Showing the Bright Side

I remember quite a few years ago when my mother-in-law passed away, the evening before funeral was a viewing and a sharing time. Having been a person of faith and cheer even among some considerable life challenges, it is not hard to visualize a hearty evening with family and friends, a large gathering including a beautiful measure of love, laughter and tears. One of mother’s lasting gifts is a posse of four daughters (my wife being one of them) who can sing. And I mean sing. They’ll stand up in almost any setting at a moment’s notice with no practice, voices already pre-tuned to soprano, alto, tenor, and they sing like angels. On this particular occasion my daughter, who is on autism spectrum (aspergers) and also sings very well, was invited to play her guitar and sing with them. By a teasie predesign she got coerced into a solo performance of one verse of “Keep on the Sunny Side.” The aunties on cue stopped singing, and Kimberly and guitar in spirit of the moment - blossomed out and sang on --- and brought the house down!😲😅

What fun it is to have performance, and even more fun when it is surprise performance. Needless to say this added an extra glow to that nice evening. I just read an article of similar tone in our church periodical. An elderly friend had died, and a tribute appeared in latest issue. Senior writer Will Braun begins this way, “Annie Janzen earned no degrees and was never elected chair of a church council. She did not start a church, write a best-seller or perform for large audiences. She did cook at Canadian Mennonite Bible College in Winnipeg for 27 years, travel the globe and make an unlikely diversity of friends” (Canadian Mennonite, Vol 26, no.2, p.4). I might add, she did get a very fine tribute written about her, a little more than obituary quality.

One of the features of these last several years of Corona life is that everyone, old young or in between, is discovering some new ways of communicating, new relational challenges and new opportunities. It’s a new twist on things. By now two years after ‘the beginning’, even as extra effort is made to resume some standard fare like NFL football (Yes, Superbowl Sunday; yeah Rams), NHL hockey (Coaches still get fired if they don’t win. Good-bye Dave Tippet), and NBA basketball (Raptors tough loss last night), same things encounter new variables.

Professional sport and faith assemblies alike are not immune to the virus. Teams on a roll can get hit by positive corona tests, rescheduled games, loss of rhythm, some allowed full fan attendance, others 50% capacity, others nada, all depending on local applicable regulations, including political interpretations and enforcements. Religious assemblies affected not only by changing regulations but interpreting of same. This city of Calgary includes several churches of my denomination choosing in-person meetings and several opting for on-line, along with moderate and strong opinions at who’s got it right. Something not quite fair, yet something akin to real life. 

Reminds me of when I was a kid growing up on the family farm. My dad, owner and creator of our outdoor rink, hockey coach and general manager, also the one who incurred the equipment expenses, most frequently hockey sticks broken in the middle of a very important game! His explanation, “Sometimes the game is not fair” and then we would submit to the best solution we could think of. We did what had to be done. One of my brothers had superstar speed and stickhandling ability - definitely a Johnny Goudreau type. He would use the shaft of the broken stick and just play with that 'poker' making him more equal to the rest of us, and the game would continue minus a hockey stick or two! 😌 Obviously these games included a play or two by lady luck, circumstance, fate, providence, and some creative management.

Some of that easygoing game commitment would be handy these days. Impressions and efforts to impress are still strong factors in our current corona array of fate, fortune or luck. If there is any doubt, check out some of your friends’ or group posts in Facebook! Social media is full of displays of snowbirds arriving safely at vacation sunspots just like we used to. Those devoid of travel opportunity can still gush over new furniture arrangements or purchases or home renovations or paint jobs. Newscasts blare away at truckers’ freedom convoys who want the 'right to choose' vaccinations or not, also demanding old-fashioned freedom including the right to add tons of extra carbon into our already polluted environment. Thousands of dollars wasted on police surveillance and enforcement to keep border crossings and thoroughfares from degenerating into chaos. Freedom to what? ...make total idiots of themselves? Could this minority group also consider some adjustments for the common good? 

New immigrants to our country are not sure what to make of this all, many coming here precisely because this is the land of the free. And yet some of them also living a contradiction. While enjoying the democratic freedom of this good country, these newcomers capitalize on generous child benefits while avoiding menial job opportunities staring them in the face. Before we get too indignant, however, us baby boomers senior citizens need to recognize we’re totally part of the problem also. Many of us have found ways to hide lavish retirement incomes, creatively investing in children and grandchildren so that “at least our family” can enjoy the good life accumulated in these post WW2 years. Self-preservation and the good life still seems the mantra.

When I was a longhaul trucker there was a humorous sign-off on CB radios as drivers might bid each other adieu, well aware of the risk we all took just going down the highway, “Keep the shiney side up.” Yup, life is better if you don’t pile your rig upside down into the ditch! Shiney up was veiled humor about life and death in that world; not just the impressions we created – although some of us could get a little distracted with that too. Show ‘n Shine anyone? 😏

Impressions. I know I’m a bit cynical about all this. And of course I can beg off and say it’s my depression, especially this time of year the SAD portion (You may have read about that in a recent post, “You Will Probably Fail” Jan.14).  Sure, perhaps a bit of mental illness, but these days I know that puts me in company of many others. At any rate this is the way I said these blogs would read. It's my way of saying it as I sees it!

Like most around me I too prefer shiney, and certainly relieved to say I kept the shiney side up for 2 million miles all over Canada and U.S. But also I live with some things less than shiney (cf my two-profession lifetime), disappointments more in the realm of professional people work. Ironically there also I met with considerable success, but the challenge had been to claim the success, rather than self reproach of what was left undone. The awareness of shadow is better than pretending it's all 'brightey', so my photographer friends will tell me. Rather than be too preoccupied with self, either the successes or the failures and the perceptions thereof, I conclude with a bit of Rudyard Kipling, and a bit of Bible.

“If you can make one heap of all your winnings.

    And risk it on one turn of pitch-and-toss

And lose, and start again at your beginnings.

    And never breathe a word about your loss: ---- 

Yours is the Earth and everything that’s in it. 

    And – which is more – you’ll be a man, my son!”

I know what it is to be in need, and I know what it is to have plenty. I have learned the secret of being content in any and every situation, whether well fed or hungry, whether living in plenty or in want. (Phil 4:12)

Surprise performance is that which goes beyond the impressions or the accolades we sometimes try to orchestrate for ourselves. It is exactly what I think is included in the grace of God, regardless how we manage it – or do not manage it. Seems to me the aunties and the Annies will be more interested to cheer for your bright side, your surprised performance, if you’re not that concerned about it yourself.

 

UNWIHW

 This is the second time around that I have participated in what still seems like a new discovery to me. United Nations World Interfaith Harmony Week, inaugurated in 2011 in Jordan and observed worldwide the first week in February, locally organized and sponsored by Calgary Interfaith Council. Not only am I impressed, but increasingly inspired by this organization. As stated in their website, The Calgary Interfaith Council seeks to build a more just and respectful Calgary through deepening relationships across faith traditions, celebrating diversity and learning from and about each other. Here is the poster for this year’s celebration.

My enthusiasm for C.I.C. is not only its ongoing array of theological opportunities for dialogue and education, but also the constant opportunity to “Just Serve” including food bank and various neighborhood collections to help those who are needy in our communities. Very likely there is also something about my ‘retirement space’ which has made this a timely involvement. It goes something like this. An unavoidable midlife health issue, depression, brought this clergyperson to a return to the highways and biways of Canada and U.S. as a long haul trucker. This in turn provided a surprising rediscovery of the very faith and life I had been preaching about. The obvious and surprising presence of God in so many sacred and profane locations during those trucking years probably now still drives my enthusiasm for this interfaith organization committed to the common good rather than the focus of most ecclesial and religious institutions these days in survival mode. So this retirement involvement seems like further confirmation of what I had begun to suspect while in ‘institutional employ.’ God’s presence is slightly beyond what everybody is trying to explain from pulpits, or podcasts or websites or publications. Words, words, words!

My thinker (yes the thinker still 😏) is inspired not only by this interfaith organization, but double inspired by those persons who give the gift of organizational leadership. The Chairperson (co-chairs this year), the secretary, the treasurer, and those who step-up for myriads of specific tasks - each of these persons obviously making a professional choice, requiring clear communication with and probably endorsement from their faith traditions, thereby multiplying the effectiveness of interfaith religious presence in our urban setting, and also greater purpose and likely peacefulness in the churches or mosques or synagogues or other participant institutions. As it says in the Bible, A little yeast leavens the whole batch (1 Cor.5:6). The organizers themselves are an inspiration. I know from experience that pastors not interested in ecumenical or interfaith or community involvements are usually plagued by people in congregation wondering what they do with their time.

Another thing I also acknowledge. This particular ‘good thing’ is a Calgary thing! Once upon a time in the 1980s I spent a very enjoyable decade of very positive ministry and training in Edmonton, and in some ways the sentiment of those years has driven certain continuing allegiances like Edmonton Oilers and also my socio-political orientation more in keeping with that city to the north! Of late I am discovering that Calgary Interfaith is quite hospitality-oriented as compared to Edmonton's more academic oriention. This of course is an over-simplification, but I know academics and business types and friends from both cities who agree with me on this. Academics and hospitality are both important especially in community building. My observation is that each city in this province of Alberta represents a slightly different face of a common good thing. Oh, and by now after thirty-two years in Calgary I am a Flames fan – right after the Oilers.😉

And, one more thing. Recently I heard a television preacher holding forth on apostasy, which apparently will precede the rapture (the removal of Christian believers from this earth before the great tribulation. 1 Thess. 4:17). From the tone of his presentation it was obvious he had us interfaith participants among the apostate ones – those ever learning but never able to acknowledge the truth. In my mind this is fearmongering, perhaps seeking personal gain rather than making the effort to be a gospel preacher, a bearer of good news. Who are bearers of good news? I do not presume to carry the ‘license’ to that one, but the Class 1 in my pocket over the years has probably helped! I received some clarification on that theological topic when I traveled the highways of North America. I had already become weary of orthodoxy spiced with erroneous right wing God and Country rhetoric all over the U.S. and increasingly Canada. Even as a born-again Christian, I have never been comfortable to cast suspicion at another’s interpretation of how God, or Allah or Creator is present among us. The irony (confirmation?) is that good news (ie Gospel) is the opportunity to speak of what I have seen and heard. Both among the truckers of North America and now this Interfaith organization I have found more invitation to speak of faith in Jesus than in my regular church circles. I scratch my head about that. Indeed we read clearly John 14:6 “I am the way the truth and the life” but no hint of how that truth might or should be proclaimed correctly. And then there is also Matthew 7:21“Not everyone who says to me, ‘Lord, Lord,’ will enter the kingdom of heaven."

Myself, I find the doctrinaire purists as the ones who may also be surprised in the end. There is so much to learn from those around us. Even the Apostle Paul, often accused of being a bit of a purist himself, says it quite clearly “For by the grace given me I say to every one of you: Do not think of yourself more highly than you ought, but rather think of yourself with sober judgment, in accordance with the faith God has distributed to each of you” (Romans 12:3). The Apostle James also, "Humble yourselves, therefore, under God’s mighty hand, that he may lift you up in due time" (4:6).

A friend of mine who blogs regularly, recently wrote of the importance of being able to describe viewpoints we are opposed to in terms that would be acceptable to the ones who held that particular view. Very important, says Ryan Dueck, “Nothing is easier than taking cheap shots at a caricature." Nothing is easier than labeling others as apostate, or as enemies. I thank him for sharing this perspective. Here is good rationale for speaking with one another, dialogue maybe, and why not diplomacy instead of warfare? When persons of faith see one another as neighbors it’s good news for the community they are a part of. Calgary Interfaith Council models precisely that approach. Good news in this city kind of looking for some good news these days.

Maybe the Interfaith Councils of our two big cities will eventually bring The Battle of Alberta to an end. No?