, we can wander forward into whatever it is that happens next.

[btw ...few more advent meditations of mine from the dusty nether regions of the past:  prayer of Mary the refugee , Advent Reflection 2:  Mary. and Advent Reflection 3: Bethlehem.  More advent stuff on other  shelves in the Back Room too ]

note to coalition

think next time.... think it through. this wasn't the best time to express glee, Jack.  And what, there are no liberal who can focus a camcorder?  this wasn't the best time to be out of focus, Stephane. . .

now I am going to go back to what is an admittedly new psychological fixation for me, america-envy.

Most of its political, most of its rational, this envy, but some of it is just plain emotional ... here's at least part of the reason why - 2 fathers, 2 sons.

   

coalescing out of inertia

Haven't had much heart for blogging for some time - though I gather from other folk this this malaise is common enough, sometimes overcome, sometimes not.  But then along comes the coalition.  And suddenly Canadian politics isn't dull anymore.  And, perhaps, we may not have to take over from Americans the task of feeling embarrassed by our national leader. So, for my Irish readers [among the few faithful readers of this blog, there's a few in Ireland who keep returning] - Canada is, like most other commonwealth nations, a parliamentary democracy in the British tradition - with the Queens rep [our Governor General, the well-liked and, fortunately, highly intelligent Michaëlle Jean ]  We have evolved/devolved into a 5 party state.  The Conservatives recently won once again as a minority government.  

Not exactly your warm and fuzzy kinda guy [blue sweater notwithstanding] the PM Harper rather than simply having a ceremonial kick off to the coming parliamentary season, thought he would kick a number of balls at once, and the leaders of the opposition parties rather than simply squirming fought back. They fought back by proposing a coalition government.  This is not unusual in multi-party states but our system has been so influenced by US politics that even Harper talks about 'being elected Prime Minister' - we don't elect Prime Ministers, we elect governments.  And if no one party has a true majority some kind of coalition, formal or informal, will be necessary in order to keep the confidence of the house.  Usually our PMs, when in minority situations, are accommodating - that's how we got medicare in 1966.  By refusing to do this, Harper really brought this whole situation on himself. Thinking the Liberals were weak and essentially leaderless, they'd be in no position to challenge him.  And the Bloc and NDP wouldn't have enough votes to harm him.  Ooops.  

Now they're up in arms, saying that this is usurping democracy, that a madcap group of socialists are trying to take over, ignoring the electoral process, refusing to recognize the will of the people as expressed in the last election. Mmmh? The conservatives received the support of just over 1/3 of voters.  The coalition [not including the Greens] represent about 55% of the votes.  About 60% with the Greens.  So quite clearly they represent the majority of Canadians.  This is democracy.  This is how parliamentary systems work.A Prime Minister can remain PM only as long as he has the confidence of the house [i.e. the support of the majority of members of the House of Commons] - when he loses a vote of confidence he is obliged to resign. 

What is really frightening is the kind of loose, dangerous rhetoric the Conservatives are employing [talking incessantly about treason and 'joining with the separatists'], and their inflammation of the right wing, the citizens of Adler Nation who are talking about this being a coup led by 2 communists and a socialist. . .  

Our national media could do us all a great deal of good if they would run stories about our parliamentary system, explaining it [most of us don't understand it] - and offering stories about coalition governments - how they work/don't work and why.  Far better than streeters offering opinions of folk who have far too little understanding of our own system of government.  

All the same, at least it's interesting once again to live in Canada.

Here's an interesting link on the 62% majority who didn't vote for Harper