Back to the scene of the crime

Suzanne and I went to Victoria for a wedding last month. It wasn’t in a church, and I didn’t do the service, so I had a great time. Not that I mind churches or doing services, but the setting was a golf course, and very beautiful, and, lazy lout that I am, I always enjoy watching other people work. The music was done by members of the worship team from the church I used to pastor there, and they were great as usual. The bride and groom were lovely, the service was interesting (in a good way), the cake was sooooo cooooool (see picture) and made by some friends who make cakes for a living. We got to see a bunch of old friends, had a lovely breakfast, and I got to do the toast to the bride, so I still got to talk which is what all preachers love to do.

Way back, well before we were little boys and girls, Eddie Cantor sang a wonderful song called Makin’ Woopie. It’s funny, and quite daring for the time, though I’ve found so many daring songs from that era I’m beginning to wonder if the 1920s and 30s were not quite as timid as I imagine. “Weddings make a lot of people sad / but if you’re not the groom it’s not so bad”. How’s that for good old fashioned family values? Well, no one seemed too sad at this one, and even the groom seemed to be having a good time.

We also got to visit with our son, James, and his girlfriend, Julie, and go to church at The Forge, which is our old church rebooted (long story which I will be sharing over the next few months).

We stayed with Suzanne’s sister and had a good visit. She has a son named Atticus (yes, just like Gregory Peck in To Kill a Mockingbird) and he is a 9 year old movie aficionado. We only had time to watch half a movie, Coraline, which we could have watched in 3D, but he prefers 2D. – A 9 year old purist. Whodathunkit? – But 2D was still pretty good. I did try too explain to him that 3D is actually 4D, and 2D is actually 3D, because movies, unlike photographs, also include the dimension of time. But he had no time for that nonsense, so I guess maybe he was right after all.

All of this is to say, we had a visit back to the scene of the crime. This is where we got crushed in ministry. Jesus said there’d be days like this (“Take up your cross and follow me” etc.), so we can’t pretend we weren’t warned, but it’s still hard. It’s been said that time heals all wounds, but that’s not strictly true. It’s the stuff you fill that time with: resting, forgiving, reflecting, doing new things, being loved and encouraged, and, in my case, blogging. It’s really getting on with your life that brings healing, but it’s also good to reflect on where you’ve been. And that’s what I’ll be doing over the next little while.

Each time we go back to Victoria it’s a little better. And the cherry blossoms in February help too.

And people say Stephen Harper has no sense of humour.

I must confess that when I first heard the suggestion that we consider changing “True patriot love in all thy sons command” back to the archaic original “true patriot love thou dost in us command”, they got me too. You just don’t expect to find irony in the Speech from the Throne. But I’m gratified to see that so many journalists are as gullible as I am. Admittedly, it’s a bit unfair to fool with people in the Throne Speech, since this parliamentary tradition has been the vehicle for so many stupid ideas in the past. But still, “...thou dost in us command”? I’m sure the slow motion replay will show that our beloved Governor General was trying not to laugh.

But, now that the door is open, how about seeing if we can get ahead of the wave on this thing? We’ve changed the wording half a dozen times in my lifetime, but the beast is still a veritable minefield of political incorrectness. Let’s fix this anthem once and for all.

O Canada! – That part’s all right; I think we can leave it. But it’s just about the only part that works.

Our home and native land! – What about all the new Canadians among us who cannot yet declare, with integrity, that this is their home? Must they be excluded? This will become their homeland in time, but making them feel invisible will not facilitate the process. And how many can honestly call Canada their “native land”? The aboriginal communities, of course, but that’s about it. So, how about “the country where we are”? It has an inclusive ring to it, and I think it fits the tune.

True patriot love in all thy sons command. – This is the current line in question, but “sons” is not the only sexist word here. “Patriot” comes from the Latin word “Father”, as opposed to “matriot”, I suppose, which would be from “mother”. And what’s with this “command” business? Pretty condescending, even patronizing (from Latin “father”). And we need a new word to rhyme with the revised previous line anyway.

With glowing hearts we see thee rise, / The True North strong and free! – Must we always be so insensitive? What of the visually impaired among us? Are we trying to offend? What do we gain by constantly reminding the differently abled of their differabledness?

From far and wide, / O Canada, we stand on guard for thee. – Here again, what of those who cannot stand? Are they, somehow, inferior Canadians? Would it be so hard for us to simply sing “we are on guard for thee”?

God keep our land glorious and free! – This line is only a few years old, but what on earth were we thinking? Atheists, agnostics, deists, polytheists; are these not full Canadians too? And what about the Christians, Jews, Moslems, etc., who are offended that the Deity is called upon in such a casual and thoughtless way. Must we start every ball game and high school assembly by placing “God” on the lips of countless people for whom it’s otherwise merely an expletive?

O Canada, we stand on guard for thee. / O Canada, we stand on guard for thee. – Do we really have to end by repeating this offensive line twice? Clearly the original was written to offend, but we can be better than this.

So, here is my suggestion. How about simply abolishing the words? We could just stand silently when O Canada is played, or sit if we prefer. And those among us who are particularly patriotic, or matriotic, could hum along if they so desired. This would make our anthem much easier to learn, non-authoritarian, inoffensive, and exactly the same in French and English.

Laughing Matters

Humour is a funny thing; it makes us laugh. And laughing lifts our spirits, humbles us, opens us up, and makes us vulnerable. Humour brings out the child in us, which, I suppose, is why we often call it “kidding”. It makes us more spontaneous, more receptive to novelty, and is, therefore, a powerful teaching tool, facilitating trust and deepening communication. This is why we often joke with strangers, and why we tease and “kid” with children.

It’s often been suggested that feminists and fundamentalists have no sense of humour, but this is quite untrue, at least about the feminists. Irina Dunn’s, comment, “A woman needs a man like a fish needs a bicycle”, is very funny. And it works in all the ways that humour is supposed to work. It makes its point and makes us smile at the same time. And it makes us vulnerable to a new idea. Funny how that works.

But humour’s also dangerous precisely because it’s so liberating. As every teacher and class clown knows, it’s hard to get control of people who are laughing. And if the clown can get the teacher laughing the insurrection is complete. So it’s the controller who has no sense of humour; she can’t afford one. It’s the controller who has to keep it serious; he’s afraid to smile. If there’s a Nazi joke book somewhere, it’s anonymous and very short. And the Stalinist book of humour is distributed by Gulag Publishing.

And this, I think, is one of God’s great problems. As Voltaire said, “God is a comedian playing to an audience too afraid to laugh.” And why are we afraid? Because too many of the god-folk among us: priests, nuns, rabbis, imams and pastors are controllers, and controllers make you afraid. These folk lead us to believe that God is no laughing matter, which is silly, of course, because everything that matters is a laughing matter. How else would we discover that what matters, matters?

But God is not a controller. If he were, he would never have created anything, and surely not apes, certainly not people, and undoubtedly not funny people. – Some controller-god-folk have suggested that George Carlin went to hell, but that just shows what sort of people they really are. How could a loving God do such a nasty thing to such a funny man as George, or to those poor folks in hell who really need to be afraid to laugh?

If you get what I’m getting at, click on Mr Deity . But, I warn you, if you're afraid to laugh this is going to be very scary.

There's no medal good enough for some things.

Well, the 2010 Olympic games were overdone, as these things always are, and now they’re simply over, done. The para Olympics will continue on the sites for a while, of course, but most of the media, athletes and fans have moved on. We’ve pretty much worn ourselves out higher-further-fastering, and it’s time for a break. But it will all be happening again, bigger and badder, in 878 days. At that point the scene will be London, England, and we will have an opportunity to sit back and be nicer about their problems than their media were about ours. It’s Canadian, and, if we must have an overriding national trait, niceness is nice.

And, even though this whole business does bring out the Grinch in me, and without recanting anything I said in my last post, it does seem right, or maybe nice, to point out some of the good things that happened over the past few weeks in Vancouver. I don’t mean winning, swaggering, chest beating or muscle flexing, but those other human things that always happen when people get together to do anything and “the better angels of our nature” show up, along with all the rest. They happen in war zones and peaceful villages, playgrounds and parliaments, development projects and disasters. They are the good blown into our lives by the illest of winds.

• When a young Georgian athlete, Nodar Kumaritashvili, dies on the luge track, suddenly the national masks slip a little and we’re mothers and fathers, sisters and brothers, in a loss that actually matters.

• When Joannie Rochette skates a bronze medal performance just a few days after her mother died, or Brian Burke manages the US hockey team to a silver medal two weeks after losing his son in a car accident, we realize that there’s just no flag raising, anthem singing, or medal awarding appropriate to that.

• And when a young singer, Nikki Yanofsky, has the grace and chutzpah, to sing O Canada as though it were a love song, or a figure skater, Johnny Weir, responds with grace and courage to nasty comments about his performance, there is something in us (that “better angel”) that rises up and reminds us that human nature can be beautiful, and perhaps even inspires us to be a little more beautiful a little more often.

• And there’s something inspiring, even in a hockey game, when you see the “bad guys” dig deep and battle back from a two goal deficit to tie the game with just 24 seconds to go. And then, of course, see the “good guys” battle back, after blowing the game, to win it in overtime. It’s enough to make you want to take all these medals out a get them bronzed. At times like these it’s really just fun to be here and human.

So, in the end, people got together and did some fun things in Vancouver. We won medals, set records, and even set records for winning medals. But the very best things we did are the sorts of things you don’t get a medal for. In fact, the really good things people do are so good that a medal would only be a distraction. These are the things that remind you that, though they’re used like nouns, athlete, winner, champion, medallist, are essentially adjectives. And human, though often an adjective, is essentially the noun. And sometimes it’s fun too.

$pectacle, $ponsorship and $port

I have this wonderful friend named Sarah who is volunteering at the Olympics. She’s blogging about the experience, and she’s delightful. In fact, if you click on “delightful” in the last sentence it will take you to her blog.

I honestly think it's great that she’s volunteering and having a good time, but, as I said in a comment to her, this whole business of the Olympics brings out the Grinch in me. And, let’s be honest, the modern Olympics is, to say the least, a business. It’s not a benevolent society, nor a humanitarian organization. It’s not even a “movement” as it likes to style itself, but the largest, least accountable, multinational corporation in the world. At one time it may have been about sports and athletes, but now those things are, at best, secondary. The Olympic Corporation has one central purpose; to make tons of money by providing the world’s biggest and best advertising venue (billions of ears and eyes) for corporate sponsors. Athletes, national pride, and heart-warming stories of little people surmounting the insurmountable are the ear and eye candy, but the point of it all is a gazillion bucks.

As you might expect, I am sympathetic to much of the protest that’s taking place. But even that becomes part of the spectacle eye-candy that makes the whole thing work. And I can’t help wondering how many of the participants have a Visa card in their wallet or Petro-Can gas in their tank. How many drive a GM vehicle, have a GE toaster, or will stop at McDonald’s for a Coke on the way home. -- All corporate sponsors of the 2010 Olympic Games.

Isn’t it wonderful to live in a country where you are free to protest? Of course it is, because protest is the pressure valve that keeps the whole thing from blowing up in our faces. But, in a liberal democracy like Canada, it’s more than that. It’s a symbiotic relationship, like the rhino and the tick-bird. The rhino may imagine she’s benevolent, and the tick-bird may imagine he’s courageous, but the truth is they simply have "an arrangement".

And this is where I find Jesus’ approach so interesting. He saw Herod’s palace and Solomon’s temple for what they were; boondoggles of one kind and another. But he never wasted a lot of time and energy serving or attacking either. He expressed his amazement and his displeasure, and reminded his disciples that time will dismantle all of it, “...not a stone will be left upon a stone” (Mark 13:2). And then he turned back to serve the little people who were “like sheep without a shepherd” (Mark 6:34).

So, as the torch flickers and dies in a couple of weeks, let us give praise, not as the assembled throng, but as the psalmist gave praise:

...to him who alone does great wonders,

His love endures forever. Psalm 136:4