Rent-A-Ride

On Palm Sunday, there's one thing I always wonder about: who is that man with the donkey?

I mean, if some dude came up to me and said, "Hey, my master needs to borrow your ride," would I hand over the reigns without any hesitation? Would I think for a while and then hand them over anyway? Or would I laugh in the crazy-person's face and make sure the knot tying the donkey up was extra secure?

If I had a car, and someone I didn't know asked me to give them the keys so they could borrow it for a rowdy parade, would I do it?

That's certainly what the donkey man did.

Now I know the theory that Jesus set the whole thing up in advance, just like how he set up Passover digs using a man with a jug on his head. It's a good theory that the donkey man knew Jesus was going to borrow his donkey in advance. Maybe Jesus even paid for it. It's a good theory because Jesus wasn't leaving anything about this crucial time to chance.

But I still wonder about it.

What if the donkey man was really a stranger, the God-given fulfillment to a prophesy? The Virgin Mary fulfilled such a prophesy, and she had free choice about it, so it stands to reason the donkey man would have, too. Somehow, I don't envision the angel Gabriel appearing to him and saying, "Lo, there shall come unto thee a disciple whom thou knowest not, asking thee for the use of thy donkey, the foal of an ass; and thou shalt give him thy donkey, for on it shall be riding the Messiah, the Son of God."

Yet he decided to hand it over, whether for money or otherwise.

How well did he know Jesus, anyway, if he wasn't recognized? If he did agree to loan the donkey in return for a price, how could he have known he'd get it back? A donkey is really expensive - those things are a person's livelihood. I doubt Jesus could have afforded to buy one. Whether the man was getting paid for the loan or not, whether this was planned or spontaneous, he was taking an awful risk.

He must have had a great deal of trust in Jesus.

I wonder if I would have had the trust to hand over my donkey to him? I'm not sure. Although I've spent much of my life as a practicing Christian, I'd probably be so afraid of what might happen to it that I'd refuse. A donkey isn't something I could afford to lose. It makes me feel ashamed to admit it, but I know that it's true.

But that man, that man two-thousand years ago, handed his donkey over. I don't know what he was thinking or feeling. I don't know why he agreed. What I do know is that he, and so many others like him, made it possible for Jesus to do what he did. Their support in small yet tangible ways allowed Jesus to make his way into the city as the Messiah, allowed him to eat a meal with his disciples in an upper room, allowed him to be executed in the most brutal way the Romans could imagine.

Whatever his reasons for helping Jesus accomplish his Passion, the donkey man, and others like him, did so without understanding what it meant. He didn't know that this would be a burden so terrible Jesus would ask that it be taken from him. And he didn't know that Jesus' death and resurrection would be for the salvation of the world. He didn't understand or know what we understand and know, but he helped Jesus anyway, trusted him in ways that would be beyond most of us.

And we don't even know his name.

And Then There Were Four

I went to a lecture yesterday entitled "The Beatles and the Gospels," or something like that. It was held at the office of the Archdiocese of Montreal across from the Roman Catholic seminary - easy enough building to locate once you've ruled out the Masonic temple.

Something like 1/4 of participants came from 'our' parish: there were jokes (on our side) that we were infiltrating our sister diocese as spies. Haha, St. Jerome is taking over! It was kind of bizzare to be the only 'Anglican' there, especially given the location. (not that I'm a 'real' Anglican, either...I guess I'm technically non-denominational.)

Anyway, the basic premise was that you can match the four gospels up with the four Beatles.

Mark doesn't mince words, is the shortest, the oldest, and is political. Also, in its original incarnation it ends with the word "afraid." We paired this gospel up with Ringo because he had a limited vocal range, was the oldest, the shortest and accidentally used malapropisms that ended up becoming important.

Mathew starts with a geneology, is most Jewish, is the strictest, emphasizes law the most but also has some cool saying about lilies and sparrows (for examples, see the Bible). This one was paired with George. He was the 'baby' and was quiet, spiritual and very disciplined. The thing about discipline is what cinched it.

Luke is the only gospel to have a sequel (that we know of), is full of payer and the Holy Spirit, is social-justice oriented and is the most civilized, in the sense that it understands social communities. Luke got paired with Paul, who was the cute one, political and sophisticated, had a good second career (i.e. sequel) and who tried to keep in touch with the others.

The final gospel, John, has a weirdo beginning, lots of "I am" statements, is metaphysical and can be read on two levels. John was paired with...you guessed it: John. John was arrogant, visionary, cerebral and abstract, sarcastic, competitive, and tended to inverse meaning. He thought he was the leader.

Since two hours is a really short time, the whole exercise was fairly superficial. But I still think it's good to try and look at these familiar texts from an unexpected angle, because it's jarring enough that it might just shake something loose.

What I need to do now is listen to Beatles music, since I've only ever heard, like, five songs. Maybe I'll understand the exercise better if I actually know what we're talking about, eh?

New Life

Things I've experienced recently have really enlightened me to the fact that new life is not confined to the Easter season. Renewal and newness are also here in Lent, in the journey to the Cross, in the going from one place to another. In general, I'd say that new things in life rarely happen while one is standing still.

In terms of my church life, I started going to a new congregation last year in Lent, where the people are great but the style of liturgy isn't one I'm used to. I'm not comfortable in the liturgy. At all. Ultimately, I think that this is allowing me to stretch my way of thinking as I get more comfortable with being uncomfortable.

The feast of the Annunciation will mark exactly one year since I started receiving Eucharist in the Anglican church. Eucharist still makes me uncomfortable, I admit it. But I'm not nearly as obsessed by guilt and sin as I was last Lent when I wasn't receiving Eucharist. There's a newness here for me because my whole experience of Lent has changed. Obviously, communion in Christ's body makes me a happier, more stable person, which I think is fairly theologically sound.

All of this is nice reflection, I'm sure. But what really brought home to me that the power of newness infuses Lent as much as any other liturgical season was my visit with my friend yesterday. I felt baby Raphaël moving in her belly and it was FANTASTIC!!!!! I'd use the 'A' word right now, except that I ranted about it a few posts ago and that would make me kind of a hypocrite.

I feel all warm and happy right now. Getting to feel this miracle reminds me that there's no time when God is not making new life, that there is no joy God can't give, and that there's nothing that can overcome the sheer power of human life - not even death on the Cross, not even the journey through darkness, not anything.

For more reflections on newness, feel free to read: http://allsaints-twomountains.blogspot.com/2010/03/all-things-new.html

Our God Is An Awesome God!

Sitting around after Friday morning Eucharist-and-breakfast today, my friends were talking about their future ordinations. One of them -- who happens to be, like, one of the nicest and best people I've ever met -- was saying that he thinks there will be objections at his oridnation. That, in itself, is a discussion for another time and place, and I won't demean it by putting it here in the context of a blog.

They both agreed a good post-objection hymn would be "Shine Jesus Shine," which I've never actually heard before, though the title is familiar. My friend found it on YouTube and played it on his computer for us. Very Praise and Worshipy: I love it!

It got me thinking about how much I like that style of music: something about it just resonates with me in a very satisfying way. As we played more songs on YouTube, was thrilled to recognize many of them, and to know them well enough that I could sing along.

I like that this music is written in a way that encourages congregations to sing. The melodies are simple enough, and the music is usually written in a key that can be comfortably reached by the normal human voice (unlike much traditonal music: the definition of a hymn is a song sung at least two octaves higher than the congregation's vocal range).

I like that these songs allow me to express emotion when I'm singing them, to play around a little bit and make them my own. I like the passion, the involvement. It makes me wish that I got to sing these songs more often!

I know that some people have problems with this kind of contemporary Christian music, maybe because they feel it's irreverent, or maybe just because the sound is different from the classics they grew up hearing. I'm not saying that we should throw away the classics: by no means! I love that music, too. I just think that praise and worship music can be a breath of fresh air, and we shouldn't dismiss it too easily.

Our God is an awesome God! He reigns from heaven above, with wisdom, power and love, our God is an awesome God!

Sing it out now!


{in other news, I just found out that my church (Anglican) is going to let me preach on the first Sunday after Easter. WOOT!!! Anyway, that's the plan for now. I'm both terrified and really excited. This should be memorable: what a blessing for me!}

A.......! It's Still Lent!

[note to the reader: the virtue of Christian charity has temporarily left me due to the vices of annoyance and criticism, otherwise known as liturgical wrath]

Today I went to the Tri-Wizard Tournament, which is of course a worship gathering of the three theological colleges wherein we compete to see who can be most creative with the order of service while still maintaining a semblance of tradition and decorum.

Today’s theme was “When in Our Music God is Glorified: a celebration in music and praise.” The idea was great, actually: that there would be a service crafted around the singing of hymns all centered around the theme presented in the first hymn, whose refrains were sprinkled throughout the order of service as a structuring meditational aid, bringing you always back to the main message. A+ for actually crafting a service that looks like what it intends to celebrate.

Unfortunately, the first hymn was “When in Our Music God is Glorified,” whose refrain is “Hallelujah! Hallelujah!”…during Lent. I’m not sure if I was the only person who didn’t sing those words, since of course this word is supposed to disappear from the liturgy, since it’s Lent. In the pre-Vatican II rite, the omission of the word actually began on Septuagesima; do we have to go shortening that liturgical period even more by ignoring it entirely?

Because this was the first – the central – hymn, the whole order of service was sprinkled with reflection phrases saying “Hallelujah!,” which I admit sort-of ruined the mood for me.

Music is important to me. Liturgy is important to me. I feel like I’ve been horribly betrayed on both counts here. Ironically, the third verse of the song reads, “So has the church in liturgy and song, in faith and love, through centuries of wrong, borne witness to the truth in every tongue.” Um, hello? What exactly do liturgy and song witness to if not the birth, ministry, death, resurrection and ascension of Jesus Christ, each in their own season, following an ever-flowing rhythm? Today’s service feels something like being betrayed by Harry Potter – as if something so loyal and good were broken, leaving a trail of broken pieces that make it difficult to recapture that pure magic again.

The refrain of the closing hymn, “Go to the World,” reads, “Hallelujah! Hallelujah!” So the whole worship service, expressing our praise through song, is framed and filled with liturgically improper worship and praise. Wow. Nothing this total has ever happened to me before. Oh sure, sometimes people add “Alleluia” to the closing blessing during Lent (which also happened today, and which already pisses me off enough), but an entire service? Wow.

I admit that, during the blessing, I actually rolled my eyes. This probably makes me a bad Christian, since that’s not exactly worshipful, but I couldn’t help it. I think I may not actually have been in a frame of mind for any of the service to count as prayer. What with the disposition of the heart being important and all.

After the service, people actually clapped for the organist! Dear Lord, why would anyone clap after prayer? I’ve never seen anyone break into applause after evening prayer. This is probably because a) you were all praying together so you’re congratulating yourselves, which is weird, and b) because laudatory applause directed at a musician makes the whole thing seem like a show, put on either for you or for God Himself. Prayer is not a show. Nor is it to be congratulated. The ‘well done, good and faithful servant’ belongs to God alone to give. Prayer resides in the heart and, though expressed in music, liturgical gesture and word, is not composed of them.

After the clapping, I confess that I started to laugh. Couldn’t help myself, and actually it took a while for the feeling to subside. I still kind of feel it right now. My levity makes me feel strangely joyful about it all…perhaps my heartfelt mirth counts as prayer?

Or is my sin of pride / intolerance / wrath / annoyance / and criticism in dire need of repentance and reconciliation?

Only the great Tri-Wizard Cup can decide.

Flower Power

The January issue of Awake! (a Jehovah’s Witness magazine) uses the orchid as an example of Divine creation: surely such a flower testifies to the fact that God created the world, since it is clearly intelligently designed!

Well…what does intelligent design mean, anyway? Does it mean that God sat up in heaven drawing blueprints of flowers and then scattered the perfect little seeds? I dunno. If He did, then He must not have created everything at once: if all creation were simultaneous, we’d run into a little problem I like to call ‘the dinosaurs.’

So, every once in awhile God makes something new and then plunks it down on the earth fully developed. This causes a few problems, too. Among other things, it begs the question of why no one’s ever caught God with His hand in the cookie jar (so to speak).

Another intelligent design theory is the ever-popular Deism: God created the ‘stuff’ of everything and then sat back and let it evolve all by itself. The Clockmaker God, Newton’s God. This is a bit problematic, too. For one thing, there’s the question of whether He actually knew what all this stuff was going to turn into or was shooting in the dark. For another, it’s a bit odd that a hands-off God would do things like Divine Revelation and Redemption: shouldn’t everything just evolve to a perfect end all by itself?

The idea that God upholds creation by – oh, I don’t know – thinking the laws of physics is not particularly comforting. As it turns out, things like the speed of light haven’t always been constant. And if God, like, sneezes and loses concentration, will we all wake up with wings? (that would explain the angels)

Creationism and intelligent design are so mind-boggling that I’m tempted to ignore them altogether. The only problem is that I believe both that evolution is true and that the world is not the product of complete chance. Oh, I can believe that specific subspecies of orchids are totally random, since that doesn’t really change their ‘orchid-ness,’ or that the entire type of flower was just one possible outcome. The fact that they’re so delicate and complicated and beautiful, however, I think could only be true in a universe where God carefully watched over things as they took their own course, making sure that they could become what they are.

It’s the same with humans: why can’t we be both descended from apes and the special creations of God? A soul can’t be evolved because it’s supernatural, and only the natural can evolve. Nor can it be separated from the natural body and remain what it is – that’s why the final resurrection is embodied, so that the human person exists in wholeness. God wants us to be able to smell the flowers and see their beauty, not just to be able to contemplate them as intellectual objects from within some disembodied existence.

God created each and every one of us as human persons, knitting us together in our mothers’ wombs. But we also belong to this world. Anyway, it’s like everything that makes us not-apes – and everything that makes us apes – was able to happen because God nurtured and helped and made it possible, knowing what it is that He had created the world and everything in it to become. After all, aren’t our lives a mixture of precisely these two things: the self-direction of free will coming from inner growth, and the help of God that makes our actualization – our becoming who we are – possible? Our lives a collaboration between us and God in a world where we do not stand alone.

Lousy Smarch Weather

'Spring Break' (also known as reading week) came to an abrupt end with today's return to normal activities. Since I have no classes, the main effect on my life is that now my doctor's appointments start again, and I can look forward to spending an hour-and-a-half a week, give or take, exploring the ways in which various experiments are making me sick.

More depressing than thrilling, I think.

What I realized during Spring Break is that I am desperately lonely. Well, maybe that's an exaggeration. Just plain lonely, perhaps. This business of 'recovery' tends to be quite solitary: following an exercise program, sticking to a food plan that makes it difficult to eat what I want (plus, it's Lent; double bummer), a daily schedule that seems to take forever to get through because I'm always tired...all conducive to the lifestyle of a hermit.

If only refined sugar was still my real friend. *dejected sigh*

At least now I can get back to daily prayer. Which of course brings up the feeling of isolation inherent in spending the bulk of my social time with a group to which I don't really belong. I could just be feeling that way because the properties of my current treatment include depression, or it could be true. Ultimately, it doesn't matter, because the reality I'm stuck living in is the one generated by my brain. It complicates things that I'm often tired enough that I can't interact meaningfully with other people anyway. I feel like this isolates me even more, but it's something I can't break free of. If only people would talk to me anyways! If only the world was made of rainbows and butterflies! If only alarm clocks were made out of chocolate!...except in Lent.

I did get to hang out with one of my best friends last week though, and that was great! I am lucky that I have this kind of friends: the ones that love me back, that I know would hug me if I asked, who are full of joy and sunshine and happiness! I love you, and you're all totally amazing and awesome and probably the reason I'm still here (you know who you are)! Survival is easier when you don't have to do it alone.

I just don't get to see my friends very often, because they have lives. Hence the loneliness.

Well, winter sometimes has barren frigid blizzards that then shape up into snowmen and impressive ice sculptures.

And sometimes summer has bees.