Mad Padre

"Millions of Human Cogs"" The Ethics of Apple Production and Addiction

2012-01-26T11:14:00.003-05:00

Color China Photo, via Associated Press
An explosion last May at a Foxconn factory in Chengdu, China, killed four people and injured 18. It built iPads.

This item below was the NYT's quotation of the day:

“If Apple was warned, and didn’t act, that’s reprehensible,” said Nicholas Ashford, a former chairman of the National Advisory Committee on Occupational Safety and Health, a group that advises the United States Labor Department. “But what’s morally repugnant in one country is accepted business practices in another, and companies take advantage of that.”

So in the last few weeks, while I've been pondering an iPad purchase, I've been following the media debate on why Apple doesn't have more product manufactured in the US. That debate, as you may recall, was focused by President Obama's asking Steve Jobs in February 2011 what it would take for Apple to make its insanely popular products in the US, given that almost all are produced overseas, and many in China. Jobs' response, according to one person who was present that night, was "Those jobs aren't coming back".

Perhaps it was optimistic to expect that traditional high-paying, middle-class creating jobs could be restored to our economy. As this graphic explains, only a tenth of US workers are employed in manufacturing, vs 6 out of 7 in the service and retail sector. I suspect that Canada would be similar if one took the resource sector jobs out of the equation and just looked at manufacturing vs service/retail.

But in China, where the bulk of Apple's manfacturing is done, the jobs created there are not the traditional commute to the plant from your suburban home kind of job that the baby boom generation in North America enjoyed. As Charles Duhigg and Keith Bradsher explained in the NYT last week, Apple's success story in getting products to market assumes that you can turn 8 thousand workers out of a dormitory in the middle of the night, give them a cup of tea and a biscuit, and then put them on an assembly line for twelve hours to implement whatever change the iPhone design team has thought up.

And its not just workers warehoused in barrack blocks that makes China attractive for companies like Apple that want agile, turn-on-a-dime manufacturing. It's also tens of thousands of qualified engineers to manage and guide that assembly work, many of whom hold degrees at western universities who accept foreign students en masse because they need the tuition income and because US and Canadian kids aren't applying in sufficient numbers to keep those universities open. And the answer to that problem is downstream somewhere in the education system and in homes that don't value education. But that's another story and I digress.

Over Christmas I tried reading Thomas Friedman and Michael Mandelbaum's "That Used to Be Us", a book which begins with a comparison of glittering infrastructure in Chinese cities that have seemingly been built overnight, versus decaying subway stations in US cities that never seem to be repaired. Friedman's tone was recently lampooned by Isaac Stone Fish in Foreign Policy as "Oh My God the Chinese Are Eating Our Lunch with Environmentally Friendly Chopsticks". Other reviews have been unkind, challenging Friedman's solution that millions of high paying green jobs can somehow be created in North America by "collective action".

I'm a little more generous to Friedman since he raises the challenge that we need to find our mojo, but I'm not sure that the answer is "Wow, look at China, we need to be like them because they are who we were". Turning workers out of barracks in the middle of the night sounds more like the gulag than Detroit in its heyday. Today the NYT ran a piece detailing the harsh and often unsafe conditions in factories making Apple product in China,which brings us back to the opening quotation by Nicholas Ashford as to the relativity behind safe working standards depending on what country you live in and buy from. Apple supplier factories in China have been known to employ underage workers, have appalling accidents with toxic chemicals, and occasionally explode.

Mind you, industrial sites here in Canada occasionally explode, leading to intense media scrutiny, regulatory investigations, and sometimes even improvements. The NYT is making the point that in China, this kind of scrutiny is less intense and less effective, and therefore the conditions under which the products we want so much are troubling.

The ethical question for us as consumers is, how troubling? If one is wealthy enough, as I am, to consider buying an iPad, then I am probably spared from the wholescale change that has wiped out millions of traditional jobs in North America. The problem is that those moved overseas, but for millions of overseas workers, the comfort, middle class lifestyle and safety regimes weren't also ported over from North America. And hence the ethical dilemma for those of us willing to think about it.

The NYT article on Chinese factory safety ended with this quotation:

"You can either manufacture in comfortable, worker-friendly factories, or you can reinvent the product every year, and make it better and faster and cheaper, which requires factories that seem harsh by American standards,” said a current Apple executive.

“And right now, customers care more about a new iPhone than working conditions in China.”

Is that Apple exec right about you and I?

New Data On Military Suicides

2012-01-24T09:59:00.004-05:00

I meant to post on this story last week when it appeared. The NYT reported on 19 Jan that the US Army has released statistics showing that 2011 suicides among active duty soldiers was at a record high of 164, up from 162 in 2009.

In 2008, the US Army suicide rate was 20 per 100,000, with a rate of 18 per 100,000 among a comparable civilian age demographic.

In 2010, the US Army said that 60% of suicides were committed by young soldiers in the first four years of their service. This figure challenges the perceived wisdom that one or multiple deployments may contribute to suicide, but it does not deny that PTSD and other results of deployment may increase suicide risk.

Military chaplains are well aware that young soldiers, especially in recruit and training prgrams, are at risk.

I am not aware of current data showing suicide rates in other western militaries, including the Canadian Forces.

The same NYT story also had the disturbing news that violent sexual crimes committed by active duty soldiers had increased by 30%, with half of the victims being women soldiers between the ages of 18 and 21. “'This is unacceptable,' Gen. Peter W. Chiarelli, the departing vice chief of staff of the Army, said at a news conference, referring to the jump in violent sex offenses. 'We have zero tolerance for this.' General Chiarelli said factors driving the increase in sex crimes were alcohol use and new barracks that offered more privacy. He said it was also possible that reporting of the offenses had increased."

The Temptations (and Dangers) of Drone Warfare

2012-01-24T09:37:00.004-05:00

In this piece in Sunday's NYT, Peter Singer makes some interesting and disturbing comments on the increasing use of unmanned aerial vehicles (UAVs), or drones, in US foreign policy.

By taking at-risk human aircrew out of the picture and replacing them with risk-free, remote operators of unmanned vehicles, Singer suggests that the US has removed "the last political barriers to war". Essentially, he is saying that it's easier to fight a war when you have no skin in the game. By transferring the prosecution of drone campaigns from the military to the CIA, legislators and presidents are spared the difficult decisions and sacrifices called for in committing military forces to war, as well as the public debate in rallying voters to a decision to go to war. While Singer supports "most" of the drone strikes, he raises good questions about their role in undermining democratic governments, which have always depended on the commitment of their citizens, even to the point of military service, in defending ther freedoms.

These questions will become especially pressing when other countries beside the US and its allies begin deploying and using UAVs as weapons in their own undeclared wars, as will happen sooner rather than later. As Singer notes, some fifty countries are pursuing this military capability. The logic of escalation may eventually have a restraining influence on the use of UAV weapons, which can currently be used with near impunity, but before we get to that point, it would be useful to have a discussion about the ethics, temptations, and dangers of these weapons.

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New Weapons for the Canadian Forces?

2012-01-20T19:56:00.003-05:00

New weapons in the war on stress and frayed nerves, perhaps. The Globe and Mail tweeted a story wondering why Canada's Department of National Defence needed to purchase 20,000 yellow rubber stress balls.

The Mop and Pail wondered if Canada's generals are worried about morale as the government prepares to announce job and funding cuts. Or perhaps they are preparing us to deal with the stressful news that one of our own has been arrested for spying.

Very funny. Hardee har har. Anyone who has ever worked a trade show booth knows that little toys like stress balls go like hotcakes, so no surprise there that recruiting, public affairs, and other outreach departments would want these.

Poor DND, is every procurement doomed to be controversial? This seems so Canadian, some how.

"Bullets, RPGs, and IEDs know no gender": Time for Female Combat Soldiers in All Militaries?

2012-01-19T11:30:00.002-05:00

The quotation in this post's title comes from Donna McAleer, author, West Point graduate, and former Army officer. Her piece on why the US military needs to allow women soldiers into combat roles is carried on Tom Ricks' blog and is worth reading.

Quick statistic from McAleer that I didn't know:

230,000 US women have engaged in combat operations in Iraq and Afghanistan

Women make up 15% of the US active duty force and 17% of active duty force officers, yet only 6% serve in senior leadership

McAleer's point is that in the 360 degree, asymetric modern battlefield, women soldiers can't help but find themselves outside the wire in combat situations, and so are fighting and dying alongside their male comrades. Abandoning the combat exclusion policy would recognize this fact and allow women soldiers to gain better entry into senior leadership, thus increasing the chances of getting the best minds around planning tables. A very convincing argument.

For the record, Canada, Israel, the Netherlands and Australia are among the militaries that now allow women into combat roles.

Military Picture of the Week

2012-01-16T23:56:00.004-05:00

This image of the Canadian flag by the Vimy war memorial, taken by Cpl Josée Girard, has been judged the winner of the 2011 Canadian Forces photography contest.

Selective Sex Abortion Debate Comes to Canada

2012-01-16T14:07:00.002-05:00

During my Sunday morning drive out to CFB Suffield on Dec 18 last year, I was listening to Michael Enright of CBC Radio's Sunday Morning talking with Canadian author Mara Hvistendahl about the phenomenon of selective-sex abortion or "consumer eugenics" in certain Asian and SE Asian countries.

You can hear that interview here:

Ms. Hvistendahl claims that as many as 160 million pregnancies of female fetuses have been terminated in those countries once their gender became known. The reasons for this practice include the greater prestige of having male children in these cultures. Living in Beijing for 11 years, Ms Hvistendahl began to notice that boys far exceeded girls everywhere she looked and that les to her research and book.

Ms Hvistendahl argues that medical technologies designed to male pregnancies safer are enabling the practice of gender selection, a practice that Western manufacturers of these technologies are quietly abetting.

I recalled this interview today after coming across this piece in The National Post.

In this article, Michael Viatteau reports on an article in The Canadian Medical Journal urging doctors to conceal the gender of a fetus from all pregnant women until 30 weeks. I do not know I'd the author the this journal article cites Ms Hvistendahl's book, nut he clearly has the same concerns about widespread gender imbalance as a result of this practice.

Besides worries about skewed demographics, it seems to me that a more pressing need for Canadians is that we have an ethical debate around prenatal sex selection. Is it a cultural practice that we should tolerate as an officially multicultural society? Is the practice protected under Canadian law, or, more specifically, lack of law governing abortion? Can we say that sex selection is part of a women's right to control her reproduction when the practice shows the hostility towards women within certain cultures in multicultural Canada?

Given the state of play on the abortion issue on Canada, I am not optimistic that we have any way of answering these questions .
MP+

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Feet Get Upper Hand in Forks vs Feet Debate

2012-01-12T08:18:00.002-05:00

This archived piece from the Globe and Mail website on the "Forks vs Feet" debate conducted at the U of Ottawa last May just spurred my resolve to run more in 2012. Executive summary: the more you run, the more calories you burn. Diet alone won't make you thinner. This may not be news, but I found it helpful.

Seen On The Late Afternoon Run

2012-01-09T23:35:00.000-05:00

Strangely warm temperatures and the blessed absence of snow and ice saw me out more often last week. While it seems like spring, the sun still sets on its winter schedule, and as I was coming back across the river and passing Medicine Hat city hall (an impressive glass structure), I liked the Christmas lights on the clock tower as it started to become luminous in the gathering dusk. The bare branches accent the piece, I think. Taken as always with my iphone camera.

Hats Off: A Genius

2012-01-09T13:35:00.003-05:00

Western military leaders and planners are no doubt adjusting to news, reported today by the New York Times, from the PRNK that their new leader, Kim Jung-On, is now officially a "military genius".

Becoming a military genius is certainly a very impressive achievement for a guy who is still in his 20s. I know lots of Canadian military in their 20s who are bright men and women, but not military geniuses, and unlike Kim, they serve in a military. I'm not even sure that "military genius" exists as a category on our military personnel evaluation forms. So all in all, very impressive. Bravo. I'm pretty sure that Napoleon and Hitler had to wait until at least early middle age for that accolade.

Still, I'm worried about young Kim peaking too early. After all, where do you go from "military genius"? Maybe "military super genius"? If so, then God help us all, because military super genius doubtless comes with some pretty amazing skills, such as melting enemy tanks with one's fiery gaze.

2011: My Year In Running

2012-01-07T15:13:00.003-05:00

Today I had the chance to check my 2011 run results as kept by Nike Plus.

Quick summary:

Kilometres run: 784 (523 in 2010)
Kilometres per week: 16 (11 in 2010)
Average Pace: 6.50 per km (8'19' in 2010)
Calories Burned: 69,358 (44,491 in 2010)
Average runs per week: 3
Fastest run: 5.11 per km
Longest run: 21.45km

2012 goals:
I said I would run a full marathon before I turn fifty. That leaves me until 14 November to meet that goal.

Improve my pace

Get to an average of 4 runs per week

Not wreck my knees

What's In A Name?

2012-01-01T06:00:00.000-05:00

A Sermon for the Feast of the Holy Name of Jesus

Preached at St. Barnabas Anglican Church, Medicine Hat, AB, 1 January 2012
Num 6:22-27, Ps 8, Phil 2:9-13, Luke 2:15-21

Our names, particularly our first or, as they were once commonly called, our Christian names, are powerful things. They mark as us individuals, and hint at the rich complexity that each of us carries within. They are the sign of intimate relationships with family, friends, and lovers. Sometimes they connect us to our ancestry if they are names that run in a family. They can morph into pet names or nicknames, known only to a few. To the rest of the world, whether its Canada Revenue or the cashier at Safeway, I may be “Mr. Peterson”, but to a relative few I am either Michael or Mike. I have to confess that I prefer it that way. I don’t want a stranger at the car dealership to start referring to me as “Mike” during a pitch, following the practice of many salespeople who seem trained to drop the prospect’s first name as often as humanly possible. That practice always annoys me because it is an unearned familiarity, but also it’s an abuse of the power that lies in our names. Our names have power, and we don’t give that power away to just anyone.

This Sunday is about the power that lines in names. In the liturgical calendar this Sunday, like Jesus, has several names. Sometimes it is referred to, rather unimaginatively, as “The First Sunday After Christmas” or, as some clergy call it, “Not Many People In Church Sunday”. In the old Prayer Book, whose 450th anniversary (that is, of the 1662 version) we celebrate in 2012, this Sunday is known as The Feast of the Circumcision of Christ. As we hear in today’s Gospel, Jesus, like all Jewish male infants (see Leviticus 12.3), receives his circumcision to mark him as one of the chosen people of Israel. A third name for this Sunday is TheFeast of the Holy Name of Jesus, because Jewish circumcision, like Christian baptism, is when children are given the names which mark them as individuals within their family. The scripture readings chosen today invite us to think about what the name of Jesus means, what our own names mean, and how the two are connected.

Through Advent and Christmas we have heard Jesus referred to in several ways. Isaiah prophesied that “a virgin shall conceive, and bear a son, and shall call his name Immanuel” (Is 7:4), and this prophecy is remembered in Matthew’s nativity story. . In Luke the angels who tell the shepherds about Jesus simply refer to Jesus by his titles, saying that Jesus will be “the Messiah”, the annointed one or Saviour. The Greek word for Messiah, “Christos”, has become linked to the name of Jesus so that “Jesus Christ” sometimes seems today like a proper name. In fact his proper name is singular, “Jesus”, and it is the name that the Angel Gabriel instructs Mary to call the child she has yet to conceive. In Matthew the angel explains to Joseph that the child Mary is carrying will be named Jesus, because the name, Jesus or as it was known then, “Yeshua”, means in Hebrew “he shall save his people from their sins” (Mt 1:21). So the etymology of Jesus’ name literally enacts the the meaning of his title, Messiah or Christ. Jesus is the one who will save his people, and, by extension, save us.

The name of Jesus is thus linked to his mission of salvation. It is a name that carries the full purposes and power of God the Father who sends Jesus to us. The name of Jesus is like no other name in the Bible, like no other name that we know. It is as this a name that has broken in to our reality from a higher realm, from the kingdom of God itself. It is a name that stands at the heart of the struggle between God’s purposes for life and light and all the forces of darkness that rage against that light. There are several hints in the Gospels that Jesus and his power are well known by demons, such as the one known as Legion who cries ‘What have you to do with me, Jesus, Son of the Most High God? “ (Luke 8:28) which has equivalents elsewhere (Mark 1:24, Matthew 8:30). I think one of our challenges as followers of Jesus is to recover our sense of the power of his name, as the most wonderful and potent word that we can call on in our times of need and darkness. This recovery means stripping off the layers of overfamiliarity, neglect, and scorn that our culture has encrusted the name with, so that once again we find the word “Jesus” to be this amazing gift of salvation that comes straight from God. Some of us, myself included, also need to recover our willngness to name Jesus without fear of embarrassment or giving offence to others. I recall attending a meeting of Synod in the Diocese of Huron where we all belted out that great Anglican hymn, “At the Name of Jesus”, and then debated reasons why we shouldn’t adopt a new plan for evangelism least we offend non-believers. I think we need to have more confidence in the name of Jesus.

One of the fears that came out at that Synod I mentioned was the feeing that we didn’t want to “shove our religion down people’s throats”, a very Anglican sentiment. Perhaps if we had paid more attention to the hymn we had just sung, “At the Name of Jesus”, based on Philippians 2, we would have realized that this fear is baseless. Paul writes that God the Father gives Jesus a name “that is above every name”, a name that has the power to make every knee on earth bend, but Paul also notes that there is nothing coercive or compulsory about the power of this name. The name of Jesus may be feared by demons, but it is also the name of the one who “emptied himself, taking the form of a slave” and who “humbled himself and became obedient to the point of death—even death on a cross” (Phil 2:5-8). The name of Jesus is the name of the one who came to serve and rescue humanity. It is the name that God gives to us not as a command for our submission, but rather gives to us as a blessing. In our first lesson, from Numbers, we hear the blessing that God gives to Aaron for the Israelites, a blessing that is much loved and used by Christians. The last part of that blessing is not usually heard, and it says “they shall put my name on the Israelites” (Num 6:27). I think that our epistle is a fulfulling of that passage, that the name of Jesus is likewise put on us as a blessing rather than as a burden, as that which connects us to the saving purposes of God.

Let me finish in a way that is less theological and more grounded, by asking you to think about your name. Take a moment to reflect on the origins and meaning of your name. Where did it come from? Why was it chosen for you? What does it mean – does it have its own etymology? If you’re not sure, a fun place to look is a website called behindthename.com. Now think about when your name was first used in your life as a follower of Jesus. In the old Prayer Book, the person being baptized is referred to either as “this Child” or “this thy Servant” until the climax of the service, when the priest says “Name this Child”. I love that moment in the liturgy because it’s then that the parents and godparents speak the name by which their child will be known as an individual, with all his hopes and dreams, for the rest of his or her life. And it’s that moment where God takes that person, and links that person with His own mighty and powerful and loving and generous name, when the priest says “I baptize you in the Name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Spriit. Amen”. It’s at that point that our particular, given name becomes our Christian name, and links us with the salvation of God through our earthly lives.

In the old Prayer Book, there was a service called the Office of Instruction which was a preparation for confirmation. It began with these questions put by the minister to the candidates.

Question: What is your Christian Name?
Answer: My Christian Name is ._______________.
Question: Who gave you this Name?
Answer: My Sponsors gave me this Name in Baptism: wherein I was made a member of Christ, the child of God, and an inheritor of the kingdom of heaven.

Those two questions and answers tell you all you need to know about the Name of Jesus. It is the name of God’s son. It is the name feared by demons. It is the name that was connected with your name at your baptism, in a bond so strong that it will bring you through life, through death, with bonds so strong at it will bring you to stand with Jesus, the one who saves his people. Amen.

Seen On The Morning Run

2011-12-25T00:06:00.004-05:00

Some runs are better than other ones, but even on the really good ones, when I've enjoyed being out and working out, I always enjoy seeing the front door of my house at the end. This was the view this morning of Christmas Eve, about 10:00am on a gorgeous and clear sunny day with our festively attired front stoop and some fresh snow on the mailbox garland. Consider this my Christmas card to all Mad Padre readers.

Luke and Linus: A Sermon for Christmas Eve

2011-12-24T23:46:00.002-05:00

A Sermon Preached at All Saints Anglican Church, Medicine Hat, AB
Christmas Eve, 2011

Lectionary Year B, Isaiah 9:2-7, Psalm 96, Titus 2:11-14, Luke 2:1-14 [15-20]

The hip and cool coffee retailer Starbucks (or “Tenbucks” for those of you who prefer the cheaper and more wholesome ambience of Tim Hortons, is very shrewd about its holiday marketing. As folks wait to place orders for their eggnog lattes, they can browse a small selection of music. The music, like the coffee, is usually very hip and cool, but at Christmas, praise be, Stabucks includes The Charlie Brown Christmas. Perhaps this selection is marketing aimed at nostalgic baby boomers like myself, who grew up with this cherished TV special. Perhaps its also aimed at hip, sophisticated types who will appreciate the jazz score by Vince Guaraldi. But it’s there, in Starbucks of all places, and it’s not called A Charlie Brown Holiday Special. It’s called A Charlie Brown Christmas. That in itself is so cool as to be practically miraculous, but not as miraculous as the story of the making of the little TV show that became an icon.

Back in 1965, in the slick, corporate America depicted in Mad Men, Charles Schulz and his business partner Bill Melendez had received a small amount of money to create a half hour TV Christmas special featuring characters from Schulz’s popular cartoon strip, Peanuts. The made the show on a shoestring budget and then went shopping for a netork sponsor and pitched the show to CBS. At first the network shied away from it. They didn’t like the child actor’s voices, the animation looked too primitive to them, and they didn’t think the jazz soundtrack would appeal to mainstream America. But most of all, the network suits were afraid of the Christian content. Not only did the Peanut’s gang sing “Hark the Herald Angels Sing” but Linus reads the whole nativity story from Luke, just as we heard it in tonight’s gospel. It took a last minute appeal by Melendez to personally sell the network president, who finally relented, even though he grumbled that airing the Peanuts special would mean preempting an episode of The Munsters.

The result was TV history. When it aired on CBS on December 9, 1965, the Peanuts Christmas special was seen by half of the households in the US. This show has become an icon, part of the memories and Christmas tradition of several generations. Today Canadian Tire and other retailers offer a Charlie Brown Christmas tree, and a DVD collectors edition is available at Starbucks. Something in that half hour show, so primitive by today’s production standards, has touched a deep chord of hunger and need in millions of people over 45 years, and the reason for that is, I believe, quite clear. I believe that the real magic in that show comes towards the end, when Linus finishes reading the Lukan nativity in the ancient King James language and says “That’s what Christmias is all about, Charlie Brown”. When we hear Linus says that, we know in our hearts that he’s right, he’s nailed it. Years later, when Charles Schulz described how he had to fight to keep the reading from Luke in the show, and he told how he said to his partners, "If we don't tell the true meaning of Christmas, who will?"

As Christians we have a pretty clear sense of what the true meaning of Christmas. At its heart is the idea of Emmanuel, the promise that God is with us. The birth of Jesus reminds us of God’s love and solidarity with us, of his refusal to be a distant, unknown and feared God. We may not understand or grasp all the majesty and mystery of God, but in Jesus we have a way of approaching and understanding God and, because God’s son chose to share our human condition, we know that God understands us as well. We also know that the birth of Jesus is connected to God’s desire to rescue us by taking on all aspects of the human condition, including the hatred, fear, violence, and greed that we call sin. That is the connection between Christmas and Easter that is expressed in the Magi’s gifts of frankinscence and myrrh, things associated with funerals and burials, because Christ is born to die for our sakes. Christmas is about our rescue from loneliness, darkness and death.

All of these themes are expressed in the Charlie Brown Christmas special. Think of Charlie Brown, plunged into darkness and despair by the cruelty and scorn of the people around him and by the soullessness and commercialism of a world that we only see at night. Then think of how Linus brings his friend out of this darkness through reminding him of Luke’s gospel story, helps bring Charlie Brown’s dying little scrap of a tree back to life, and reunites Charlie Brown with the other children, who are no longer scornful and cruel and have become gentle and loving. In his simple and brilliant way, Schultz uses the story of Charlie Brown to act out the themes of rescue, redemption and resurrection that are part and parcel of the gospel of the birth.

Tonight I’ve talked about stories that breath life and hope and magic into the world. The world of 1965 was different from the world of 2011 in many ways, and certainly far different from the world of Augustus and Quirinius that Luke takes us too. But in essence it was and is the same world. It was and is a world of darkness, a world made tired by fear and greed. But it was and is the world that God made and loved and loves today, the world that God’s son was born into and continues to be born into each and every Christmas It was and is a world that the light of Christ stubbornly comes to, whether in the flickering torches of the manger and the star from the east, or the flickering light of a 1965 TV show, or in the LED lights and displays of today, for across the years and to all of us “is born this day in the city of David a Saviour, who is the Messiah, the Lord”. Thanks be to God.

A Fantasy For Christmas Eve

2011-12-24T11:49:00.002-05:00

Five years ago I preached this sermon while I was in a rural parish in SW Ontario. After the service several folks gently accused me of ripping it off of someone like the CBC's Stewart MacLean, which I took as a compliment to the sermon if not to my character, since I had in fact written it. It was my first and to date only homiletic creative writing. I leave it to you to judge its merits, but to you, readers of Mad Padre, consider it a Christmas gift. Blessings to you all, and may you know God's love and sustaining presence in the new year. Michael

“For the grace of God has appeared, bringing salvation to all”. Titus 2:11

It’s dark when the sound wakes you. Not some polite “is anyone at home” tapping at the front door, but a loud urgent banging, as if someone’s trying to tell you that the house is on fire. The person at the door may be someone you’ve known all your life, or it may be a mere acquaintance, but the expression and a few urgent words are enough. You know that if you don’t go with this person, you will regret it for the rest of your life.

There may be a sleepy child and a protesting spouse that you have to wake and bundle up, or it may be that you’ve been alone in this house for far too many years. You struggle into coat and boots and follow the messenger into the cold night air, to where a vehicle sits running. Perhaps you slide onto the leather seats of a sleek import, or sit on the cracked vinyl of a muddy farm truck, smelling comfortably of wet dog and gun oil. You head off into the night.

A few folks have left their coloured lights on, but without the snow and in the damp night they seem pale and dim. For years you and your neighbors have hung lights and decorated for a time you’ve called the holidays, with only a vague sense of what it all means, and a nameless hope that somehow the lights and the gifts will keep the darkness at bay. Tonight this is hope is faint, and the town huddles into itself, surrounded by dark and wet fields, as if not even daring to dream.

You head into the dark tunnel of the night, and then your driver points to a something. At first it’s a glow glimpsed through the tree tops, but once you’re in open country you see it clearly through gaps in the scudding rain clouds. A comet or meteor, perhaps, hanging low in the sky, a clean, silvery glow, like running water sparkling on a sunny day. It’s like your dearest memory of seeing the northern lights when you were a kid, only purer and more magical, if that is possible. As you drive you feel a nameless sense of expectation.

You realize that you’re not alone on the road, even at this late hour. Other vehicles are heading in the same direction. You start to wonder what concession you’re on, because the landscape looks unfamiliar in the silvery night. Finally you pull off a gravel road into a deeply rutted farm laneway, and stop where the others are parking.

The ground is wet and the mud pulls at your boot as you make your way up the lane. You pass an old delivery truck bearing the name of a long defunct business, and a Chevy of a vintage normally seen at heritage shows. Others are walking with you now, and some are neighbours and you nod to them, but others are strangers, and some are adults you remember from when you were a kid, all walking with you up this laneway.

A small crowd has assembled in front of a barn that’s seen better days. You see people you know – Anne from curling and Joe from Lions and the couple who run the restaurant, and Mr. Olson, your schoolbus driver from long years ago. They’re mixed in with strangers in muttonchop whiskers and tight bun hairstyles you’ve seen in old pictures. An immigrant family in rough workclothes stands beside a group of First Nations people in deerskin and fur wraps. To one side is a small knot of olive-skinned, bearded men in thick homespun, carrying serviceable crooked sticks and one holding a young lamb, and beside them a homeless man in an old parka and some folks from the Crest Centre. All patiently wait their turn until, in ones and twos, they can enter the barn and look inside. Breaths mingle in the night air, but you notice that you’re not cold.

You watch those coming out of the barn, and each is different. Some are grinning and some look quiet and thoughtful, but all seem taller as they leave, and their faces are bright with some new inner glow. Then it’s your turn, and you push back a rough sheet of plastic and enter. Inside it’s fragrant with straw and warm animals. A single light bulb hanging from a wire reveals two strangers, a very young woman, and behind her an older man, his body hardened with work but his face gentle. Their newborn child is wrapped in clean horse blankets and cushioned amidst a pile of woolsacks and feed bags. Two barncats watch with glittering eyes, and a horse snuffles in the shadows.

You don’t wonder at why these people and this child are here, and not in some clean hospital. You only draw closer, holding your breath, until the mother smiles her permission at you and you find yourself kneeling in the clean straw. The child opens his eyes and looks at you, like no other person has ever looked at you before. You feel a great surge of release as the locks on the secret and shameful places of your soul open, and the iron doors of regret and long-nurtured anger open to the bright light of this child’s presence. You feel cleansed and scoured, your soul freed of its grime and cobwebs. You realize that you’re not alone, not left to suffer and doubt and fear. Somehow, you know that this child has come to serve, has come to keep company, has come to save.

As you stand and prepare to leave, the child holds your gaze a moment longer and you realize that this gift is not for you alone. It is for all those here with you, and for those in countless other places. You realize that this child is also present in nursing homes and small towns, in city shelters, in army camps, in hospitals and prisons and every place in between. He is here now, in this moment, and in all the times before and in all the times to come.

And so you leave this place, and turn back into the night. Outside in the farmyard and in the surrounding fields, the mud and the wet are gone, covered by snow that is whiter and cleaner than any dream of childhood winters. The dismal rain clouds are gone, and the sky is ablaze with stars, as if escorting that one silver light that still draws newcomers up the laneway. You and your companion make your way back to the car, walking with others. People are thoughtful and quiet, but you exchange looks with Ann and John and Mr. Olsen and the folks from the old pictures. You know now that the child loves all these people, and somehow all carry the marks of that love in their gentleness to one another.

Your companion head the car back down the laneway. Later you could never recall how long it took to get back to town, whether it was minutes or hours, but it was long enough for the stars to grow pale and for a golden sun to start climbing into the clear blue sky. Your last memory is singing the old carols together as you neared home, something about a little town where the hopes and fears of all the years have come together in this one night.

©Michael Peterson+ 2006

Back To The Summer: Adventure Training In The Rockies

2011-12-01T16:16:00.008-05:00

As the daily temperatures drop and winter approaches on icy feet, I find myself retreating into pleasant memories of this summer, including things I haven't managed to blog about yet.

In August I was lucky enough to get a spot on an Adventure Training trip to Alberta's Rocky Mountains, in the Kananaskis region. Adventure Training is army speak for going on a rather strenuous holiday at taxpayer's expense, so to you, the Canadian taxpayer, my thanks.

Our leader was Major Charlie McKnight, a qualified mountain warfare instructor who knows the Rockies as well as anyone, so we were in excellent hands. Three non-commissioned members, myself, and another officer signed on to do three peaks in three days, all of us thinking that mountains were kind of tall and steep, but not doubting we could do this thing. After all, the climbing we would be doing is called "scrambling", which is not technical climbing with ropes, pitons, and the like. Even so, it was more than a walk in the park. As the Major said several times in a jovial but serious way, "Pay attention to me, because mountains can kill you." We paid attention. It turned out to be one of the most rewarding and challenging things I've ever done.

Our first climb was a peak known as Windy Tower, an imposing looking slab of rock when seen from the parking lot. The first few kilometres were along an almost unforgiving forest trail that had me stopping and wheezing every few hundred metres. It only took us an hour on this trail to be thankful for the trekking poles we were instructed to bring. They proved invaluable in propelling us upwards.

Our lungs and body soon acclimated and within a few hours we had cleared the treeline. As we climbed, Spray Lake, a large and long lake beneath us, steadily grew smaller. As we neared the summit, we learned why the peak was named Windy Tower. Despite the warmth of the summer day we had felt earlier, on the summit we quickly broke out jackets and fleece vests, and I had to jam my hat firmly on my head to keep it from blowing away.

Resting and sheltering from the wind at the top of Windy Tower. Spray Lake lies beneath us.

Dave Williams admires the view from Windy Tower. I couldn't bring myself to accept his offer to sit beside him, it was too far down.

Me looking self-satisfied at the top of Windy Tower:

At the restaurant that night, the only part of me that didn't feel destroyed was my appetite. It was all I could do to shuffle to the barstool-type seat at our group's table, and the climb up exhausting, but the food (no beer or alcohol allowed) was heavenly. Then back to our spartan accomodations at Trail's End Camp near Cochrane, AB, at the facility the British army uses for adventure training and kindly leant to us.

Our goal the next day was The Fortress, near Canmore, AB. At 9,843 ft or 3000m, it ranks as the 262nd highest mountain in Canada.

Our approach route had to be improvised at the last minute by Major McKnight, since the path he had wanted to take was closed due to bear activity. He found us a route that followed a logging road for several kilometres, then took us along a forest path that skirted several avalanche routes. The Major pointed out several places where recent avalanches had damaged and carried away trees. Seeing a massive tree trunk smashed to kindling made me respect what an avalanche can do.

Between the treeling and the base of the summit, we had to navigate two short cliffs, called headwalls. After struggling up them on paths that sometimes seemed vertical, we were greeted by wondrous sights, two small hanging valleys, each with a waterfall-fed lake. This one, as I recall, was stocked with fish for any hardy angler that might lug a pole up to it.

Me looking tired but still self-satisfied on top of The Fortress. The little stone statues, inukshuks, were everywhere on the mountains.

Our final day's climb was Mount Yamnuska. As seen in this picture, our route would take us up to the base of the mountain and then its right flank to climb it from behind. Coming back down, we would circle the mountain from behind, come around its left flank, and the descend the scree slopes in the centre of this image, following the white paths you can see in the centre.

Yamnuska had some interesting features, including an ascent of several hundred feet through a moderately challenging chute of rock. In this picture, Maj. McKnight is working his way up after carefully watching us all ascend.

Another challenging section was a ledge, about five feet wide in sections, several hundred feet in length, that had to be traversed with the aid of a stout cable at waist height. The cable and one's balance were all that prevented a nasty and almost certainly fatal fall, so it took a bit of concentration. This is Dave Williams crossing the ledge.

After a trip of about four hours up, our team at the top of Yamnaska. Back row: Master Bombardier , Major Charlie McKnight, Corporal Nick Gervais, Corporal Klayton Heal. Front row: Captain Dave Williams and myself.

Our descent was quite a bit faster because of the scree slopes I mentioned earlier. A mountain looks subtantial from a distance, but in reality it is fighting a losing battle against gravity, weather and erosian, and much of a mountain is in small pieces. Below Yamnaska were long slopes of small rock which cushioned and absorbed your impact as you ran and leaped down them. Maj. McKnight called it "running on the moon" and he showed us the way, making long, graceful leaping steps that ate up hundreds of metres in just a few seconds. This is me, looking considerably less graceful.

We had started the climb at about 08:00, and by mid afternoon we were all safely down. Three climbs in three days left us in various degrees of stiffness and agony, and I was walking like a man in his nineties. But for those of us who were new to the mountains, we had seen and done things that were incredible. It's hard to relate the sense of engaging with these peaks that look impossibly grim from the highway, learning their secret routes, and gradually realizing that you have ascended to what seems like the highest point in the world. From these heights, you have a sense of how incredibly fragile the human body is against sheer height, empty space, and rock, and yet how beautiful the world is. For Major McKnight, a man as comfortable in this world as in his own backward, we all felt enormously grateful for his leadership and oversight, and for me at least, some of his enthusiasm rubbed off. I will be back to the mountains this coming summer, I am sure.

The Economics Of Death

2011-11-29T16:14:00.003-05:00

Kudos to the Globe and Mail for running this latest piece in their series on end of life issues. As Canada's population ages along with the rest of the Western world, death will consume more and more of our health care dollars. Personally I welcome the discussion this article invites. While I worry that an economic analysis like this could lead us toward the sort of future envisioned by P.D. James in The Children of Men, where the aged are invited to quietly (and cheaply) off themselves, the reality is that Canada is looking at 300-400,000 deaths a year by the 2030s, when I will likely be approaching the end of my lifespan. With current costs of $30K+ for terminal illnesses or death from old age, that's a lot of money. Perhaps, as the article suggests, more frankness and honesty as to how we want to die (eg, "do not resuscitate’ or "no heroic measures" instructions) could be a good first step in making health (and death) care sustainable for the future. MP+

How much does dying cost Canadians?
lisa priest
From Tuesday's Globe and Mail
Published Monday, Nov. 28, 2011 8:44PM EST
Last updated Tuesday, Nov. 29, 2011 10:35AM EST

Of all the financially grim statistics confronting Canadian health care, this ranks among the grimmest: About 25 per cent of all health-care costs are devoted to caring for patients in their last year of life.

Provincial governments are scrambling to contain health-care spending, even as an aging population begins to place increasing demands on the system. Yet there is also a growing recognition among policy makers that they cannot make efficient spending decisions without a better understanding of the economics of death.

Whole article here.

A University Chaplain Brings Some Peace To Tense Campus

2011-11-23T16:07:00.004-05:00

The tense campus is University of California at Davis, site of the now-viral images of a university peace officer casually pepper-spraying a row of sitting and apparently peaceful demonstrators on 18 November. The chaplain is the Rev. Kristin Stoneking, who was called in to campus the following day to defuse a tense situation outside the administration building. A group of students, feeling excluded from a press conference being held by the university chancellor, had gathered and the administration staff were feeling threatened and excluded.

Chaplain Stoneking was able to act as an interlocutor between the two groups, escorted the chancellor from the building, and descalated a potentially tense situation.

UC Davis Chancellor Linda Katehi walks with Rev. Stoneking past silent protesters as she leaves her office at the campus in Davis, California November 19, 2011. (BRIAN NGUYEN - REUTERS)

On her blog, Chaplain Stoneking wrote this:

What was clear to me was that once again, the students’ willingness to show restraint kept us from spiraling into a cycle of violence upon violence. There was no credible threat to the Chancellor, only a perceived one. The situation was not hostile. And what was also clear to me is that whether they admit it or not, the administrators that were inside the building are afraid. And exhausted. And human. And the suffering that has been inflicted is real. The pain present as the three of us watched the video of students being pepper sprayed was palpable. A society is only truly free when all persons take responsibility for their actions; it is only upon taking responsibility that healing can come.

Why did I walk the Chancellor to her car? Because I believe in the humanity of all persons. Because I believe that people should be assisted when they are afraid. Because I believe that in showing compassion we embrace a nonviolent way of life that emanates to those whom we refuse to see as enemies and in turn leads to the change that we all seek. I am well aware that my actions were looked on with suspicion by some tonight, but I trust that those seeking a nonviolent solution will know that “just means lead to just ends” and my actions offered dignity not harm.

I like this story because I believe it points to a function that all chaplains have the potential to fulfil, namely witnessing to our common humanity and values. As the Occupy movement becomes taken up in ideological talk of class warfare by both sides (note the perception of militarization in the linked articles), we need voices to pull us back from dehumanizing and demonizing one another. MP+

Seen On The Run

2011-11-22T12:24:00.005-05:00

Two images from some recent runs of things that caught my attention.

Last week in downtown Calgary, during an all-too brief run along the south bank of the Bow River, I came across this carved monument, a gift to Calgary from the Hungarian Arts and Heritage Association of Alberta. It had just snowed for the first time this winter just moments ago, and my footprints were the first along the trail. If I hadn't read the inscription, I would have guessed that the carving style was Japanese.

Seen this morning in Kin Coulee Park, Medicine Hat, during a chinook warmed and windy day. Some water continues to trickle over a little weir, while the bare trees and the dry yellow grass await the coming snow. The Park was an irresistible detour while running home after dropping my car off for its snowtire spa day. If this winter is like the last one, I'll need those snowtires soon. It got so thick last year that the trails and roads in parks like this one were no-go for runners.

Seen On The Morning Run

2011-11-20T00:00:00.005-05:00

Today's image is, well, me. This grisly visage was what my fellow runners from the Mad Hatters Running Club had to look at during our 10k outing this morning. They said the high today was -14 C, but this morning with the wind chill I think it was at least -20. THe good thing about running in a prairie winter (and this is just the first taste of it) is that no matter how much you dread it starting, you feel so good when it's done. Worst thing: the dreaded frozen moustache.

Yes, I know, your eyes are bleeding, aren't they? Sorry.

Meeting Royalty: A Sermon for the Reign of Christ Sunday

2011-11-19T18:55:00.015-05:00

A Sermon Preached at Christ the King Chapel, CFB Suffield, Ralston, AB, 20 November, 2011.

The Reign of Christ and Last Sunday of Pentecost, Lectionary Year A. Ezekiel 32:11-16,20-24, Psalm 23, Ephesians 115-23, Matthew 25: 31-46.

Then he will answer them, "Truly I tell you, just as you did not do it to one of the least of these, you did not do it to me.' 46 And these will go away into eternal punishment, but the righteous into eternal life." (Matthew 25:45)

My brother sent me a news story this week about an Australian soldier who was invited along with his family to visit the Queen at Buckingham Palace. Normally Australian corporals don't get invited to tea at the Palace, but they made an exception for Corporal Ben Roberts-Smith. While in Afghanistan, the Corporal charged an enemy machine gun position in order to save his comrades. This action was considered special enough that Corporal Roberts-Smith was awarded the Victoria Cross, the Commonwealth's highest decoration for valour in combat.

Typically self-effacing as soldiers are, "Big Ben" as he is known by the media said that "At the time it was just something that needed to be done". This battle-hardened soldier confessed that he was quite nervous to visit the Queen in her home, but found that "She’s a lovely lady and made me very comfortable. It was easy to talk to her."

If the Corporal was nervous to meet a gracious elderly queen with corgis as her feet, the encounter with the Son of Man in today's gospel is much more intimidating! Here, almost at the end of the gospel we have travelled with this summer and fall, Jesus tells his disciples that he will return in glory as the "Son of Man" to judge all humanity. The criteria for judgement are quite simple. Those who paid attention to the "least" around them will be given a place of honour and "eternal life", and those who ignored the "least" around them will be shamed and condemned to "eternal punishment".

In his commentary on this passage, David Lose remarks that there is a significant "Yikes factor" at work when we hear about the sheep and the goats and judgement. As he writes, "Not only does it feel more than a tad threatening but it also seems to run contrary to much of our inherited theology about grace". Christians are taught that we are saved by faith in Christ and by the underserved love of God, but if in fact our judgement and our fate in eternity depends on what we do in life, then do any of us have really have a chance? If the Sheep extreme is, say, Mother Teresa, and the Goat extreme is the unregenerate Scrooge (or maybe Bernie Madoff), where do we fall in the spectrum? How much do we have to do to earn sheep status? And what about this gospel lesson's emphasis on prison visiting? What if I don't know anyone in prison? Does volunteering for a food bank count instead?

Before we get too agitated about the Yikes factor here, we need to pause and remember that what we are hearing is not new. A few weeks ago in Matthew's gospel we heard Jesus say that all of God's law and teaching could be summarized as "Love God with all your heart and mind, and love your neighbour as yourself". Jesus reminds us that our regard for others flows out of our relationship with God who creates and loves us. It's not a matter of doing some many good works in hopes of earning Sheep status before the Day of Judgement. Rather, it is about recognizing Christ as the King of a realm that works by different rules than those of the world we know. If , as some say, the kingdoms of the world are run by and for the one per cent, the inner circles and cronies, then the Kingdom of God is about the all the rest, what Jesus today calls "the least." A Christian is someone who recognizes that God has different priorities. As the theologican Stanley Hauerwas says about today's gospel reading, "The difference between followers of Jesus and those who do not know Jesus is that those who have seen Jesus no longer have any excuse to avoid 'the least of these.'"

So failure to act in the world as a Christian s not an option. If one decides to be a subject of Christ and live in the Kingdom of Heaven, I don't think it's possible to fail to act. People today speak of the church's irrelevance in an overwhelmingly secular age, but I think that as the spirit of that age becomes more and more manifest, the gospel speaks to us with a greater urgency. When wealth is concentrated into fewer and fewer hands, when powerful voices seem to reject the notion that they should have to pay taxes, and when a presidential candidate blames the poor for not being sufficiently industrious, then there is a problem. As Christians, our calling to live and act differently in this world becomes clearer by the day, it seems. We may see the lmits to what our individual actions can do to change things, but we also know that the boundless love and righteous anger of God are limitless, and that both will one day be fully revealed.

Just as failure to act is not an option for Christ's followers, I don't think that trembling in fear of him is an option either. David Lose reminds us that today's lesson comes just before the final acts in Matthew's gospel, as Jesus chooses the the cross for all of us. In the paradoxical way of that cross, the shame of his death becomes the glory of the King who dies to serve his undeserving subjects. As David Lose notes, the one who will one day come to judge us is the same one who first came to be judged for us. So ... the one who came, the one who comes, and the one who is coming again -- is undeniably and unalterably for us...and all the world. And suddenly our "yikes" is transformed into "thanks be to God."

What Lose is saying is that Jesus chooses to make goats into sheep. Even if, as I've said here before, sheep can be kind of messy and dirty, they are still sheep. We don't become sheep by our own efforts and works. What we do as believers living as subjects in God's kingdom comes from the work that Christ has done for us on the cross. Everything else flows from that work of redemption and transformation. Which means that while we may, like the Australian corporal I mentioned earlier, be nervous about meeting Christ the King, in fact it is and will be a wonderful encounter. So if today's gospel makes you feel sheepish about being ready to meet Christ one day, it's ok to be sheepish. After all, he is a shepherd as well as a king.

Military Video Games: "The Promise Of Plausible Heroism"

2011-11-16T20:22:00.002-05:00

In a thoughtful piece in the NYT, Seth Schiesel makes the point that the new generation of incredibly attractive modern war video games (I confess I'm tempted to get an XBox and start blasting away) are supplying narratives of war and heroism that the wars of the last decade have not given us. MP+

A scene from Battlefield 3.

November 15, 2011
Recruiting the Inner Military Hero in Men
By SETH SCHIESEL

If there were a draft in this country, video games about war probably wouldn’t be so popular. The fantasy would be less appealing if the reality of killing and dying in combat with other human beings were more imminent for more people.

A military draft is now unthinkable in America. And so bullet-spewing first-person shooter games like Battlefield 3 and Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 3 seem likely to continue to reign among men as the most consistently popular genre in video games. According to game companies and analysts, the expansion of gaming onto social networks (FarmVille, Sims Social) and cellphones (Angry Birds) is largely being propelled by women. But the core console and PC gaming world — where players spend $60 on a product that has cost tens of millions to create — is still mostly driven by the tastes of young and reluctantly middle-aged men.

Despite the public’s political exhaustion after a decade of real war, imaginary war remains as popular as ever. Both Battlefield 3, published by Electronic Arts, and the new Call of Duty, from Activision, will be among the year’s biggest-selling games. In terms of design polish, production values, visual presentation, multiplayer appeal and even such storytelling as there is, they deserve all of their success.

But what makes these games so much fun for so many people in the first place? Of all video games, first-person shooters usually elicit the most confusion, consternation and derision in people who don’t play them.

Trust the marketers to show us the way. The people who make these games know exactly which of their audience’s psychological buttons they are trying to push. The tagline in the commercial Activision has been running during football games and other television programs to promote Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 3 is “There’s a soldier in all of us.” The official trailer has been pulling in about a million hits a day.

Read the whole piece here.

Atheists In U.S. Military Seek Official Status

2011-11-16T19:48:00.003-05:00

From last week's Baltimore Sun. As an aside, I can't imagine a Canadian military chaplain, faced with a similar situation, telling a soldier that "this is God's army". MP+

Army Capt. Ryan Jean, an intelligence officer at Ft. Meade, Md., is an atheist who seeks official recognition for nonbelievers on par with that of Christians, Jews and Muslims. (Algerina Perna, Baltimore Sun / October 20, 2011)

By Matthew Hay Brown, Baltimore Sun

November 14, 2011, 3:40 a.m.
Reporting from Ft. Meade, Md.— Capt. Ryan Jean wanted to perform well on the Army's psychological evaluation. But he also wanted to answer the questions honestly. So when he was asked whether he believed his life had a lasting purpose, Jean, an atheist, saw no choice but to say no.

Those and other responses, Jean says, won him a trip to see the post chaplain, who berated him for his lack of faith.

"He basically told me that if I don't get right with God, then I'm worthless," said Jean, now an intelligence officer at Ft. Meade. "That if I don't believe in Jesus, why am I in uniform, because this is God's army, and that I should resign my commission in order to stop disgracing the military."

Jean says experiences such as that confrontation three years ago, when he was serving at Camp Arifjan in Kuwait, have spurred him to seek Army recognition as a humanist lay leader — on par with Christian, Jewish and Muslim lay leaders who help military chaplains minister to the troops.

Read the whole story here.

"This Should Haunt All Of Us": A US Army Officer Calls For Better Ethical Training For Soldiers

2011-11-10T15:39:00.003-05:00

Apropros of yesterday's post on waterboarding, here's another take on the role of torture in contemporary warfare.

H/t to Tom Ricks of the Best Defence blog for flagging this excellent piece on ethics and combat by a junior US Army officer, based on his recent experience in Afghanistan.

Kevin Bell argues that ethics can't be left to chaplains as subject matter experts because nobody else needs to know about it. He argues that because of the stresses that junior officers will feel in a counter-insurgency environment where the enemy is largely unknown, the temptation to resort to torture as interrogation will be huge because of anger and the desire for revenge will be enormous.

"Reasonable people can disagree about the best arguments for and against torture. For us as soldiers, though, these claims are beside the point. We are required by duty and honor to uphold our country’s statutory and treaty obligations, which state that torture is categorically unacceptable. To better fulfill this duty we have to do more to confront the ethical dilemmas of our profession before we go to war. It isn’t enough to know the rules if we are still unsure in a time of weakness what to do with detainees who might have tactically useful information. Our training
and leadership culture have to reinforce our understanding that the ethical treatment of prisoners doesn’t undermine the counterinsurgency strategy."

Whole article here. A must read for army officers.

On The Wargames Blog: Confederate Gunners

2011-11-10T15:29:00.002-05:00

Posted on my wargames blog yesterday, some photos of a group of American Civil War gunners just finished. Lots more toys on the mad padre workbench to keep me busy this winter.

US Soldier: Waterboarding Is Torture, Period

2011-11-08T15:53:00.002-05:00

I came across this piece in Small Wars Journal by Malcom Nance, a US counter-terrorism guy, on how waterboarding as an interrogation practice is torture, pure and simple, and how equivocation in US government and media circles on its continued use is a "crisis of honor". A must read for anyone interested in military ethics. Here's a sample:

"Until recently, only a few countries considered it effective. Now American use of the waterboard as an interrogation tool has assuredly guaranteed that our service members and agents who are captured or detained by future enemies will be subject to it as part of the most routine interrogations. Forget threats, poor food, the occasional face slap and sexual assaults. This was not a dignified 'taking off the gloves'; this was descending to the level of our opposition in an equally brutish and ugly way. Waterboarding will be one our future enemy's go-to techniques because we took the gloves off to brutal interrogation. Now our enemies will take the gloves off and thank us for it.

There may never again be a chance that Americans will benefit from the shield of outrage and public opinion when our future enemy uses of torture. Brutal interrogation, flash murder and extreme humiliation of American citizens, agents and members of the armed forces may now be guaranteed because we have mindlessly, but happily, broken the seal on the Pandora's box of indignity, cruelty and hatred in the name of protecting America. To defeat Bin Laden many in this administration have openly embraced the methods of by Hitler, Pinochet, Pol Pot, Galtieri and Saddam Hussein."

Seen On The Morning Run: Winter Starts To Grip The River

2011-11-08T13:23:00.003-05:00

Running along the bank of the S. Saskatchewan River this morning around 07:00hrs, I stopped to take this and several other shots of the first ice forming on the water. I was glad I turned off my music to do so, because it allowed me to hear the ice actually moving on the river, something that can only be described as a hissing sound, like water on a hot skillet heard from the next room.

Total distance this AM: 7.1k. Listened to: NPR Podcast, Diane Rehm show Friday news round up, which while very informative did little to speed my pace.

Life in Suffield: The Mad (And Bad) Padre On Ice

2011-11-07T18:21:00.004-05:00

Last week marked my second ever ice hockey game. Our Base Public Affairs Officer, Nicole, came to the rink for the game featuring the Officers' Mess vs the Senior Warrants and Sergeants' Mess, and took many thrilling action shots.

I am not among these thrilling action shots, because I saw no action, other than slowly careening (if that's not a contradiction in terms) about the ice, trying to get close to the puck while trying not to run into anyone. However, Nicole did capture this shot of me during the warm up, tapping a puck with my stick (and look, one of my skates is off the ice!)

Like all small communities, the ice rink here in Ralston is the beating heart of the community. For the mostly British population resident in the married quarters patch, they have ample opportunity to get good at hockey during a two year posting, and some of them are very good. In fact, the Officers' Mess team would be lost without our British players.

They are very kind to let me play with them and perhaps before the season is over I'll have a more dramatic picture to post here, or at least something dramatic to report (a pass? an assist? perhaps a goal?).

"They Facilitated the Horror": A New Study Of German Chaplains in Hitler's Army

2011-11-07T16:09:00.005-05:00

In the National Post today, Canadian professor Doris Bergen talks about her research on the paradoxical place of German chaplains in Hitler's army, and how their presence did not stop and may even have facilitated the atrocities committed in places such as the Eastern Front. Here's an excerpt:

"For all her work she had done on the Holocaust, she had never given much thought to the role of Christian chaplains who served the cause of the Nazi Germany.

The chaplains were always in a strange position, she explained. Pure Nazi ideology was at its core pagan. The SS, for example, never allowed chaplains in their midst. Hitler probably would have thought Nazism was enough for the troops, she said. At the same time, 95% of Germans were baptized Christians who continued to belong to the mainstream churches. German soldiers had the words Gott mit uns (God with us) on their belt buckles.

“What I tried to show that the chaplaincy was in an uncomfortable position, that they were also in a position of suspicion.” In the field, the chaplains had to keep adjusting themselves. While there were many who wanted their services there were fanatical Nazis among the troops who hated the chaplains and would taunt them.

“That pushed the chaplains into a position that wouldn’t offend some of the troops. It pushed them in a direction to make their lives easier.”

I'm currently in the process of reading Michael Burleigh's book Moral Combat: A History of World War Two, which proves from documentary sources that rank and file German soldiers (including chaplains) could not have been present in invaded Soviet Russia without witnessing the massacres of Jewish and Slavic civilians by specialized Nazi formations. The presence of chaplains, and their vain attempts to intervene in these massacres, is indeed the starting point for Prof. Bergen's study. It doesn't surprise me that most of these German chaplains shared the mindset of many Germans - that Hitler was good for Germany, that Nazism was a bulwark against Communism and atheism, that Jews were enemies, etc. Not every Christian had the clarity and the courage of those who followed Barth, Bonhoeffer and the confessing church. I wouldn't want to have made those choices myself.

I will look for Bergen's study in print. Her subject is a cautionary tale that all military chaplains and people of faith should study.

Zombie Apocalpypse, Christian Apocalypse

2011-11-05T18:08:00.015-04:00

A Sermon for the Twenty-First Sunday After Pentecost, Preached at Christ the King Chapel, CFB Suffield, Ralston, AB, 6 November 2011

Lectionary Year A, Proper 32. Amos 5:18-24, Psalm 70, 1 Thessalonians 4:13-18, Matthew 25:1-13

But we do not want you to be uninformed, brothers and sisters, about those who have died, so that you may not grieve as others do who have no hope. (1 Thess 4.13)

In this text from our second lesson, Paul reminds us that Christians are people who have hope in the future. Not the anemic hope that everything will somehow turn out ok but the robust, eschatological hope that God will win and that fear and death will lose. I mention death because Paul is writing to a church where death has shaken hope in the future. The early Christians in Thessalonica appear to have believed that Christ would return soon, and now that some believers have died, theire hope is shaken. What of their beloved dead? Will they be saved as well? What if those now living die before Christ returns? Will they be saved as well? Paul, as one of their pastors, addresses these fears by saying that the Thessalonicans don't need to despair: "For since we believe that Jesus died and rose again, even so, through Jesus, God will bring with him those who have died" (1 Th 4:14).

Christianity is faith that is as much about the dead as it is about the living. The church, like Israel before it, believes that it is for the generations past, present and future. Through its feast days All Souls' Night and All Saints Day (which some congregations are celebrating today), we remind ourselves that we are united with the great cloud of witnesses, with those who, as the old prayer book puts it, have gone before us in faith and fear. The church also looks forward to new generations, in its sacraments of baptism and marriage, trusting that the future is in God's hands. Because we believe that the generations are united across time in God's creation, and because we have hope in what God will do from the here and now to the end of time, we do not fear the dead. They, like the living and those yet to be born, are part of the church.

For the last few weeks, the lawns of houses around me have been transformed into mock cemeteries as meighbours decorated for Halloween, surely the biggest spending holiday behind Christmas. In the popular idea of Halloween graves and the dead are accessories, part of the fun of a good clean scare that ties into our ancient fear of the dark and things going bump in the night. But under all that, I think, something more profound is going on. How a culture sees (and even fears) the dead is an index of its outlook on the future, particularly whether it sees the future as a thing to be dreaded or longed for. When our society fears a future where the dead are walking around eating the living (something pop culture calls "the zombie apocalypse"), that to me is a sign that something is badly broken in our hopes for and views of the future.

I mention zombies because it's slowly dawning on me that I have acquired a reputation around the base as "the zombie padre". I don't think "zombie padre" means that I'm not shambling about uncertainly and moaning (except after morning PT, maybe) but rather, I gather, speaking confessionally, that it has to do with my well-known enthusiasm for that grotesque and quite trendy subgenre of horror movies.

Very briefly, the zombie genre, as developed by film directors such as George Romero, assumes that virus (or similar explanation) causes the dead to rise and become mindless, flesh-eating and remorseless threat to humanity. Because the zombie virus is highly contagious, the numbers of zombies rise exponentially, overrunning civilization and leaving the few human survivors hunted and scattered. The Walking Dead, a TV series currently running on AMC, is perhaps the best contemporary example.

I enjoy the zombie genre because it's viscerally as well as intellecturally scary, tapping into many of the conscious or subconscious fears of the anxious time that we live in. The fear of civilization falling apart quickly and disastrously (see the interview with Niall Ferguson in today's Globe and Mail) seems very real as our economies and legislatures seize up and our leaders appear helpless and bereft of vision. The idea that one's family and neighbours could turn into ravenous killers evokes recent memories of ethnic cleansings around the world, and haunts the increasingly rancorous political and social discourse we see in the national life of our US neighbours. Finally, the idea of the numberless zombie horde surely points to our own fears that the human race, now at seven billion and climbing at a rate called "more bacterial than primate" by scientist Edmund O. Wilson, will outstrip and devour the resources of a limited, fragile planet. So while I enjoy the zombie genre as drama and as pop culture, I also think that it has something profound to say about our culture's fear that we have failed. Our culture doubts that much is meaningful, fears the future, and senses that death is greater than life, and this is why we need to hear the gospel of Christ.

The gospel, the good news of Jesus Christ crucified and resurrected, is a gospel of meaning, of life's triumph over death, and of hope in the future. The gospel story of Jesus' life and work is a story about God's commitment to the world he created, and his determination to see that his creation continues to be good. The gospel story of Jesus' resurrection tells us that the kingdom of death, which the zombie genre both celebrates and fears, is made powerless by Christ's rising from the dead. The gospel's promise that Christ will come again is about hope, because it promises us that the future, however dark it may seem, is in God's hands and is therefore safe.

Both our second reading from 1 Thessalonians and our gospel reading from Matthew point to the future and to Christ's return. We call the return of Christ the Second Coming or the apocalypes, from a Greek word meaninhg "revelation" or "unveiling". Some Christian churches, like the ancient Thessalonicans, still place great emphasis apocalyptic theology, combing the Book of Revelations and other texts for signs and indicators of when the end times will occur. My own thinking on this is, to paraphrase what C.S. Lewis said about devils, that it Christians should neither think too much of these things or too little of them. The future is in God's hands, the dead are safe in God's keepings, and are lives are to be lived in faith with the aid of the Holy Spirit.

What all those means for those of us in between the past and future, in the present of the church, is to be worked out along with the rest of our Christian lives. Our gospel reading from Matthew 25 is a difficult one in that it can be taken as a call for a heightened vigilance which, like terror alerts, are difficult to sustain over time. What it does clearly say is that Christ, the bridegroom, shall return and shall know those who believed in and waited for him. As Holly Hearon notes in her commentary on our second lesson, Paul advises the Thessalonicans to continue to do the little, everyday things of Christian life:

For myself, I find this hope in the little things rather than the apocalyptic scenarios. Nonetheless, they are things that are also identified in the letter: in the encouragement we receive from one another (4:18; 5:14); in the practice of praying without ceasing (5:17) so that I learn to live in the presence of God; of discovering some way of giving thanks, regardless of the circumstances (5:18) because this helps me to see God at work in all circumstances; in not becoming complacent, but keeping awake even when I would prefer to numb my senses through alcohol, mindless television shows, or shopping sprees; in attempting to discern what it means to live by the grace and peace of Christ so that I may hold fast to what is good and abstain from evil (5:22-23).

Through these small things, lived day by day, the power and presence of God becomes real, as real as Christ coming down out of the sky, and offers me hope to face each new day with courage.

There will be days when the future, including death, will be scary, when our atavistic fears and impulses will be strong. In my first parish, I served a church beside an ancient(for Canada) country graveyard that could still be scary when I was alone there at night. On those occasions I would sometimes find myself whistling the fine Christian hymn "For all the saints", and was particularly encouraged by this verse:

O blest communion, fellowship divine!
We feebly struggle, they in glory shine;
yet all are one in thee, for all are thine.
Alleluia, Alleluia!

If, as some might say, Christianity is merely hopeful whistling in the graveyard, then I would counter by saying that there are worse things to whistle.

Military Picture of the Week

2011-11-03T17:41:00.003-04:00

Got this courtesy of Dana Rittenhouse. This was taken last week in Kabul, during the ramp ceremony for Master Corporal Byron Greff. The padre leading the bearing party is Dana's husband, Captain Howard Rittenhouse, chaplain to the Third Battalion, Prince Patricias' Canadian Light Infantry, and a dear colleague of mine.

Dana wrote that "The ramp ceremony went without a hitch - they actually practice it (and Howard had to lead the procession in a slow march - the hardest one to do, drag foot, hesitate, put down, start again) and Howard maintained his composure until he was all done - he was wearing a preaching scarf (that is the tradition) so did not have headgear which means he could not salute the casket as everyone else did. He was bothered by that so he walked over to face the casket and stood at attention for a minute as his gesture of respect - he said he started to lose it after that, and then watching the man's closest friends go into the herc to salute goodbye."

Doing Church in Hipster Brooklyn

2011-11-03T13:44:00.005-04:00

Sometimes I'm tempted to think that churches are no longer countries for young people, and then a story like this one give me hope. Perhaps the "Skinny Jeans" angle explains why it was carried in the NYT's style section, but no matter. MP+

November 2, 2011
A Congregation in Skinny Jeans
By MARISA MELTZER

ONE recent Sunday night on the south side of Williamsburg, Brooklyn, a crowd of more than 100 men and women in their 20s and early 30s gathered.

True to the unspoken dress code of the neighborhood, they were wearing high-waisted skinny jeans, vintage T-shirts and deliberately homely sweaters. One woman in a floral romper, her platinum-blond hair cut in a shag, carried a Bob Seger vinyl record under her arm. After a gospel band played, the group listened as a man with a tattoo and a shaved head, Thomas Vito Aiuto, gave a talk that referred in turn to Woody Allen, jogging and London cabdrivers.

They were at church.

Resurrection Presbyterian Church and Mr. Aiuto (known as Vito), its pastor, have developed a reputation for attracting the artistic young denizens of the neighborhood to services that combine readings of Psalm 85 with sermons that have a somewhat secular inflection.

Mr. Aiuto, 39, bristles when his church is singled out as particularly cool. “I don’t want this church to be special,” he said over chicken mole at a Williamsburg taqueria. “I don’t want us to be a church for artists. I want it to be a garden-variety church. What we have to offer people is God.” He paused for a moment. “And I think our music is really good.”

While only one-quarter of the so-called millennial generation, those born after 1980, attend weekly religious services (according to a study by the Pew Research Center), young pastors like Mr. Aiuto and Jay Bakker, the son of the televangelists Jim and Tammy Faye, as well as groups like the Buddhist-inspired Dharma Punx, are tailoring their messages to young worshipers.

In Mr. Aiuto’s case, this can involve a certain irreverence (he made a rude gesture while illustrating a point about the parable of the prodigal son during a theological question-and-answer session after one recent service) and a dash of self-deprecation.

“I’m shocked I’m a preacher,” he said. “There’s a part of me that did and in some ways still feels that I have no place standing up and telling other people what to do or to believe.”

Read the whole piece here.

Notable Quotable: Gail Collins on Herman Cain and Frozen Armadillos

2011-11-03T13:35:00.002-04:00

Gail Collins does some of the best satiricial and smart writing in politics today. From today's NYT, she writes on on the improbabilities of Herman Cain and frozen armadillos. Trust me, it's funny.

Canadian Soldier Killed in Afghanistan

2011-10-31T13:32:00.003-04:00

Among the sixteen killed in an attack on an armoured NATO bus in Kabul, Afghanistan on Saturday, 29 October. Master Corporal Byron Greff, of the 3rd Battalion, PPCLI, was the first Canadian soldier to be killed since the end of the combat mission, centered in Kandahar, this July.

For more on this incident and on MCpl Greff, Globe and Mail coverage here. The G&M article also mentions the deaths of three Australians, killed in a separate incident by an Afghan soldier they were training. Clearly Canada's mission in Afghanistan continues to have risks.

Rest eternal grant to him, O Lord, and may light perpetual shine upon him.

Noteable Quotable: Pope Benedict on the Christian's Military Life`

2011-10-27T16:40:00.004-04:00

From Pope Benedict's to the International Meeting of Military Ordinariates (an Ordinariate is somewhat like a Diocese for military chaplains) at Rome, given 25 October. I admire the Pope's identification of charity as the cardinal military virture. MP+

"A Christian’s military life, in fact, is placed in relation to the first and greatest commandment, that of love of God and of neighbor, because the Christian military man is called to realize a synthesis that makes it possible to be a military man out of love, fulfilling the ministerium pacis inter arma.

I am referring, especially, to charity exercised by soldiers who rescue earthquake and flood victims, and also fugitives, putting their courage and competence at the disposal of the weakest. I am thinking of the exercise of charity of soldiers involved in de-activating mines, with the personal danger and risk involved in this, in areas which have been the scene of wars, as well as of soldiers who, in the realm of peace missions, patrol cities and territories so that brothers will not kill one another."

Read the full adddress here.

Notable Quotable: Simon Sebag Montefiore on Col. Qaddafi and the Deaths of Tyrants

2011-10-27T10:21:00.004-04:00

From today's New York Times:

"Western leaders and intellectuals find Colonel Qaddafi’s lynching distasteful — Bernard-Henri Lévy worried it would “pollute the essential morality of an insurrection” — yet there are sound political reasons for the public culling of the self-proclaimed king of kings. Colonel Qaddafi’s tyranny was absolutist, monarchical and personal. The problem with such dictatorships is that as long as the tyrant lives, he reigns and terrorizes. As Churchill put it, “dictators ride to and fro upon tigers from which they dare not dismount.”

Read the whole piece here.

Running Like A (Pioneer) Girl

2011-10-26T14:33:00.002-04:00

Continuing the running theme this morning, I was inspired by this article in today's NYT on Julia Chase-Brand, one of the great pioneering woman runners. Here she is running the Manchester Road Race in 1961. Gear and shoe geeks, check out what she's wearing - it didn't stop her from running hard and fast. That day she ran 4.75 miles in 33 min 40 sec and her result, finishing 128th ahead of ten men, was not allowed to stand.

At 69, she's still running today. Awesome.

There's also a piece on Canadian women distance running pioneers in this month's edition of Canadian Running.

Seen On The Morning Run

2011-10-26T13:27:00.005-04:00

It was cold this morning when I set out just after 6am, with a hard frost on the car windows parked along my street. I was hesitant to launch out the door, but consoled myself with the thought that an early run does offer the consolation of a sunrise. Pausing by the South Saskatchewan River near the bridge on Altawana Drive, I was rewarded by this view.

Taken with my trusty iphone using the Pro HDR 3.01 app.

After the run (11.2km) I remarked to my wife Kay that it my headlamp kept slipping down over my eyes.
Kay: Doesn't it have a way you can tighten the strap?
Me: Uhhhh ... look at that, it does!

During the run I had tried to keep it in place by removing a glove and stuffing it under the strap of my headlamp, but her way seems easier somehow. Proof that
you don't have to be smart to run.

Book Review: Philip Kerr's Field Gray: A Bernie Gunther Novel

2011-10-25T19:21:00.003-04:00

Philip Kerr, Field Grey: A Bernie Gunther Novel. New York: G.P. Putnam's, 2011, ISBN 978-0-399-15741-7.

I'm a total World War Two junkie and an occasional fan of harboiled detective stories, so when I was in the local library last week and discovered a book combining the two, I couldn't resist checking it out and I wasn't disappointed.

Philip Kerr's Bernie Gunther is a World War One veteran and a Berlin homicide cop whose career spans from the fall of the Weimar Republic to the rise of the Nazis and World War Two. This novel moves back and forth from Gunther's Berlin days to the postwar 1950s in Cuba and other locations. There's tons of material for history fans, and enough moral ambiguity for a squad of ethicists and philosophers, particularly in the centre part which asks, can a good man serve in the middle of SS under Heydrich, Hitler's executioner?

Gunther is a decent guy surrounded by scumbags, including German communists, Nazis, cynical French intelligence operatives and naive but brutal Americans. Gunther is no choirboy but he's portrayed as tough, wisecracking, and essentially decent. Here's an excerpt of a scene where he's being interrogated by US war crimes investigators with a briefcase of hidden agendas:

"You enjoy playing Gestapo. It's a little bit of a kick for you doing it their way, isn't it? Secretly, you probably admire them and the way they went about extracting teeth and information."

They came close to me now, raising their voices beyond what was comfortable to hear.

"F**k you, Gunther."

"You hurt our feelings with that remark about the Gestapo."

"I take it back. You're much worse than the Gestapo. THey didn't pretend they were defending the free world. It's your hypocrisy that's offensive, not your brutality. You're the worst kind of fascists. The kind that think they're liberals."

One of them started knocking at my head with the knuckle on his finger; it wasn't painful so much as annoying.

I love that last line, it's typical of Gunther's attitude and Kerr's writing; both are tough and clever.

I won't say anything about the plot, except that it was a bit labyrinthine and sometimes I had trouble following it. I'll have to read it again, but I enjoyed it and was delighted to find that there are three more Bernie Gunther novels in Kerr's Berlin Noir trilogy.

I liked this book and recommend it to history and detective fans alike.

UK Secular Society Says No Tax Dollars For Chaplains

2011-10-25T19:09:00.003-04:00

h/t to my friend Pete Garnham for passing this story on. MP+

15 October 2011
By John McManus
BBC News

Secular campaigners have criticised the Armed Forces for funding military chaplains, and want churches to fund them instead.

The MoD revealed, after a Freedom of Information request, that it costs taxpayers £22m a year to support about 280 Christian padres.

The National Secular Society says that at a time of defence budget cuts the cost should be met by churches.

The Church of England said it was not considering such a change.

The chaplains work across all three services, and are drawn from the Church of England, the Roman Catholic Church, and the Methodist Church among others.

There are also five civilian chaplains, who minister to Hindu, Sikh, Jewish, Muslim and Buddhist recruits.

Read the whole story here.

Jewish Chaplains Memorialized At Arlington Cemetery

2011-10-25T18:38:00.003-04:00

H/T to my friend Padre Mike Gibbons for this story from the Huff post. MP+

The face of the Jewish Chaplains Memorial that was dedicated Oct. 24, 2011 at Arlington National Cemetery in Arlington, Va. The memorial, that stands on Chaplains Hill in the cemetery, is dedicated to the 14 Jewish chaplains who have died in service to the U.S.

In this family photo released by the Silberberg family, Rabbi Morton Singer, right, is seen in 1968 at Fort Sill, Okla. Singer was killed in a plane crash in Vietnam while flying to observe Hanukkah with Jewish soldiers. He was serious in his commitment to help American soldiers worship in wartime. Until recently, his name, and those of 13 other Jewish clergymen, were absent from monuments at Arlington National Cemetery that honor more than 240 other fallen military chaplains.

By Adelle M. Banks

Religion News Service

ARLINGTON, VA. (RNS) In a ceremony steeped in Hebrew prayers and military hymns, a monument to Jewish chaplains who died in active duty was unveiled Monday (Oct. 24) at Arlington National Cemetery.

“They are unrecognized heroes of both Jewish and American life, but today we begin the process of publicly acknowledging their contribution and their ultimate sacrifice,” said Allan Finkelstein, president of the Jewish Community Centers Association, which sponsors the council that endorses Jewish military chaplains.

The cemetery's Chaplains Hill has been home to three monuments -- one for World War I chaplains, another for Protestant chaplains from the two world wars and one for Catholic chaplains from World War II and the wars in Korea and Vietnam.

The newest addition honors 14 Jewish chaplains who died in combat, in accidents or of natural causes. They include one who traveled thousands of miles each month to reach Jewish military members in isolated areas in Alaska. Two others perished in plane crashes on their way to conduct Hanukkah services for military personnel.

Retired Rear Adm. Harold L. Robinson, director of the JWB (Jewish Welfare Board) Jewish Chaplains Council, said the memorial reflects the unity of the U.S. military's chaplain corps.

“To have that uniqueness not represented at Chaplains Hill fails to represent one of the gems of American life,” said Robinson, a retired Navy chaplain. “Now we visually symbolize that on Chaplains Hill.”

Read the whole story here.

Jesus Was Killed By "Liberal Court"

2011-10-24T15:54:00.002-04:00

Anyone care to guess who said the following?

The liberal court found Him guilty of false offences and sentenced Him to death, all because He changed the hearts and minds of men with an army of 12.

His death reset the clock of time.

Never before and not since has there ever been such a perfect conservative.

For over 2,000 years the world has tried hard to erase the memory of the perfect conservative, and His principles of compassion, caring and common sense.

The answer is: Herman Cain, who is the pizza flavour of the month in the US Republican nomination race. Thanks to the Huff Post for this lead.

I had no idea that Jesus was the "perfect conservative". I've also seen supporters of the Occupy Wall Street movement post pictures of Jesus driving the money changers from the temple and claiming Him as one of their own.

Vindication, if anyone needed it, of Albert Schweitzer's old dictum that people seeking to recover a Jesus favourable to their thinking are like those seeing their reflection at the bottom of a well. Also, I think, vindication that Herman Cain is an idiot.

No Record for 100 Year Old Marathoner ...

2011-10-24T14:57:00.002-04:00

... But He's Still My Hero

Anyone in the running world who has gray hair (comme moi) will have been cheered by the news last week that Fauja Singh, aged 100, finished Toronto's waterfront marathon on 16 October and became the world's first centarian to complete a marathon.

Fauja Singh, 100, raises his hands in celebration as he crosses the finish line in Sunday's Toronto waterfront marathon. Singh set a world record as the oldest person to complete a race of that distance. (Canadian Press

Unfortunately, Canadian Running magazine today reports that the Guinness World Book of Records has denied Mr. Singh the record, since he can't produce a birth certificate. Apparently official documentation wasn't that easy to obtain in rural India in 1911, the year Mr. Singh claims he was born. I can see why Guinness wants to protect its integrity, but a half-hearted boooo escapes my lips.

No worries, Mr. Singh, you're my running hero. And if I can complete my first marathon in under 5.40.01, the time you set as a 90+ man in 2003, then I'll be quite happy.

"Do I really want the internet to be something I feel naked without?" Sam Graham-Felsen on Life Without the iphone

2011-10-20T16:31:00.002-04:00

A few minutes ago I posted here on why I can't run without my iphone, and how it makes my life better in all sorts of ways. Is that a sign that I need an intervention? That thought crossed my mind after reading one user's account of how he decided to live without his iphone. Crazy talk, I know. Isn't it?

Notable Quotable: "Jesus would not be cutting U.S. foreign aid"

2011-10-20T16:20:00.003-04:00

David Rothkopf, writing on Foreign Policy website, skewers the Republican presidential hopefuls, "a bunch of candidates who seem hell-bent on proving their essential Christian-ness", for their foreign aid (bad) vs defense spending (good) priorities:

As for cutting defense spending, where do you think Jesus would come out on that one ... especially if they taught any arithmetic in the Nazareth public school system of the Galileean Unified School District. Might he suggest that spending say, only eight times more than our next biggest rival was sufficient to maintain the peace and that we could use the extra $140 or so billion that saved us per year ... $1.5 trillion over a decade, to meet the budget cutting goals of the Supercommittee in one fell swoop? Might he note that there is no way to make the big cuts we need by chopping away at comparatively small programs? Or that somehow cutting the programs that help the rest of the world versus those that are designed to blow it up might send the wrong message?

Heck, it doesn't take being the Prince of Peace or a guy with a knack for stretching a budget (see the whole fishes and loaves thing) to recognize that this approach of eviscerating U.S. smart power while blindly protecting the brute sort is kind of dumb not to mention dangerous.

Read the whole piece here.

A Runner's Reward: Prairie Sunrise

2011-10-20T16:00:00.005-04:00

(Apologies to my Facebook friends who have already seen this photo)

Every time I go for a run, my iphone is grasped in my sweaty little paw (I really need an arm strap/holster for it). I carry it for a number of reasons. It's always smart to have a phone if one gets into trouble, main reason - especially as we head into a prairie winter. Also, I can listen to music (fast upbeat music is best for my pace - news and current affairs podcasts such as NPR's The Diane Rehm show are informative but slow me down). And, the Nike Plus application logs my progress, and makes me look forward to logging better pace times and distances. It's curious how, if I couldn't log my run digitally, a part of my brain would think the run was wasted - curious.

I also carry it for the camera function, which I upgraded with the HDR app. Occasionally I see things I like to capture, and to be honest, a few minutes break never hurts either. Today's reward for getting out in the dark was this sunrise, seen just south of CFB Suffield. The Alberta prairie can seem quite monotonous at times, but every now and then it offers its blessings.

I'm also happy to report that my pace is slowly coming down, even for long runs. Today it was a 6.05 min per km average pace for a total of 11kms in 1:07:04, despite some persistent knee pain which I'm going to have to get looked at. My goal this year is to get the down to a 5.45 race pace, break 2 hours for the half marathon and do a full marathon before I turn fifty in November 2012.

British Soldiers Save Calgary Man ... With Credit Cards

2011-10-19T15:48:00.002-04:00

Left to right: Private Ben Regan, Pte Lee Wingrove, Pte Cai Thomas, Lance Corporal Sam Neil and Sergeant Terence Wall
[Picture: Andrew Walmsley 2011]

It's a common complaint in SE Alberta that British soldiers training at CFB Suffield rum amok on leave and do disgraceful things. Not that anyone here complains about the money the Brits spend while on leave.

It was good therefore to see this piece in the UK MOD news service about five young soldiers who saved a Calgary man with an innovative application of their training.

The Minstrel Boy To The Wars Is Gone ...

2011-10-14T13:01:00.002-04:00

... in the ranks of the flip-flopped you will find him.

Provenance of this photo is unclear. Possibly it's from the recent fighting in Libya. A friend of mine is sure the guitar is not photoshopped, but thinks it may be staged, given the terrible muzzle discipline of the shooters.

Either way, it has my vote as the coolest combat photo of the 21st century to date.

Book Review: Lizzie Collingham's The Taste of War: World War Two and the Battle for Food

2011-10-13T16:43:00.003-04:00

I read this book in August and thoroughly enjoyed it. The review below is being submitted to the Canadian Army Journal's book reviews section and I thought I'd share it here. Good reading for foodies and history buffs alike. MP+

THE TASTE OF WAR: WORLD WAR TWO AND THE BATTLE FOR FOOD.
COLLINGHAM, LIZZIE, London, Penguin Books, 2011, 634 pages, $50.00.

That deaths (at least 20 million) from starvation, malnutrition, and related diseases exceeded deaths (19.5 million) from military action in World War Two may surprise readers of this book. Besides this shocking number of dead from hunger, millions more worked and fought for years on the brink of starvation. Lizzie Collingham, a British social historian, has done us a great service by offering a comprehensive picture of the grievous human cost of World War Two. She explores the role of food in the ideology that led the world to war, in the social context of total war and its cost on populations, and in the military context of feeding vast militaries. Collingham connects this piece of human history with contemporary security issues by noting the parallels between food availability and demands then and now.

The growth of urban populations and their growing demands for more nutritious and costly foodstuffs is not just a phenomenon of today’s world. The same trend was at work in the West and in Japan in the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. The US had enormous agricultural potential to exploit, while Britain could feed its population by leveraging its Empire and its maritime trade. The totalitarian governments of Germany and Japan, with their ideologies of racial superiority and entitlement, were unwilling to rely on trade with Britain and the US to feed their people. For the Nazis, who remembered the Allied blockade and use of hunger as a weapon during World War One, food security was a strong motivator. This book effectively argues that the German and Japanese desire to secure their food supplies was a major cause of World War Two.

German and Japanese planners looked to Eastern Europe and Manchuria respectively to resettle their surplus farmers and develop breadbaskets for their empires. The populations of these regions would be systematically displaced and starved, thus creating living room for the conquerors. Collingham calls this policy of deliberate extermination by starvation the “exporting of hunger”, the wholesale plundering of the food supplies of others so that the homelands would not go hungry. In fact the implementation of these policies was chaotic and unsuccessful. In eastern Europe the ingenuity with which people bartered, hoarded and found alternate food supplies meant that the Nazis accelerated their concentration and destruction of Jews in order to meet their self-imposed quotas of eliminating “useless mouths”. Policies of genocide and food security thus went hand in hand.

Collingham’s accounts of how governments worked to feed their peoples and militaries will fascinate students of logistics and social science. Total war placed enormous stresses on food production. Shipping and transport was destroyed or diverted from moving food to moving troops and war supplies. Factories switched from agricultural to military production, leaving tools, tractors and fertilizers in short supply. Agricultural labour was moved into militaries and industry. To compensate, governments adopted rationing based on their internal values of entitlement. For the US, the mobilization of its vast food resources inspired the slogan “Freedom From Want” as an American war aim, thus banishing ghosts of the Depression and inspiring a new middle class standard of prosperity. In Britain, egalitarian standards of rationing shed light on pre-war class-related nutritional deficits and led to social reforms that lasted until the Thatcher era. In the dictatorships, rations were allocated based on one’s value to the war effort. Soviet workers and soldiers functioned on the brink of malnutrition through the worst years of the war. In Germany, the ruthless plundering of other countries’ food reserves (as Canadian troops discovered liberating a starving Holland) meant that most Germans did not face starvation until the final collapse. Only Japan, which had its maritime shipping totally destroyed as the Pacific War turned against it, was unable to feed its soldiers and citizens. By 1943 the Japanese government was reduced to exhorting its people to eat “Decisive Battle Food” that included insects, rice straw and seaweed.

Adequately feeding militaries of millions posed huge challenges. In the Allied armies, the increased democratization of societies meant that citizen soldiers had higher expectations than did those of the Great War. Britain thus introduced its Army Catering Corps as part of reforms to culinary standards previously so low they caused sit down strikes in 1941 among Canadian troops stationed in Britain. The quality of field rations improved gradually, though in hostile environments such as the Desert and New Guinea, troops often survived on bully beef and biscuits. German troops were expected to augment their rations with food confiscated locally, at the detriment of occupied populations. Their Russian opponents were generally hungrier and became expert foragers, keeping scurvy at bay by eating nettles and boiling pine needles. The worst off were the Japanese, who, often isolated and marooned on islands, were reduced to eating dried grasses, palm starch, and, ultimately, each other. American troops became the wonder of the world for their seemingly unlimited rations, and it is no wonder, as Collingham notes, that “plentiful American food became a symbol of the United States’ economic prosperity”.

It is difficult for Canadians today to imagine a world where hunger and thoughts of food haunted waking life for billions, although for parts of the globe that world still exists. For decades after 1945, societies ruined by the war struggled with hunger while the victors, particularly Americans, dedicated themselves to increased consumption of meat and dairy products. Other countries followed the American example as they recovered, and so consumerism, obesity and “diseases of affluence” are legacies of the war. Advances in nutritional science, food preservation and storage technologies are more positive results. As global population and food demands continue to climb, as climates change and as agriculture reaches yield limits, Collingham predicts that governments (and, by implication, militaries) will once again need to manage the world’s food supplies and relearn the lessons of World War Two.

Signs that your church is toxic?

2011-10-12T15:29:00.001-04:00

Oh, wait a moment. It must be an adjective, not a verb. Gotta be.

H/t to Charlie Kew's blog.

Book Review: The Junior Officers' Reading Club

2011-10-11T17:02:00.003-04:00

Patrick Hennessey. The Junior Officers' Reading Club: Killing Time and Fighting Wars. New York: Riverhead Books (Penguin), 2009.

During the British Army's training season here at CFB Suffield you can spot them in the officer's mess - young Brit officers with big hair, a certain languid grace and a devil-may-care attitude. They fall into two groups, the young subbies (lieutenants) here with their battlegroups, training to go over to Helmand province in Afghanistan, and slightly older captains who have already been over there and are now here as trainers, imparting their hard-won lessons to the first group. Reading Patrick Hennessy's book gives me a sense of what their lives and their army is like.

Patrick Hennessy is a bright young man (born 1982) from a family of soldiers who did well at Sandhurst, was assigned to the Grenadier Guards, and went from Iraq to Afghanistan, where he mentored a piratical group of Afghan National Army soldiers. In the process he did very well, saw an insane amount of combat, got badly burned out, and came to realize that he and his peers had followed the trajectory of each generation before them, learning lessons the hard way, by personal experience and coming of age. As he writes in the introduction, his cohort could only learn so much from their seniors, not because the seniors couldn't teach, but because the juniors had to walk that road themselves.

"Too Cool for School" was what we'd been called by the smarmy gunner colonel on a course down in Warminster, congratulating through gritted teeth the boys who'd picked up gallantry awards, too old now to win the spurs he never got the chance to while he was getting drunk on the Rhine and flying his desk.
But in a way he was right: what did we know just because we'd had a few scraps in the desert? The bitter, loggy major who sat next to him had probably been to the Gulf back in '91, when we were still learning to read; probably had been patronized himself when he was a crow by returning Falklands vets who in turn had been instructed by grizzly old-timers sporting proud racks of World War Two medals, chests weighed down by Northwest Europe and Northern Desert Stars, which told of something greater than we could comprehend, the stuff of history imagined in black and white when no one was anyone without a Military Cross. Our grandfathers were heroes, whatever that meant, and they had taught the legends who charged up Mount Tumbledown in the Falklands and had returned to teach us.
We who didn't believe them."

I suppose that excerpt repeats a cliche as old as Achilles, that each generation in turn must go to war to prove itself as their elders did, and in turn must experience war and its many disillusionments first hand. Hennessey is a bright young man, and he tells this old story in the language and context of his generation: ferociously skeptical, media astute, cynical but wanting meaning. There are times when, as a chaplain and a person of faith, I find myself wincing at his honesty, as when he writes that he "was overcome by a surge of revulsion at the hypocrisy of the thing, the crap being peddled by the padres that somehow makes it all right for a nineteen-year-old to die if he's going to heaven. That surely can't have been the same heaven the suicide bombers who blew up the UN workers were off to. After the Old Testament trials of the week I'm done with the religious bullshit dimension of what is going on" (24-25). Brutally honest, but I'm grateful for it. It's good to know your audience.

Despite its title, this book is more about combat than about literature. The Book Club in the title was the author's initial peer group, but they are only briefly sketched characters and we soon lose sight of them. However, Hennessey was himself an avid and eclectic reader in theatre, and his choices are interesting. Some of his reading connects him with a long tradition of adventurous British soldier-scholars, such Wilfred Thesiger's The Marsh Arabs. As something of a satirist himself, it's easy to see why Hennessey enjoyed military send-ups such as Evelyn Waugh's Vile Bodies and Joseph Heller's Catch 22. More contemporary choices included Brett Easton Ellis (himself once a bright young man). And of course there are the 21st touches, ipod playlists, DVD series, email and videos.

I won't spoil the ending. Along the way, one admire's Hennessey's love for the Afghan soldiers he served with, and shares his unease as to the West's longterm commitment to the Afghan people. As an addition to the genre of military memoirs, it's a useful update, even if the tropes (alienation from former civilial friends, resentment at rear-echelon types, disillusionment with the experience once so eagerly sought out) are familiar. If war is indeed a cliche, then each generation it seems must discover that truth for itself, and Hennessey is an apt spokesman for those who came of age in the War on Terror. My hope is that somewhere out there, a similarly articulate young Canadian soldier is working on his or her own account of Afghanistan.

A quick final note on the cover art shown above. The choice of a pile of dog-eared paperbacks, some suspiciously resembling the old Penguin Classics, is inspired. It reminded me of the chapters in Paul Fussell's chapters in his book Wartime: Understanding and Behavior in the Second World War (1989), on how paperbacks, miraculously suited to the pockets of battledress, helped soldiers pass the time and stay sane. Regretfully, Penguin has seen fit to adorn the pile of books on the cover with little soldiers who, from their weapons and helmets, are conspicuously US. Could they not have used images of British soldiers? Surely the North American market could stomached that.

After Thanksgiving, a Question: Why Give Thanks?

2011-10-11T15:32:00.002-04:00

I liked this essay by the Rev. James Christie, a Canadian theologian, which appears in this month's issue of The United Church Observer. Christie's main point - any good relationship, including the one want to have God, is founded on please and thank you. MP+

Military Picture of the Week

2011-10-11T13:42:00.002-04:00

I continue to love the work of the British military photographers! This photo is the MOD's Image of the Day for 10 Oct 2011. MP

Lightning strikes in the distance behind Camp Bastion, Afghanistan, as troops wait for the first rainfall on Operation HERRICK 15, which officially began yesterday when 20th Armoured Brigade took over command of Task Force Helmand in Lashkar Gah from 3 Commando Brigade Royal Marines. Click here to read more. [Picture: Sergeant Steve Blake RLC, Crown Copyright/MOD 2011]

Call The Doctor (Because No One Else Can Help You)

2011-10-04T20:24:00.002-04:00

Fr Pierre Martinius nursing plague victims, 1564. N532/0007 Rights Managed

I was ordained just after the SARS epidemic haunted North America for a very brief and unpleasant time in early summer. My bishop let we his clergy know that if things got as bad as the doomsayers were predicting, he would remove any of us who refused to visit the sick or worse, to use a phrase with echoes of the Black Plague, deserted our parishes. I confess that for a few days I entertained romantic thoughts of myself acting like Father Paneloux in Albert Camus' The Plague, faithfully preaching, visiting, and burying (not that Fr. Paneloux was a hero to Camus, mind you, but it comes to mind). Fortunately such heroics weren't necessary. SARS vanished as quickly as it came, a blessed few had to be buried, and none of my clergy colleagues had to be removed.

I was reminded of SARS as I watched Stephen Soderbergh's scary and smart film Contagion last week. I'm sure Soderbergh wanted us to be reminded of SARS and all the other diseases that haunt this now all too flat earth. That's the conclusion of David Denby in his very fine review in The New Yorker. r I'm not the only Christian blogger to recommend this film, which is fast-paced, thoughtful, and scary as hell. However, as I watched Contagion, I looked in vain for a priest, minister, or even a church. Not a sign of one. While Contagion does set up a conflict between rational science, reperesented by the heroic and steadfast researchers and doctors in the film, and irrationality, Soderbergh doesn't bother using faith as his straw man.

The straw man here is the blogger and conspiracy theorist played by Jude Law, who plays on fears of collusion between governments, medicine, and big pharma to discredit the vaccine which finally arrives late in the film to save society tottering on the brink. It's a good conflict, and it's a worthy anttodote to the wild and half baked theories infecting the internet. But I was taken aback by the final words in Denby's review"

"No one prays, no one calls on God. "Contagion" lacks any spiritual dimension - except for its passionate belief in science and rational administration. The movie says: When there's real trouble, we're in the hands of the reality-based community. No one else matters."

Amen ... I think. I'm grateful for Soderbergh for valourizing science and public administration in this film. Many of the characters in Contagion, like the doctor played by Kate Winslett, are worthy heirs to Dr. Rieux, the real hero of Camus' The Plague. As Francis Fukuyama writes in the introduction to his 2011 book, The Origins of Political Order, there is a prevalent notion that we would all be better off if modern states were dismantled when, in fact, they are damned complicated, took a long time to build, and are generally good for us. Soderbergh's film underscores that point rather well. It's just the spiritual emptiness in it which, once Denby pointed it out to me, saddens me.

Or maybe it's not spiritual emptiness, but rather a displacement of spirituality that's going on. In the same (Sept 19, 2011) issue of The New Yorker, Paul Goldberger offers an essay on how architects are rethinking buildings dedicated to medical research and science. Speaking of Louis I. Kahn's design for the Salk Institute, he writes that the building gives "research scientists private, almost monastic solitude". So that's where the monks have all gone! I guess I'll take some comfort in the idea that monasteries, once dedicated to being set apart to pray for the world, have given place to laboratories working to save the world. It's an appealing and comforting alternative to the old SF movie cliche of the laboratory where bad things and nightmares are hatched. I take more comfort in the idea that God the creator, who created humanity to use its formidable intellect, finds delight in these beautiful buildings and tenacious humans who work to save life, which, I suppose, save for the mention of God, was Soderbergh's point as well.

A Labour of Love

2011-10-01T21:43:00.008-04:00

"What more was there to do for my vineyard that I have not done in it?" (Isa 5:4)

A Sermon for the Sixteenth Sunday After Pentecost, Preached at Christ the King Chapel, CFB Suffield, Ralston, AB

Year A Lections for Pentecost 16: Exodus 20:1-4, 7-9, 12-20, Isaiah 5:1-7, Psalm 80:7-15 (14, 15), Philippians 3:4b-14, Matthew 21:33-46

I haven't toured a lot of wineries but whenever I do I am impressed by how much work it is to create a place that grows good wine. Some years back I was visiting friends on Pender Island in BC's Gulf Islands and they took me to Morning Bay Vineyards. This winery is quite new, and was created by blasting terraces out of the island rock, hauling in good earth, and planting vines brought over from Europe. It took them eighteen months to build the vineyard before they could start production, in what was clearly a labour of love, and they make some very nice wine.

I was reminded of my visit to Morning Bay as I was reading the first lesson from Isaiah, the song of the beloved's vineyard. "My beloved had a vineyard on a very fertile hill. He dug it and cleared it of stones, and planted it with choice vines; he built a watchtower in the midst of it, and hewed out a wine vat in it" (Isa 5:1-2). Isaiah's song of the vineyard is an allegory and a warning. As the vehicle of the allegory, the labour and effort to create the vineyard is a reminder to Israel of the care and love that God has put into his covenant relationship with them. God's chosen people are the "choice vine", and as verse 7 explains, the fruit that this vine is expected to produce is "justice" and "righteousness". In other words, the people of Israel are expected to live according to the law that God gave them, both in their dealings with God and with one another. The warning to Israel is that they have not kept their covenant with God, the vineyard has produced "wild grapes" that cannot be made into wine. In a voice equally mixed with sorrow and anger, God declares that he will destroy the vineyard.

You can imagine how disappointed the owners of Morning Bay Vineyards would have been after all their investment and labour did not produce good grapes. At some point the love and hope and effort poured into a project just isn't enough to make it work. We hear some of that disappointment in God's words as Isaiah relates them: "And now, inhabitants of Jerusalem and people of Judah, judge between me and my vineyard. What more was there to do for my vineyard that I have not done in it?" (Isa 5:3-4).

In the Song of the Vineyard, Isaiah captures both the voices of the God of love who wants to be in relationship with humanity and the anger of God of Justice who is outraged by bloodshed and cruelty. The blending of these voices is far more subtle than the Old Testament, supposedly full of judgement and smiting, is often given credit for. The theologian Karl Barth, in his discussion of humanity's election by God, called these two voices the No and Yes. The No is the voice of warning and ultimately of condemnation, but it is not ultimately the final voice, or voices. The final voices are both the Yes of God's loving grace and forgiveness, and the Yes of those who choose that grace and forgiveness rather than condemnation.

By way of fleshing out that theological sidebar, let's note that the Song of the Vineyard is not the final song. That song is continued in today's Gospel, in Jesus' exchange with the teachers and the pharisees, and his parable of the vineyard that is grounded on Isaiah 5. Jesus' very act of telling the parable reminds us that the judgement and destruction of the vineyard threatened by the owner in Isaiah has not yet happened. In the parable, God's outreach to his created and chosen people continues, like negotiations continuing to the very last possible minute, wit one side being violently and irrationally intractable and the other being hopelessly generous.

David Lose, one of the wonderful voices of the Working Preacher website, compares the forbearace of the vineyard owner in the parable to the Sower in the parable of the Sower and the Seed. Both, he writes, are emblematic of what Lose calls God's "crazy generous love": "Who would do such a thing? No one...except maybe a crazy landlord so desperate to be in relationship with these tenants that he will do anything, risk anything, to reach out of them. This landowner acts more like a desperate parent, willing to do or say or try anything to reach out to a beloved and wayward child than he does a businessman. It's crazy, the kind of crazy that comes from being in love."

To be sure there is Barth's No, the voice of condemnation, in Matthew's parable. Interestingly, though, it does not come from Christ, but rather from Christ's antagonistic interlocutors, who are maneouvered into saying what the owner will do when his Son is killed: "He will put those wretches to a miserable death, and lease the vineyard to other tenants who will give him the produce at the harvest time" (MAtt 21:41). I'm struck by what Loses and others note here, that these words of condemnation are not spoken by Jesus. They come, ironically, from those who will soon, in Matthew's Passion narrative, join in the rejection of Jesus. But these words of condemnation do not come from Jesus himself.

In Isaiah's Song, the owner of the vineyard vows to destroy and tear up what he has lovingly created and offered to humanity. In Matthew, in the shadow of the cross he will soon go to, Jesus the beloved son, with whom God is well pleased, embodies the vineyard. In chosing the cross, Jesus acts out the part of the obedient son in the parable. In his commentary on Isaiah 5, Mark Gignilliat of Beeson Divinity School makes the spot-on connection between Christ's broken and lifeless body becomes the uprooted vineyard. "It is a powerful image: God the Father before the cross with dead vines in his blistered hands. In the final analysis, God in a triune act of love destroyed his choicest vineyard -- this is my beloved son -- for the sake of planting a vineyard of love and grace in the whole world."

For me the gospel in this Sunday's lections is the reminder of the persistence of God and his desire to be in fruitful relationship with us. In this time of autumn and harvest, as living things shut down and the land becomes bleak, the hope of what God would bring to life in each of us seems somehow greater and more radiant.

New On My Tablet Christmas Wish List

2011-09-29T11:10:00.003-04:00

I've been considering getting an Ipad this Christmas, partly because I'm tired of trying to find print copies of The New Yorker in the small town where I live and getting it on a tablet seems attractive.

This piece in today's Globe and Mail on the new Kindle Fire tablet is intriguing. For half the price of the Ipad, if I can get a bigger screen than my iphone to read ebooks AND get the New Yorker, hmmmmm.

Oh, and it supports Plants Vs Zombies! Bonus!

"You've Just Got to Join In": Tips of the Trade From a British Army Chaplain

2011-09-29T11:02:00.003-04:00

Good advice here for my chaplain colleagues from a British army padre. MP+

Army chaplain Padre Stephen Hancock
[Picture: Corporal Andy Reddy RLC, Crown Copyright/MOD 2011]

"Sitting in a vehicle watching these guys, in body armour and helmet in 56 degrees [Celsius] heat, 122 [degrees Fahrenheit] in English money, you've got to be robust, but that's how you earn their respect.

"Even if you fainted, they'd probably love you more - you've just got to join in.

"You've got to do what they're doing, be with them, share with them, and then it's incredible how, when you least expect it, they will come to you with their intimate pain and intimate secret.

"And that is a real privileged position and you start to think 'my presence is not wasted'."

More here.

"Generosity Can Lower A Person's Status": In Tough Times, Be Tough, Study Finds

2011-09-28T18:12:00.004-04:00

In August I posted a sermon here which noted two studies claiming that selfish and assertive people do better financially and in the workplace. Today's Globe and Mail notes a similar study which finds that people may respect selfless and generous behaviour, but in times of crisis they would prefer a leader who is selfish and aggressive.

"While we all might prefer to work for a saintly personality like Mother Teresa, when the going gets tough most people would rather be led by a self-serving toughie like Al Capone".

An interesting and somewhat alarming story to read at a time when the West seems to be drifting over the falls and strong leadership is nowhere to be seen.

"They Are the Beginnings of a Nation": Major Fernando Lujan on How the War in Afghanistan Can Still be Won

2011-09-28T11:34:00.006-04:00

Wise and encouraging words in today's NYT from a US Special Forces Major who believes that the Afghan people have the will to prevail against the Taliban even when many in the West have pronounced the conflict unwinnable.

Here's an excerpt: "... optimism in Afghanistan should not be mistaken for naïveté. We’ve paid a terrible price for the gains we’ve made, and Afghans know we’re leaving. Insurgents still control many areas and are certain to attempt a counteroffensive as foreign troops withdraw. My optimism is rooted instead in an intangible metric, gleaned from the thousand cups of tea we drank and the hundreds of patrols we walked: the Afghans have the will to win, with or without us."

Read the whole piece here.

Military Goats In the News

2011-09-26T16:05:00.002-04:00

It's been over a year since we at Mad Padre posted on that most captivating of subjects, the military goat. In August 2010 we introduced you to AirCraftsman George, the mascot of the Royal Air Force recruit training centre at RAF Halton. Apparently AC George is stagging on and doing his duty as a good goat should.

Today the UK MOD News Service announced that the RAF and the Bucks Goat Centre, his official residence, have put together a handsome trailer so AC George can travel in style.

Recruit Training Squadron mascot George the goat arrives at RAF Halton in his new trailer to attend a graduation parade
[Picture: Crown Copyright/MOD 2011]

The RAF reports that "George appears to love his new trailer as it gives him a place to rest, shelter and prepare himself physically and mentally for his performances."

Sadly, to my knowledge there are no goats serving in the Canadian Forces. If the situation changes, Mad Padre will be the first to let you know.

Getting Over Ourselves

2011-09-25T11:30:00.008-04:00

A Sermon for the Fifteenth Sunday of Pentecost, preacher at Christ the King Chapel, CFB Suffield, Ralston, AB, 25 Sept 2011.

Lectionary texts for Year A: Exodus 17:1-7, Ezekiel 18:1-4, 25-32, Psalm 25:1-9 (6), Philippians 2:1-13, Matthew 21:23-32

First sermon after a month of leave and temporary duties. Hasty and rushed, and written after the fact, but a pleasure to preach the gospel again. H/T to the Kiwi Canon for the idea. MP+
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My friend Gene Packwood put me on to this excellent piece by Sharon Hodie Miller on aithenticity. Her starting point in this essay is the prevalence of the word "authentic" and the claims to autnenticity by so many politicans and celebrities today. This prevalence leads Miller to claim that "authenticity is near to becoming a core ... ethic" at a time when so many of us feel manipulated and lied to.

I think Miller has a good point. In an age of media spin and of a growing gap between the superrich and the rest of us, it does seem that those at the top are anxious to claim the legitimacy of being real folks, just like the rest of us. I found it fascinating this week to note a CBC documentary on the singer Celine Dion, who is anxious to tell her public that she is really just an ordinary working parent: "I am a mom, like other moms. I am a working mom, like other working moms." This claim may be hard to digest when we note that Ms. Dion makes megabucks singing in Las Vegas, but its fascinating that she needs to present herself to us this way, as if the reality of personhood is the one thing her public persona cannot give her.

Not that being "authentic" is a bad thing. I can't think of anyone who would be displeased to be described as "authentic". Authenticity is reality, without the semblance of masks or posturing. It is the matching of word and action that we call integrity. In very geneeral terms, being authentic is being true to one's self.

What does it mean to be authentically Christian? I ask this question because a frequent accusation made against Christians is that we are hypocrites, who speak piously but act in such a way that undercuts the values we proclaim. The sexual misdeeds of clergy or of Christian conservative politicians, the greed of televangelists, or the indifference of affluent congregations to racism and poverty are common facts that explain this perception.

Miller offers two helpful thoughts about being authentically Christian. The first is that it takes time and practice. Our word "disciple" comes from the Latinword for student, and being a student of anything worthwhile takes time. In this congregation we have soldiers, nurses, teachers and parents, and you all know that you don't get good at those crafts overnight. Miller's second point is that authentic Christianity only comes from its namesake, Christ.

Miller writes (and this is a long quotation but worthwhile) that authenticity "can only be had in Christ. C. S. Lewis wrote, “Until you have given up your self to Him you will not have a real self. . . . The very first step is to try to forget about the self altogether. You real, new self will not come as long as you are looking for it. It will come when you are looking for Him. . . . Christ will indeed give you a real personality.”

Lewis makes this statement as one who understands the deceptiveness and destructiveness of sin. Only God knows who we really are — that is, who he created each one of us to be. Sin leads us to construct alternative versions of ourselves, selves we prefer, selves that are more comfortable, selves that bring us the most glory. We may try to construct selves that will honor God, but even our best intentions will be perverted when working off a manmade blueprint.

In Christ, however, we become our true selves. God opens our eyes to our sins, to the self-deception, to the things in our lives that are not of him. Then he transforms us, conforming us to the only perfect human being who ever lived. In Christ, we stop operating according to the constraints of social expectations, personal insecurities, and lies. Rather than live in ways that are subhuman, we finally live in a manner worthy of God’s vision for humanity."

In our second lesson from Philippians, Paul expresses the idea of authenticity in his phrase "having the mind of Christ". He associates this mind with values that promote others above self, particularly "compassion" and "sympathy", and then suggests that there is only room for these values in the Christlike mind when the self is put out of the way: "Do nothing from selfish ambition or conceit, but in humility regard others as better than yourselves. Let each of you look not to your own interests but to the interests of others" (Phil 2:3-4). Only by removing the self, Paul suggests, can "the same mind be in your that was in Christ Jesus" (Phil 2:5).

The idea of devaluing the self is a difficult one. In the Sermon Brainwave disussion on today's lections, Prof. Karoline Lewis and her colleagues the very honest statement that Paul's call to lower ourselves can be heard the wrong way to modern ears, playing into power dynamics that promote inequalities and oppression. I think that's a fair caution. Even for someone as relatively privileged as myself, it's difficult to hear. This week I am meeting with my chaplain supervisor to receive my annual professional review, and of course the selfish part of me is hoping for good comments and a decent ranking that might lead the way to promotion and nice postings. Supessing the self or even dying to the self is a difficult thing.

I think however that the famous Christ hymn in Philippians 2:6-11, as important as it may be to our doctrine of Christology, also explains what Paul means by the "Christ mind". The Son of God, Paul says, left the power and status of the divine to become a slave. My guilty pleasure right now is watching the Starz series "Spartacus: Blood and Sand" which, while not for the faint of heart, reminds us what it means to be a slave in Paul's world. No greater self-abnegation could be imagined by Paul's contemporaries. So Paul is saying that authentic Christianity is the Christ mind and the Christ mind is selflessness. To be authentically Christian, we need to try to get over ourselves. Otherwise we may be surprised, like the religious professionals, to find that those we might see through and ignore, like the "tax collectors and prostitutes" (Matt 21:31), are entering the kingdom of heaven way ahead of us.

Selflessness is not impossible. Military culture promotes it all the time. Theories about atltruism being a genetic trait may even suggest that it is hardwired in us. Whether we choose to cultivate an attitude of selflessness that as Christians will lead us into the mind of Christ is a choice that we make repeatedly over our lives. Selflessness means seeing the other person and their need with "compassion and sympathy". If you like, try practising that skill the next time you go into Medicine Hat for a Timmies, not at the nice ones with the drive thrus, but the one on Third Street with no drive thru, where the riff raff, street folks and the mentally ill hang out. Get in line with them. Notice them. Say hello to them. While you are down there, you may notice the sign in a nearby shop window that I saw the other day. It reads "We are on this earth not to see through one another, but to see one another through". Not a bad summary of the Christ mind, I think.

"If People Are the Focus Then There's No Hope". Paul Wilson on Preaching

2011-09-22T13:24:00.003-04:00

Paul Scott Wilson, from Emmanuel College, Toronto School of Theology, on what he calls "one of the biggest issues that there is in preaching", the need for the preacher to focus the sermon on God.

A Canadian War Hero Gets His Due

2011-09-22T11:50:00.002-04:00

Major William. G. Barker poses with the wreckage of Sopwith F1 "Camel" aircraft of No. 28 Squadron, RAF, in 1918 in Italy.

Great story from today's Globe and Mail about steps in Toronto to honour Canada's greatest military aviator. He deserves to be remembered.

More on Paul Hellyer and the "R" Word: A Reader's Comments

2011-09-21T16:47:00.002-04:00

On 17 August I posted some comments here about Paul Hellyer's dissent from the government's decision to restore the titles "Royal Canadian Navy" and "Royal Canadian Air Force". Hellyer, pictured above, was Minister of Defence under the late PM Pierre Trudeau and axed these titles as part of his restructuring of the Canadian military in the late 1960s.

My post tried to be provocative as well as thoughtful, and it elicited some very thoughtful response. Today I got this great reply from JCanuck and I thought it was a pity to see it buried in the comments portion of an old post, so here it is. Thanks, JCanuck. When time permits I'll comment on it below but you deserve to have this seen by others.
Blessings, MP+

Honked Off? You did that with spades Mike, however I enjoy your blog. Let's examine your assertions on the term'Royal'.

You assert not many serving identify with the word Royal "particularly younger ones and especially those who are not of Anglo background". That is perhaps the way you feel, but it certainly hasn't been my experience in all the years I have been serving and I write as an 8th generation Canadian married to an immigrant from a visible minority. My wife and children are quite happy with the word Royal. So are Officers I have served with from the Royal 22nd, the 'Van Doos'. Not only happy with, but proud of the title.

The dropping of the prefix 'Royal' at the time of unification was justified on two premises which had little if any merit. Conveniently you repeated them for us. The first was that new Canadians would have trouble identifying with the term 'Royal'. Very strange as they chose to immigrate to a country that is a constitutional monarchy. They had other choices, no one forced them to come here. They came here out of their own free will. The other premise which you assert is that it creates 'difficulty' for French Canadians. The truth is that French Canada sided with the Crown in the wars of 1776 and 1812 and not with the Americans. It was in their interest to do so and we can see how well the French speaking population of Quebec has fared in comparison with their compatriots in Louisiana.

Some genuinely thought in the 1960's that playing down or eliminating our heritage and traditions would make it easier for newcomers to become Canadians and would put paid to the separatist threat in Quebec. In fact those actions had the opposite result. Newcomers saw no depth of tradition or heritage to adopt and fell back on to the traditions and heritage they had come from in what Reginald Bibby called 'Mosaic Madness'. They didn't feel particularly Canadian. Separatists were interested in promoting their own 'heritage and traditions' not old or new Canadian ones. Canadians who had treasured their heritage and traditions were hurt by the changes and grew resentful. So negativity all around.

Did you notice that the Australians and New Zealanders, who have large immigrant populations, didn't feel the need to drop the prefix 'Royal? No one thinks of Australia or New Zealand as a colony. Interesting to note too that no major country has embarked on the unification route put forth by Hellyer.

Unification also got rid of two Regular Regiments with very long histories that predate the formation of Canada: The Black Watch of Canada and the Queens Own Rifles of Canada. Given that we have more Scottish Blood flowing through Canadian veins than they do in Scotland, that was particularly hurtful.

Canada is constitutional monarch and our titles and symbols should reflect that. Elizabeth II is Queen of Canada (she also has some secondary duties :-) )

What has happened this year is not a move backward, but a restoration to what is right and proper. The Royal Canadian Navy brings to mind the Battle of the North Atlantic and the Convoys. The Royal Canadian Air Force connects to the Battle of Britain, Number 6 Group in Bomber Command, the Golden Jets, and the Avro Arrow. The RCAF and RCN connects with heritage and traditions that were bought with service and sacrifice. It's good for us to remember that and be connected with it. It shows us paying respect for what has gone before and the Canadians that have gone before.

It take a big man to admit that he was wrong. Hellyer isn't that sort of a man. He never was and never will be.

What Soldiers Are (And Should Be) Reading

2011-09-21T16:44:00.001-04:00

Tom Ricks serves up his own and others' reading books on the profession of arms as practised today and in the past. Lots of essential and worthwhile reading here to keep you busy this winter.

For Some Squids, Don't Ask Don't Tell Still Applies

2011-09-21T13:51:00.004-04:00

No, this post has nothing to do with the US Navy, who are sometimes known as squids. Nor does it have to do with the repeal of the US military's Don't Ask, Don't Tell policy, which became official yesterday, allowing serving men and women to be openly gay. According to the New York Times, the US Marine Corps has been the first out the gate to recruit gays and lesbians. As the Times put it, "Although Marines pride themselves on being the most testosterone-fueled of the services, they also ferociously promote their view of themselves as the best. With the law now changed, the Marines appear determined to prove that they will be better than the Army, Navy, Air Force and Coast Guard in recruiting gay, lesbian and bisexual service members." Which is all to the good, in Mad Padre's opinion. It's actually quite gratifying that the USMC is following in the Canadian military's footsteps in this area. Think of it as military evolution.

Actually, this post is about another NYT story that caught my eye today, about a certain species of deep sea squid, octopoteuthis deletron, which don't ask their prospective mate's sex before, well, mating. "Male squid, for example, pay no attention to the sex of other squid. Understandably so. They live alone in the dark, males and females are hard to tell apart, and only occasionally do squids pass in the night. Far better to risk wasting a few million sperm than to miss out on a chance to reproduce."

Theologically the story is interesting because it led me to think about the doctrine of creation, where, as Karl Barth and others have insisted, good theology starts. Apparently octopoteuthis deletron is one of many species, including of mammals (dolphins and bonobos) that are indifferent as to the gender of their sexual partners. Besides certain and oft-debated biblical warrants, the Christian disapproval of homsexuality is grounded on the belief that it the practice is unnatural, since the revelation of nature, if we accept that nature is God's handiwork, seems to testify that God created life male and female and intended the sexes to complement one another. The behaviour of this diminutive species of squid, and of other animals mentioned in the NYT article, seems to make that argument a tad blurry.

By the same token, those who use octopoteuthis deletron to argue that there is a natural warrant for same-sex behaviour may find themselves on shaky ground. Dr. Hendrik Hoving, one of the authors of the squid study, "was prepared for attention to the same-sex behavior and was ready for people to conflate squid and human behavior and announce the discovery of gay squid.

He fended off that notion, reiterating that the squid has no discernible sexual orientation, and that a tentacled invertebrate that shoots sperm into its mate’s flesh really has nothing to do with human behavior."

Another biologist, Dr. Marlene Zuk, is quoted in the NYT piece as saying that same-sex sex in the animal kingdon is a valid evolutionary strategy. "Don’t imagine that squid are stupid, Dr. Zuk said, at least about being squid. “The animal is not making a mistake. It’s not mistaken to deposit sperm with another male,” because somehow, the behavior works, or natural selection would have eradicated the behavior or the squid.

And, she said, “we still have squid.”

So, I'm not sure that the squid story supplies much theological ammunition one way or another. At best, nature can only offer limited insights into the creator's intentions, as J.S Haldane once quipped when he said that God must be inordinately fond of beetles. If evolution is the outworking of creation, then it will do weird stuff as necessary (and if you think that the squid story is weird, google "traumatic insemination" and be prepared for nightmares). Perhaps all we can conclude from these two stories is that evolution is good for squid ... and for militaries.

Who Is Mary's Mother? Get It Right If You Want To Stay In Canada

2011-09-20T17:39:00.003-04:00

Kudos to the Federal Court of Canada for reigning in a particularly zealous Refugee Board adjudicator, Ms. Rose Andrachuk, who wanted to turf a man from China claiming refugee status for being persecuted as a Roman Catholic.

According to today's National Post, "The Federal Court of Canada expressed dismay at the level of knowledge expected from the recent convert, who knew Mary was the mother of Jesus but didn't know Jesus' grandmother's name; and who knew Jesus was baptized by John but didn't know John's mother's name. (The answers are Anne and Elizabeth, respectively.)"

The refugee claimant, Mao Qin Wang, "26, says he turned to religion after his father was seriously injured in an accident and a friendly Catholic said he was praying for him. When his father improved, he started attending his friend's underground church in 2007, he says."

I can appreciate that Ms. Andrachuk, a practicing Roman Catholic, wanted to see if Mr. Wang's claim was sincere, but I'm also pretty sure that underground Catholic churches in China don't offer quality RCIA (catechism for converts) programs. I can think of a few of my Anglican clergy colleagues who might be stumped by the Anne and Elizabeth questions.

Read the whole story here.

The General's Jet

2011-09-20T13:30:00.005-04:00

If you are Canadian, you will have likely heard that there has been a bit of a flap on since CTV News ran a story on the cost of jet travel incurred by Canada's top soldier, General Walter Natynczyk, the Chief of Defence Staff.

I'm a serving member of the Canadian Forces and I can't comment directly on this controversy. I'll simply say two things. First, if you're interested in this matter, you need to read this piece in today's Globe and Mail by George Petrolekas, who offers an insider's view on what happens on the CDS' Challenger jet.

Secondly, some months ago the CDS visited CFB Suffield for a few hours. We are a small base in an out of the way part of Alberta. The closest airport is Medicine Hat, and you can't fly there directly. Either you take a commuter flight from Calgary or you drive the three hours from Calgary Airport. The CDS flew his Challenger into Med Hat, and spent a few hours with us. There are barely one hundred uniformed CF members here, but it meant a lot to us that our top soldier came here to talk to us and listen to us. I have no idea where he was before Suffield, and where he went afterwards, but I am pretty sure the only reason he could carve time out of an insane schedule to visit us was because of his Challenger jet. I for one think that was taxpayer's money well spent.

A Call for Justice for Women Veterans

2011-09-12T16:35:00.003-04:00

Props to the New York Times for this op-ed piece calling on the US Department of Defense and the Department of Veterans Affairs to take a pro-active and supportive stance towards those women veterans who have suffered sexual trauma while in uniform. Short and worth reading.

Where was Mad Padre?

2011-09-12T16:06:00.006-04:00

Mad Padre has been offline for several weeks while Mrs. Padre and I bashed around southern Alberta in our new/old VW Westfalia Vanagon camper. Today I'm clean shaven and looking reasonably military. Yesterday I looked like a bit of a civvie freakazoid.

This picture, and the next, show Mrs. Padre and myself with our Westy at Spruce Coulee Lake, Cypress Hills Interprovincial Park, in SE Alberta. The Westy doesn't have a name yet. I'm thinking of Lt. Gruber (if you're a fan of Allo! Allo! you'll get the reference) because it drives a bit like a tiny tank. However, I'm open to your suggestions.

MTF on our adventures.

Notable Quotable: Barry Ward on Why Funeral Planning Matters

2011-08-22T17:03:00.003-04:00

"A Christian funeral service focuses attention on what God has done for us in Christ." So says Rev. Barry Ward, pastor of Saving Grace Lutheran Church in Saskatchewan, in a great little article in The Canadian Lutheran. Worth reading by all pastors who are caught in the awkward space between what families want for a celebration of life and what the church's funeral liturgy can offer. It's an awkward space to be in, but Ward reminds us why that conversation is worth having. MP+

Medals and Sacrifice

2011-08-21T10:18:00.004-04:00

A Sermon Preached at Christ the King Chapel, CFB Suffield, Ralston, AB
Tenth Sunday After Pentecost

Ex 1:8-2:10; Ps 124; Rom 12:1-8, Mt 16:13-20 (Lect Yr A)

I appeal to you therefore, brothers and sisters, by the mercies of God, to present your bodies as a living sacrifice, holy and acceptable to God, which is your spiritual worship. (Romans 12:1)

If there is any church that might have a gut-level understanding of what Paul says in this verse, then surely it is a military chapel. The congregation of a military chapel may not get all the intricacies of Paul’s theology, but it does get the idea of “present[ing] your bodies as a living sacrifice”. This last week on Wednesday and Thursday there were a lot of soldiers around this base for the change of command ceremony and since they were in their dress uniforms and mess kits, there were a lot of medals on display. Most of those medals say the same thing, namely, “I went somewhere unpleasant because someone else told me to, even though I might have been killed, because it was part of the job.”

During the war in Afghanistan, the Canadian Forces offered a new decoration, the Sacrifice Medal, to honour the many soldiers who were getting killed and wounded while doing their duty.

The military has bureacratic names for everything, including sacrifice. The military calls it “unlimited liability” but it basically means “presenting your bodies as a living sacrifice”. Unlimited liability is tied to the idea of service. During the wars of the last ten years, most soldiers wearing uniform in a public space such as an airport have had people come up to them and say “thank you for your service”. Soldiers put their lives on the line for their country in the abstract sense, but at the sharp end of things, they put themselves on the line for each other. Many decorations for valour, perhaps most of them, are for helping wounded comrades while under fire. So what folks at the airport are saying to soldiers is “thank you for being selfless”.

Selflessness isn’t a highly celebrated quality these days, at least, not outside the army. Two news stories from last week both make the point that selfless behaviour does not equal success in the capitalist world we live in. A study done by a Cornell University business professor published last week apparently found that “nice guys are getting the shaft”. The study found that people who were described by coworkers as “disagreeable”, which usually meant men, got paid more than colleauges described as being “nice guys”. Apparently selfish and assertive people are better at getting raises and promotions. Likewise another university study, this one by a sociologist, found that the rich tend to be more selfish and less empathetic than poorer people. He summed up his findings in a quote by the writer Aynn Rand, that “It is the morality of altruism that men have to reject”. Rand's idea of selfishness as a guiding life principle has become quite mainstream in society and politics.

Truth be told, there are selfish people in the military too. Some of them wear medals. Some of them are chaplains. I recall a fellow on my Basic course who, after ten days on a field exercise, sprinted off the bus when we got back to quarters to be the first to get his clothes in the laundry. We thought - really, this guy is going to be a padre? But truth be told, I can be as selfish as him in my worst, or sometimes even my normal, moments. It's part of the human condition, called sin, which is one of Paul's main themes in Romans. In her excellent commentary on today's epistle, Mary Hinkle Shore reminds us that sin wars with creation "to such an extent that Paul can speak of our having been 'enslaved to sin' (Romans 6:6)". The trajectory of Romans from then on, as Shore notes, is how we are freed from the bodily slavery of sin through dying and being born into our new identity in Christ.

Selfishness is the opposite of selflessness, and is therefore a good defintion of sin. Anglicans traditionally pray the words of our Lord in the Summary of the Law, "And the second [commandment] is like unto it: Thou shalt love thy neighbour as thyself". My identity in Christ is the only way that I can make this prayer meaningful. There may be a self-help book in Chapters on "How to Be Selfless", but I can't make that book work for me without Christ. And even with Christ, the only way I can put selflessness into practice is in community with others, which brings us to Paul's body metaphor in the latter part of today's lesson.

For as in one body we have many members, and not all the members have the same function, so we, who are many, are one body in Christ, and individually we are members one of another. (Rm 12:4-5)

Churches are excellent places for reminding us of all the ways in which our selfishness can blind us to our interdepence on one another as part of the body of Christ. Early in my ordained career I found myself shovelling the snow from the church entrance one Sunday when there was no one to help me. Arriving home, I whinged to my wife that "I have four university degrees and I'm shovelling snow". Kay fixed me with a gaze that could cut steel and said "So what's your point?". I realized that I really had no point other than selfishness. That day I was the hands part of the body of Christ, called to selflessly shovel snow, with no medal to show for it.

Paul, who lived in a warlike time and who sometimes used military figures of speech himself, would have understood "unlimited liability" as the idea behind medals, but I suspect he would have said that being "transformed by the renewing of [our ]minds" was the best and only medal we would get. As a Jew and a Pharisee, Paul knew that sacrifices occurred outside the temple as well, in the sanctified but ordinary places and tasks of daily life. In going beyong that understanding as a follower of Jesus, Paul realized that our lives and our very persons become the sacrifice. In this new life of the self as sacrifice, there are no uniforms for the adopted children of God and citizens of heaven, except possibly the white robes of our baptism, and no medal except the blood of Christ that buys us from slavery. We did nothing to deserve this medal, but we wear it proudly and gratefully.

"Really moving backward": Paul Hellyer on the return of "royal" to Canadian Navy, Air Force

2011-08-17T16:16:00.003-04:00

"Is he still alive?" A friend in the mess said that this morning when I mentioned that Paul Hellyer, Minister of Defence under Prime Minister Trudeau, had weighed in on the government's announcement that Canada was going back to "Royal Canadian Navy" and "Royal Canadian Air Force". Paul Hellyer, arguably, still holds the title as most hated man in Canadian military circles. He was the Minister who in 1968 pushed the unification of the Canadian army, navy and air force, and abolished the term "Royal" (Canada's army alone of the three services has never used "Royal" in its title though many regiments do).

For the record, Hellyer had this to say when speaking to CBC news yesterday: "I'm very disappointed, actually very sad … I think it's really moving backward," Hellyer told CBC News, adding that the name changes are returning Canada — and the Forces — to a "semi-colonial status."

I still hear my seminary principal, George Sumner, saying that its easy to swim downstream, but it's hard to be a contrarian, so I'll go out on a limb and say that for me, personally, I'm with Hellyer on this one. I love tradition as much as the next soldier, but I think the term "royal" doesn't connect with many serving members today, particularly younger ones and especially those who are not of Anglo background. Two years ago I did a military course (OPME) on Canadian society, and wrote a paper on demographic trends facing the CF in the next decades. By 2031, one in four Canadians will have been born outside of Canada. Falling birthrates and an aging population will see the Anglo identity of Canada and of the CF slowly fading. So I'm not sure how the "Royal" appelation connects with the new Canadians whom the CF will have to recruit in the coming decades. Nor do I see how it connects with Franco-Canadians, who have proudly served in Afghanistan alongside theur Anglo comrades.

I'd also point out that the whole trajectory of Canadian military history, as forged at places such as Vimy Ridge, was of Canadian soldiers proving their own worth under their own command. I think that trajectory continues today. Lt. Col. Ian Hope, who commanded Task Force Orion in Afghanistan in 2006, made this observation about the US troops he worked with: "I realized that, at some point in the past decade, we have had a fundamental shift in the culture of the Canadian infantry, making us identify most readily with American, and not British, soldiers." (Hope, Lt. Col. Ian. “Agility and Endurance: Task Force Orion in Helmand.” Outside the Wire: The War in Afghanistan in the Words of Its Participants. Eds. Kevin Patterson and Jane Warren. Toronto: Random House, 2007, p. 154). I serve on a base with British soldiers, and I love them, they're great soldiers, but I'm proud to wear a Canadian maple leaf on my shoulder and, occasionally, I feel the need to remind some of the shirtier oners that they are guests in this country and not our masters or betters. Returning to a military heritage of colonial times, I think, takes us backwards rather than forwards. What Hellyer was trying to do was envision a role for Canada in a new world in a new century. I think today we're losing some of that vision, and I regret it.

John Ibbitson on How Canadian Defence Procurement Works

2011-08-13T19:09:00.003-04:00

If you're a Canadian and you follow the politics of defence spending, you will know that it's a complicated business deciding what to buy and where in Canada the money gets spent. That point was driven home to me recently in a recent military course or OPME on military technology.

In Saturday's Globe and Mail, John Ibbitson does an excellent job of explaining the government's three choices as to which regions will get huge contracts to build new ships for the Navy and Coast Guard. Halifax's Irving Shipyards and Vancouver's Seaspan Shipyards both have strong bids and strong provincial lobbying behind them. When I went through the Ottawa airport recently, Nova Scotia adds promoting Halifax's shipbuilding industry were everywhere. However, Quebec City has a hastily concocted bid from the David Yards, which have a somewhat dodgy financial history. All three regions are in play for the Tories politically. Who will win? Very short and insightful piece, well worth reading.

More Than Crumbs

2011-08-13T11:28:00.011-04:00

A Sermon for the Ninth Sunday After Pentecost
Preached at Christ the King Chapel, Ralston, AB, CFB Suffield 14 August, 2011

Lectionary Year A: Gen 45:1-15; Ps 133; Rom 11:1-2a,29-32, Mt 15:21-28

Reproduced courtesy of www.agnusday.com

Have you ever been in a place or situation where you made to feel that you didn't belong? It's an uncomfortable and even demeaning feeling, isn't it, unless you are one of those rare people who feel that they can go everywhere and anywhere. I'm not one of those people. When I was on my chaplain basic training, our course officer organized an excursion to Toronto where we had lunch at the Officers' Mess of his regiment, a posh Reserve unit with a proud history. We were all in training mode, supremely conscious that we were the lowest forms of life in the military food chain, and we had been told by our host that we would be on our best behaviour, and that we had better not embarass him. Sure enough, one of our number sat in a rather opulent chair that just happened to be unoccupied, not thinking to ask himself why the nicest chair in a crowded joint just happened to be vacant.

"Is that chair comfortable?" an officer of that regiment asked our colleague?
"It sure is!" he replied, grinning rather foolishly.
A minute later, the grin faded as the host explained that the chair was by tradition the Queen's chair, having been sat in once by royalty long ago and now reserved for royalty should they ever visit again. Needless to say, our course officer had some words for this hapless fellow later on.

Most people are blessed with sufficient situational awareness that they have the ability to discern where they are welcome and where they shouldn't be. Sadly, however, I think people many people mistakenly exercise this power of judgement when it comes to going into churches. On more than one occasion some little child has toddled past the door of my office and stared through the glass doors of our base chapel or even, heavens forfend, ventured inside those doors. Inevitably a horrified mother from the base wives and mums club has rushed to scoop the child up, saying "that's the church, you don't go in there." And its not just mothers who do this. What army padre hasn't heard a soldier say "You'll never catch me in church, I'd burst into flames if I went inside one"?

Some people, like hardened atheists, say this on principle and I get that. I
thought I was an atheist myself once, so you never know what happens to folks like that. But often I wonder, what makes a person feel that they don't belong in church? Is it a lack of familiarity with the customs of liturgy? As an Anglican I get that too, and I try to help people get over that hurdle. Is it the unfamiliarity of being a stranger? I get that too, and often, when I'm by myself, I have to force myself to go into a strange church, particularly a small one where I can't be anonymous. That's why it's so important that pastor and people try to be as welcoming of the stranger as we can, and that's quite an art, especially for small churches, being welcoming but not too smothering or needy.

Perhaps the deepest and most pervasive reasons why people don't feel they are good enough to go to church are either because they have had an experience with pious gatekeepers who make them feel unwelcome, or, sadly and more profoundly, because deep down they feel unworthy. The pious gatekeepers wh want to enforce dress codes or ban noisy children can are a problem, but that training and good theology can help a a congregation wants to get over its own piety. The sense of unworthiness is a harder thing to deal with. Only Jesus can help you with that problem.

In today's gospel we have a situation where a person, the Canaanite woman, goes into a situation where she doesn't seem to belong. The woman has a sick daughter, and has run out of options to help her girl until she meets Jesus. So she approaches him, and greets him as "Lord, Son of David" (Mt 15:22). Now normally in the Gospels, getting the identity of Jesus right is usually a necessary step for those people seeking his help, and the woman certainly gets it right, calling him "Kyrie" or "Lord". She also gets his lineage as the Jewish Messiah right by calling him "Son of David" but therein lies a problem, for she is not a Jew but an outsider, a Caananite, and as you recall from the Old Testament, the original Caananites were the folks who were cleared off the land promised by God to the people of Israel. Caananites had their own gods an customs, and there was hostility between them and the Israelites.

We see that hostility in the reaction of the pious gatekeepers, the disciples, who ask Jesus to "send her away". James Boyces describes the scene in these wonderful words.

Gathered in one corner are those familiar disciples, for Matthew the true blue representatives of the faithful lost sheep of Israel, now leaping into the fray like so many ravenous beasts, as it were self-styled guarantors of the holy tradition, on their guard lest the mercies of God be wasted on the unworthy. Like a gang of watchdogs at the door they are about the checking of IDs and keeping out the non-pedigreed riffraff. On the other side of the gate stands this outsider, a woman no less, one lone representative of the dogs of religion, now become as it were a lost sheep plaintively pleading for the mercy of the master shepherd. No English translation can capture Matthew's careful orchestration of the painful choral refrain. "Lord, have mercy," the dog's solo bleating cry. "Get rid of her," the "lost-sheep chorus" barks back in reply.

At this point the story can create complex reactions in us. Some people admire the chutzpah of the woman for getting in Jesus' face and arguing that she has a claim on God's mercy even if she isn't one of his chosen people. Others cringe at her apparent self-abasement in comparing herself to a dog under the table, though as I've argued elsewhere in this blog in a sermon on Mark's version of the story, I think that's an unfortunate but quite human reaction that we need to get past. Still others are troubled by what first appears to be Jesus' ignoring her. Whatever are discomforts are with this story, we need to put them on the backburner until we get further into it, because if we do then our qualms about the story may well recede and good things can happen.

Once Jesus begins to speak (although it's not clear yet is he is speaking to her or to the disciples or, even, to himself), he appears to say that his mission is only to reach the "lost sheep of Israel", that is, he is the Jewish Messiah only and exclusively. He then changes animal metaphors when he compares the woman and her people to dogs under the table (v 26) but as she persists ("Yes, Lord, yet even the dogs eat the crumbs that fall from their masters' table" v 27) Jesus appears to relent and grants her wish, praising her great faith. Some people argue that the woman actually forces Jesus to change his mind, and thus alters the broadens the scope of his ministry beyond the "lost sheep of Israel" to other peoples. Others argue that Jesus is doing what a good teacher does, using questions and challenges to make others think. I have my own thoughts on this choice, but I don't really think it matters. What's important is that we notice what has actually happened here.

What's happened is that the disciples, the self-righteous gatekeepers who, as Boyce notes, want to check the ID of those at God's door, have been totally repudiated. Jesus has shown that mercy triumphs over entitlement, and that he reserves the right to decide who the "children of Israel" are. In Matthew's gospel, often called the most Jewish of the gospels, there is a decisive movement towards broadening the scope of Jesus' mission beyond the spiritual elite of Israel towards the whole world, and Paul will pick up on this many times in his letters, saying that both Jew and Gentile are chilren of God. So what matters here is that the story is not about sheep or dogs, not about whose in and whose out, but rather it's about a robust and generous mercy that God grants as he wishes.

Several weeks ago here I talked about the parable of the Sower and the Seed and about what I called the crazy generous nature of God's mercy. In that sermon I also talked about the parable of the Labourers and the Vineyard, and how the final words of the owner of the vineyard, "Can I not do what I want with what is mine?" really speak for God and his right to do what he likes with his mercy. I think this story of the Caananite women is woven out of that same cloth. The point here is the same, that if all we bring to God is a willingness to throw outselves on his love and mercy, then we will be allright. A related point is that if we think we have some special claim on God because of our piety or holiness, like the disciples, then we had better check that at the door, because like the disciples we are likely to be disappointed.

My final point has to do with the quality and qauntity of God's mercy, which is, as Shakespeare's Portia says, "not strained". The Caananite women asks for crumbs from the table, but Jesus does not limit himself to crumbs. Recall that several Sundays ago in the lectionary, we heard the earlier story from Matthew of the feeding of the five thousand, and how there were "all ate and were filled; and they took up what was left over of the broken pieces, twelve baskets full" (Mt 14:20). That's a lot more than crumbs. In John's Gospel Jesus says "I am the bread of life; whoever comes to be will never be hungry" (Jn 6:35). You don't make a promise like that if all you have to offer is crumbs.

If our lectionary readings come together to make a single point, then that point is that God's mercy is not partial or limited in any way. The only claim of the Caananite women is that she wants God's mercy, and she has some idea of who God's son is. As may commentators have noted, her request to Jesus, Lord have mercy, is quoted Sunday by Sunday in the church's eucharistic liturgy, kyrie eleison. It is the request that we ourselves make in this chapel, a motley lot drawn from several nations, ranks and walks of life. We are, in the words of our first lesson from the prophet Isaiah, the "foreigners" who have "joined ourselves to the Lord" (Is 56:6), trusting, like Paul, in the "irrevocable" call and mercy of God (Rom 11:29). When we welcome the stranger to our midst, that's all we have to offer. We have nothing here that comes from ourselves, except our gratitude and our willingness to share. As someone once said, evangelism or faith sharing is simply one beggar telling another where to find bread. We've got good bread here. And lots of it.
Amen.

Canadian Forces Unveils New Female Uniform

2011-08-11T11:23:00.004-04:00

OK, just kidding to see if anyone's awake this morning. This image from a Globe and Mail piece on a recent designer show in Copenhagen, which I perused to remain au fait avec le monde d'haute couture, or maybe because I was bored.

Pirate captain with chic eyepatch?

Ready to be an extra in Joseph and the Technicolour Dreamcoat?

I confess I don't understand fashion very much.

Children's Artwork Brightens Chapel in Afghanistan

2011-08-09T18:18:00.002-04:00

Lovely story and image. Text below from the UK MOD. MP+

[Picture: Sergeant Alison Baskerville RLC, Crown Copyright/MOD 2011]

Children from two primary schools in Plymouth have created plastic mosaic windows for the tent which houses padre Ian Wheatley's church in Lashkar Gah. As a number of the schoolchildren have family members serving in Afghanistan, they wanted to give the church some colour and remind personnel of home. Click here to read more.

Peter Short on the Spiritual Life of the Chaplain

2011-08-09T17:48:00.004-04:00

The following meditation was given by the Rev. Dr. Peter Short to the annual gathering of Canadian Forces Chaplains in June of this year, and is published here with his kind permission. Rev. Short is a former Moderator of the United Church of Canada and is a member of the Interfaith Committee on Canadian Military Chaplaincy. The meditation below is useful not only for chaplains but for any person of faith who still has time to rest and enjoy what remains of summer. I hope you find it a blessing, as I did when I heard it. Enjoy. MP+

The Spiritual Life of the Chaplain

Peter Short
The Interfaith Committee on Canadian Military Chaplaincy
June 9, 2011
(Notes for an eight minute address to Canadian Forces Chaplains at Cornwall, ON.)

I offer three brief thoughts, each followed by a text. I hope that in receiving this - wheat and chaff together - you will keep what is worth keeping and with the breath of kindness blow the chaff away.

First, a thought. The spiritual life of the chaplain is a human life. I know - deep - but it’s the best place to start. Like all God’s creatures you are born, you flourish for a season, and die.

Do you know why mothers and fathers weep at weddings? It’s not because they are overcome by the beauty of liturgy or the splendour of costume. They weep because life is short

Here is a text by Michael Crummey, novelist and poet from Newfoundland and Labrador.

Her Mark

I, Ellen Rose of Western Bay in the Dominion of Newfoundland. Married woman, mother, stranger to my grandchildren. In consideration of natural love and affection, hereby give and make over unto my daughter Minnie Jane Crummey of Western Bay, a meadow garden situated at Riverhead, bounded to the north and east by Lovey’s Estate, to the south by John Lynch’s land, to the west by the local road leading countrywards. Bounded above by the sky, by the blue song of angels and God’s stars. Below by the bones of those who made me.
I leave nothing else. Every word I have spoken the wind has taken, as it will take me. As it will take my grandchildren’s children, their heads full of fragments and my face not among those. The day will come when we are not remembered, I have wasted no part of my life in trying to make it otherwise.
In witness thereof I have set my hand and seal this thirteenth day of December, One thousand nine hundred and Thirty-Three.

Her
Ellen X Rose
Mark
(Michael Crummey, Hard Light, 1998)

This text is a simple and eloquent commentary on the wisdom of Qoheleth, the preacher whose work we call Ecclesiastes. Our life in all its dimensions, including its spiritual dimension, is the life of the creature.

A second thought. The spiritual life of the chaplain creature is vulnerable. That which is human is also frail. It can be easily damaged. Spiritual life can be used up and cast aside empty. We are neither immortal nor invulnerable. Forgetting or disdaining the source of the soul’s vitality, the chaplain soon becomes prey to her or his own ambition.

Here is a text by the Quaker educator and writer Parker Palmer. This is a brief section of an essay in which he is writing about what he calls, “the shadow side” of leaders.

I call [it] functional atheism. This is the belief that ultimate responsibility for everything rests with me. It is a belief held among people whose theology affirms a higher power than the human self, people who do not understand themselves as atheists but whose behavior belies their belief.
Functional atheism is an unconscious belief that leads to workaholic behavior, to burn-out, to stressed and strained and broken relationships, to unhealthy priorities. Functional atheism is the unexamined conviction that if anything decent is going to happen here, I am the one who needs to make it happen. Functional atheism is the reason why the average group (according to studies) can tolerate only 15 seconds of silence; people believe that if they are not making noise, nothing is happening. Functional atheism is an inner shadow of leaders that leads to dysfunctional behavior on every level of our lives.
(Leading From Within, Parker Palmer, public address, 1990)
The spiritual life can become distorted and ultimately destructive, especially when the desperate chaplain goes beyond feeling responsible to God and gets to feeling responsible for God.

Therefore, a third thought. Like the life of any creature, the spiritual life must be connected to its lifesource. It must be nourished and defended against danger so that, like the flourishing tree, it might bring forth its fruit in its season. Here is a poem by Unitarian Universalist minister, editor and poet Lynn Ungar.

Camas Lilies

Consider the lilies of the field,
the blue banks of camas opening
into acres of sky along the road.
Would the longing to lie down
and be washed by that beauty
abate if you knew their usefulness,
how the natives ground their bulbs
for flour, how the settlers’ hogs
uprooted them, grunting in gleeful
oblivion as the flowers fell?

And you - what of your rushed and
useful life? Imagine setting it all down -
papers, plans, appointments, everything

leaving only a note: “Gone to the fields
to be lovely. Be back when I’m through
with blooming.”

Even now, unneeded and uneaten, the
camas lilies gaze out above the grass
from their tender blue eyes.
Even in sleep your life will shine.
Make no mistake.
Of course
your work will always matter.
Yet Solomon in all his glory
was not arrayed like one of these.
(Lynn Ungar, Blessing the Bread: Meditations)

The healthy spiritual life returns again and again to the fields of its blooming. Perhaps the fields of your blooming are in the sacred texts in which you were seeded and sprouted. Or perhaps in the nurture and relationships of a community in which you were formed. Maybe there are practices of spiritual vitality through which your strength and your delight are restored in equal measure.

Wherever they are, return to the fields of your blooming. Not once but always. No chaplain wants to give people plastic flowers. Every chaplain wants to give the bloom of life.

So if you are setting out on holiday this summer and if on the last day of work you want to leave a message on your answering service, don’t forget to provide the numbers people can call in case of emergency. Then at the last, you can say, “Gone to the fields to be lovely, be back when I’m through with blooming.”

Blackhawk Down Survivor On Somalia Today

2011-08-09T16:56:00.002-04:00

If you remember the film Black Hawk Down, you'll remember the sequence where the second US helicopter crases and its crew is bravely but vainly defended by two Delta Force commandoes. What happened to the captured crewman, Michael Durant? This piece from the BBC tells that story, and it's one of surprising compassion, shown both by one of the captors at the time, and by Durant today. MP+

I'd describe it as hitting a speed bump in a parking lot going 40mph (64km/h)," says Mr Durant, describing the moment his Black Hawk helicopter was struck by a rocket-propelled grenade fired from a Mogadishu street 70ft (21m) below.

Amid loud whines and bangs, his aircraft "began to spin... rather violently", he says.

"Because the spin was so rapid, I couldn't see anything immediately around me. We probably hit the ground in about 15 seconds. It does not take long to fall 70ft in a helicopter."

It was 3 October 1993, and Mr Durant's Black Hawk was taking part in an operation to capture close associates of the local warlord Mohammed Farah Aidid.

Michael Durant (pictured recovering in hospital) was almost beaten to death after the helicopter crash

Read the whole piece here.

Dictator Conversions

2011-08-08T16:57:00.003-04:00

The deathbed conversion is an event that is often viewed with extreme skepticism, but can be, for theologians of an Arminian view, like myself, an occasion where God's grace can operate.

However, there is something to be said for scepticism when dictators backed into a corner embrace religion. Foreign Policy profiles five cases of tyrants discovering faith and repenting. Not for me to judge them, though I confess I find the sincerity of Col. Qadaffi's #1 son (pictured above) and henchman, especially dubious. Read and see what you think.

Afghanistan Blog of Note

2011-08-08T16:16:00.002-04:00

Royal Air Force Sergeant Alex Ford volunteered to go to Afghanistan at age 41 because he felt guilty working a desk job at home. At 41, he is in military thinking an old man, and so kudos to him for going out on patrol in 40+C weather with soldiers young enough to be his kids. Sgt. Ford is an engaging and thoughtful writer. I'll be checking out his blog, Rafairman, regularly and encourage you to visit it as well.

\

Sgt. Alex Ford

Book apps: A reading revolution, or the end of reading?

2011-07-25T09:55:00.001-04:00

As I post this I am sitting in a coffee shop in a strange town, with an old fashioned print book (PAtricl Hennessey's The Junior Officer's Reading Club) balanced on my knee, while synching, updating and charging my iphone before I hit the road. End of reading? Don't think so. Maybe mixed media reading? And as for the article below, I confess I would buy an ipad as soon as I can afford one, if only because I can't find the New Yorker reliably here in AB and I can't read it on my iphone. MP+

JOHN BARBER
From Saturday's Globe and Mail
Published Saturday, Jul. 23, 2011 6:00AM EDT
Last updated Saturday, Jul. 23, 2011 10:12AM EDT

The On The Road app sells for $16.99, compared to $10.88 for a paperback on Amazon and $9.99 for an electronic copy of an earlier “deluxe” edition. “The app itself has all the text of the book and then it’s got five times more material,” Morrison notes.

But the economics of book apps are still a matter of guesswork. “We’re in this experimental stage,” Morrison says. “We’ll see how this one does, figure out how much it costs us and, if we were going to do more, how many we would have to sell to make it worthwhile.” It will be a very long time before the last of the 1,500 titles on the Penguin Classic backlist get apped, he added. “At this point, they are very time-consuming, so we have to pick our shots.”

Read the whole piece here.

Marijuana a Possible PTSD Cure

2011-07-19T13:58:00.001-04:00

Noted in today's NYT. MP+

New York Times, July 18, 2011
Marijuana May Be Studied for Combat Disorder
By DAN FROSCH

DENVER — For years now, some veterans groups and marijuana advocates have argued that the therapeutic benefits of the drug can help soothe the psychological wounds of battle. But with only anecdotal evidence as support, their claims have yet to gain widespread acceptance in medical circles.

Now, however, researchers are seeking federal approval for what is believed to be the first study to examine the effects of marijuana on veterans with chronic post-traumatic stress disorder.

The proposal, from the Multidisciplinary Association for Psychedelic Studies in Santa Cruz, Calif., and a researcher at the University of Arizona College of Medicine, would look at the potential benefits of cannabis by examining 50 combat veterans who suffer from the condition and have not responded to other treatment.

“With so many veterans from the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, there is a widely accepted need for a new treatment of PTSD,” said Rick Doblin, founder and executive director of the psychedelic studies group. “These are people whom we put in harm’s way, and we have a moral obligation to help them.”

Read the whole article here.

"Where Do Human Rights Come From?": Secular vs Divine Grounds for Human Rights

2011-07-18T17:54:00.002-04:00

Most people would agree that there is such a thing as human rights, but what do we appeal to when we make that claim? Is it a religious conviction that stems from an idea that humans are divine creations, or is it a secular idea of morality that doesn't require a belief in God?

In this provocative essay in the New York Times, Israeli philospher Anat Biletzki, argues that a religious grounding for the sacredness of life and of the human person is deficient. Those of you who heard the lectionary from Genesis a few weeks back describing Abraham and Isaac may have some thoughts on this part of her argument:

"A deep acceptance of divine authority — and that is what true religion demands — entails a renunciation of human rights if God so wills. Had God’s angel failed to call out — “Abraham! Abraham!” — Abraham would have slain Isaac."

Read the whole essay here.

Help for a veteran in "a perfect storm of things going wrong"

2011-07-18T16:47:00.004-04:00

An encouraging story from Michigan about how the local courts and police worked with a veteran with PTSD to salvage his life. MP+

July 17, 2011
Coming Together to Fight for a Troubled Veteran
By ERICA GOODE

OKEMOS, Mich. — When the standoff began on a humid August night, it seemed destined to become one more case of a returned soldier pulled down by a war he could not leave behind.

Staff Sgt. Brad Eifert circled through the woods behind his house here, holding a .45-caliber pistol. The police were out there somewhere and, one way or the other, he was ready to die.

He raised the gun to his head and then lowered it. Then he fired nine rounds.

“They’re going to take me down, they’re going to finish me off, so,” he remembers thinking, “finish me off.”

Leaving his weapon, he ran into the driveway, shouting, “Shoot me! Shoot me! Shoot me!” The police officers subdued him with a Taser and arrested him. A few hours later, he sat in a cell at the Ingham County Jail, charged with five counts of assault with intent to murder the officers, each carrying a potential life sentence.

In daring the police to kill him, Mr. Eifert, who had served in Iraq and was working as an Army recruiter, joined an increasing number of deployed veterans who, after returning home, plunge into a downward spiral, propelled by post-traumatic stress disorder or other emotional problems.

Their descent is chronicled in suicide attempts or destructive actions that bring them into conflict with the law — drunken driving, bar fights, domestic violence and, in extreme instances, armed confrontations with the police of the kind that are known as “suicide by cop.”

Such stories often end in death or prison, the veteran in either case lost to the abyss.

But something different happened in Mr. Eifert’s case. Headed for disaster, he was spared through a novel court program and an unusual coming together of a group of individuals — including a compassionate judge, a flexible prosecutor, a tenacious lawyer and an amenable police officer — who made exceptions and negotiated compromises to help him.

Read the whole story here.

Language Play of the Week

2011-07-18T16:10:00.003-04:00

Every now and then I read something - a phrase, a turn of thought, and I think, "wow, Writer Dude, you just nailed that". OK, I realize that my last sentence wasn't exactly an example of the kind of effective writing I'm talking about, but you get my point. Here's the third in what is thus far proving to be a highly intermittent feature in Mad Padre.

Theatre critic Ben Brantley, in the 11 July 2011 issue of the New York Times, kicks an old theatre cliche up a few notches in describing Kevin Spacey's current performance as Shakespeare's Richard III.

LONDON — If a cloud of sawdust seems to hang over the Old Vic Theater these days, that’s because Kevin Spacey is chewing his way through the scenery there like an atomic termite.

Actually the rest of the paragraph is pretty good too.

In a ripping old-fashioned star turn as Shakespeare’s Richard III, Mr. Spacey gives fierce and flashy physical life to every twist of a power-mad man’s corkscrew mind. Richard may be slowed down by a hunched back and hobbled gait, but this performance spins a classic, much-interpreted character until we’re all dizzy.

Canada's youngest RC Bishop is a Blogger

2011-07-18T15:55:00.002-04:00

Interesting piece in today's Globe and Mail about Fr. Thomas Dowd, the first Roman Catholic priest to start blogging in Canada and now to be Canada's youngest RC Bishop. His blog, Waiting in Joyful Hope, is sure to get a few hits from today's G&M piece. I hope to visit it soon.

One quote from the article that I liked: “We’re supposed to speak every language. Why not computer language?” he says about the evolving global Church." Definitely spoken in the spirit of Paul's visit to the Aeropagus.

MP+

Notable Quotable: James Traub on What's Going Right in Libya

2011-07-18T14:04:00.002-04:00

I'm currently working on a professional development paper, that has me reading Anthony Shadid's book Night Draws Near: Iraq's People in the Shadow of America's War on Bagdhad before and after the US invasion of 2003, and rereading Tom Rick's book Fiasco: America's Military Adventure in Iraq. Both books describe how the US had no clue what it would do with Iraq after it overthrew Saddam, and had no clue really who the players in Iraqi society were. It's therefore encouraging to read James Traub write in Foreign Policy that we know who the Libyan rebels are and we have a good opportunity now to get behind them and prepare the way for Libya post-Qaddafi. MP+
Here's an excerpt:

"But the problem may be political as well as legal. "We're paranoid about the possibility of Islamic infiltration," says Marina Ottaway. For months, critics of the decision to bomb Libya, as well as many on the right, have wrung their hands over the rebels in Benghazi, saying, "We don't know who they are." Now, after extensive reporting, we know who they are: people from all walks of life, including a great many professionals, who loathe Qaddafi and yearn for a better life -- and yes, some Islamists, too. Behind the NATO-enforced cordon sanitaire in front of Benghazi, a chaotic laboratory of democracy has sprung up. Benghazi has 400 non-government organizations and 40 or so proto-parties. There are endless meetings, debates, committees. The Tripoli Task Force, a TNC-appointed committee of independent experts, makes plans -- quite serious, specific plans -- for Day One of the post-Qaddafi world. Whatever its inevitable shortcomings, this is a struggle which undoubtedly deserves the support -- not just moral, but also financial -- of the West."

A Rare Honour for a US Soldier

2011-07-13T11:48:00.003-04:00

Inspiring stuff from yesterday's New York Times. MP+

July 12, 2011

Rare White House Ceremony for Medal of Honor
By JACKIE CALMES

WASHINGTON — President Obama grasped the prosthetic right hand of Sgt. First Class Leroy Arthur Petry in congratulations on Tuesday, awarding him the Medal of Honor for actions in Afghanistan that included saving two comrades’ lives by hurling away a grenade as it exploded.

Doug Mills/The New York Times
President Obama giving the medal to Leroy Arthur Petry.

This is only the second time since the Vietnam era that the nation’s highest military honor has been awarded to a soldier who survived combat in a conflict still under way; the other awards were given posthumously. Mr. Obama bestowed the first award last fall to another veteran of Afghanistan, Staff Sgt. Salvatore A. Giunta, who was present in the East Room along with medal recipients from past wars.

Seven Medals of Honor have gone to soldiers killed in Afghanistan or Iraq. Mr. Obama called them “members of the 9/11 generation” of service members.

Sergeant Petry, an Army Ranger and father of four who has served two combat tours in Iraq and six in Afghanistan, was nominated by his colleagues and honored for his actions on May 26, 2008. Then 28 years old, he came under fire with other Rangers during an operation in mountainous eastern Afghanistan, near Pakistan, to clear a compound where a top Qaeda commander was believed to be hiding among insurgents.

“Today we honor a singular act of gallantry,” Mr. Obama said at the White House ceremony. “Yet as we near the 10th anniversary of the attacks that thrust our nation into war, this is also an occasion to pay tribute to a soldier, and a generation, that has borne the burden of our security during a hard decade of sacrifice.”

Sergeant Petry was shot in both legs and was seeking cover behind a chicken coop with two other Rangers when a grenade exploded nearby, wounding the others. When a second grenade landed feet away, Sergeant Petry scooped it up and threw it as it detonated. The blast ripped away his right hand and filled him with shrapnel. He applied a tourniquet to his wrist and continued to radio for support and direct the operation before being evacuated.

Sergeant Petry was credited with saving the lives of the other soldiers, both of whom were at the White House. Mr. Obama told the audience that in an Oval Office meeting before the ceremony, Sergeant Petry “gave me the extraordinary privilege” of seeing a plaque bolted to his prosthetic hand and inscribed with the names of other Rangers from the 75th Regiment who have died.

“They are quite literally part of him, just like they will always be part of America,” Mr. Obama said.

Both before and after affixing the medal and its blue ribbon around Sergeant Petry’s neck, Mr. Obama grasped his right hand and shook it.

Mr. Obama also used the occasion to once again claim progress in Afghanistan. Quoting from President Ronald Reagan, who spoke of Rangers in World War II, Mr. Obama said of Sergeant Petry and other Afghanistan veterans, “These are the heroes who helped end a war.”

This IHOP Serves 24/7 Prayer, Not Pancakes

2011-07-11T15:51:00.003-04:00

This article rom the New York Times, 9 July, 2011, describes a US church that combines a 24/7 cycle of continuous prayer with an eschatological focus on preparing for the end times and the second coming of Christ. A daily round of prayer (even if not "24/7")has been a strong part of Christian devotional practice and feature of monastic life for many centuries so in that respect there is a devotional intensity here that is attractive. In terms of relating to the culture, which is a huge goal of contemporary culture, the appropriation of the IHOP name is brilliant, even if it is being contested in court. However, as the NYT article notes, some evangelical theologians have raised concerns about the teaching of the International House of Prayer's teachings. Andrew Jackson's (Gordon Conwell Theological Seminary) concerns as found here are thoughtful and worth reading, both on essential vs nonessential eschatological teachings and on the ecclesiological dangers of a church using private insider language. MP+
Where Worship Never Pauses
By ERIK ECKHOLM
KANSAS CITY, Mo. — The worship music, throbbing soft-rock appeals performed by live bands, has continued here without pause, day and night, since May 1999. Voices calling to Jesus or pleading with God to help tornado victims or make Congress ban abortion resound in an auditorium that is the physical and spiritual heart of the International House of Prayer, a Christian ministry rapidly blossoming into a movement.

Founded 12 years ago by Mike Bickle, a self-trained evangelical pastor, with a group of 20, the International House of Prayer, in a former strip mall, now draws tens of thousands of worshipers to its revival meetings. A wholly devoted cadre of 1,000 staff members, labeled missionaries, have given up careers to move here, living off donations and spending several hours a day in the prayer hall to revel in what they describe as direct communication with God. Another thousand students attend the adjacent Bible college, preparing to spread this fervent brand of Christianity.

The well-populated prayer room and the devout community growing up around it are at the epicenter of a little known but expanding national network: dozens of groups that are stressing perpetual prayer in a way seldom seen in modern America, said Marcus Yoars, the editor of Charisma, an evangelical magazine. Many of them were inspired by the operation here, though none have maintained such an elaborate 24-hour system of worship, seen around the world on a live webcast.

Mr. Bickle has won praise from many evangelicals, but he has also been criticized by some pastors for what they describe as unorthodox theology and a cultish atmosphere, charges that Mr. Bickle rejects. Some former students said they had been expelled for questioning the fascination with mystical healings, prophesies, angels and demons.

The ministry has also drawn fire for helping Gov. Rick Perry of Texas plan a day of prayer in Houston, which is scheduled for August and will be dominated by ardent opponents of abortion and gay rights. Mr. Bickle said he avoided direct involvement in partisan politics himself, but a member of his leadership group, Lou Engle, has a side group, The Call, that organized stadium revivals to promote California’s Proposition 8, which banned same-sex marriage.

But many young followers here said they were drawn by their sense of visceral communion with God and had given little thought to such issues.

Read the whole article here.

Crazy Generous: A Sermon for the Fourth Sunday After Pentecost

2011-07-10T16:05:00.000-04:00

Preached at Christ the King Chapel, CFB Suffield, Ralston AB
The Fourth Sunday of Pentecost, 10 Juy 2011
Lectionary Year A Proper 15
Gen 25:19-34; Ps 65:1-13, Rom 8:1-11, Mt 13:1-9, 18-23

"And he told them many things in parables, saying 'A sower went out to sow'" (Mt 13:3)

For years I’ve read and heard that Jesus used parables to convey heavenly truths to ordinary people in everyday language. It’s said as a commonplace that He used agricultural metaphors to reach an audience of peasants and small farmers. I get that, and I know that I’m a city person who doesn’t know beans about beans, or about any other crop, for that matter. However, I think I understand today’s gospel reading from Matthew, the parable of the Sower and the Seed, because like most middle class North Americans, I understand grass. As I write this, I can hear the whir of my neighbour’s sprinklers as the cool of a summer evening descends, and I worry about the yellow patches on my own front lawn. From my study window I can see the bare patch of dirt that my wife carefully weeded, raked, and prepped before spreading grass seed on it last week. Nearby is the giant bag of peat moss that we are going to spread on the grass to enrich the soil, not far from the expensive compost maker I recently bought from Home Depot so we can better divert our green waste into the garden. I couldn’t grow food to feed myself if my life depended on it, but at least I know that you have to work hard to grow things, and so I think I am safe in saying that the sower in the parable is an idiot.

How could you not think that? Here’s a guy who has a bunch of expensive and precious seeds (I am sure that it was harder to get seeds in Jesus’ time than it is now, and I wince when I buy grass seed at the local garden centre) and doesn’t care where it lands. Rocks? The packed hard dirt of the pathway? Thorns and nettles? Bare ground scorched by the sun? Whatever. It’s all good. Really? Would anyone hear hire this guy as your gardener or lawn care man? If you think about it for just a moment, the parable, taken literally, is ridiculous, and I am sure that it’s first audiences, who sowed and reaped as if their lives depended on it (for they did) would have thought it was ridiculous too. And maybe that’s the point. Because there is something about the generosity of God that is ridiculous in its liberality, and that is cause for thanks.

In the second half of today’s gospel reading, Jesus spells out the meaning. The sower’s seed is “the word of the kingdom” (Mt 13:18). So what is “the word of the kingdom”? When Christians talk about “the word” we are talking about scripture, about the message of love and forgiveness that God reveals to humanity across the ages through the writing of prophets, evangelists, apostles as received and understood by the church. It’s not a coincidence, and it’s certainly relevant to our text today, that the Canadian Bible Society has for its logo the a figure sowing seed. *http://*www.biblesociety.ca/home You may have seen that figure on the spine of the little bibles that CBS has been distributing to members of the Canadian Forces for some years now. CBS invests all of its energy and fundraising to distribute bibles and other scripture materials as widely as possible – to soldiers, to Olympic athletes, to convicts – because, like the Gideons, it believes that the word of God can changes and save lives. Think of all those Gideon bibles lying in hotel room drawers around the world, and think of the energy and money it took to get them there. Now ask yourself how many of those bibles are actually read in times of spiritual need or crisis, and you are a step closer to understanding the parable.

“The word of the kingdom” can also be taken to mean Jesus himself, who elsewhere, in John’s gospel, is described as the Word. Jesus as the embodiment of the word and as the personification of God’s love and forgiveness spent three years teaching and preaching to all manner of people, and while some listened, like the “great crowds” we hear of at the beginning of today’s gospel, not all did. In the chapter before our reading today, in Matthew 12, a series of hostile encounters between Jesus and the religious leaders of the day is described. For example, Jesus drives a demon out of one man, and the Pharisees explain it as Jesus being in league with demons (Mt 12:22-28) since they are already hostile to Jesus’ teaching on the Sabbath. In Matthew 12 we see Jesus all too aware that his words and actions will not be effective everywhere. Jesus knows that some will welcome his message and thus be good soil, but others will reject it, and thus be bad soil. The point of Jesus’ work, however, like the work of the Sower, is that he is indiscriminate. Jesus does not pick and choose his audiences. He knows that some will welcome his message, and others will reject it. God is like the Sower in that respect, broadcasting his message as far and wide as possible, letting it fall where it will. The inherent generosity of that message is seen elsewhere in Jesus’ parables, f or example in the owner of the vineyard who rewards all labourers equally despite how hard they word (Mt 20:1-16). It is a crazy kind of generosity, but God has the right to be crazy generous. As the owner of the vineyard says in that parable, “Am I not allowed to do what I choose with what belongs to me?” (Mt 20:15).

The parable of the Laborers in the Vineyard, like the Sower and the Seed, both point to God's right to be crazy generous with his love and grace. Grace, which theology defines as undeserved love, is God's initiative and He intends to use that initiative. That generosity may offend the sensibilities of some who want to be rewarded for piety or virtue (and which of us doesn't think we deserve at least some reward for our faith, churchgoing, good works, etc), but we should know better. After all, as the late Father Richard Neuhaus pointed out in one of his Good Friday meditations, one of the very first people admitted into paradise by the Son is one of the condemned criminals hanging beside him, which is another example of that lavish grace in action.

Of course there is a place for our response to God's intitiative. Jesus addresses our role in the second half of today's reading, when he explains what is meant by the good soil. Not all hearts will be receptive to the word of kingdom. We all have heard people say that religion is for the weak minded and superstitious, that sort of thing. Part of being a follower of Christ is opening oneself up to the word, presence and leading of God, both in worship and in our own personal time. But there is a danger in thinking that it's all about us. I know very well that there are many times in my spiritual life when I am too preoccupied, selfish, tired, or distracted, yes even by "the cares of the world and the lure of wealth" to be very open to God. I'm not great soil, most of the time. That's when I depend on the grace and the liberality of God.

Now what I've just said may sound overly self-exculpatory, and may well be, but take a moment to think back to our first lesson, the account of Jacob and Esau from Genesis. This story probably was an attempt to explain ethnic origins of Israel versus its neighbour Edom (hence the "two nations are in your womb" reference Gen 19:23) but it's also worth noting that Jacob, whom the Lord supposedly favoured over poor dim Esau (See Mal 1:2f, Rom 9:13) is a real fink. Jacob sneakily and treacherously gets Esau to sell his birthright, as they used to say, "for a mess of pottage". What a jerk. And yet Jacob is the one loved by God and is the one who, as we will see next week in Gen 28:10-19a gets to hang around with angels. Jacob may be a jerk, but he's God's jerk. God uses him as another link in the chain of descendents that he promised to Abraham, as a way of bringing forth Israel and from Israel the Christian church. And if you are offended by that notion of God's injustice, you are welcome to get be offended and get in line behind the Laborers in the Vineyard who felt they were owed more than they got. That is, as they say, how God rolls. “Am I not allowed to do what I choose with what belongs to me?” (Mt 20:15).

For my part, I am encouraged by the figure of Jacob, because if good things can come of his stony and graspy heart, then maybe there is hope for the poor soil in my own heart. Did you ever take a mountain or a desert path and find one flower or one tree growing where it had no business growing? There's that crazy Sower again, and there's a sign of his foolishness, that something, amazingly, grew where it shouldn't. That's all of us, really, children who, as Paul says in Romans, are only God's by adoption, because God chose us first. I for one am grateful for God's crazy generosity, and suddenly I see that the Sower isn't the idiot I first thought he was.

"He Was a Good Soldier": White House Letters of Condolence To Go to Families of Military Suicides

2011-07-07T16:00:00.002-04:00

A short op-ed piece from the New York Times, reprinted here in full. Thumbs up to the Obama Administration for including suicide in a war zone as cause for a presidential letter of condolence. It doesn't change the causes of suicide, necessarily, but as the NYT says, it does recognize that not all sacrifice involves enemy fire. MP+

July 6, 2011
Death on the Battlefield
In an enlightened reversal of the ways of war, President Obama has decided to begin sending letters of condolence to the families of combat troops who commit suicide. Until now, White House policy across several administrations extended the president’s personal sympathy to the kin of troops killed in combat, but denied the honor for those who committed suicide in war zones.

The change is heartening for grieving families and for the nation, too. The policy amounted to official stigmatizing and showed a lack of gratitude for some who faced combat fire.

The military’s concern had been that drawing attention to those who struggled with mental health problems and took their own lives might encourage more suicides. But after an 18-month study, the administration came to the obvious conclusion that condolences could be a positive factor. Mr. Obama will be signing letters in the future “to destigmatize the mental health costs of war” and help prevent more tragic deaths, the administration said.

Suicide in the military and among veterans is a pressing problem the government is struggling to understand. There were more than 295 suicides last year among active-duty personnel, a majority outside combat zones.

The honor for families of those who killed themselves in battle zones will not be retroactive. But in changing the policy, the White House called to extend comfort to Gregg Keesling, the father of a soldier who committed suicide in 2009 on his second tour in Iraq. Mr. Keesling was in the forefront of growing protests about the cruel neglect of these grieving families. “He was a good soldier,” Mr. Keesling told CBS News, “and that’s the part that I want to know — that the country appreciates that he fought.”

"The Thirst For Fairness Runs Deep": The Evolution of Sharing

2011-07-05T11:25:00.002-04:00

Good and thought-provoking science piece from the New York Times suggests that we may be hardwired to be ethical. MP+

July 4, 2011
Thirst for Fairness May Have Helped Us Survive
By NATALIE ANGIER

Among the Ache hunter-gatherers in eastern Paraguay, healthy adults with no dependent offspring are expected to donate as much as 70 to 90 percent of the food they forage to the needier members of the group. And as those strapping suppliers themselves fall ill, give birth or grow old, they know they can count on the tribe to provide.

Among the !Kung bushmen of the Kalahari in Africa, a successful hunter who may be inclined to swagger is kept in check by his compatriots through a ritualized game called “insulting the meat.” You asked us out here to help you carry that pitiful carcass? What is it, some kind of rabbit?

Among the Hadza foragers of northern Tanzania, people confronted by a stingy food sharer do not simply accept what’s offered. They hold out their hand, according to Frank Marlowe, an anthropologist at Durham University in England, “encouraging the giver to keep giving until the giver finally draws the line.”

Among America’s top executives today, according to a study commissioned by The New York Times, the average annual salary is about $10 million and rising some 12 percent a year. At the same time, the rest of the tribe of the United States of America struggles with miserably high unemployment, stagnant wages and the worst economic crisis since the Great Depression. Now, maybe the wealth gap is a temporary problem, and shiny new quarters will soon rain down on us all. But if you’re feeling tetchy and surly about the lavished haves when you have not a job, if you’re tempted to go out and insult a piece of corporate meat, researchers who study the nature and evolution of human social organization say they are hardly surprised.

Read the whole piece here.

"A Carbon Copy of Reality": Video Game Technology as Military Training Aid

2011-07-05T10:59:00.004-04:00

I have commented here before about the military applications of video game technology to military simulation training. It's not a new story, but this piece from the UK MOD news service describes how video training is being mixed in with interaction with human actors to take training to a whole new level. I love the "carbon copy of reality" quote at the end. Curiously anachronistic given the subject matter. I wonder how many younger readers know what a carbon copy is? MP+

Gaming technology helping UK forces prepare for Afghanistan
A Training and Adventure news article
4 Jul 11

A huge virtual reality training facility in Sennelager, Germany, which uses the latest 3D gaming technology, is helping British forces, from individuals to entire battle groups, prepare for operations in southern Afghanistan. Report by Sharon Kean.

A soldier gets a virtual taste of Op HERRICK from a simulator cab at the Combined Arms Tactical Trainer [Picture: Lockheed Martin]

Two years ago, PlayStation-style war games helped soldiers of 5th Battalion The Rifles (5 RIFLES) get ready for their tour of Iraq.

Before departing for theatre, troops spent hours in simulators and replica operations rooms at the Sennelager Training Centre in Germany, driving virtual vehicles and commanding computer-generated ground patrols.

Many of those soldiers are now gearing up for Op HERRICK 15 and once again the early stages of their pre-deployment preparation took place in cyberspace.

Read the whole story here.

“Canadian Forces have stayed here for a long time” : Canada's combat mission in Kandahar is over

2011-07-05T10:41:00.002-04:00

It would be tempting to say that this story marks the end of Canada's longest war, but that would depend on how one defines war. This summer Canadians are heading back to Kabul, where the mission started in 2002, to begin training and supporting Afghan government forces. Does that new mission meet the definition of war? For deploying soldiers and their families, the answer is probably yes. However, this story from today's Globe and Mail does mark an important date in Canadian military history. MP+

July 5, 2011
Canadian troops formally hand over Kandahar battlefield to U.S. forces
By Susan Sachs

(Shah Marai/AFP/Getty Images) Commander of Canadian forces in Afghanistan Brigadier General Dean Milner (R) receives a carpet from Haji Faluddin Agha, Governor of Panjwai district, following a ceremony marking the Canadian handover of Forward Fire Base Masum Ghar to US forces in Panjwai district in Kandahar province on July 5, 2011.

Muted ceremony filled with expressions of mutual admiration mark one of last rituals in Canada's long goodbye Canada formally handed over its battle zone to an American battalion today, passing one of the last signposts on its way to end of combat mission in Afghanistan.

It was a muted ceremony, filled with expressions of mutual admiration and attended by Afghan military officers and Panjwai district notables who have been dealing with Canadians soldiers for more than five years.

It was also one of the last rituals of Canada's long goodbye to Kandahar.

Read the whole piece here.

"We Never Felt We Were Among Strangers"

2011-06-30T15:17:00.003-04:00

Second interfaith post for today. I actually noticed this Canadian Press piece in the local paper a few weeks back and meant to post it. The story reconfirms my gratitude for the many gifts that our Mennonite brothers and sisters bring to the church. MP+

By Brenda Suderman (Canadian Press)
Fri Jun 17 2011

Mennonite theologians, Iranian Muslim clerics discuss views of human nature

WINNIPEG — They visited Winnipeg to talk about their theological understanding of human nature, but seven Iranian Muslim clerics also came away with some practical examples of how Christians live and express their faith.

“People were very friendly and it was a warm environment,” Mohammed Fanaei Eshkevari said after attending a Sunday morning worship service at Bethel Mennonite Church.

“We never felt we were among strangers.”

Fanaei Eshkevari and six of his colleagues from the Imam Khomeini Education & Research Institute in Qom, Iran, met at Canadian Mennonite University earlier this month for three days of closed-door discussions with seven Mennonite theologians from Canada and the United States.

It marked the fifth formal meeting between Shia Muslim scholars from Iran and Mennonite scholars, and the first time the dialogue met in Winnipeg. The previous Canadian meetings took place in Toronto and Waterloo.

The Winnipeg event also marked the first time Iranian Muslim women were involved, with nine female graduate students attending as observers and staying an extra week to study peacemaking from a Christian perspective.

Read the whole piece here.

In Afghanistan, Different Faith Leaders Talk Together

2011-06-30T13:29:00.003-04:00

An encouraging story from the UK MOD about how Christian military chaplains can help engage with locals in religious dialoge. MP+

Religious leaders meet and forge relationships in Helmand
A People In Defence news article
30 Jun 11

A shura was recently held in central Helmand between local elders and religious representatives of the Afghan forces, Royal Marines and Gurkhas all currently working together in the area.

Members of the Afghan Army and Police, 45 Commando Royal Marines and 2nd Battalion The Royal Gurkha Rifles (2 RGR) are all operating in the Nad 'Ali (South) area of Helmand province.

The shura between their religious representatives came about when the local elders heard that the Gurkhas' religious advisers were planning a visit to the Nepalese soldiers operating in Nad 'Ali (South). They then organised the shura for the representatives of the different religions to come together and discuss the similarities shared by their faiths and forge a better understanding of each other.

Religious leaders representing the Muslim, Christian, Hindu and Buddhist faiths attend a religious engagement shura at Chah-e Mirza in Nad 'Ali (South), Afghanistan
[Picture: LA(Phot) Andy Laidlaw, Crown Copyright/MOD 2011]

Read the whole article here.

Withholding Our Children: A Sermon on the Sactifice of Isaac

2011-06-27T15:52:00.003-04:00

A Sermon for the Second Sunday after Pentecost, 26 June 2011
Preached at Christ the King Chapel, CFB Suffield, Ralston, AB

Genesis 22:1-14, Psalm 89:1-4, 15-18, Romans 6:12-23, Matthew 10:40-42

"Now I know that you fear God, because you have not withheld from me your son, your only son." (Gen 22:12)

In Michael Crumney's literally fabulous novel about Newfoundland, the inhabitants of a remote outport have only one Bible, a copy that was found in the gullet of a cod fish "as large as a goat". Only one man, a lay preacher with the wonderful nkae of Jabez Trim, is able to read it. Unfortunately the bible is worse the wear for its time in the fish, and so sections of it are blotted and illegible. The story of Abraham's sacrifice of Isaac is readable until the point where Abraham raises the knife over his son, but the ending of the story is too blurred to read. One fishermen, James Woundy, likes to regale his fellow fishermen with the story and supplies his own endings, each with its "inevitably gruesome conclusion". When Jabez Trim protests that the angel intervenes to save Isaac, Woundy is unconvinced, claiming that it doesn't sound like the God they know.

I think Crumney's humour is quite astute, because even for those of us who know this story well, how we react to it depends to it depends on the God we think we know. As the tension builds line by line in this challenging story, we (meaning I and I suspect many of you) flinch at what God is asking Abraham to do, then cringe as Abraham appears willing to do it. The tension ratchet's further as Isaac pathetically asks where the sacrifice is and in Abraham's answer, "God will provide" leads us to wonder, does Abraham really believe what he is saying, does he really have that much faith, or is he allaying the child's fears. Even after the angel stays Abraham's hand, its tempting to supply our own ending and our own conclusion, focusing not on what God has provided, but rather focusing on what God has asked.

I have to admit that as a preacher, the sacrifice of Isaac is not a reading that I prefer to dwell on. T he story of God who can ask the unthinkable of a father, and the father's almost robotic willingness to obey, well that all requires an effort to think about, and more to preach on. It would be easier to talk about our gospel reading with its call to reap rewards from a seemingly easier action. I suspect there are preachers this morning who will avoid this reading and even cut it from the service because they've heard enough about people are repulsed by the hateful and capricious God of the Old Testament. I can't say I blame them, because I was tempted to do the same thing. However our prayer of St. Jerome reminds us, each Sunday, that God has "given us [his] word for a light to shine upon our path", and so I think we need to ask how this old and difficult story offers any light to guide us?

In my preparation for today I was reading that all three of the religions which counted Abraham as an an ancestor drew different lessons from this story. For the early Christians, the story was anticipated God's sacrificing his own son Jesus. In Isaac, who was old enough to carry the wood of his own destruction up the mountain, we see a foreshadowing of Jesus carrying the wood of the cross to the hill of Calvary. The parallel of obedient self giving is even closer if we assume that Isaac was a strapping young man who could have escaped his unnaturally old father but chose not to. For Muslims, who also claim Abraham as an ancestor, the point of the story was Abraham's obedience to the will of God. For Jews, the point of the story was that God provides, a point made in the renaming of the mountain at the end of the story.

Are any of these lessons helpful to us later Christians who hear the story in a much more civilized time that celebrates the family, and which condemns child abuse and psychological cruelty? As we live in a military culture we can understand the idea of sacrifice, though we think in terms of self-sacrifice rather than that of others. We think in terms of obedience, though as soldiers we limit that concept to lawful orders from legitimate authorities. As I've said already, the idea of God testing Abraham this way challenges our ideas of God's legitimacy and makes us draw back from this story. So even though we understand sacrifice and obedience, those values seem insufficient in their application to this particular story. So what about the idea that God will provide for us? I think that idea is helpful if we take a moment to sketch out a little background for this story.

Not all cultures were as enlightened as we are. In bible times, Israel was surrounded by other nations that did practice ritual child sacrifice. Biblical scholars have suggested that the ultimate point of the story of Abraham and Isaac is that God does not require child sacrifice. The point of the story of Abraham thus far is that God would give this aged, childless man and his equally aged wife a miraculous son whose descendents would fulfil God's promise that Abraham would be the father of many nations. That long list of nations that we heard in Acts Two, two weeks back on Pentecost, was a sign of the fulfilment of that promise. The story thus becomes a narrative reinforcing Israel's identity as a nation which believed, quite literally, that its children were the future fulfilment of God's promise to Abraham, that Israel and the Christian church which arose from Israel would be God's family and presence in the world. So, rather than worshipping a cruel god who demanded that children be provided to it, Israel worshipped the true creator God who provided children and thus a future.

Of course, not all cultures are as enlightened as we are. We don't need this story, do we? We are willing to let whole cultures and generations be trashed as armies conscript child soldiers and destroy their futures, but we don't practice child sacrifice. We are willing to let billions of children grow up undernourished and underfed, including millions in this rich country that go to school hungry, but we don't practice child sacrifice. We are willing to let our own children consume a diet of increasingly violent video games and other culturalother products. We encourage them to embrace sexual practices and identities that destroy self esteem and respect for others. We pursue material goals, wealth and careers at the expense of the family, and we refuse to force morality, religion and discipline on our children, hoping instead that they find their own way. Increasingly, through practices and debate around reproductive and end of life choice, we devalue the sanctity of life. We as a society do all these things, but we do not practice child sacrifice. Not in name.

The story of Abraham and Isaac is our story in at least one respect, that just as Isaac was a precious and unspoken gift to his parents, so are the children given to us. The sacrament of infant baptism is our recognition and response to that gift, both a recognition that life comes from God, and it is the character and nature of God to create life and not destroy it. For those Christians who are parents, the responsibility entailed in the gift of children is significant. That responsibility can seem like a burden when we realize that raising our children in the faith can be so counter-cultural that it can seem like a burden and a sacrifice. However, the task of raising children in the faith allows us to reinterpret and reapply Gen 22:12, so that we truly do give our children back to God and not withhold them from him.

God provides, and while demands are intrinsic in that provision, as it is with any covenant, God still provides. At a very profound level, the story of Abraham and Isaac celebrates the character and nature of God. We risk forgoing that lesson and its application to our lives and times if we find the narrative shell of that story to be distasteful. We are Christians individually, but in lives as the church we are collective and intergenerational. We are wonderfully created and loved beings, and the journey of Abraham and Isaac, together descending the mountain renamed "God will Provide", is a further step towards the family that God wants us to be.

A Place for Sharia Law?

2011-06-20T13:57:00.002-04:00

Aziz Huq, in an op-ed piece in today's New York Times, argues that bans on sharia law such as the one enacted by the state of Oklahoma not only make for bad democracy, it makes for bad security:

"In this context, bans like the one in Oklahoma will serve to chill cooperation by the Muslim-American community with counterterrorism efforts. This makes sense: in such an environment, it would be fair for Muslims to pause before, say, passing on a lead to the police, worrying about whether the police would then look at them with suspicion as well."

Protestants Drink More Beer: And Other Beer Facts You May Not Have Known

2011-06-20T11:34:00.004-04:00

Actually this article by Charles Kenny (Chug for Growth Drink and be merry -- it's all for the common good) in Foreign Policy is more about beer consumption as an indicator of social and economic progress, but the point in this last paragraph is interesting:

"Indeed, beer may have been a force for growth for a long time. Colen and Swinnen note that beer consumption is higher in Protestant countries. What if the early success of Protestant-dominated economies wasn't about Weber's famed work ethic at all, but about the impact of breweries? Of course, it may be just as outlandish to argue that progress is driven by hops and barley as by the fear of eternal damnation -- but at least it's more fun to discuss over a pint."

Interesting to be sure, and as Kenny notes, that statistic does challenge the old steretoype of the abstemious protestant. However, to be fair to my Roman Catholic friends, they have long considered beer a heavenly drink, as Mad Padre noted back in 2008.