Tuesday, February 21, 2006

Aileen took the test!

Aileen took the test...are we surprised at the result? I'm just glad Kermit and Fozzy get along. And I'm glad she's not Miss Piggy.

You Are Kermit

Hi, ho! Lovable and friendly, you get along well with everyone you know.
You're a big thinker, and sometimes you over think life's problems.
Don't worry - everyone know's it's not easy being green.
Just remember, time's fun when you're having flies!

Thursday, February 16, 2006

I've Heard of manna, but this is ridiculous

I’ve heard of manna, but this is ridiculous.

There we were sitting in our living room having a great visit talking about church planting with some great friends, Paul and Wanda and Anne-Charlotte to be exact, when suddenly – WHUMPH – there was this unmistakable loud sound of something rather large striking our living room window. So I hesitantly opened the patio door and looked out on our balcony, and lo and behold, there was what turned out to be a loaf of some kind of raisin bread in smattered across the cement. You could see the grease mark where it had hit the window. It was a surreal moment.

This begs the question: why did this loaf land on our balcony? What did we do to incur the wrath of this pastry? And last, but not least, where did this loaf launch from?

There are several obvious possibilities:

1. This loaf is actually a landing craft for some alien being that lives or travel through space, in dough, and the dough cooked into bread upon entering our atmosphere. What we thought were raisins were actually the fried remains of these extra-terrestrial creatures that had come to invade earth.

2. An Air Canada passenger, tired of poor in-flight service and lousy airline food threw his dinner portion out the window of the aircraft, thus causing the load to fall on to our balcony. This person must have been a cleaver fellow because I’ve never been able to figure out how to get the windows on those planes to roll down.

3. A commuting crow from Burnaby was flying home from work in the west end with a large morsel of bread and either lost his grip on it, or was attacked in mid-flight by another jealous and ravenously hungry crow, and ended up loosing his lunch on our balcony. Oh well, at least that is better than what they usually drop on our balcony…

4. A neighbor on one of the upper floors of the Taylor tower was baking and the raisin loaf she / he made was stuck to the pan. In their struggle to release the loaf, they inadvertently lost their grip on it and it went sailing across their kitchen, out their patio door, over their balcony railing, falling across Taylor Street and landed – WHUMPH – on our balcony. An alternate scenario is that after tasting their loaf they thought they could dispose of it by throwing it at us. Or maybe it was some kind of gift…

If you have ever had a loaf land suddenly – WHUMPH – on your balcony, or indeed, any incident similar to this, like a loaf of whole wheat, or even a muffin of sorts, I would love to hear about it. Perhaps you have heard of this kind of event, or have a logical explanation that I haven’t thought of yet, I would like to hear out it. Please enter your comments and let me know.

Wednesday, February 15, 2006

Which Muppet are You? Part II


Okay, so Paul inspired me to bare my soul and share the intimate secrets of my life. I too have taken The Muppet Personality Test. I was shocked and shagrined at the results! Could this explain my life-long preplexity at people's response (or lack there of) to my humor?

You Are Fozzie Bear

"Wocka! Wocka!"You're the life of the party, and you love making people crack up.If only your routine didn't always bomb!You may find more groans than laughs, but always keep the jokes coming.

Sunday, February 12, 2006

The Third Place

At RE MIX with Mike Frost last month, he referred to an interesting sociological concept called "the third place". According to Ray Oldenburg, an American sociologist who coined this term in his book The Great Good Place, third places are "distinctive informal gathering places”. The first place is home, the place of the domestic. The second place is work, or the place of production. The third place is where people can regularly go to take it easy and connect with friends, neighbors, and just whoever shows up. It is the social place. The subtitle of Oldenburg’s book says it all: "Cafes, Coffee Shops, Community Centers, Beauty Parlors, General Stores, Bars, Hangouts and How They Get You Through the Day."

Oldenburg’s point is that these third places are vital to healthy society, and suburbanization of North America has really destroyed the opportunity for the development of and regular involvement in these community forming venues. Frost’s point was that not only are cities loosing their third places, but as missional Christians, we are not taking advantage of these places to connect with others and engage in meaningful conversation. Too often the Christian’s replacement for the third place becomes the church or other ‘Christian’ spaces that further our withdrawal from the world, rather than our engagement with it. But to live this way is not acting as ‘sent ones.’

So what has this got to do with us? Well, one of the things that makes downtown Vancouver special is the purposeful encouragement of third places. Larry Beasley, the planning guru for the city of Vancouver has stated that the goal of neighborhoods like the one we live in is to make the sidewalks of the community the living room of the community. I think this is why a sidewalk cafĂ© can be a great missional place. People have an innate desire to connect in this way, the city is eager to see these places develop, and as a Christian, what better place could there be to engage my community in meaningful conversation in an environment they accept, enjoy and appreciate? That’s why I’m dying for Paul and Wanda to start their coffee shop across the street from my home.

Saturday, February 11, 2006

Hunger Pains

"We excel at making a living but often fail at making a life.
We celebrate our prosperity but yearn for purpose.
We cherish our freedom but long for connection.
In an age of plenty, we feel spiritual hunger."
~ David G Myers

Friday, February 10, 2006

Olympics


Favorite Olympic events:

1. Men's Hockey
2. Free Style Skiing
3. Alpine Skiing

Don't make me watch:

1. Figureskating
2. Sliding Events
3. IOC Press Conferences

Living In Paradise




Okay, so I was whining a bit about the weather. Well, things have changed. The above picture was taken on my way home from work tonight. It's the 2 Road bridge in Richmond, looking west down the middle arm of the Fraser over Georgia Straight to the mountains on Vancouver Island. Wow, what a beautiful sight. (The new Olympic Speed Skating Oval is under construction just off camera to the right, for you Olympic buffs.)

As I was talking to my sister Darla in Saskatchewan this week, and her comment weather wise was "Yeah, it may be wet on the coast, but when it does quit raining, you've got instant summer. When it quits snowing here, we've got 3 weeks of mud."

Then there was Jer Postal reminding me that if you can't stand the rain, head for the mountains and enjoy the piles of powder. (Okay Jer, you made me jealous...)

Yup, a little perspective always helps.

Sunday, February 05, 2006

Stephen Harper just can't quit his inner-Evangelical


Here's a great article by David Haskell. You can see the original here. The title caught me - I must admit I was pleasantly surprised...

Stephen Harper just can't quit his inner-Evangelical
Feb. 4, 2006. 01:00 AM
DAVID HASKELL
GUEST COLUMN

Stephen Harper, our newest Prime Minister, is an evangelical Christian. Over the course of the election campaign, certain media outlets, Liberal Party supporters, and members of Canada's intelligentsia have suggested that that makes him different from the rest of us ... us being "average Canadians."

Let me make this perfectly clear (I stole that line from Paul Martin), Harper's faith does make him different, but not in the ways his detractors are suggesting.

As an evangelical, Harper is a strong supporter of traditional marriage but that hardly put him at odds with "average Canadians;" if anything it lumps him in with the majority. Consider this: a poll conduct last year for CBC News found that more than half of Canadians, 52 per cent, said they disagreed with the Liberal government's plan to change the definition of marriage to include same-sex couples.

As an evangelical Harper probably supports some restrictions on abortion (I say probably, because he has never said so himself).

But again, this doesn't set him against most Canadians, it aligns him with them.
A 2004 Environics poll showed that more than two-thirds of the population wants greater restrictions on abortion. In fact, some experts feel that percentage would increase if more Canadians knew that we have no abortion legislation and as such a pregnancy can be terminated up to its final month.

Note that I said Harper, as an evangelical, might support restrictions but not a ban on abortion. I'm basing that on the empirical evidence. While nearly 100 per cent of Canadian evangelicals find abortion morally offensive, research done by sociologist Sam Reimer shows that only about 28 per cent think the procedure should be outlawed. Interestingly, a 2005 Environics poll shows a similar percentage of "average Canadians" are of the same mind as "hard-line" evangelicals believing that "life should be protected from conception."

How do we know that Harper isn't one of the evangelical hard-liners gunning for abolition of abortion? Well, as it says in the Gospel of Matthew: "By their fruits you shall know them."

Harper's track record shows that he's always been a moderate conservative when it comes to social issues.

Read any of the policy or position papers written by Harper from the time he was a grad student at the University of Calgary, to his days as a Reform Party MP, to his stint as head of the National Citizens' Coalition and you will be surprised to find that the only time he talks at length about values is when he is discussing the value of the dollar and how to maximize its potential. Conservative social values, while I'm sure they are important to him, are not what get his motor revved.

People often forget (or perhaps in the case of his Liberal opponents, they choose to ignore) that Harper quit as a Reform MP because his party colleagues often made social issues, and not economic and political reform, their primary focus. After his resignation a report in the Toronto Star referred to Harper as a "moderate." Yes, Canada's national voice of the left, called him a moderate.

While the values stemming from Harper's evangelical faith may seem extreme relative to the values held by national media personnel, Liberal Party insiders and those in ivory towers; relative to the values held by a majority of Canadians they appear pretty mainstream.

But as I said at the outset, in some ways Harper's faith does make him different from the rest of it. Specifically, if Harper is a typical evangelical then chances are he is more prone to be honest than the population-at-large.

Research, also done by Reimer, has determined that because Canadian evangelicals see honesty, fidelity and charity as categorical imperatives and not situational options they tend to show more continuity between what they say and what they do. In the vernacular of evangelicals: if they talk the talk, they walk the walk.

The implications of these findings are staggering: it could mean that for the first time in decades Canadians might have a Prime Minister who doesn't lie to them.

Skeptical? I understand. It may be easy for evangelicals, but for the rest of us ... it's hard to believe in miracles.

David Haskell teaches journalism at the Brantford campus of Wilfrid Laurier University.

Wednesday, February 01, 2006

Tellin' it like it is...


A tourist arrives in Vancouver on a rainy day. He gets up the next morning and it's still raining. In fact, it's still raining three days later. He goes out to supper and spies a young kid. Out of despair, he asks, "Hey kid, does it ever stop raining around here?" The kid says, "How do I know? I'm only six."

Ain't No Sunshine

Ain’t No Sunshine. Oh rain, rain go away! Come back in…August. We might have dried out by then. I mean, I love Vancouver, and I don’t mind stepping out into a drizzle, but since the middled of December when it all kind of started it has gotten ridiculous. We’ve been in Vancouver for seven years now, and have never thought about building an ark until now. Or maybe booking a vacation to some sun destination…like Calgary. (C’mon…that’s why they call it Sunny Alberta.)

For some dumb reason I was a little disappointed when we fell short of passing the record for consecutive days of rain earlier this month. I think it was that if we had to put up with this liquid, sunless misery, we might at least have something to brag about. Maybe we could buy T-shirts with “I survived the winter monsoon of ’06” emblazoned on them in a dull grey color.

But all is not lost. As it turns out there were only two days out of 31 in January when rain didn't fall at some point -- more days of rain than any other month in the city's history, and in that time 283.6 mm of precipitation fell, beating the old record of 281.8 mm, set in 1992. I guess I could put that on a T-shirt. It would just have to be a big T-shirt.

So now everyone in the city has an excuse for being grumpy. And moldy.

Signing off from a sodden mess.