Just put a bit of Alcaine in there...

One of the things that I've been thinking about over the past few days is the notion of character flaws. I mean, we all have them, and most of us are blind to our own, and are exceptionally excellent at pointing out others' faults (the good 'ol noticing the speck and ignoring the log phenomenon).
I wonder, however, how many of us are willing to listen when others are pointing out our specks. I'm wondering this particularly in my own life: am I really, really listening when people are trying to tell me things in a very nice manner? So nicely, in fact, that I don't actually hear the criticism?
I'm wondering this as I wonder how to give criticism as well; when one sees a persistent speck in another's eye, that is so deep and pervasive and repetitive, and obvious to almost everyone else, is it loving to let it fester there? What if you're so apathetic you can't even be bothered to point it out? What if you've tried, but have been vehemently denied its existence, such that you don't want to be attacked any more?
In a particular situation in my life, I've seen the detritus caused by one friend's life, and the non-joy it has brought to their life, as well as others, and I wonder what to do. I wonder what to do, especially in the context of having been rebuffed before. Should they be left to float in their own consequences, until, perhaps, one day they will be willing to hear someone's voice?

Crazy hypocrites...

I was just reading in the G&M today about a former minister in the United church who is on leave of absence due to depression (admittedly, if I was a minister in the United church, I would be depressed about a lot of things, including the direction that the denomination has chosen to go in, and the denomination that I was stuck in). He was writing about his experience of this, in being removed from the pulpit and how he misses the hands-on "spiritual" (my quotations) work.
It brings up the interesting point about mental illness and faith: is mental illness a sign of lack of faith (this, I doubt very much)? Is increasing your faith the means to which to maintain good mental health? Some would argue that if you fall into a depression, then something is ruptured in your relationship with God, and the key is to restore it. Having witnessed this happen to many people over the years, this view makes me angry, by blaming the victim for not being good enough, or not doing good enough for God, to stay healthy.
The comments were also intriguing: Many were saying things along the lines of, well, if your God is so great, why did (s)He let you go into depression? Obviously, your God is not immune from keeping you well to take care of your group (again, my words: I'm quite loath to call United church groupings as congregations).
It's an interesting point: now, I am not saying that that particular denom is at all equivalent to solid Biblical teaching (which it is not). However, it does bring up the point of, "Hey, if your God is so great, why doesn't He bring you down from that cross? Why doesn't He bring Elijah to save you?" The generalized view seems to be that, though the church is also accused of being full of hypocrites, somehow the public is also expecting that God zaps blessings down in perpetuity upon all these hypocrites, and His power is diminished when weakness or failure show up in people.
That doesn't quite make sense to me: Yes, the church is made up entirely of hypocrites, that is without question. We do not do what we say we believe, we do not act consistently with justice and mercy, we are, many times, indistinguishable from the rest of society. I don't think that diminishes the power of God; I think we certainly block His power with our own selfish, scheming ways.
Which, I guess, brings up the issue of Jesus - I would constantly point people back to the personage of Jesus, for He is the centre and purpose of all things. The manifestation of His church in its current form is enough to drive people away screaming, but the fundamental attractiveness and loveliness of Jesus can be the only core that draws people to Himself...

FFT

We can have a democratic society or we can have the concentration of great wealth in the hands of the few. We cannot have both.

-Supreme Court Justice Louis Brandeis

They always look shinier in the box...

The line between want and need sometimes gets a bit fuzzy, doesn't it? My newest toy arrived a few days ago, courtesy of Apple Co. Yup, they sent me a FREE(!) iPod Touch and pretty flowered case to put it in. So I've been playing around with it, trying to figure out how it works, and wondering if/what kind of apps should be added to it.
Of course, there is no data plan with this gadget; it's completely dependent on the kindness of strangers and their non-password protected internet access (or libraries or coffee shops). I haven't quite figured that part out yet.
However, the potentiality of having internet on the go is alluring; it's making me consider: Gee, do I need a Blackberry or an iPhone, with its never ending stream of internet all the time, all the time, all the time? Do I need to pay for a data plan so I can always check my email every second of the day? Wouldn't it be a good idea to be able to do that?
I find I have to fight that urge: why do I need to be tethered to an additional electronic leash all the time? I already have a cell phone. I already have internet access at work and at home. I also have survived this long without having constant access to my email or google, and I haven't withered away to a meaningless nobody (at least, not yet).
The siren song of being constantly wired is there, however. I think, sometimes, the fetters and chains of constantly being on-line outweighs its freedoms and opportunities. The temptation of new toys and gadgets also constantly ups the ante; people were already cooing over my new "iPhone" (though I had to correct people and say it wasn't an iPhone).
Hopefully (and very likely), I'll withstand the temptation, and quickly get bored with my toy as another daily piece of my purse...

Romans 7:19

It is sometimes hard to maintain hope in the face of mindless consumerism, greed and Western ways of living. Though I was hanging with people who hope to be leaders in sustainable development in their respective fields, whether government, business or otherwise, we are still equally hypocrites in the way that we live.
I flew to the conference, which is near heresy, considering how easy it would be for me to take the bus or the train. Several of us (not me, of course) regularly went for disposable take-out coffee every morning. We used disposable cutlery and plates when meals were provided to us. We were certainly not carbon-neutral in running the conference. I shopped quite a bit, accumulating clothes that were mainly manufactured and transported from China.
My own personal beef was visiting a farm as an example of a sustainable establishment. Too bad that their seeds were supplied by Monsanto, that they were a conventional farm, spraying their strawberries up to six times in a month (!!!! I had asked how the rains had affected their crops and that was their answer!!!!) with Monsanto pesticides, that they wished they could afford to buy GMO corn, but since they couldn't, they were growing conventional corn, and that they remarked that organics are not a sustainable way of farming. Sleeping in the bed with the enemy is NOT a sustainable way of farming. That's all I have to say about it.
So here we are, talking about cultural paradigm shifts, BRICK economies, CSR, etc etc, and we cannot even address our own hypocrisies, both internally and as a group.
So then what? Does hope remain? My hope lies with Him who has said that His Kingdom has already come. We are His stewards to guide it back to its original beauty and splendour. I cannot have hope in man, who buys clothing from half a world away, buys unfair trade policy coffee, and spews carbon emissions into the air, yet says that he loves the planet... we all cannot hope in man, for he disappoints. The LORD disappoints never; His mercies are new every morning!

Adaptive renewal, stakeholder engagement and other jargon

This week has been quite a blur, as I spent it in formation (the French word) in sustainable development, whatever that really means. Throw in a few friends narrowly dodging a bullet (literally), and it becomes an interesting week!
I'll leave the bullet stuff aside, but it's been interesting being confronted with different ways of thinking and jargony-type things that is a bit hard for me to comprehend how it functions in real life. I suppose it's because it's all rather social science and 'soft', and, I must admit, in asking questions as to 'how' this stuff actually works in real life, I had a hard time actually getting concrete answers from anyone.
I guess what it comes down to is that it is difficult for me to see the utility in models and various tools being developed to describe various phenomena, and then have them not be robust enough to actually withstand a real life situation. Venn diagrams, loop dioramas, etc aren't particularly helpful when they don't help explain basic situations. Parsing out your semantics in order to split hairs as to what facet of jargon you're talking about is also a little bit difficult to swallow.
Now, I sound really negative and down on the social sciences, and I'm trying hard not to be, and it certainly is not that it was all a waste of time, but, even when taking it to the streets and watching it happen in real life still didn't help close the circle in determining how these models function!
I will think about this some more, but then have to re-approach this whole idea of sustainable development...

Before the throne of God above...

Prayer becomes increasingly urgent and more pervasive in one's life, if there are things to be desperately appealed to the throne of grace. In the last few days alone, I've been told of people who are imprisoned injustly and being sentenced without trial, of children being taken away from their orphanages to work in their parents' brothels, of those being targeted and assassinated... reports of people that my friends know, love, and work with. People with actual names and histories and families that are personally known by people of the West.
This takes it to a different level than just vaguely praying for 'problems' in other countries and jurisdictions. This makes it personal, for your friend is my friend too.
And, as per the discussion last night, it does make me wonder whether our leisure and comfort impedes us from really living out that passage in I Corinthians that talks of the whole Body suffering when one member suffers...

Why I should pay more attention in meetings...

How does one acquire vision and focus? Organizations usually coalesce around a vision statement, a mission statement and some sort of strategic plan in order to help determine what their mandate is, and what falls within and without that mandate.
Certainly, as the Church, we have that kind of organization and planning: Jesus has clearly told us what our mission statement is to be, and has given us vision as to our ultimate strategic plan, which is awesome.
However, when it starts from the general, applicable to the entire Church, and returns all the way back down to the individual, it becomes a bit more tricky. How does one determine what is 'best' to pursue? Though there may be an over-arching vision and mission statement for the whole Body, how that works itself out in each individual is a little bit different.
Strategic plans are useful in order to focus and train to determine how best to fulfill vision and mission. Organizations determine where their strengths lie, what abilities they have, determine where they'd like to see themselves in five to ten years, and then decipher some sort of path to get them there.
The question is, however, is how individuals get about to doing this. There are many good, perhaps even great, things that individuals can do, all of which may very well fulfill Grand Purpose, but the question becomes what is best, how to maximize gains and to be most effective for Kingdom building. This is something I get the sense that many people are rather complacent about; I don't know too many people who are striving to know what God would have them do. Mostly, though certainly not exclusively, people tend to be rather content to let the days and weeks roll by doing the same-old, same-old, with little thought and consideration to Grand Purpose. I want to be with those who wrestle the angel by night, those who strive to know Who is He that contends with us, to hold on with such strength and grip that they will not ever let go, not until they are renamed and renewed...

My dream job

I know I've discussed this with many people, so this shouldn't be a huge surprise to anyone, but I thought I should put 'down to paper' what my ideal job would be.
It's well known that I would become a farmer/marry a farmer/inherit a farm in a heartbeat. As most farmers tell me, however, it makes much more sense for me to keep my license though, as that would be helpful in actually keeping the farm afloat.
However, it's also well-known that I have a small contempt for many aspects of medicine. So, as pregnancy and childbirth are the bread and butter of my (good) days at work, I would love to continue that aspect of practice. In addition, finally writing all the books I have wanted to write would be a good way to spend the rest of my time.
It's like a mother earth kind of job; bringing forth life in all its forms: vegetable, animal and human, all culminating in creative art. I think there's a nice synchronicity in that, don't you?

Calm blue ocean, calm blue ocean...

I know I often have very little optimism for the future intelligence of the human race, but I can't really help it: I face the barrage of the fullness of human stupidity on a daily basis.
A woman had been coming into our clinic quite regularly over the past few weeks wondering why we weren't "helping her". She had been tired for a few months, exhaustedly so. Doctors had already done some preliminary bloodwork which showed... nothing. So I asked her, how much are you sleeping per night? To which she answered that she was getting four hours a night, because she recently had a baby (not that that is an adequate answer; there are plenty of women who can get a decent 8 hours of sleep total, even while breastfeeding). I pointed out to her that anybody, not just new mothers, would be utterly exhausted if they had been functioning on that little sleep for months on end.
Apparently, that wasn't a sufficient answer for her. Nope, she demanded more investigations, more doctors, more answers. To which I demurely declined and suggested instead she should try to figure out some way to get more sleep. To which, as always, she said she would look for a second (third, fourth, fifth) opinion, and left, since I wouldn't automatically aquiesce to her demands.
There are, of course, the myriads of people coming in wondering what those red itchy spots are on their bodies, which, to their amazement, I point out are mosquito bites. I am not sure how we got to a point in Canadian society that we no longer know what mosquito bites are, what they look like, and what to do with them. Clearly, we, as a nation, need to go camping more.

FFT

There is one thing that we all must do. If we do everything else but that one thing, we will be lost. And if we do nothing else but that one thing, we will have lived a glorious life.

– Rumi (1207-73), Persian poet and philosopher

Smooth as butter....

A curious thing I discovered about food this week is about butter. Specifically, who makes butter.
I had understood that all butter available was pretty much only from large multinationals, such as Parmalat and Nestle, and finding local conventional butter would be next to impossible. Organic butter, of course, is always easy to find, and is definitely local.
However, a farmer had pointed out to me that Gay Lea/Nordica is actually a farmers' co-operative, that is so say, the farmers own the company, and they pool their resources together to produce and market their own goods. This is great! That means buying Gay Lea brand butter is actually helping farmers directly, and one by-passes the multinationals entirely.
Of course, this also implies one should eschew margarine entirely. Margarine is a pointless, ugly, non-food product.
What I don't understand is why they haven't marketed that more clearly; in this day and age of wanting more local, closer-to-the-ground food, you'd figure they would be all over that market. At any rate, that knowledge has changed my butter-buying habits from here on in.
Well, it would have, had not I mentioned my desire to find some real, home-churned butter up here. When I mentioned that, one person up here brought me a large tub of home-churned butter. A very large tub. However, she warned me it wouldn't really taste like butter, and likely would taste more like cheese. She said likely it would evoke more of a Heidi-and-her-grandfather-on-the-mountain-eating-bread-and-butter-slathered-all-over-it kind of experience. I haven't had the opportunity to try it yet, but am bringing it home and looking forward to it.

99 to 1 odds...

I have been pondering the parables of the lost sheep and the lost coin this past week, after a new friend profoundly rocked my world with their views on the matter. The concept of withdrawing from, or deliberately depriving oneself from the comforts of the horde in order to pursue, into the wilderness, the one who is lost is compelling.
It makes one wonder about how to realign our purposes to true purpose. I don't think I can really do it justice. It makes me wonder where I've been setting my priorities and where my heart-treasure lies...

FFT

Excerpts from an article I was reading... this kind of helps to delineate a few of the reasons why I seem rather non-plussed about my globe-trotting....

Colonialism isn't dead.
Colonialism is alive and well every time you travel from the First World to the Third and come home bearing photographs of sharks and storms and slums, or scorpions fried for snacks, sunflowers bigger than your head, stalled buses whose aisles are slick with spit, and then you tell your friends and co-workers, "Oh man, it was so great, you gotta go."
We call it ecotourism and adventure travel. That sounds sensitive. We think "ugly Americans" are the fat ones on cruises and on package tours - anyone but us. We think we're different because we don't have a stars-and-stripes patch on our backpacks.
We think our motives are purer, that in the correct frame of mind, a trip to exotica means independence and not exploitation, as we come and see and - well, not quite conquer but globalize with every dollar spent. It's easy to say: "My aim is true, my morals are on track," but Christopher Columbus and a million missionaries said so, too. Easy to think it's not corrupting or condescending or anachronistic but cool to collect snapshots of the other, trading smiles with strangers to brag about at dinner parties later: souvenirs....
... Okay, so we - having shelled out to the airlines and big oil and then fouled the air - arrive abroad. Here we are now, entertain us. We're spurred by the same selfish yearnings as every pioneer and pirate and imperial passenger from eras past... Lawrence Osborne laments that there's "nowhere left to go," because "tourism has made the planet into a uniform spectacle," with everyone "wandering through an imitation of an imitation... The entire world is a tourist installation."...
... every destination resembles a theme park at which "you are asked to play a part in the racial memory of others": Consumer. Invader. Crusader. Seducer. Self-hating Westerner. Buffoon...
... But I now wonder whether it is right to guide anyone anywhere that he or she could not find on his or her own. Travel writing is advertising; it's turning foreigners and their landscapes into commodities...
... tourism, as James Hamilton-Patterson writes.. "is an industry determined to embrace you... It wants you to spend as much as you can on fatuous souvenirs; it wants you to do Machu Picchu or the Taj Mahal; it wants you to have the rainforest experience or the Mysterious East experience or the Rose Red City Half as Old as Time experience, and it doesn't terribly mind if you also have the fleeced-by-muggers-on-Copacabana-Beach experience."
First Worlders penetrating the Third World aren't the wild rebels they imagine themselves to be, he snorts. They're deluded children, lulled by the convenience of their own electronic toys and their longing to make the folks back home envy them for where they've been...
... In an ever-flatter world where simply seeing is no longer enough, where adventure travel gets spun into Survivor and The Amazing Race, neo-swashbucklers feels compelled to traverse entire nations and waterways on foot or in unorthodox boats, suffering and sometimes only barely surviving... But even this - even what appears to be anti-travel writing, with its horror stories about power outages and Taliban gunmen and canned meat and house-sized icebergs and whole populations afflicted with what Tayler calls "broken souls" - is travel writing nonetheless. Because in its perverse way, it still makes you want to go.
Go on, sneers Hamilton-Patterson, who has lived all over the world: Ski down Kilimanjaro before the last snowdrift melts on a planet whose "accelerating demise is helped along by the mounting effluent of our journeys."
... Am I saving some tribe from extinction by not looking for it, much less telling you about it? Or am I starving some shopkeeper by not buying his sandals? Both. Neither...

- Anneli Rufus

Looking at the Man in the Mirror

So, with all the brou-ha-ha about Michael Jackson's passing (whether real or staged), along with everybody else on the planet, I headed to Youtube to watch some of the classic music he'd created over his lifetime. Yes, he was an incredibly talented singer, dancer and entertainer, and the contributions that he made to the music industry are absolutely stunning (ie. like Thriller, utter, utter brilliant classic).
However, I also reviewed some Jackson 5 videos, from when he was a small child, and I couldn't help thinking about the man. We all know the stories of how those poor boys, like many other child entertainers, were worked to the bone, and possibly even abused, to practice their routines and shows day and night for the masses. Looking at little Michael, dancing around to 'ABC' (yet another classic), it saddened me to think about his life. His whole life, fed bit by bit to the masses, since he was old enough to hold a microphone. No wonder he got weird. No wonder he was so enamored of children (whether criminally so, or not, is a point of debate). No wonder he lived in Neverland with a chimp. Searching elusively for the childhood, the innocence, the peace of just being normal; something he never actually ever got a chance to do.
Now that being said, a very wise friend also reminded me that another 170,000 people also died yesterday as well, and none of those, especially those killed for rising up against the regime in Iran, will be eulogized and remembered like the King of Pop...

Go watch Food Inc. already...

I've been rather delinquent on this end, but it's been rather busy, being growing season and all.
Yesterday, I went to go see Food Inc., the movie with a friend, and for me, rather familiar faces and voices populated the screen, and, to be honest, I didn't learn anything more that I didn't already know. That being said, it's a highly recommended movie and I think everyone should watch it for education's sake. What I couldn't believe this past weekend that a Sandra Bullock rom-com was the #1 grossing movie. Gross, indeed.
However, my friend learned quite a bit from watching, so that was gratifying. Not that they were any slouch in the nutrition and eating department at all, but it was hopeful to me that they learned quite a bit.
It sometimes makes me wonder about preaching to the choir. I find that most people I talk to about food and food issues already 'get' me; in fact, many of them are my teachers as well. Most other friends don't actually really care about food, or where it comes from, or what it's made of. They find that as long as my beliefs and understanding about food works for me, then that's great. Awesome.
Which inevitably makes me think about mission. It works both ways, you see. Just as many of my friends in the Community don't understand why I care so much about food and agriculture, and see it mainly as irrelevant to the Way and faith, it works in reverse as well. Sometimes, I feel evangelism is more about preaching to the choir; we love Jesus, and everyone else is happy for us that we do, but it doesn't fit into their paradigm, so as long as it doesn't really affect them, they don't need Him either.
Just as I wonder and worry about my non-food friends not caring about how they are nourishing their bodies, and what the future holds for them as they choose to continue to be completely ignorant of what they are feeding themselves, I likewise worry about my food friends who do not know Jesus, and I worry about their future as they choose to be ignorant of what they are feeding their souls...
What I deeply ponder is to how to be the gap-stander, how to build bridges that make sense and how to see God glorified in His creation that He loves so much...

God is doing a mighty thing....

Admittedly, God is always doing mighty things, but that's 'cause He's always amazing!
One thing that always moves my heart is Urbana. The idea of it makes my heart leap. Now, to be sure, of most of the people I know who've been, I know scant few who actually work cross-culturally, which is disappointing. However, it is the potentiality of God's people being unleashed for His purposes which is exciting!
Here's a clip, for the Liberator has come!

Running for office

I don't understand politics very well, but there are various things that both the provincial and federal opposition parties seem to be making much hay about currently. Pointlessly. Particularly since some of the hay-making is health-related, I am particularly annoyed at how much useless rhetoric is being slung around, none of which has anything to do with reality, or the issue at hand.
I am curious, however: I understood that one of the main reasons why Stéphane Dion was perceived as a weak leader was his waffling at being unable to vote against the government, and thus bring the minority government down. He apparently let several non-confidence motions pass through the House without much debate, and this contributed to his downfall.
Um, now I have a question: Didn't Michael Ignatieff just do the exact same thing?
I don't understand how come the media isn't howling at the hypocrisy. Can someone explain that to me (especially you journalists out there)???

Clichés bug me

I'm not quite sure how to approach this. A friend of mine recently told me something about themselves that, for all intents and purposes, is chronically sinful. Now comes the delicate dance of deciding how to do the 'hate the sin and love the sinner' cliché. Certainly, I'm not happy about the whole situation, my friend is perfectly aware what my traditional stance has to be on the issue, as well as what the Community at large tends to think as well. On the other hand, to condemn and be an awful person about it is also not such a great idea.
So, I brought it up as a prayer point in a small group I attend, none of whom know my friend at all, mainly along the lines of how to walk that line. Well. The response and discussion about how to walk that line didn't quite work out the way I was hoping. There was no walking of any line; I am supposed to pick a side and sit there. That to not strongly point out the 'ungodliness' of the situation was ducking the issue. That to not condemn meant I was supporting and condoning the action. Hm.
Well, I had today to mull about it, and wrote about the issue (because, of course, you never really think about how to say things eruditely at the time; usually, you have good comebacks wayyy after the fact) in an email to the ones who particularly are involved. My response to the idea that my friend's sin is a specifically bad one is as such (I've edited out anything that might identify my friend, which takes a way a bit from the flow of the email, but you can probably get the drift):
We all live ungodly lifestyles. I'm impatient, stubborn, materialistic, selfish, self-centred and ungracious; those are (some of) mine. To particularly stigmatize and condemn one sin over another, I feel is not fair. I perpetually live a lifestyle that almost completely ignores the reality of a spiritually lost, economically unjust, justice-deprived world - THAT, I feel, in many senses, is a VERY ungodly lifestyle.
We should call it what it is: Prayer for a friend and how to love him well, love him despite his shortcomings, possibly love him into a new reality and a renewed relationship with the One who loves him more than any human ever could.

Oh, to just pass over...

Ach, it bothers me when my patients' situations really grab me by the heart and I weep with them in their despair. Very unprofessional, and frankly, very self-indulgent - it's not exactly very helpful to you when your health care provider is as upset about your situation as you are.
However, my encounter with one of my families hit very hard with this recession has struck me today, more than the others that have come over the past few months; they have already lost their home, had to sell many of their appliances, have had creditors hounding them with phone calls at work and at home, and are considering personal bankruptcy. They are fearful that they will not be able to provide for their children and have them subsequently taken away from them. They've had to use a food bank for the first time in their lives, and dad cannot even bring himself to say the word "food bank". For various other reasons, they really are alone and afraid.
It's a world I, and the vast majority of my friends, barely ever touch. We don't understand want; sure, we may be short of cash, so we have to go to Tim's, rather than Starbucks, but we are not in danger of falling behind in the rent or the mortgage payments or in being unable to afford a landline, let alone a cell phone plan and internet access.
But this, this is a completely different beast. Despair and fear are not words I hear in my social circles, but they are being whispered under the doors of many other houses. I almost wish I had a paintbrush, and could paint the protective blood over their doorways, to keep hunger and poverty and despair from their homes...