Zoltar Sees a Talking Bridge in Your Future...

The picture to the left is from an article in Decision magazine entitled "The Future of Evangelism in Canada." If you blow up the left side of the picture ... what's that you see on the laptop screen? It's the Bridge Talk site! Booyah! We're living in the future baby!
No this is not photoshopped ... it's the future! (And if I was going to photoshop Bridge Talk into a publication, it'd be the New York Times, or Wired Magazine or The Dead Sea Scrolls).

I've gotta go now. I've gotta jump in my flying car and get to the grocery store to buy some meal-in-a-pills and some neural implants.

Click here to read the article (By the always inspired and future-friendly Milton Friesen)

Mr. T Muther R'spect.

Only the best for you mom ... and it doesn't get any better than Mr. T rapping!

E & K's First Soccer Practice

Fairy-tale in our Front Yard

It was "dress up as a fairy-tale character" day at preschool today.

The Golden Stars

Emily and Kaylee started T-ball/Soccer season tonight. They are on the U-6 Gold team. The first order of business for the team was picking a name. One kid suggested "The Golden Snowballs." Urinary allusions lost out and new names continued to be fielded. Emily suggested "The Golden Cinderellas." The coach and the three boys on the team refused to be Cinderellas. Then one kid suggested Golden Stars and all the kids jumped on it ... except Emily. She stood in front, smiled and stated firmly, "No. The Golden Cinderellas." Then she turned toward the coach with a bigger smile and a twinkle in her eye and pleaded, "the Golden Cinderellas?" She lost out. But she recovered quickly.

After some warm-up chase-the-coach and simon-says-stretching-games, T-ball began. T-ball for four to six year olds involves the ball randomly being thrown around the field, blind batting as the too-big helmet droops over kids faces, children running toward whatever base they feel like, fielders throwing toward home (or a tree, or mom, or straight up in the air) and mid-game spontaneous sand castle building in the red-rock of the infield.

It is way more entertaining to watch than real baseball.















*** In the photos, Emily is in purple pants, Kaylee is in blue. Click 'em to see full size pics. ***

How to Fix a Hole in the Chest with a Stoner Story

I've been busy. And stressed. STRESSED. Rationally, I know everything is Ok & will eventually become even more Ok. But for the past couple of months, due to a confluence of time, money and life-force-consuming difficulties on the personal, financial, business and professional fronts, I have ended up in a perpetual state of stress.

I have two very simple diagnostics that usually tell me I'm near my top-stress level:

*
1. I feel an "absence" in the middle of my chest. An uncomfortable hollowness in the centre of my physical being. It ebbs and flows a bit ... but never fully leaves me. Last week it was omnipresent. This week it's just popped up intermittently.







2. I don't blog when I'm stressed. I blog when I have time. I even blog a little when I'm busy. But when I'm busy and stressed I simply don't blog (as evidenced by the two month gap in entries in this blog). Stress sucks up creative resources, personal reflections and other layers of being that add to life's abundance. These layers are the things that inspire me to blog, and they get sucked dry by stress.

And yet, here I sit, chest-hole free and blogging my fingers raw. What gives? My little bro and his fiance gave: In this case they gave Stacey and I 20 hours of baby-sitting and a night in Canmore. Phewwww, Awwwwww, Yehawww etc.

And so, with four hours left in this day away, I leave you with two insights that have been meaningful stress-relievers to me:

1. When everything is laid bare, I realize that my stress is largely over "stuff." And "stuff" shouldn't be my concern. God provides enough "stuff" to live and care for my family. My personal status as provider is over-inflated and illusionary (See Jesus' take on birds and lilies and numb-skulls like me).

2. I honestly believe the gratitude, peace and hilarity of the following substance-induced story is possible even after the ganja's been swapped for a moment of solitary-confinement with the divine: Thankful Craigslist Pizza Stoner.


I think I'll buy my three girls flowers and order pizza tonight.



* Lego image from my friend Avi's wonder-filled blog Dark Roasted Blend.

Blog Slack

I may soon be dead due to burrying myself under too many sedimentary layers of slacking:

I logged into my blog here in an attempt to escape for a momenr from some Bridge Talk frustration involving my 8 year old, first generation DVcam. So now that I'm here, I'm officially slacking off from work. And what did I discover? Five posts that I've got saved in drafts but have slacked off from completing and posting! And now I'm writing this which is layer #3 of slackery (and actually could be layer #6 of slackery if viewed as follows):

- Layer 1: Caring for my children.

Slack from this (because they're currently at their grandma's) to:
- Layer 2: "Real" jobs that don't involve doing all the fun, weird stuff I get to do at my job, or the fun weird stuff I get to do as a partial-stay-at-home-dad.

Slack from this to:
- Layer 3: The personal investment/real estate interests I'm involved in that help me to keep my family afloat given the fiscal realities of layer 4 below.

Slack from this to:
- Layer 4: King's Bridge "work."

Slack from this to:
- Layer 5: My personal blog.

Slack from this to:
- Layer 6: This post which is an avoidance of completing the five personal posts that are waiting in the wings.

Someone please send an archeologist or paleontologist to dig me out (or put a ouji-phone call in to Satan to start pushing from below, cuz I'm so deep down that there must only be a few layers of soil left between me and hell).

Ooo ... phone's ringing .... back up to layer 4.

Jesus Email

Someone at Resonate pointed this vid out: It's great!

(Warning: If you already think I'm a heretic you'll hate this as much as you likely hate being forced to actually think about anything else you believe or the way you present your beliefs to those with different perspectives).

It very entertainingly presents an honest struggle many have with the Christian faith. I can think back on a number of conversations I've had in the past along these lines.

Epiphany

I like Epiphany. It may be because of my Anglican roots or perhaps it comes from a latent desire to extend the Christmas season; But on a deeper level I think it's because Epiphany is a theology-twisting, weird-God holy-day. It's the celebration of the revelation of Christ to the gentiles. Three mystical astrologers from other lands see a sign in the sky and follow it to find Christ ... how cool is that? These magical, non-Judea-Christian holy men hearing from God in their own cultural context, through their own spiritual practices, and ending up on their knees before the toddler Messiah? This seriously messes with formulaic Amero-Evangelical-McChristianity. Put that in your purpose-driven pipe and smoke it!

And so I present here two Epiphany award winners:

My first award goes to Izvoru, Romania, where villagers leave their Epiphany church service, have their horses splashed with holy water and then launch into a break-neck horse race (When Stacey hears of this, she may just try to bring this celebration to Canada).

My second award goes to Coptic Pope Shenouda III, seen here celebrating coptic Christmas (which is celebrated at Epiphany). Someone has got to give this guy the recognition he deserves for his Tommy Chong impression (The "insense" smoke surrounding him is a nice enhancement). Plus check the bling on this old dude! (Bonus points go to Shenouda for finding ways to be at peace with Muslims in his native Egypt, without compromising his faith. Bonus points go to Tommy Chong for going to High School in Calgary without red-necking out).

New Year, Old Rant.

A few months ago, I was asked if "cultural engagement" and "conversational ministry" are really very significant. The question was gently and sincerely put, yet the response I began to write somehow tapped into a deep well of both passion and frustration within me. After typing out a ranting initial response, I opted to send a shorter more moderate answer to the question. My initial response sat dormant and unsent on my computer until this morning. I stumbled upon it again as I prepared to write a chapter for an emerging church book I've been asked to contribute to. It struck me that this "rant" is an appropriate post to charge into the new year behind, so here it is:

I want to go with Paul in to the Aeropagus and say, “that unknown God you’ve commemorated … I think I know Him.”* I want to sit beside Jesus with the woman at the well, and not give a damn about how inappropriate, or culturally stretching, or uncomfortable it is, because she wants to talk about eternal things … and is going to meet Jesus because of it.** The Bible is filled with Christ in these contexts, yet we’ve managed in our Chritianized society to fabricate a tamed, easy, self-help and entertainment-oriented Christianity that looks nothing like the context of the early church. And at the same time our society is looking more and more like the society that infused, and surrounded and was engaged by the early church. Yet our response is to judge, and complain, and rail against the loss of the good ol’ days. We ought to throw out the Bible and start canonizing church bulletins as our new scriptures.

The church is coming out of a comfortable, dormant time in the western world, where we could sit in our comfortable pews, and hang out with our Christian friends, and buy stuff at Christian book stores, and rail against secularism; A time when it was impossible to be the President of the United States without being a Christian. And that time is fading, dying. Good riddance. Dig the grave deeper. We’re fat and lazy and afraid and judgemental and we reek of pharisaism.

“Engaging the culture” and “catalyzing conversation” and “building relationship” are nothing more than buzz words. A lot of comfort-oriented churches are doing the same thing they’ve always done, except that they’ve added a cappuccino machine at the back and movie clips in the sermon and now they say they’re exemplifying these buzz words. But the culture they're engaging is the Christian sub-culture; The conversations and relationships are with other Christians. The church walls are just as high as ever, they've just been painted a nice new colour. At their heart, if these buzz words are going to mean anything at all, then they have to be about loving people, and getting over ourselves, and not attempting to restrain Jesus; which is an illusion anyway, because the Jesus we can keep in a box under our bed is a fabrication of our own neediness; A fabrication that we use rather that follow. The real Jesus is out in the marketplace, in the sanctuaries of other religions, in the brothels, under the bridges, in the alley behind the glass office tower, in the foul-mouthed writers room, and everywhere in between.

I’m not interested in building a sub-culture, I’m interested in following Christ … the Christ who both enters and transcends culture.

* Acts 17:16-34

** John 4:1-29

Birthday-Christmas Season

I blew the dust off my facebook account. and tossed a whack of pictures up. Here are a few of 'em for those of you not inclined to book your face.

Remembering Allan.

Stacey has put together a memorial website for her father. It has the tribute video, Stacey and Shannon's eulogies and many comments from people who knew and loved Allan.

Near

Four years ago, Stacey and I were camped out in the hospital through the holiday season. Our new babies, Emily and Kaylee had to stay in the Special Care Nursery for ten days after they were born, and we stayed with them. One floor above us, Stacey's Uncle Kinley lay dying. And Christmas was right around the corner.

Now we find ourselves in the tensions of life and death again. Stacey's father has just died. Emily and Kaylee are about to celebrate their fourth birthday. And Christmas is right around the corner.

If Christmas is just about gifts, and a little bit of good will, it has little in it that speaks into times of loss and times of wonder. But if Christmas is about the incarnation, God walking among us, as one of us, God entering the human situation, then it has a lot to say. God is with us in our loss and our celebration. He weeps. He bleeds. He laughs. He is near.

And Christmas is right around the corner.

Remembering Allan.

Stacey's Father, Allan Smith, passed away just before 11pm on Monday night. Stacey and her sister Shannon were by his side. They have been by his side since he entered the hospital over six weeks ago. The three of them have spent countless hours together. And Allan was in very good spirits, right up to his final day.

Stacey has created a website in memory of her father. Over the days to come it will be added to. And you can add your memories and reflections to it as well by leaving a comment.

At the Lonely End of the Rink

I hear your voice ‘cross a frozen lake
a voice from the end of a leaf
saying, ‘you won’t die of a thousand fakes
or be beaten by the sweetest of dekes’
- The Tragically Hip.

I'm midway through the process of making a skating rink in our backyard. Emily and Kaylee are skating machines. Every day after pre-school we go slide around on the community rink, and I have to drag them off kicking and screaming. The only thing on their Christmas lists this year are "big kid skates." Kaylee's favourite story is about a little boy who loves hockey and builds a rink in his backyard. She is adamant that our rink be the right shape and have red and blue lines.

Beyond my girl's love of ice, there's a legacy-thing at the heart of flooding the back yard. My grandfather and namesake used to make a rink in the backyard for my mother and her siblings. Stacey's dad used to make one for her and her sister. And Stacey and I made one together a few months before we were married.

The first step was communal: Kaylee and I shoveled snow ridges and sprayed them down, while Emily acted as foreman overseeing us through the window, from behind a cup of hot chocolate.

Thanks in part to the warm weather, the latter steps have been solitary: wandering out into the darkness at 9 or 10 pm with a hose over my shoulder.

Something about standing in the darkness, listening to water flow, feeling the chill and reflecting on fathers now gone, fathers facing their last days and the fatherhood I find myself in the midst of feels right. Solid. It feels like a place I'm supposed to be.

Just don't laugh when you see how poorly I skate.

Morgan ... Uh Uh Uh.

Playing the president of the United States? Playing God? Driving Miss Daisy? No way. This clip is Morgan Freeman's greatest acting achievement.

Bad Vicar

I have a new career aspiration now (thanks Milton).

Holiday Magic?

We set up a real Christmas tree last night while the girls were sleeping. It filled the house with a nice pine smell. The girls awoke this morning and wandered into the living room whole Stacey and I eagerly awaited their excited little-kid reactions to the tree:

Emily was visibly pleased. Kaylee was too; Then she looked at the tree, sniffed a couple of times and said, "Why does it smell like an automatic toilet in here?"

Girly Man Man Man Man Man!

Mike Sutton "translates" music videos like the one above by subtitling in english words that sound like the words coming out of the singers mouth (in this case in Hindi) The results are hilariously weird. I just about fell over laughing at the video above. For more on this see this link to a Wired News article.

Bobbin'

No, the video below is not an expression of Stacey & my medieval child-discipline strategies.

Happy Halloween.