New Pilgrimage

Well, this new season of pilgrimage has led me to some interesting places lately. I've been considering the message of the Gospel a little in the last while, and it seems awfully too relational to ignore. The more I consider it as such, the less I can justify an angry disposition no matter the circumstance and the more I try to respond with love; whether it be a loud and obnoxious co-worker, or a muchly missed girl who I wish I could be with.

Along with this new season I have moved to the mountain. I seem to be spending most of my time with the un-churched. Now in some ways this can seem fruitless when your not waiving around a bible and checking off names on a list of converts, but I was recently encouraged by a random comment from Glenn, one of our bartenders.

"Graham, what is the key to happiness?"

"Well, I think it has to do with being content with what you have."

"Yeah."

"Umm, was there some sort of specific answer you were looking for?"

"Not really, you just seem like a happy person."

I'm not really sure if this means as much to all of you as it does to me, but that kind of surprised me. I think Glenn agreed with my point, but there was something in his demeanour that said much more. I think that he found a truth in me that we were able to come together over. These seem to be the truths that I think Jesus was concerned about. These relational truths seemed very important to him throughout the Gospel.

This is where my words fail me because I'm not really sure how to describe these relational truths. Maybe they are those words that people hear in our smiles, the truths people feel in our voice, the things people know from our embrace. Truth has never needed us to stand up and fight for it; in fact I'm sure He is more than equipped to defend himself. I want to introduce people to the person of truth in me and let that bring us together regardless of our religious background.

Mountain man Del

Hey guys, I've delayed in announcing this via the bloggin community but I'm moving up to Mt Washington for the winter season to work up there. I'll be learning to snowboard and doing it a lot probably, so if any of you are gonna be coming up and either want someone to come along or a place to crash (or both) I'm sure I'm your man. If you don't already know my number, there's probably a good reason for that so you have to find that out yourself... creeper.

Community matters

Since the diagnosis of the cancerous tumour we all knew it was coming. My Grandmother passed away on the 28th of October and the funeral was held on All Saints day, Nov 1st.

I'd imagine that you start to see the world in perspective when the end is in sight, and I believe that was true for my Grandma during these last few months. Sometimes I felt bad that it took a lump of cancerous cells on her ovaries to motivate me to go see her more often, but it didn't feel like placing blame was going to help, so I delicately laid my guilt to rest so we could concern ourselves with what really mattered. From my visits, it was clear what really mattered to my Grandma.

Recently I have been in a kind of church limbo. Regularly attending different churches but not calling any of them my own. I never thought of my Grandma as a particularly spiritual person, but it seems she knew the value of church community. Of all the things we talked about, the one thing that she never failed to ask was whether I had found a new church yet. I'm not sure whether or not she would have been so persistent in different circumstances, but if there was anything she wanted to have told me, she couldn't have been more clear than this. She knew the value of belonging to a church community, and desperately wanted me to understand that as well.

The last thoughts of my dying Grandmother for me were fixed resolutely on community in Christ. The least I could do is fix my thoughts likewise... any thoughts?

Eileen Hicks, 1918 - 2006

tale of the slightly absentee blogger...

I'm not really sure if there are many people who check my blog all that often waiting for a new post, but recently I've had a few paradigm shifts that have slowed my blogging habit to a crawl.

It's hard to balance a bike if you're not moving. In fact it's easy to say "they lean too much left" and then they will say "they only say that because they lean too much right" and so the story goes. But the beautiful thing about a bike is that when you start moving, centripetal forces seem to help you balance in a seemingly effortless manner. To me, this balancing act of liberal/conservative, post-modern/modern, left/right, chocolate vanilla... I'm not going to say that it hasn't been fun, but it doesn't always get us further. It's not that I'm abandoning my ways of mind melding thinking binges that I've come to love and enjoy, but it's that I want to try and compensate for my natural tendencies to... well, think life to death.

So I guess maybe I've been a little short of "deep thoughts" (for lack of a better term) but I'll be back as soon as I find that natural state of balance on this bike of life (lol, that made me laugh out loud). Hahaha...

If Grace is true: Why God will save every person

I heard about a book recently, and it grabbed my attention because it had a very interesting title: "If Grace is true: Why God will save every person." And at first I got a little angry because I felt like, if that were true, then what are we even doing here? I mean as Christians. If everyone gets to heaven, then what's the point? But to be honest, I gradually became even more disgusted with my own reaction than the title of the book...

How long have I reduced God's salvation for us to a free ride ticket to heaven? What was Jesus coming to save us from? What if he came to save how we love one another, or how we see ourselves, or how we love God? Didn't he come so that we might have life and to the fullest? Maybe he came to save us from that feeling of meaningless meandering about this earth. This is why I love Phillipians 2:12 so much now, salvation isn't some cataclysmic event that happens in one moment then is over, in fact the typical "conversion" is really just an introduction to the process of salvation. We are to continually work out our salvation!

So what does this make evangelism look like? What if we weren't simply trying to "save them from the fires of hell" but rather "helping them to unlock real life"? Maybe we need to change how we think of salvation.

This is hot

Hey everyone. This is just me saying that the hottest thing since the Great potato rebellion of 1266 has just started his own blog. Well... he's been blogging for a while but no one reads myspace blogs haha. Check him out!

On the pier

There are always certain truths that I believe we will have to be constantly reminded of throughout our life, and I think I might have just been reminded again of one of those.

One handsomely dark evening, I found myself chatting with a friend on the pier about my thoughts, and about the beauty of community in spite of stark differences that seem to face us as Christians in the body. Although I rarely am able to see the error in my ways, I try to be open to the reality of my constant imperfection; and what I came to conclude had nothing to do with our dialogue directly but was so beautifully represented accidentally through that dialogue. As I listened to myself, I started to hear a hollow sounding voice that didn't resound the Truth that I was so dearly seeking after.

I'm not saying that I was wrong about everything I was saying, but I didn't feel any life in it anymore. Something that used to be a passionate throbbing in my heart for these ideas (and some might call ideals) had turned into nothing more than the very empty and heartless logic I was trying to fight.

Have I been ignoring the fellowship with his Spirit in favour of arguing my good ideas? Have I been neglecting the true nature of community with Jesus and His church in favour of arguing about it? Don't we all sometimes?