Sunday, 08 November 2009


  •   I'm still not right.  The more astute reader will recognize that I rarely am right, both in head and in heart and in matters of truth or fiction.

      Some mornings I struggle to get up because of the pain.  I suppose I shouldn't be surprised, but a lot of what people say to me is hurtful, even when they don't mean it to be.  Is it because I'm just being oversensitive?  Probably!  But a large part of me wishes folks would be a little more sensitive to what they say.  Sometimes, what makes a safe place to be one's broken self has little to do with how much people really do have good intentions of being helpful and encouraging and sometimes has a lot to do with their skill in it.

      But this isn't about that.  It's about me realizing that I can't stop giving.  And sometimes, the giving makes being on the receiving end of the shit stick easier to take. 

      I went to preach at another church today and felt bad for the pastor.  It was not a healthy church, and the pastor is younger than I am, although into his fourth year in ministry.  He was clearly overwhelmed by a lot of the things going on there, and when he offered to pray for me, I stopped him and said "I don't want you to pray for me.  I'm here to minister and to serve your congregation, but not just by sermonizing.  Let me pray for you instead."  So I did.  Sounds terribly noble, right?  I'd say so too, except that I can almost hear my counselor's voice floating in over my shoulder "are you hiding behind your role again?"  Uh, not as far as I know.  Maybe I felt extra compassionate because I could sense how much pain this young fella was in-- and I could only have sensed that much pain if I was sensitive to my own pain.  Sometimes what I carry around with me threatens to deaden my senses, but others times, it does make me more sensitive to what's going on in other people.

      Not all the time, of course.  Just some of the time.

      I was feeling tired and rotten on Saturday morning coming out of the gym.  Two older women were attempting to move a table, and I felt for them.  The world felt conspiratorial.  I was alone, and slightly enraged at the unfairness of everything.  But seeing them struggle to move the table around tweaked something in me.  It was like watching your mom try to move heavy stuff around when you know you can probably do it a lot faster-- so I stepped up and offered my help.  After we moved the table, one of the ladies asked "do you work here?"

      Here's what I wanted to say:  "No ma'am.  But I did stay at a Holiday Inn Express last night."

      Here's what I ended up saying.  "No ma'am.  Just wanted to help."

      I felt a lot better as I strode out of the community center.  Cynics will say it's because I was safe in my roleplaying.  But I touched something good in me when so much of what had been pouring out until then was more bile and more bitterness.  I don't know why I suddenly felt better, but there is something to transcending one's self by means of kindness.  My mind's too tired at the moment to really dwell on that, but in the home stretch of the day, that's as much as I can say.  Perhaps you should think about it for me.

     

Tuesday, 03 November 2009


  •   It's been so long that I had to try a number of times to get my password right. But I figure my readership has died down enough now that few would actually see this post, thus making it what it once was:  a semi-secluded spot to puke uncontrollably from fear and discouragement.

      I didn't think I'd ever come back here.  There wasn't any point.  Either some people gave too much of a shit when I wrote, and most everyone else couldn't give two shits if I did.  That leaves a shit in between, which pretty much sums up where I am these days.
     
      It was a terribly tumultuous summer, both inside and out.  It never ceases to amaze me that most folks think "oh, everything's fine" when they see me on Sunday morning or another context.  You know what that is, though?  Because when all is said and done, I'm a fucking professional, and it's not about me in circumstances where my personal problems are causing me to bleed dry from within.  I cannot striptease my pain in front of the flock because there are only a few who would understand--and, unfortunately, a few who would be sent into valleys of their own because they are the ones by whose hands I have suffered.  So I will not let them know.  I will only swallow the pain as I swallow painkillers.  I will hide behind my blandest smile.  I will mouth platitudes.  I will offer prayer.  But within, I am rotting away; my bones know no soundness.

      There are stories of how C.H. Spurgeon would get peeled from his bed by his church elders so that he could get up to preach, then would return to his bed once the service was over.  It wasn't exactly like that for me, but were it not for friends and yes, professional counselors, I don't think I would have bothered to leave my apartment at all.  The thing about being self-aware is that you end up doing whatever you can to divert deeper depression:  you keep exercising, you eat as best you can, and you try to get enough sleep.  But sometimes, it's not enough.  I've been taking sustained beatings over the last few months in many different ways, and it's still not all good.  In fact, over the last few days, I've been in the absolute shits.  I've realized in the last few months that I'm actually very good at hiding stuff when I want to, and, more frighteningly, awesome at playing the I'm-so-fucking-happy game.

      I slipped this summer.  Many times.  Into depression, out of depression.  Sometimes wondering why the hell I need to get up at all.  Sometimes wondering what the possible use of soldiering on could be. 

      I tried.  I tried!  I wanted and desired and prayed.  I don't think I ever wanted such a thing as I did when I prayed for this, the change of my wounded heart.  It was secret, it was furious, it was the work of a mountain lifting up its skirts and planting itself in the sea.  Yet, my cold heart warmed too late, too late.  So I am left behind, left alone, left holding the bag-- again.  The moment when my heart of stone became a heart of flesh is exactly the moment when it became vulnerable to being torn apart.  Story of my fucking life.  Why have a heart of flesh at all?  Is it not better to be what I have projected myself to be:  a stone monolith--uncaring, distant, yet strong?

      What for?  What for, this new pain?  Were it to make me compassionate, I mayhap would smile and say "good good", but all I feel now is bitterness and all that comes out of me is groaning.  Were it to cleanse me, as some had thought it would, all this has done is scar me even more deeply-- a surprising thing, since I was not aware of how open I had become.  What was all this striving for?  For naught, I should say, and even less than naught to a terrible hurt that I do not know what to do with.  Pain, pain, go away, come again another day.  Every day I wake up and am in pain, and the only way I know to alleviate it is to medicate mind and body.  And yes, I know you don't know what this is about, but I do, and for now, that's enough.  No one can know the seemingly innumerable hurts I have gone through in the last year, and even if they do, no one understands how I have processed them and felt worn down by every single stroke of the lash.  The first I could stand.  The second tingled.  The third I could feel my skin break.  By the tenth, I am left an incoherent, gibbering mess; sobbing into my wounds and begging for it to stop.  Enough! 

      I don't know why I'm writing here.  Maybe it's because I've written through the last dozen or so pages of my journal complaining to God.  Maybe it's because I spend every morning feeling my tongue curl with curses; and at night when I drift to sleep, my tongue cleaves to the roof of my mouth in sorrow.  Maybe it's because most of my friends probably couldn't stand a sustained barrage of f-bombs as I am prone to use when I'm angry or tired or discouraged or, in this case, all three.  More likely, it is the revelation of pain that most cannot stand.  You know, I think I just figured out why I'm writing here:  it's because in some weird way, it helps to have someone bear witness to your pain.

      I said as such to Cousin Ted and my buddy Phil last week when I held them in confidence.  I have other friends whom I may call, but I am afraid that they might be exhausted by the difficulty of caring for someone they love and so lapse into explanations.  It is not as though I really want theological answers that explain it all.  I can come up with enough myself!  It is the counselor in me remembering that this is my shit, and even though others are trying to walk with me, it's still my problem, not theirs.  They cannot bear my pain for me.  Only I can.  In that way, I am alone.  But all can bear witness, and this, dear reader (if you have read this far) is the boon I ask of you today:  bear witness.  I am laid low and silent, a shiftless shadow wandering the halls of Sheol.  Voiceless.  Sleepless.  Formless.  Bear witness!  I am a worm, not a man.

      I don't want theological answers.  I want to be loved through this, borne up by the reassurance of God's love for me.  God is good, you say?  Then I need proof!  I have felt the care of God in some ways:  if not by dint of my own flattened will, that struggles to rise like a prizefighter from the mat, then by the attendance of others to me; angels incarnate, those bearing the salve of pity and understanding.  Mockers say "oh, does the little boy need his pity party so badly?"  And I say "yes.  Only heartless bastards do not know what it means to live with a broken heart."  I have lived with mine for so long that very often I feel only as a quarter of a man, not even half-a-man, a speck of what I think I should be.  This long grief, this long sorrow-- it does not kill you, but it shrinks you, pulls you down into the corner of some dark box where there is no warmth and no light.

      I have only begun to ask the most dreaded question we all must eventually ask of our pain:  where is God in all this?  And for me, the pain is still too near, so I can only throw up my hands and say "hidden".  I wish it were as simple as feeling the comfort of His presence, but now, there is nothing.  Only the hum of my refrigerator and more silence beyond.  I do not know where God is in all this, because right now, it feels as though He is not in it at all and that He is asleep or uncaring.  And perhaps that is the best thing I have written thus far:  that perhaps God was not in this at all-- yet what I hope for is the redemption of this suffering.  Maybe not on this side of life, for it may well be that I will weep out the rest of my days, but maybe on the other side, when I am raised anew, all of the way this sorrow has carved me out will prepare me to become a vessel of some greater joy.

      I can only hope.  Right now, after having spent the evening doing my damnedest to drink myself into a stupor and then found, to my dismay, that my tolerance is much better than I thought it was-- this moment, I can only breathe.  And each breath draws the darkness nearer.  Yes, darkness, you are my closest friend.




     

     

Friday, 10 July 2009

  • This Is It For Now and Perhaps For All Time


      Though I sort of doubt it.

      The last few weeks have been tumultuous-- not only with regards to personal stakes, but over the last week, my spirituality has been greatly challenged.  In particular, the way I write and what I write for has come so sharply into question that I am going to leave it for a while-- and leave this blog entirely.  No more even infrequent updates-- just nothing for a while after I write these scant few words.  Ah!  I'd better make them count.

      Am I scared?  Yes.  Though I still believe that the power of self-expression is one I have received from God, the places I go to and the powers I draw on when I write may not be.  Now that is a hard thing to hear, especially when one believes all along that one has been labouring for the glory of the Lord and the furtherance of His Kingdom.  Yet I am frightened more because I have relied so heavily on knowing myself and being known as a budding writer that to see myself as valuable and significant outside of what I do and have done is a leap I cannot, at this moment, make.  The question of "who am I" is answered easily enough by "you are God's beloved son", but there is no feeling in me to answer it thus.  I might as well be saying "4 is the sum of 2 and 2", a mathematical fact that has no emotive value except to say that God is rational and constant.

      The promise of all of this is that I should know myself as God's Beloved, something I admit that I am not always capable of seeing.  The last time I remember feeling such love was when I returned from a run one Friday afternoon and, walking in through the door, suddenly felt the closeness of God and something of a divine embrace.  I choked back a sob.  In that little moment, every nagging worry that I carry with me evaporated in the blaze of such immense gentleness. 

      This goes further, deeper than just writing-- though writing is how it often gets in.  It touches on painful memories I have yet to be healed from, glances across betrayal and nakedness of many kinds, and works tendrils and runners into what I do now.  There is, I am told, a taint to my writing and to my preaching that reaches the people.  Hearing this makes me not want to preach anymore-- what preacher worth his or her salt wants to be known for poisoned lips?  Yet I will still preach.  Only now, I must be more careful where I draw from when I do.

      Those of you who can pray, I would ask to pray-- though I am somewhat tired of people laying hands on me over the last couple of weeks.  There are things operating around me and in me that I am only now becoming aware of, so pray that these things be dispelled and cast away.  I'll not do them anymore honour than to mention them in briefest terms for now, but pray that I might be delivered.

      Until I write again,

    ed

Thursday, 18 June 2009



  •   This is the way the world ends
      This is the way the world ends
      This is the way the world ends
      Not with a bang but a whimper

      --  T.S. Eliot, The Hollow Men

      I've had this fragment of T.S. Eliot stuck in my head for the last few days, not really knowing why I should have such a thing in there to begin with.  The last time I read this poem was over a year ago, I think-- but strange how some things bubble up from our subconscious when we least expect it.

      Today was a difficult day.  I went from contentment to anger to bitterness to acceptance to gritted joy in the span of a few hours-- all because of money.  I am giving up the last of the "Smaug vintage", as Bilbo might say, and quite rightly so, for it is all that I have ever been able to save when I went "there and back again." 

      Giving it up means also giving up certain dreams, things that weren't really happening anyway.  I was hoping to use that money for another degree-- now, I don't think I'll have the money for that.  I was hoping to also use it for a wedding-- but I need not tell you how far that is from me as well.  No, the money was just sitting there, waiting to be used, and used it shall be-- and for good cause. 

      I didn't give it up easily, though.  I raged.  The first thing on my lips after I was confronted with this new poorer reality was fucking hell.  I thought "why me" and sucked my thumb.  I clenched my jaw until I thought my teeth would shatter in my mouth.  And then, I heard from God.

      It was as I was praying for someone else, it was as though God was challenging me on several different fronts, but the most important thing I heard was "some people need to be separated from their money."  It was something my old pastor and mentor in Hong Kong once said about other people, but something I turn over in my head.  However, this is what I usually mutter to myself as I watch congregants drive off in their nice cars to multi-million dollar houses on the West Side.  I didn't think that I, the poor church mouse, would need to be ever separated from my money.  Did I? 

      I guess I did.  Later, another pastor at the meeting I was at mentioned Abraham at Mt. Moriah, and it all became incredibly clear.  I was counting on that money for certain things-- for hope, for a future.  It is a subtle thing.  I was not, in one sense, depending upon God, but upon what He had provided.  The LORD giveth, and the LORD taketh away, n'est-ce pas?  And now, the decision on how to use it is taken from me, the burden of wealth no longer a part of my life.  Not because I still don't have the capacity to pay bills or go out for occasional lunches, but because the option of doing anything more than I regularly do is now gone.  That wealth was my Isaac, my hope for the continuation of a promise and a life. 

      Only this time, there was no ram in the thicket.  My dagger sheared into my own flesh and blood until I cut it away from me.  Quickly, quickly, quickly.  I did it quickly so I would not feel it so much, yet the feeling of leaning on emptiness is discomfiting to say the least.  Yet is it ever emptiness that I lean on?  Will God actually still provide?  Or is it really going to be like the Eliot poem-- "Not with a bang but a whimper."

      O God, I hope You show up here.  Not just for my sake, but You do realize people are watching, don't You?  If not for me, then for Yourself then! 

     

Saturday, 13 June 2009

Friday, 05 June 2009

  • Why I Blog



      I've been trying to sift through a number of things of late, none of which I care to directly discuss here in a semi-public forum.  Suffice to say that some moments in life are more like muddy minefields than alpine meadows with bright-eyed flowers.

      This corner of cyberspace is over six years old now.  I originally started it as a testament to the kids I was teaching in Hong Kong and to keep friends in Vancouver "in the know" about my life, but then I just kept on going-- and yes, kept on going with xanga, a much-maligned community primarily composed of people writing about what they bought and who they hung out with, replete with self-photography at various nightclubs while pants/tops are falling down.  It's a bit saddening to read other people's sites from time to time-- it makes those of us who strive to use the Queen's English (or rough facsimiles thereof) despair for what can be, at times, a wonderful language to know.  Everyone knows serious bloggers go with, well, Blogger or Wordpress, not teenybopperville Xanga. 

      Yet, here I remain.  Not because I am particularly attached to Xanga, but because I have certain ruts (or routes, choose which you think applies) that I like. 

      So I blog on.  In my better moments, I use this space almost as a workshop for my more serious writings.  I try out different words and phrases to see how they sound together-- and even more importantly (McLuhan adherents would disagree) I workshop ideas and gauge responses from readers.  All three of you.  And even though what I write is so often (for some) entertaining or intriguing, I suppose one other reason I keep writing is because it gives people space to feel "not alone".  I've been told a few times how what I write has the uncanny knack of speaking what other people feel (a slight difference from a good comedian, who speaks what we all are thinking, such as "I hate pants" and "what's the deal with airlines?"), and this, I hope, has the effect that those who come by here begin to feel less alone.  Though I'm a severely limited human being, my words can go where I physically cannot, building bridges and connecting people to themselves and the way they feel.

      However, there is a dark side to my blogging:  I like the attention.  I like having people comment on my entries and to tell me I'm a good writer.  I like having your eyes/ears for a moment to tell you what's on my mind.  And, of late, I am beginning to see that perhaps this unhealthy outlook might be best assuaged by quitting blogging for a while-- even at the risk of spontaneous combustion from not being able to get my words out of this scrap of hide.  There are even occasions, I must admit, when the prospect of attracting women because of what I write and how I write it is too much of a temptation for me to bear.  Though I am as honest as I can be when I write here, I do know what effect such honesty can have on others.

      So there you have it.  Not the flashiest nor most lyrical of posts I have ever done, but I thought I should confess it.  Will you forgive me?




     

Saturday, 30 May 2009



  •   Things I Sing When I'm Alone:

      Bon Iver - The Park (see vid below-- it takes a while to get to the song, but it's worth it.)

      Great Is Thy Faithfulness (Incongruous, I know.  But sometimes you just gotta sing it.)

      That is all.

     

     



Monday, 25 May 2009


  •   It's the simple things that count.
     
      I preached today on the Rich Young Man and Jesus.  One of my seminary professors once said that if you can't say what you want to say in one sentence, it probably isn't worth saying at all.  So here's the one sentence summary:  Not everyone is called to sell their possessions and give the money to the poor, but all of us need to be separated from obsessing over the things that we think will bring us security.

      There.  I said it.

      I was a little disappointed that some people who I feel might have benefited from some of the things I said weren't there today.  It's always a bit of a crapshoot when it comes to preparing your sermon with particular people in mind and they're not there to hear it.  But, I suppose all things being equal, the people who needed to hear it probably heard it just fine, thank you very much. 

      The after sermon discussion was also quite involved, as being a relatively wealthy church, every single one of us struggles with "living lightly" as I commended them to do.  Yet the discussion seemed to be strangely repetitive, as though everyone was repeating what I had already said (or what I think I said-- in fact, I'm pretty sure I said it because I have a manuscript to prove that I said it!) and then claiming it as something that just occurred to them.  It's not as though I need them to say "what you said about ______  was really thought-provoking/challenging/beautiful/craptastic", but it felt as though people had just switched off and made up their minds about the passage and would have shared about it in the same way even if I hadn't just preached on it.  Don't get me wrong.  It's great that they're learning.  But maybe it's my insignificance complex talking when I think that people are ignoring what I just said and passing it off as something they just thought up.

      And another thing:  I'm tired of people demanding application and practicality.  Not that these are all bad, but sometimes, truth is truth and how this applies is for you to puzzle out in your context, not for some dude behind the music stand to tell you how to live your life.  Think people, think!

      It wasn't a frustrating day, but I come away from it feeling misunderstood.  Yes, poor Wiggum.  I bet this is how James Houston felt when he talked about modern obsession with technique and "technology" (which he defined as development of technique) and the people around me all wondered "Is Dr. Houston against email and computers?  He said he doesn't like technology."  Yes, that's right.  Oxford don who lives up the hill from me also happens to be a luddite.  That would explain the flickering lights in his house I see from time to time.  Must be him riding his stationary bike to power up his water heater.

      Simplicity is good.  I had a few friends over to make pasta, and the act of making good food together and drinking a little wine on top is always a welcome event.  As you may know, my current obsession (ahead of doing actual research for my next book) is making noodles.  I made two kinds of gnocchi yesterday, a spinach and a butternut squash one.  They were pretty good, but the main event today were the KitchenAid pasta making attachments that my friend brought over.  They're simple machines-- one for flattening and the other for cutting into strips-- but elegant and sturdy little stainless steel die that made some of the best pasta I have ever had. 

      I first made a lemon pepper dough to demonstrate how it's done.  The basic recipe is 1 cup flour/1 egg and oil and flour to adjust the dough to sufficient stickiness.  Then you add in whatever you fancy.  The next noodles were spinach, basil, and italian flat leaf parsley.  Then we made a roast garlic noodle.  Finally, I stepped in and made chocolate pasta-- which itself was just all right, but the sauce is what set it off.  I'm relatively proud of the sauce, since it was my first real time using a double boiler set up to melt the dark Callebaut bits I procured before my trip.  To this rich, glossy (but still very fudgy stuff) I added sugar, milk, a quarter cup of butter, vanilla, salt, cayenne pepper, and peanut butter.  This was no ordinary peanut butter-- this was the stuff my mom had made a while ago but while tasting a little funny with bread, I had been saving for sauces such as this.  I was not wrong.  It was probably one of the most delicious things I have ever made, and I am not even that much of a chocolate fan.  The girls, of course, all flipped out into semi-orgasmic states.  One of them even licked her plate clean.  Not to pass out from tooting my own horn (which is an oxymoronic statement because you know at this point I'm going to brag) but the women around me often say they'd all be two hundred pounds if they lived with me because everything I make is carbalicious.  Breads, pastas, puddings, pies, cakes, loaves... yes, I do tend to make things with a certain "bite" to them. 
     
      I often wonder what life would be like with a wife or family to appreciate what I make.  My friends and family already do tend to like almost everything I make, but part of me is wistful for the opportunity to make wonderful dishes for someone else to enjoy.  It sounds strange, but part of me really loves the act of cooking and baking for others.  It's how, as they say in the vernacular, I like to "love on" other people.  That, and writing.  But writing is like having your lower intestine pulled out of your empty eye sockets.

      Although making pasta was a lot of work, the results were so immediately rewarding that I'll have to do it again. 
    My feet ache, my back aches, my hands are chapped, but the bouncy texture of the noodles and the gratification of making something good sends me now to sleep with a smile on my face.

      Noodles, noodles for all.


Tuesday, 19 May 2009

  •   It's snowing in Edmonton.  In the middle of May.  But strangely enough, it doesn't bother me half as much as it bothers everyone else.  I suppose the Vancouverite in me shrugged off inclement weather as being part of the price to pay for living in such a beautiful city, but then I stopped and realized that this is Edmonton, not Vancouver.

      It is not as though Edmonton is without charm.  It has a genuine small-town feel that reminds me of Saskatoon, except perhaps with a great deal more sprawl.  I borrowed my sister's car and drove down to South Edmonton Common today to look for a sweater and possibly a suit.  It was not the snow that bothered me as I stepped out of the car and surveyed the stores placed so far apart that the thought of walking from outlet to outlet was somehwat unpalatable.  No, what unsettled me was how unnatural the entire thing seemed-- as though the buildings were more machinations against the way of nature, a distinctly fallen attempt to "civilize" things when things needed no such "civilizing."  Even though the facades of these stores were done up in cultured stone, I could not help but feel the cognitive dissonance of urban life, something that has been on my mind a lot lately since finishing Jacques Ellul's The Meaning of The City, one of the better books I have read so far in 2009. 

      I can't live without the city.  None of us can.  The way the world is set up is that we will inevitably urbanize the face of the earth because this is the simple truth of living in an industrialized society.  And as a shepherd, I go where the people go.  Though I sometimes fantasize about having a mountain retreat (or a Fortress of Solitude) to sit and write in, the truth is that we Kingdom folk aren't called out of the city, but because of what Christ does and the hope we live in, to engage in the city.

      And no, I'm not actually a fan of that Chris Tomlin song.  I actually can't stand it.  Maybe Tomlin has read Jacques Ellul, but for the hundreds of thousands who sing it, I am afraid that it might be a misinterpreted invitation to participate in pre-millenial self-justification by works.  But that's just me.  I'm sure everyone else just sings it and thinks "what a pretty song."

      Edmonton is built for snow.  It felt somewhat Christmas-y as I sat in Second Cup reading John Stott.  The raisin scone and americano helped with that feeling too.  Things seem more compact in the snow, or else maybe driving these interminable distances to some distant Prairie horizon has led to a shrinking of the city that seems so vast and yet so small at the same time.

      Every time I visit a place I find myself wondering "could I live here?"  Lately, this has also meant asking the question "could I minister here?"  The answer for many places has been "yes".  Vancouver, Hong Kong and Singapore are all places I could easily see myself living and working.  Edmonton has crept into my conscience over the last several days, and as I talk with people who live here, what strikes me is the lack of alternatives for those seeking something more than Sunday morning solipsism.  Thus the question I have been asking myself has now evolved into general feelings of meeting people and feeling them to be "sheep without a shepherd."  I wonder if Christ did not go to Rome because he would have been overwhelmed with the teeming multitudes and would have been so busy with healing the sick that he never would have had the opportunity to die.

      This is completely unrelated, but I was struck by a song on a CD in my sister's car:  Rufus Wainwright's rendition of Shakespeare's Sonnet 29.  As I waited to turn left on Whyte Ave., I found myself thinking about the characters I have written and how this song might be a perfect complement to many of the things I have written.  There is something deeply moving about the way the cello reverberates a steady river of dusky tones.  It put me in the mind of Adam, not dressed to run but running anyway-- with a smile on his face and dashing down the broad sidewalks in lower Central outside the glass and steel Cheung Kong building with the daylight fading and the streetlights just shyly coming in.  It was a strange image, but a pleasurable one nonetheless. 

      There was another image too, of when Adam sees Persie near the end of the book and he can't do anything but feel his heart rupture for her.  When Wainwright sings

    "Yet in these thoughts myself almost despising,
    Haply I think on thee, and then my state,
    Like to the lark at break of day arising
    From sullen earth, sings hymns at heaven's gate;"

      This is Adam staring up at Persie.  Though those of you who are reading my book and reading this blog (all, what, two of you?) might have now realized the contrasts between Persie and April, there is something in me, the author, that is inspired by relentless and terrifying beauty.  I suppose this is why artists sometimes find themselves muses.  Me?  I have strange revelations while waiting to turn left from Whyte onto 109.


     





Wednesday, 13 May 2009

  • Vacatio



      Tomorrow marks the beginning of the first weekend I've really had "off" since coming back from an extended trip to Hong Kong last July.  This is also the first time I've left Vancouver in almost a year.  I think the farthest I've gone in the last several months has been Surrey.  The first weekend off.  In.  Almost.  A.  Year.

      Thinking that makes me feel more tired than not thinking that. 

      It's made me wonder what stuff I'm really made of, and whether I'm more of a workaholic than I think I am.  I tend not to think so, since I do manage down time so that, like a distance runner, you take refreshments along the way instead of taking long breaks like everyone else. At least, this is the theory.

      Yet when I think about it today, I'm tired.  Maybe it's because I pushed myself pretty hard this weekend and had to be a great deal more extroverted than usual.  I sort of horrified myself last night when I pushed myself to go to a friend's place for dinner and found myself being one of the chattiest people in attendance.  Yes, horrified.  That's not me.  That's me still being pastor and making everyone feel loved and at home-- even when it wasn't my home!  I walked away from that dinner wondering what was going on with me that I couldn't just be all right with being quiet like so many other people were.  After all, the majority of people there were Regent students.  They'd understand the need for silence.  I wonder if they walked away thinking that the Chinese guy with the scrubby chin patch was an extrovert or else in need of being the center of attention.

      No, I'm not.  Or am I? 

      I felt myself crash a little this afternoon as I picked up friends from the airport and we bumped into someone I hadn't seen for close to a decade.  We were never close even when we were in the same church, but somehow we ended up eating with her and her father.  I felt myself switching off for long periods and just spacing out.  I didn't mind eating with my two very good friends, but somehow, adding someone more really broke my back.  I knew I wasn't being very good company, but in a fit of childishness, I really didn't care.  Like my vacuum cleaner that shuts down every so often because of high heat, I was shutting down because I wasn't really able to cool off.  Normally, Sunday evenings are me + couch + beer.  Mondays are long runs and general monkishness.  Tuesdays are on my ass dwelling in my head writing stuff few people care about.  But tip that balance just a little and I start, well, overloading.

      It made me wonder how I'll ever handle family life-- if that's even something I want anymore.  Perhaps that's an unduly pessimistic thing to say, but the general feeling as I went for a run today was that much of what I know myself by at this time in my life-- a man who cherishes his solitude-- would largely evaporate into a cloud of unmet expectations from other people.  I began to wonder if the trade off was worth it after all, and whether growing mouldy in this same apartment, churning out novels no one will ever read, is not the life for me.  (yo ho ho and a bottle of rum.)

      Then, upon returning from my run, I stretched in front of the TV and watched the Simpsons.  Edna Krabappel was draped over a railing staring wistfully at Homer and Marge tamping gunpowder into homemade fireworks.  Then she sighed, and thought "I wish I had someone to share this with." 

      That restored me a little.  Sometimes I focus so much on the drain of my resources that I forget the other side of things, the blessing of friends and family that I do get to share my life with.  All of a sudden, desire made sense again.  I don't often get the positive side of family life shared with me.  Most married people and people with kids often wax moany about their lack of personal time and space.  I suppose as a pastor I ought to get used to people bellyaching about one thing or another, but I'm almost positive you never do-- nor should you.  Yet I realized then that I don't hear about the other side often enough; that giggling children are a joy to have and that husbands and wives are a pleasure to hold.

      Part of me is tempted to respond next time to a congregant's whingeing about their wife/husband/kids by simply asking "so why don't you just leave them if they're making your life so miserable?"  All right, so it's not the most sensitive thing to say, and I'll probably never say it, but it's just mad enough that it might be better than a slap upside the head.  (Which, I think, some people could still use.)  I suppose the pastoral thing to say would be "you've been talking a lot about the downside of commitment.  But what are the blessings of where you're at?"  (Statements like this, by the way, are why single pastors sometimes get treated like eunuchs.)  Yet the principle remains the same.  What would life be like if it was bereft of the blessings we all have? 

      Writing is a blessing and a curse.  I get to use words-- glorious words!-- to tell everyone exactly how they feel.  It is a curse because it takes a tremendous amount of time, energy, and a dash of insanity to work at something as ethereal as a story.  Yet would my life be better for not having it?  No.  I wouldn't be me.  I wouldn't be the guy who writes extremely long (and, admittedly, sometimes pointless) blogs about every little thing that comes into his head.  I wouldn't know myself outside of the streams of thought that I sometimes am able to direct onto a page.

      Living alone is also a blessing and a curse.  On the one hand, I can eat, sleep, read, write, and run whenever I want to.  I even get to defecate with the door open!  But the downside is waking up in the middle of the night and feeling frightened by the dark-- and having no one to talk to about it.  The downside is feeling like going for a vacation, but not wanting to go somewhere alone.  Maybe it's just because almost all of my guy friends are married or have girlfriends that I find myself in the latter situation, but at least the girls I know get to go away with other single girls.  Me?  I sit at home and dream about going to Istanbul.  Guys don't go on the sorts of vacations I'm interested in-- they go to Vegas, a place I have about as much interest in as getting kicked in the head.

      Sigh.  It's not as though I'm not looking forward to Edmonton.  I just wish I had someone to share this all with.

      I guess I do.  You.
     

     

The Myshkiness

Sunday, 08 November 2009


  •   I'm still not right.  The more astute reader will recognize that I rarely am right, both in head and in heart and in matters of truth or fiction.

      Some mornings I struggle to get up because of the pain.  I suppose I shouldn't be surprised, but a lot of what people say to me is hurtful, even when they don't mean it to be.  Is it because I'm just being oversensitive?  Probably!  But a large part of me wishes folks would be a little more sensitive to what they say.  Sometimes, what makes a safe place to be one's broken self has little to do with how much people really do have good intentions of being helpful and encouraging and sometimes has a lot to do with their skill in it.

      But this isn't about that.  It's about me realizing that I can't stop giving.  And sometimes, the giving makes being on the receiving end of the shit stick easier to take. 

      I went to preach at another church today and felt bad for the pastor.  It was not a healthy church, and the pastor is younger than I am, although into his fourth year in ministry.  He was clearly overwhelmed by a lot of the things going on there, and when he offered to pray for me, I stopped him and said "I don't want you to pray for me.  I'm here to minister and to serve your congregation, but not just by sermonizing.  Let me pray for you instead."  So I did.  Sounds terribly noble, right?  I'd say so too, except that I can almost hear my counselor's voice floating in over my shoulder "are you hiding behind your role again?"  Uh, not as far as I know.  Maybe I felt extra compassionate because I could sense how much pain this young fella was in-- and I could only have sensed that much pain if I was sensitive to my own pain.  Sometimes what I carry around with me threatens to deaden my senses, but others times, it does make me more sensitive to what's going on in other people.

      Not all the time, of course.  Just some of the time.

      I was feeling tired and rotten on Saturday morning coming out of the gym.  Two older women were attempting to move a table, and I felt for them.  The world felt conspiratorial.  I was alone, and slightly enraged at the unfairness of everything.  But seeing them struggle to move the table around tweaked something in me.  It was like watching your mom try to move heavy stuff around when you know you can probably do it a lot faster-- so I stepped up and offered my help.  After we moved the table, one of the ladies asked "do you work here?"

      Here's what I wanted to say:  "No ma'am.  But I did stay at a Holiday Inn Express last night."

      Here's what I ended up saying.  "No ma'am.  Just wanted to help."

      I felt a lot better as I strode out of the community center.  Cynics will say it's because I was safe in my roleplaying.  But I touched something good in me when so much of what had been pouring out until then was more bile and more bitterness.  I don't know why I suddenly felt better, but there is something to transcending one's self by means of kindness.  My mind's too tired at the moment to really dwell on that, but in the home stretch of the day, that's as much as I can say.  Perhaps you should think about it for me.

     

Tuesday, 03 November 2009


  •   It's been so long that I had to try a number of times to get my password right. But I figure my readership has died down enough now that few would actually see this post, thus making it what it once was:  a semi-secluded spot to puke uncontrollably from fear and discouragement.

      I didn't think I'd ever come back here.  There wasn't any point.  Either some people gave too much of a shit when I wrote, and most everyone else couldn't give two shits if I did.  That leaves a shit in between, which pretty much sums up where I am these days.
     
      It was a terribly tumultuous summer, both inside and out.  It never ceases to amaze me that most folks think "oh, everything's fine" when they see me on Sunday morning or another context.  You know what that is, though?  Because when all is said and done, I'm a fucking professional, and it's not about me in circumstances where my personal problems are causing me to bleed dry from within.  I cannot striptease my pain in front of the flock because there are only a few who would understand--and, unfortunately, a few who would be sent into valleys of their own because they are the ones by whose hands I have suffered.  So I will not let them know.  I will only swallow the pain as I swallow painkillers.  I will hide behind my blandest smile.  I will mouth platitudes.  I will offer prayer.  But within, I am rotting away; my bones know no soundness.

      There are stories of how C.H. Spurgeon would get peeled from his bed by his church elders so that he could get up to preach, then would return to his bed once the service was over.  It wasn't exactly like that for me, but were it not for friends and yes, professional counselors, I don't think I would have bothered to leave my apartment at all.  The thing about being self-aware is that you end up doing whatever you can to divert deeper depression:  you keep exercising, you eat as best you can, and you try to get enough sleep.  But sometimes, it's not enough.  I've been taking sustained beatings over the last few months in many different ways, and it's still not all good.  In fact, over the last few days, I've been in the absolute shits.  I've realized in the last few months that I'm actually very good at hiding stuff when I want to, and, more frighteningly, awesome at playing the I'm-so-fucking-happy game.

      I slipped this summer.  Many times.  Into depression, out of depression.  Sometimes wondering why the hell I need to get up at all.  Sometimes wondering what the possible use of soldiering on could be. 

      I tried.  I tried!  I wanted and desired and prayed.  I don't think I ever wanted such a thing as I did when I prayed for this, the change of my wounded heart.  It was secret, it was furious, it was the work of a mountain lifting up its skirts and planting itself in the sea.  Yet, my cold heart warmed too late, too late.  So I am left behind, left alone, left holding the bag-- again.  The moment when my heart of stone became a heart of flesh is exactly the moment when it became vulnerable to being torn apart.  Story of my fucking life.  Why have a heart of flesh at all?  Is it not better to be what I have projected myself to be:  a stone monolith--uncaring, distant, yet strong?

      What for?  What for, this new pain?  Were it to make me compassionate, I mayhap would smile and say "good good", but all I feel now is bitterness and all that comes out of me is groaning.  Were it to cleanse me, as some had thought it would, all this has done is scar me even more deeply-- a surprising thing, since I was not aware of how open I had become.  What was all this striving for?  For naught, I should say, and even less than naught to a terrible hurt that I do not know what to do with.  Pain, pain, go away, come again another day.  Every day I wake up and am in pain, and the only way I know to alleviate it is to medicate mind and body.  And yes, I know you don't know what this is about, but I do, and for now, that's enough.  No one can know the seemingly innumerable hurts I have gone through in the last year, and even if they do, no one understands how I have processed them and felt worn down by every single stroke of the lash.  The first I could stand.  The second tingled.  The third I could feel my skin break.  By the tenth, I am left an incoherent, gibbering mess; sobbing into my wounds and begging for it to stop.  Enough! 

      I don't know why I'm writing here.  Maybe it's because I've written through the last dozen or so pages of my journal complaining to God.  Maybe it's because I spend every morning feeling my tongue curl with curses; and at night when I drift to sleep, my tongue cleaves to the roof of my mouth in sorrow.  Maybe it's because most of my friends probably couldn't stand a sustained barrage of f-bombs as I am prone to use when I'm angry or tired or discouraged or, in this case, all three.  More likely, it is the revelation of pain that most cannot stand.  You know, I think I just figured out why I'm writing here:  it's because in some weird way, it helps to have someone bear witness to your pain.

      I said as such to Cousin Ted and my buddy Phil last week when I held them in confidence.  I have other friends whom I may call, but I am afraid that they might be exhausted by the difficulty of caring for someone they love and so lapse into explanations.  It is not as though I really want theological answers that explain it all.  I can come up with enough myself!  It is the counselor in me remembering that this is my shit, and even though others are trying to walk with me, it's still my problem, not theirs.  They cannot bear my pain for me.  Only I can.  In that way, I am alone.  But all can bear witness, and this, dear reader (if you have read this far) is the boon I ask of you today:  bear witness.  I am laid low and silent, a shiftless shadow wandering the halls of Sheol.  Voiceless.  Sleepless.  Formless.  Bear witness!  I am a worm, not a man.

      I don't want theological answers.  I want to be loved through this, borne up by the reassurance of God's love for me.  God is good, you say?  Then I need proof!  I have felt the care of God in some ways:  if not by dint of my own flattened will, that struggles to rise like a prizefighter from the mat, then by the attendance of others to me; angels incarnate, those bearing the salve of pity and understanding.  Mockers say "oh, does the little boy need his pity party so badly?"  And I say "yes.  Only heartless bastards do not know what it means to live with a broken heart."  I have lived with mine for so long that very often I feel only as a quarter of a man, not even half-a-man, a speck of what I think I should be.  This long grief, this long sorrow-- it does not kill you, but it shrinks you, pulls you down into the corner of some dark box where there is no warmth and no light.

      I have only begun to ask the most dreaded question we all must eventually ask of our pain:  where is God in all this?  And for me, the pain is still too near, so I can only throw up my hands and say "hidden".  I wish it were as simple as feeling the comfort of His presence, but now, there is nothing.  Only the hum of my refrigerator and more silence beyond.  I do not know where God is in all this, because right now, it feels as though He is not in it at all and that He is asleep or uncaring.  And perhaps that is the best thing I have written thus far:  that perhaps God was not in this at all-- yet what I hope for is the redemption of this suffering.  Maybe not on this side of life, for it may well be that I will weep out the rest of my days, but maybe on the other side, when I am raised anew, all of the way this sorrow has carved me out will prepare me to become a vessel of some greater joy.

      I can only hope.  Right now, after having spent the evening doing my damnedest to drink myself into a stupor and then found, to my dismay, that my tolerance is much better than I thought it was-- this moment, I can only breathe.  And each breath draws the darkness nearer.  Yes, darkness, you are my closest friend.




     

     

Friday, 10 July 2009

  • This Is It For Now and Perhaps For All Time


      Though I sort of doubt it.

      The last few weeks have been tumultuous-- not only with regards to personal stakes, but over the last week, my spirituality has been greatly challenged.  In particular, the way I write and what I write for has come so sharply into question that I am going to leave it for a while-- and leave this blog entirely.  No more even infrequent updates-- just nothing for a while after I write these scant few words.  Ah!  I'd better make them count.

      Am I scared?  Yes.  Though I still believe that the power of self-expression is one I have received from God, the places I go to and the powers I draw on when I write may not be.  Now that is a hard thing to hear, especially when one believes all along that one has been labouring for the glory of the Lord and the furtherance of His Kingdom.  Yet I am frightened more because I have relied so heavily on knowing myself and being known as a budding writer that to see myself as valuable and significant outside of what I do and have done is a leap I cannot, at this moment, make.  The question of "who am I" is answered easily enough by "you are God's beloved son", but there is no feeling in me to answer it thus.  I might as well be saying "4 is the sum of 2 and 2", a mathematical fact that has no emotive value except to say that God is rational and constant.

      The promise of all of this is that I should know myself as God's Beloved, something I admit that I am not always capable of seeing.  The last time I remember feeling such love was when I returned from a run one Friday afternoon and, walking in through the door, suddenly felt the closeness of God and something of a divine embrace.  I choked back a sob.  In that little moment, every nagging worry that I carry with me evaporated in the blaze of such immense gentleness. 

      This goes further, deeper than just writing-- though writing is how it often gets in.  It touches on painful memories I have yet to be healed from, glances across betrayal and nakedness of many kinds, and works tendrils and runners into what I do now.  There is, I am told, a taint to my writing and to my preaching that reaches the people.  Hearing this makes me not want to preach anymore-- what preacher worth his or her salt wants to be known for poisoned lips?  Yet I will still preach.  Only now, I must be more careful where I draw from when I do.

      Those of you who can pray, I would ask to pray-- though I am somewhat tired of people laying hands on me over the last couple of weeks.  There are things operating around me and in me that I am only now becoming aware of, so pray that these things be dispelled and cast away.  I'll not do them anymore honour than to mention them in briefest terms for now, but pray that I might be delivered.

      Until I write again,

    ed

Thursday, 18 June 2009



  •   This is the way the world ends
      This is the way the world ends
      This is the way the world ends
      Not with a bang but a whimper

      --  T.S. Eliot, The Hollow Men

      I've had this fragment of T.S. Eliot stuck in my head for the last few days, not really knowing why I should have such a thing in there to begin with.  The last time I read this poem was over a year ago, I think-- but strange how some things bubble up from our subconscious when we least expect it.

      Today was a difficult day.  I went from contentment to anger to bitterness to acceptance to gritted joy in the span of a few hours-- all because of money.  I am giving up the last of the "Smaug vintage", as Bilbo might say, and quite rightly so, for it is all that I have ever been able to save when I went "there and back again." 

      Giving it up means also giving up certain dreams, things that weren't really happening anyway.  I was hoping to use that money for another degree-- now, I don't think I'll have the money for that.  I was hoping to also use it for a wedding-- but I need not tell you how far that is from me as well.  No, the money was just sitting there, waiting to be used, and used it shall be-- and for good cause. 

      I didn't give it up easily, though.  I raged.  The first thing on my lips after I was confronted with this new poorer reality was fucking hell.  I thought "why me" and sucked my thumb.  I clenched my jaw until I thought my teeth would shatter in my mouth.  And then, I heard from God.

      It was as I was praying for someone else, it was as though God was challenging me on several different fronts, but the most important thing I heard was "some people need to be separated from their money."  It was something my old pastor and mentor in Hong Kong once said about other people, but something I turn over in my head.  However, this is what I usually mutter to myself as I watch congregants drive off in their nice cars to multi-million dollar houses on the West Side.  I didn't think that I, the poor church mouse, would need to be ever separated from my money.  Did I? 

      I guess I did.  Later, another pastor at the meeting I was at mentioned Abraham at Mt. Moriah, and it all became incredibly clear.  I was counting on that money for certain things-- for hope, for a future.  It is a subtle thing.  I was not, in one sense, depending upon God, but upon what He had provided.  The LORD giveth, and the LORD taketh away, n'est-ce pas?  And now, the decision on how to use it is taken from me, the burden of wealth no longer a part of my life.  Not because I still don't have the capacity to pay bills or go out for occasional lunches, but because the option of doing anything more than I regularly do is now gone.  That wealth was my Isaac, my hope for the continuation of a promise and a life. 

      Only this time, there was no ram in the thicket.  My dagger sheared into my own flesh and blood until I cut it away from me.  Quickly, quickly, quickly.  I did it quickly so I would not feel it so much, yet the feeling of leaning on emptiness is discomfiting to say the least.  Yet is it ever emptiness that I lean on?  Will God actually still provide?  Or is it really going to be like the Eliot poem-- "Not with a bang but a whimper."

      O God, I hope You show up here.  Not just for my sake, but You do realize people are watching, don't You?  If not for me, then for Yourself then! 

     

Saturday, 13 June 2009

Friday, 05 June 2009

  • Why I Blog



      I've been trying to sift through a number of things of late, none of which I care to directly discuss here in a semi-public forum.  Suffice to say that some moments in life are more like muddy minefields than alpine meadows with bright-eyed flowers.

      This corner of cyberspace is over six years old now.  I originally started it as a testament to the kids I was teaching in Hong Kong and to keep friends in Vancouver "in the know" about my life, but then I just kept on going-- and yes, kept on going with xanga, a much-maligned community primarily composed of people writing about what they bought and who they hung out with, replete with self-photography at various nightclubs while pants/tops are falling down.  It's a bit saddening to read other people's sites from time to time-- it makes those of us who strive to use the Queen's English (or rough facsimiles thereof) despair for what can be, at times, a wonderful language to know.  Everyone knows serious bloggers go with, well, Blogger or Wordpress, not teenybopperville Xanga. 

      Yet, here I remain.  Not because I am particularly attached to Xanga, but because I have certain ruts (or routes, choose which you think applies) that I like. 

      So I blog on.  In my better moments, I use this space almost as a workshop for my more serious writings.  I try out different words and phrases to see how they sound together-- and even more importantly (McLuhan adherents would disagree) I workshop ideas and gauge responses from readers.  All three of you.  And even though what I write is so often (for some) entertaining or intriguing, I suppose one other reason I keep writing is because it gives people space to feel "not alone".  I've been told a few times how what I write has the uncanny knack of speaking what other people feel (a slight difference from a good comedian, who speaks what we all are thinking, such as "I hate pants" and "what's the deal with airlines?"), and this, I hope, has the effect that those who come by here begin to feel less alone.  Though I'm a severely limited human being, my words can go where I physically cannot, building bridges and connecting people to themselves and the way they feel.

      However, there is a dark side to my blogging:  I like the attention.  I like having people comment on my entries and to tell me I'm a good writer.  I like having your eyes/ears for a moment to tell you what's on my mind.  And, of late, I am beginning to see that perhaps this unhealthy outlook might be best assuaged by quitting blogging for a while-- even at the risk of spontaneous combustion from not being able to get my words out of this scrap of hide.  There are even occasions, I must admit, when the prospect of attracting women because of what I write and how I write it is too much of a temptation for me to bear.  Though I am as honest as I can be when I write here, I do know what effect such honesty can have on others.

      So there you have it.  Not the flashiest nor most lyrical of posts I have ever done, but I thought I should confess it.  Will you forgive me?




     

Saturday, 30 May 2009



  •   Things I Sing When I'm Alone:

      Bon Iver - The Park (see vid below-- it takes a while to get to the song, but it's worth it.)

      Great Is Thy Faithfulness (Incongruous, I know.  But sometimes you just gotta sing it.)

      That is all.

     

     



Monday, 25 May 2009


  •   It's the simple things that count.
     
      I preached today on the Rich Young Man and Jesus.  One of my seminary professors once said that if you can't say what you want to say in one sentence, it probably isn't worth saying at all.  So here's the one sentence summary:  Not everyone is called to sell their possessions and give the money to the poor, but all of us need to be separated from obsessing over the things that we think will bring us security.

      There.  I said it.

      I was a little disappointed that some people who I feel might have benefited from some of the things I said weren't there today.  It's always a bit of a crapshoot when it comes to preparing your sermon with particular people in mind and they're not there to hear it.  But, I suppose all things being equal, the people who needed to hear it probably heard it just fine, thank you very much. 

      The after sermon discussion was also quite involved, as being a relatively wealthy church, every single one of us struggles with "living lightly" as I commended them to do.  Yet the discussion seemed to be strangely repetitive, as though everyone was repeating what I had already said (or what I think I said-- in fact, I'm pretty sure I said it because I have a manuscript to prove that I said it!) and then claiming it as something that just occurred to them.  It's not as though I need them to say "what you said about ______  was really thought-provoking/challenging/beautiful/craptastic", but it felt as though people had just switched off and made up their minds about the passage and would have shared about it in the same way even if I hadn't just preached on it.  Don't get me wrong.  It's great that they're learning.  But maybe it's my insignificance complex talking when I think that people are ignoring what I just said and passing it off as something they just thought up.

      And another thing:  I'm tired of people demanding application and practicality.  Not that these are all bad, but sometimes, truth is truth and how this applies is for you to puzzle out in your context, not for some dude behind the music stand to tell you how to live your life.  Think people, think!

      It wasn't a frustrating day, but I come away from it feeling misunderstood.  Yes, poor Wiggum.  I bet this is how James Houston felt when he talked about modern obsession with technique and "technology" (which he defined as development of technique) and the people around me all wondered "Is Dr. Houston against email and computers?  He said he doesn't like technology."  Yes, that's right.  Oxford don who lives up the hill from me also happens to be a luddite.  That would explain the flickering lights in his house I see from time to time.  Must be him riding his stationary bike to power up his water heater.

      Simplicity is good.  I had a few friends over to make pasta, and the act of making good food together and drinking a little wine on top is always a welcome event.  As you may know, my current obsession (ahead of doing actual research for my next book) is making noodles.  I made two kinds of gnocchi yesterday, a spinach and a butternut squash one.  They were pretty good, but the main event today were the KitchenAid pasta making attachments that my friend brought over.  They're simple machines-- one for flattening and the other for cutting into strips-- but elegant and sturdy little stainless steel die that made some of the best pasta I have ever had. 

      I first made a lemon pepper dough to demonstrate how it's done.  The basic recipe is 1 cup flour/1 egg and oil and flour to adjust the dough to sufficient stickiness.  Then you add in whatever you fancy.  The next noodles were spinach, basil, and italian flat leaf parsley.  Then we made a roast garlic noodle.  Finally, I stepped in and made chocolate pasta-- which itself was just all right, but the sauce is what set it off.  I'm relatively proud of the sauce, since it was my first real time using a double boiler set up to melt the dark Callebaut bits I procured before my trip.  To this rich, glossy (but still very fudgy stuff) I added sugar, milk, a quarter cup of butter, vanilla, salt, cayenne pepper, and peanut butter.  This was no ordinary peanut butter-- this was the stuff my mom had made a while ago but while tasting a little funny with bread, I had been saving for sauces such as this.  I was not wrong.  It was probably one of the most delicious things I have ever made, and I am not even that much of a chocolate fan.  The girls, of course, all flipped out into semi-orgasmic states.  One of them even licked her plate clean.  Not to pass out from tooting my own horn (which is an oxymoronic statement because you know at this point I'm going to brag) but the women around me often say they'd all be two hundred pounds if they lived with me because everything I make is carbalicious.  Breads, pastas, puddings, pies, cakes, loaves... yes, I do tend to make things with a certain "bite" to them. 
     
      I often wonder what life would be like with a wife or family to appreciate what I make.  My friends and family already do tend to like almost everything I make, but part of me is wistful for the opportunity to make wonderful dishes for someone else to enjoy.  It sounds strange, but part of me really loves the act of cooking and baking for others.  It's how, as they say in the vernacular, I like to "love on" other people.  That, and writing.  But writing is like having your lower intestine pulled out of your empty eye sockets.

      Although making pasta was a lot of work, the results were so immediately rewarding that I'll have to do it again. 
    My feet ache, my back aches, my hands are chapped, but the bouncy texture of the noodles and the gratification of making something good sends me now to sleep with a smile on my face.

      Noodles, noodles for all.


Tuesday, 19 May 2009

  •   It's snowing in Edmonton.  In the middle of May.  But strangely enough, it doesn't bother me half as much as it bothers everyone else.  I suppose the Vancouverite in me shrugged off inclement weather as being part of the price to pay for living in such a beautiful city, but then I stopped and realized that this is Edmonton, not Vancouver.

      It is not as though Edmonton is without charm.  It has a genuine small-town feel that reminds me of Saskatoon, except perhaps with a great deal more sprawl.  I borrowed my sister's car and drove down to South Edmonton Common today to look for a sweater and possibly a suit.  It was not the snow that bothered me as I stepped out of the car and surveyed the stores placed so far apart that the thought of walking from outlet to outlet was somehwat unpalatable.  No, what unsettled me was how unnatural the entire thing seemed-- as though the buildings were more machinations against the way of nature, a distinctly fallen attempt to "civilize" things when things needed no such "civilizing."  Even though the facades of these stores were done up in cultured stone, I could not help but feel the cognitive dissonance of urban life, something that has been on my mind a lot lately since finishing Jacques Ellul's The Meaning of The City, one of the better books I have read so far in 2009. 

      I can't live without the city.  None of us can.  The way the world is set up is that we will inevitably urbanize the face of the earth because this is the simple truth of living in an industrialized society.  And as a shepherd, I go where the people go.  Though I sometimes fantasize about having a mountain retreat (or a Fortress of Solitude) to sit and write in, the truth is that we Kingdom folk aren't called out of the city, but because of what Christ does and the hope we live in, to engage in the city.

      And no, I'm not actually a fan of that Chris Tomlin song.  I actually can't stand it.  Maybe Tomlin has read Jacques Ellul, but for the hundreds of thousands who sing it, I am afraid that it might be a misinterpreted invitation to participate in pre-millenial self-justification by works.  But that's just me.  I'm sure everyone else just sings it and thinks "what a pretty song."

      Edmonton is built for snow.  It felt somewhat Christmas-y as I sat in Second Cup reading John Stott.  The raisin scone and americano helped with that feeling too.  Things seem more compact in the snow, or else maybe driving these interminable distances to some distant Prairie horizon has led to a shrinking of the city that seems so vast and yet so small at the same time.

      Every time I visit a place I find myself wondering "could I live here?"  Lately, this has also meant asking the question "could I minister here?"  The answer for many places has been "yes".  Vancouver, Hong Kong and Singapore are all places I could easily see myself living and working.  Edmonton has crept into my conscience over the last several days, and as I talk with people who live here, what strikes me is the lack of alternatives for those seeking something more than Sunday morning solipsism.  Thus the question I have been asking myself has now evolved into general feelings of meeting people and feeling them to be "sheep without a shepherd."  I wonder if Christ did not go to Rome because he would have been overwhelmed with the teeming multitudes and would have been so busy with healing the sick that he never would have had the opportunity to die.

      This is completely unrelated, but I was struck by a song on a CD in my sister's car:  Rufus Wainwright's rendition of Shakespeare's Sonnet 29.  As I waited to turn left on Whyte Ave., I found myself thinking about the characters I have written and how this song might be a perfect complement to many of the things I have written.  There is something deeply moving about the way the cello reverberates a steady river of dusky tones.  It put me in the mind of Adam, not dressed to run but running anyway-- with a smile on his face and dashing down the broad sidewalks in lower Central outside the glass and steel Cheung Kong building with the daylight fading and the streetlights just shyly coming in.  It was a strange image, but a pleasurable one nonetheless. 

      There was another image too, of when Adam sees Persie near the end of the book and he can't do anything but feel his heart rupture for her.  When Wainwright sings

    "Yet in these thoughts myself almost despising,
    Haply I think on thee, and then my state,
    Like to the lark at break of day arising
    From sullen earth, sings hymns at heaven's gate;"

      This is Adam staring up at Persie.  Though those of you who are reading my book and reading this blog (all, what, two of you?) might have now realized the contrasts between Persie and April, there is something in me, the author, that is inspired by relentless and terrifying beauty.  I suppose this is why artists sometimes find themselves muses.  Me?  I have strange revelations while waiting to turn left from Whyte onto 109.


     





Wednesday, 13 May 2009

  • Vacatio



      Tomorrow marks the beginning of the first weekend I've really had "off" since coming back from an extended trip to Hong Kong last July.  This is also the first time I've left Vancouver in almost a year.  I think the farthest I've gone in the last several months has been Surrey.  The first weekend off.  In.  Almost.  A.  Year.

      Thinking that makes me feel more tired than not thinking that. 

      It's made me wonder what stuff I'm really made of, and whether I'm more of a workaholic than I think I am.  I tend not to think so, since I do manage down time so that, like a distance runner, you take refreshments along the way instead of taking long breaks like everyone else. At least, this is the theory.

      Yet when I think about it today, I'm tired.  Maybe it's because I pushed myself pretty hard this weekend and had to be a great deal more extroverted than usual.  I sort of horrified myself last night when I pushed myself to go to a friend's place for dinner and found myself being one of the chattiest people in attendance.  Yes, horrified.  That's not me.  That's me still being pastor and making everyone feel loved and at home-- even when it wasn't my home!  I walked away from that dinner wondering what was going on with me that I couldn't just be all right with being quiet like so many other people were.  After all, the majority of people there were Regent students.  They'd understand the need for silence.  I wonder if they walked away thinking that the Chinese guy with the scrubby chin patch was an extrovert or else in need of being the center of attention.

      No, I'm not.  Or am I? 

      I felt myself crash a little this afternoon as I picked up friends from the airport and we bumped into someone I hadn't seen for close to a decade.  We were never close even when we were in the same church, but somehow we ended up eating with her and her father.  I felt myself switching off for long periods and just spacing out.  I didn't mind eating with my two very good friends, but somehow, adding someone more really broke my back.  I knew I wasn't being very good company, but in a fit of childishness, I really didn't care.  Like my vacuum cleaner that shuts down every so often because of high heat, I was shutting down because I wasn't really able to cool off.  Normally, Sunday evenings are me + couch + beer.  Mondays are long runs and general monkishness.  Tuesdays are on my ass dwelling in my head writing stuff few people care about.  But tip that balance just a little and I start, well, overloading.

      It made me wonder how I'll ever handle family life-- if that's even something I want anymore.  Perhaps that's an unduly pessimistic thing to say, but the general feeling as I went for a run today was that much of what I know myself by at this time in my life-- a man who cherishes his solitude-- would largely evaporate into a cloud of unmet expectations from other people.  I began to wonder if the trade off was worth it after all, and whether growing mouldy in this same apartment, churning out novels no one will ever read, is not the life for me.  (yo ho ho and a bottle of rum.)

      Then, upon returning from my run, I stretched in front of the TV and watched the Simpsons.  Edna Krabappel was draped over a railing staring wistfully at Homer and Marge tamping gunpowder into homemade fireworks.  Then she sighed, and thought "I wish I had someone to share this with." 

      That restored me a little.  Sometimes I focus so much on the drain of my resources that I forget the other side of things, the blessing of friends and family that I do get to share my life with.  All of a sudden, desire made sense again.  I don't often get the positive side of family life shared with me.  Most married people and people with kids often wax moany about their lack of personal time and space.  I suppose as a pastor I ought to get used to people bellyaching about one thing or another, but I'm almost positive you never do-- nor should you.  Yet I realized then that I don't hear about the other side often enough; that giggling children are a joy to have and that husbands and wives are a pleasure to hold.

      Part of me is tempted to respond next time to a congregant's whingeing about their wife/husband/kids by simply asking "so why don't you just leave them if they're making your life so miserable?"  All right, so it's not the most sensitive thing to say, and I'll probably never say it, but it's just mad enough that it might be better than a slap upside the head.  (Which, I think, some people could still use.)  I suppose the pastoral thing to say would be "you've been talking a lot about the downside of commitment.  But what are the blessings of where you're at?"  (Statements like this, by the way, are why single pastors sometimes get treated like eunuchs.)  Yet the principle remains the same.  What would life be like if it was bereft of the blessings we all have? 

      Writing is a blessing and a curse.  I get to use words-- glorious words!-- to tell everyone exactly how they feel.  It is a curse because it takes a tremendous amount of time, energy, and a dash of insanity to work at something as ethereal as a story.  Yet would my life be better for not having it?  No.  I wouldn't be me.  I wouldn't be the guy who writes extremely long (and, admittedly, sometimes pointless) blogs about every little thing that comes into his head.  I wouldn't know myself outside of the streams of thought that I sometimes am able to direct onto a page.

      Living alone is also a blessing and a curse.  On the one hand, I can eat, sleep, read, write, and run whenever I want to.  I even get to defecate with the door open!  But the downside is waking up in the middle of the night and feeling frightened by the dark-- and having no one to talk to about it.  The downside is feeling like going for a vacation, but not wanting to go somewhere alone.  Maybe it's just because almost all of my guy friends are married or have girlfriends that I find myself in the latter situation, but at least the girls I know get to go away with other single girls.  Me?  I sit at home and dream about going to Istanbul.  Guys don't go on the sorts of vacations I'm interested in-- they go to Vegas, a place I have about as much interest in as getting kicked in the head.

      Sigh.  It's not as though I'm not looking forward to Edmonton.  I just wish I had someone to share this all with.

      I guess I do.  You.
     

     

myshkin

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