itineris mei

sam

2012-01-06T14:58:00.000-06:00

this post is dedicated to my beautiful "little sister" sam.

2011 has come a gone and in those 12 months i read... a lot!

here's a list of the books that i read. some i enjoyed a lot, while others were more of a challenge.

the titles that are bolded were my favorites.

1. The Shallows - Nicholas Carr

2. Mandela: A Biography - Martin Meredith

3. The Search for God & Guinness - Stephen Mansfield

4. A Million Miles in a Thousand Years - Donald Miller

5. Freakonomics - Steven D. Levitt & Stephen J. Dubner

6. The Dawkins Delusion - Allistair McGrath

7. The Blue Parakeet - Scot McKnight

8. How to be a Graphic Designer - Ana Labudovic & Nenad Vukusic

9. The Coke Machine - Michael Blanding

10. Poor Story - Giles Bolton

11. Child Soldiers - Romeo Dallaire

12. Poker Face - Maureen Callahan

13. Logo Design Love - David Airey

14. Panic Virus - Seth Mnookin

15. What Makes Flamingos Pink - Bill Mclain

16. The Ragamuffin Gospel - Brennan Manning

17. Hitler - Ian Kershaw

18. Proper Confidence - Lesslie Newbiggen

19. The Forgotten Ways - Allan Hirsch

20. Super Mario - Jeff Ryan

21. Evil & the Justice of God - N.T Wright

22. Proofiness - Charles Siefe

23. The Know It All - A.J Jacobs

24. One Life - Scot McKnight

25. The Litigators - John Grisham

26. Steve Jobs - Walter Isaacson

"lover of"

2011-02-09T18:30:00.000-06:00

As an amateur (lover of) & aspiring graphic designer I often visit other designers sites to get inspired, encouraged & also to admire his or her work.

Today I would like to share some of what I've found.

The artist has dubbed this collection: "Minimalist Movie Posters".

And just because he's the best superhero of all time...

(for the most part) - pt 2

2011-01-27T14:22:00.000-06:00

In late November of 2010 I wrote about my journey toward vegetarianism & "ethical eating".

I talked about Jonathan Safron Foer's lastest book, Eating Animals. This book chronicles his personal journey of discovery. Foer spent over two years immersed in the world of factory farming, mass produced food products & alternatives that are attainable for everyone.

Since then, my wife & new family have been trying to make better choices about the food we eat.

We have virtually cut out meat in our diets. Our evening meals now consist of more vegetables, grains & faux meat products.

We've also consciously taken time to research local alternatives to buying factory farmed meat at our local supermarkets. Saskatoon is a city of hidden gems. Dad's Market for example is a chain of small grocery stores that stock only natural, ethical & green food products for it's shoppers. Also Saskatoon has an excellent farmer's market. At which, fresh chemical free produce, hormone free beef, chicken & pork can purchased. Last but definitely not least is, Pineview Farms, it is locally owned and operated and sells a variety of meat products that are sustainably raised, humanely slaughtered & sold to consumers at a fair price.

In (for the most part) - pt 1, I received a comment from an old friend, her comment inspired this very post. She mentioned two products that are commonly associated with not only vegetarianism but also with "ethical eating". The first being soy, & the second is tofu.

For most vegetarians & people familiar with asian cuisine, soy & tofu are staples of their diets. There is no doubt that both these foods, with proper applications, can be excellent substitutes.

However upon closer examination, one glaring problem stands out. Packaging. The packaging that is required is astounding. So, if you're like me & buy soy milk as a substitute to cows milk, like me, you're not exempt from feeling the effects of being wasteful.

So as I continue to eat less & less meat, it is worth a thought about how the substitutes are affecting my conscious way of living.

As my old friend commented, soy can be found in almost any processed food product in today's supermarkets. It never hurts to the read the label, and if you can't pronounce it, don't buy it.

So, as I continue to change the way I & my family eats, I must also be mindful of how my new choices are affecting the world around me.

Is eating less tofu, to save packaging from ending up in landfills worth consideration?

I would have to say yes.

Is cutting down on my soy milk consumption worth a second look, so that our precious resources from the Amazon rain forest aren't completely depleted?

Resoundingly, yes!

strive to say nothing.

2011-01-21T14:36:00.000-06:00

I have nothing to say,

but because I have a blog I feel the pressure to continually come up with something new.

That thought struck me as extremely odd. Many people I know have a blog and write a lot, yet seem to say nothing at all. I find that people usually post about things that are important to them. For example my wife posts about our children. Or a pastor friend of mine posts about his ministry. In fact this is what I found myself doing on a regular basis. I wrote about the thing that were important to me and the things I was interested in.

But then I started looking back and could not find a common theme. It wasn't there. I am a schizophrenic blogger.

For me it works. I can jump from topic to topic and not need to coherence that others need or strive for in their posts.

Now, I strive to say nothing. Unlike others, I don't expect you to listen just because it's out there.

I write for me, it may be nothing important to you, but this space is for me, to express things I think about and wonder. I would be delighted if you contributed to this new endeavour.

best of 2010

2010-12-23T11:18:00.002-06:00

Two-thousand-and-ten will soon be on its way out. Many new things have been learned, experienced and in some cases forgotten.

So the most memorable things of 2010 deserve a shout out, in no particular order of course.

So here's the best...

book

band, album & song

movies

tv show

video game

the best for last

"blood phones"

2010-12-06T15:02:00.000-06:00

Last week in the Globe & Mail I read an excellent article.

I thought I would share it with you today.

Smartphones: Blood stains at our fingertips

By IAIN MARLOW AND OMAR EL AKKAD

"The mineral that helps make your phone smart also finances wars that include mass rape. But can industry be made to track these 'blood diamonds of the digital age'?

On April 11, 2009, NDP MP Paul Dewar's plane touched down in what is sometimes referred to as the rape capital of the world: The Democratic Republic of the Congo. He was there to talk about a mining industry that has helped finance a vicious war that has left some seven million people dead since 1998. The voracious international appetite is centered on an obscure mineral, coltan, which many Canadians have never heard of and yet would not be able to live without.

To see the other side of that war, Mr. Dewar could have remained in Canada and taken a trip to the nearest mall. In the next few weeks, millions of electronics will be yanked off store shelves during the busy holiday shopping season - computers, smart phones, electronic book-readers. Almost every single one of the gadgets Canadians purchase will, in turn, help extend Congo's misery, because inside the circuitry of those gadgets is coltan.

Coltan has become one of the world's most sought-after materials because it is used to create tantalum, a key ingredient in electronic circuitry. The global tantalum capacitor market is worth about $2-billion (U.S.) annually. You'll find them in computers, cell phones, home appliances and myriad other electronic goods.

"I'd like to see that when my kid buys an iPhone or an iPod Touch - any of these technologies - that I can and any Canadian can rest assured that they're rape-free," says Mr. Dewar, who has just tabled the Trade in Conflict Minerals Act with Liberal Party support. The act would pressure companies to ensure the raw materials they purchase don't end up putting money in the pockets of warlords. But the proposed law's future is likely also dependent on Canadian consumers' willingness to pay a few dollars more for computers that aren't built using conflict minerals - something that's far from certain.

Whereas blood diamonds have shamed many of the world's biggest miners into more ethical practices, the notion of blood tantalum has so far had no such effect. Not only are most consumers unaware of the mineral or its background, but there are currently no reliable means of ensuring that the tablet computer you just purchased wasn't made using conflict coltan.

The U.S. government is leading a push to embarrass the world's biggest coltan purchasers into cleaning up their act. The Dodd-Frank law, a sweeping Wall Street reform act that leverages the might of the Securities Exchange Commission and is expected to take effect in the next few months, contains a clause that would pressure companies to say where they're buying minerals such as coltan.

About 80 per cent of the world's coltan is in Africa, and the vast majority of that store resides in war-torn Eastern Congo. With an estimated $25-trillion in potential value, Congo is, in terms of untapped mineral wealth, perhaps the richest country on Earth. However the country's mineral trade is a complex and violent web. Rebel groups from within the Congo and neighbouring countries have set up shop around the coltan mines, sometimes with the implicit support of the local military - which experts note are sometimes little more than criminal warlords in uniform.

Numerous government and human rights groups have drawn a direct line between coltan mining profits and the ongoing atrocities in the region, including dismemberment and gang-rape.

"This obscure mineral has had the distinction of effectively becoming a kind of blood diamond of the digital age," professor Jeffery Mantz of George Mason University wrote in a 2008 Social Anthropology article exploring Congolese coltan mining.

As with the diamond trade, there are some potential solutions to the conflict-coltan problem, but their implementation is far from assured. For example, manufacturers could be forced to declare where their raw materials are coming from, or to implement a fair-trade program such as some coffee producers have done. In part, the clauses in the Dodd-Frank act seek to impose some of these solutions on companies - and because, unlike in Canada, there exists a countrywide securities regulator in the U.S. to enforce the law, hardware manufacturers are taking it seriously.

In theory, under the proposed law, suppliers who adhere to ethical practices will be able to market their wares as conflict-free - a potentially effective marketing strategy. But as in the case of fair-trade coffee, such initiatives are limited by the number of companies willing to buy in, and the number of consumers willing to pay extra for the product. However the coltan trade is more difficult to clean up partly because of the lawless nature of mining in the Congo and partly because of the general public's ignorance of the commodity's use in most modern technology.

There are other large deposits of the mineral in countries such as Australia. But Australian "conflict-free" coltan comes at a higher price, adding to the final retail cost of a high-end personal computer or cellphone. As such, Australian mines have largely been unable to compete with Congolese operations. In fact, the presence of "conflict-free" coltan has in some ways made the conflict variety more difficult to detect.

"Recent reports state that Rwanda and others are using the war in Congo to continue the exploitation of coltan. Once it is extracted, we are told, it is then sent down to Australia, where it is mixed with Australian coltan - where 20 per cent of the world's coltan comes from - before being processed into tantalum," U.S. Senator Sam Brownback said in a 2008 speech on the senate floor. "Unfortunately, it is impossible to say with any certainty that the tantalum supply coming out of Australia is conflict free."

The U.S. government has moved more aggressively in recent years to combat the use of conflict minerals. The Dodd-Frank act, passed in July, contains a clause that would put intense pressure on U.S. public companies to state the source of certain minerals - including coltan's derivatives - used in the manufacturing process. Because companies will be forced to report to the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission, the need to ensure legally sound and accurate compliance is immense.

Mr. Dewar hopes Canada follows that lead. In late September, he introduced Bill C-571, which would create a "due diligence mechanism" to ensure Canadian companies are not purchasing conflict minerals. In Canada, the mining finance capital of the world, such rules would go a long way toward disrupting the conflict coltan trade. However, because Canada has no national securities regulator, Mr. Dewar was unable to lodge responsibility with a financial agency with teeth and has to rely instead on an ombudsman and an annual report he hopes will shame companies that continue to use conflict minerals.

But in the U.S., many manufacturers and retailers, including Wal-Mart and Target, have fought against these new rules, arguing that it is simply too difficult to accurately trace the origin of such raw materials. Some worry the Dodd-Frank act may have the unintended effect of shifting Western corporate money away from an already impoverished Congolese population.

Indeed, it appears few if any major technology firms are able to say with certainty that their devices don't contain coltan sourced from the mines fuelling Congo's brutal war.

Rick Goss, as the vice-president of environment and sustainability at the Information Technology Industry Council, has been helping the high-tech industry try to stay ahead of the public relations disaster that befell the "blood" diamond industry. His industry lobby group represents huge interests - RIM, Apple, Microsoft, Dell, Nokia, HP and many others - but Mr. Goss seems earnest as he describes the sector's voluntary efforts ahead of the deadline for the Dodd-Frank provision to take effect on April 17. The group is test-piloting an audit system for the Chinese and Indonesian smelters that buy shipments from conflict zones, and it has started implementing a "bag-and-tag" process whereby the raw minerals are sealed as they are mined, aggregated through village traders and then sent off abroad in larger shipments.

Goss admits there's no fool-proof process. In the chaos of the Congo, where even the military is being implicated in atrocities and kick-back schemes, it is simply impossible to ensure armed militias don't get at least some of the cash, by erecting impromptu road tolls to extract illegal taxes on even legitimate shipments of "conflict free" minerals.

"There's no paper trail when an illegal tax is applied," Mr. Goss says. "Can you avoid every leak into the system? It's never going to happen. No more than the IRS (Internal Revenue Service) here can make sure that no one ever cheats on their taxes."

For years, hardware manufacturers have essentially relied on the word of their suppliers that minerals such as coltan have been conflict-free. However it appears that more and more people are deciding such assurances aren't good enough. A campaign is under way to establish "conflict-free campuses" in universities across the U.S., and earlier this year hundreds of people peppered Intel's Facebook page with queries about where the company gets its raw materials.

Ultimately, however, the movement to end the use of conflict coltan will largely rest on whether consumers come to acknowledge the link between sleek, state-of-the-art electronics and brutal violence in one of the most war-torn nations on Earth - and whether "blood phones" will become as current a phrase as blood diamonds.

In Kinshasa, Congo's capital, that came into sharp focus when Mr. Dewar asked the Minister of Mines and Natural Resources about the lack of governance that has led to the violence. Couldn't the government take a more active role in policing the mining sector, to ensure that mineral wealth didn't flow to murderous thugs, he asked? "I remember the Minister just looking at me and saying flatly, 'What is your role?' ""

Iain Marlow is the Telecom Reporter and Omar El Akkad is the Technology Reporter for The Globe and Mail.

(for the most part)

2010-11-30T15:17:00.000-06:00

OK, I admit it, I watch the Ellen show.

While her humour is usually hit & miss with me, she often finds interesting guests that I enjoy. Also being a vegan, a lesbian, and having her mother survive breast cancer she is quite vocal about events in popular culture. Every October the Ellen show donates thousands of dollars to breast cancer research. As of late she has been talking about bullying in grade schools, not only in the U.S but also in Canada.

For those reasons, and a few more I have a distinct respect for Ellen. She is unafraid to share her opinions, and stand up for causes she believes in.

A few months ago Ellen had author, Jonathan Safran Foer on her show. For those of you who are unfamiliar with Foer, he is the author of two fictional book and one non-fiction. Both fiction books have won numerous awards. His most recent book is called: Eating Animals, and as you can imagine this book focuses on Foer's journey through researching the mass produced, factory farmed animals that we all encounter in our supermarkets everyday.

It is important to mention that when Foer set out to write this book he was not a vegetarian himself. His wife had just given birth to their first child and Foer was faced with one of the most important questions of his life.

What foods should I be feeding my child?

For those of you who have children will know that as soon as your son or daughter was born it was time to eat. Your newborn child was hungry and suddenly your whole life now revolved around making sure this little one was fed. One of the most basic and essential needs of being human starts right after birth and will remain constant for the rest of our lives. So, wanting the best for his newborn son, Foer decided to dig deeper into the food industry to find out where his child's food is coming from, how is it dealt with, before & after slaughter.

What Foer found was not pleasent and most times even horrific. This book is not about presenting all the facts about how bad our food industry is and scaring readers into making the decision to becoming a vegetarian. This book is about Foer's journey, his personal thoughts and feelings about the things he saw and the people he met.

Because of this, as the reader I was a lot more receptive to what he had to say. It was the way he presented "the facts" as a story, and that is why I loved this book.

I would like to share with you a couple quotes from his book that had a huge impact on me and prompted me to rethink what I eat and where it comes from, but also to making a decision that could not only affect my life but the life of my family as well.

" Perhaps in the back of our minds we already understand... that something terribly wrong is happening. Our sustenance now comes from misery. We know that if someone offers to show us a film on how our meat is produced, it will be a horror film. We perhaps know more than we care to admit, keeping it down in the dark places of our memory - disavowed. When we eat factory-farmed meat we live, literally, on tortured flesh. Increasingly, that tortured flesh is becoming our own."

After reading these few sentences it wasn't guilt that I was feeling, but conviction. Moral conviction. I had realized that by eating animals from the supermarket or my favourite fast-food joint I was contributing to the problem. As a God fearing man I could no longer move forward, trying to ignore what I discovered. I could not as a steward of what I'd been given, continue to eat the way I was.

“Just how destructive does a culinary preference have to be before we decide to eat something else? If contributing to the suffering of billions of animals that live miserable lives and (quite often) die in horrific ways isn’t motivating, what would be? If being the number one contributor to the most serious threat facing the planet (global warming) isn’t enough, what is? And if you are tempted to put off these questions of conscience, to say not now, then when?”

I was challenged! Never before I had felt so personally challenged by a book. Foer was outright challenging me to think about what I was eating and how my food choices were contributing to this problem of animal suffering. Every time I go grocery shopping I am unknowingly voting for products that are promoting factory farming and animal cruelty. The largest contributor to global warming today is not too many cars on our roads or the millions of factories world wide, but factory-farming! The methane (farts) released from the billions of animals (cows) on factory farms is the single largest factor in green house gases being released into our atmosphere.

So, now what? I have finished reading Foer's book, Eating Animals, I felt challenged & convicted about the foods that I was eating and the implications it was having on the world around me. But where do I go from here? Well the answer is more simple than it may seem.

I need to change my eating habits.

As a family we have stopped buying most meat products.

I am now (for the most part) a vegetarian!

word.

2010-11-24T12:03:00.001-06:00

i'm interested in graphic design.

i would love to make a career from it.

i like dreaming up cool designs.

recently i've been looking at other designers for inspiration.

today i discovered jim lepage. he has been working on a project called "Word". graphic designs inspired by scripture. each week he releases his newest design based on individual books of the bible.

here are a few of my favourites.

are you average?

2010-11-19T14:04:00.001-06:00

According to a recent study done by the BBC the average person has only read six out the one-hundred books on the list below. Most are classics but a few modern literary works are included.

I think that it would be a cool challenge to read through this entire list. With the BBC's average of 6 books in mind, I am above average at 14. In the list below, the titles highlighted in orange are the ones I have read.

So tell me, are you average?

1. Pride and Prejudice - Jane Austen

2. The Lord of the Rings - JRR Tolkien

3. Jane Eyre - Charlotte Bronte

4. Harry Potter series - JK Rowling

5. To Kill a Mockingbird - Harper Lee

6. The Bible

7. Wuthering Heights - Emily Bronte

8. Nineteen Eighty Four - George Orwell

9. His Dark Materials - Philip Pullman

10. Great Expectations - Charles Dickens

11. Little Women - Louisa M Alcott

12. Tess of the D’Urbervilles - Thomas Hardy

13. Catch 22 - Joseph Heller

14. Complete Works of Shakespeare

15. Rebecca - Daphne Du Maurier

16. The Hobbit - JRR Tolkien

17. Birdsong - Sebastian Faulk

18. Catcher in the Rye - JD Salinger

19. The Time Traveler’s Wife - Audrey Niffenegger

20. Middlemarch - George Eliot

21. Gone With The Wind - Margaret Mitchell

22. The Great Gatsby - F Scott Fitzgerald

24. War and Peace - Leo Tolstoy

25. The Hitch Hiker’s Guide to the Galaxy - Douglas Adams

27. Crime and Punishment - Fyodor Dostoyevsky

28. Grapes of Wrath - John Steinbeck

29. Alice in Wonderland - Lewis Carroll

30. The Wind in the Willows - Kenneth Grahame

31. Anna Karenina - Leo Tolstoy

32. David Copperfield - Charles Dickens

33. Chronicles of Narnia - CS Lewis

34. Emma -Jane Austen

35. Persuasion - Jane Austen

36. The Lion, The Witch and the Wardrobe - CS Lewis

37. The Kite Runner - Khaled Hosseini

38. Captain Corelli’s Mandolin - Louis De Bernieres

39. Memoirs of a Geisha - Arthur Golden

40. Winnie the Pooh - A.A. Milne

41. Animal Farm - George Orwell

42. The Da Vinci Code - Dan Brown

43. One Hundred Years of Solitude - Gabriel Garcia Marquez

44. A Prayer for Owen Meaney - John Irving

45. The Woman in White - Wilkie Collins

46. Anne of Green Gables - LM Montgomery

47. Far From The Madding Crowd - Thomas Hardy

48. The Handmaid’s Tale - Margaret Atwood

49. Lord of the Flies - William Golding

50. Atonement - Ian McEwan

51. Life of Pi - Yann Martel

52. Dune - Frank Herbert

53. Cold Comfort Farm - Stella Gibbons

54. Sense and Sensibility - Jane Austen

55. A Suitable Boy - Vikram Seth

56. The Shadow of the Wind - Carlos Ruiz Zafon

57. A Tale Of Two Cities - Charles Dickens

58. Brave New World - Aldous Huxley

59. The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-time - Mark Haddon

60. Love In The Time Of Cholera - Gabriel Garcia Marquez

61. Of Mice and Men - John Steinbeck

62. Lolita - Vladimir Nabokov

63. The Secret History - Donna Tartt

64. The Lovely Bones - Alice Sebold

65. Count of Monte Cristo - Alexandre Dumas

66. On The Road - Jack Kerouac

67. Jude the Obscure - Thomas Hardy

68. Bridget Jones’s Diary - Helen Fielding

69. Midnight’s Children - Salman Rushdie

70. Moby Dick - Herman Melville

71. Oliver Twist - Charles Dickens

72. Dracula - Bram Stoker

73. The Secret Garden - Frances Hodgson Burnett

74. Notes From A Small Island - Bill Bryson

75. Ulysses - James Joyce

76. The Inferno - Dante

77. Swallows and Amazons - Arthur Ransome

78. Germinal - Emile Zola

79. Vanity Fair - William Makepeace Thackeray

80. Possession - AS Byatt

81. A Christmas Carol - Charles Dickens

82. Cloud Atlas - David Mitchell

83. The Color Purple - Alice Walker

84. The Remains of the Day - Kazuo Ishiguro

85. Madame Bovary - Gustave Flaubert

86. A Fine Balance - Rohinton Mistry

87. Charlotte’s Web - E.B. White

88. The Five People You Meet In Heaven - Mitch Albom

89. Adventures of Sherlock Holmes - Sir Arthur Conan Doyle

90. The Faraway Tree Collection - Enid Blyton

91. Heart of Darkness - Joseph Conrad

92. The Little Prince - Antoine De Saint-Exupery

93. The Wasp Factory - Iain Banks

94. Watership Down - Richard Adams

95. A Confederacy of Dunces - John Kennedy Toole

96. A Town Like Alice - Nevil Shute

97. The Three Musketeers - Alexandre Dumas

98. Hamlet - William Shakespeare

99. Charlie and the Chocolate Factory - Roald Dahl

100. Les Miserables - Victor Hugo

help!

2010-10-25T17:30:00.001-06:00

Watching TV for 10 hours a day has finally paid off. I have discovered the funniest commercial of all time!

Check out the full version below...

tried it...

2010-09-20T15:06:00.001-06:00

Every once in a while I either get introduced to something new or remember something from my past that I wanted to try. So over the past few weeks I've been trying some new & old things.

Here's are a few of the things that I've tried...

When Blue Like Jazz was first released in early 2003 it quickly became very popular in Christian circles. Donald Miller was an unknown in the "Christian-literary" world. Seven years after Donald Miller wrote his first book the Blue Like Jazz craze has died down, and I have just finished reading it. Overall it's a well written, and Miller is an easy author to read.

So...

Did I like it? No, not really.

Why? It didn't change/challenge my thinking about faith. It seemed all too much autobiographical. In the end, it seemed my expectations were high & I was let down.

Starbucks. It tastes good, smells great, infinitely customizable, & most of all it's an experience. The corporate executives at Starbucks are well aware of this, and they have come up with a way for it's die-hard customers to bring this experience anywhere! It's called Starbucks VIA. Essentially it's their version of instant coffee... but better.

So...

Did I like it? Yes.

Why? While it's nowhere close to homemade-freshly-ground-drip-brewed-coffee, in a pinch it did just fine.

I'm a geek & a nerd. My wife knows this. She thought because I was a geek and a nerd that I would find this somewhat new comedy funny.
Essentially this show is about two roommate super-geniuses who have multiple PhD's. They live across the hall from an unattainable blonde bombshell in which one genius quickly develops a crush. It is currently about to begin it's fourth season which airs on CBS on Thursday nights.

So...

Did I like it? Yes & no. But more so no.

Why? The reason why I both liked it & disliked it was because while it is humorous, the character "Sheldon" can easily border on frustrating and annoying in his idiosyncrasies. Also because the two main characters are written as geniuses they say at least 20-30 scripted words that I don't understand. This quickly becomes tiring & boring.

Or...?

2010-09-12T16:59:00.002-06:00

Tastes change, right? Well recently I've taken to drinking more Coke than Pepsi. Which for those of you who know me is odd. In the past I would've sworn by Pepsi, it was always my first choice when it came to pop. But now... I'm not so sure.

So, if you had choose, which would it be?

And, which do you think I should choose as my new (or old) favorite?

russell jared designs

2010-08-18T16:27:00.000-06:00

15 books later...

2010-08-12T17:45:00.000-06:00

the average person consumes 100,500 words a day. either heard or read.

While it may not be a world record, or even close to my brother-in-law. Over the past few months I have rediscovered the joy of reading.

15 books later... I've experienced a lot.

The feel, smell, and look of a new book in your hands is a neat feeling. I enjoy discovering new books in stores like Indigo, or McNally Robinson. It's also good to hear about what others are reading. Both my brother & brother-in-law are avid readers, they often post reviews. Most of the time it's just as you see on the right.

So now, I'd like to do the same... here are my top 5.

1. Eating Animals is one man's journey to discover the truth about our world's corporate agricultural industry. After the birth of Foer's first child he launched onto a journey to find out what he might one day feed his child. This books chronicles his journey. It's more than a fact book, it's personal. Foer relives his encounters with farmers, agribusiness executives, and those doing it the "old fashioned" way. Being a vegetarian himself, Foer does not slant his writing in such a way that condemns omnivores or the conscious choice they have made to continue to enjoy meats of all kinds.

While I myself am not a vegetarian by any means, it was extremely interesting to have a personal perspective on the agribusiness industry. Foer writes about his midnight visits to factory farms. He describes truly appalling conditions in which animals that we eat everyday are forced to live in. As a Christ follower who is called to a higher standard of living was convicted about how I was treating members of God's creation. This book has caused me to seriously consider vegetarianism, it has caused me to think critically as a Christ follower of how I treat the world in which I inhabit. And that is why Eating Animals is the first on my top 5.

2. The Naked Gospel is not just a book about Matthew, Mark, Luke & John striped bare. It's a book about the gospel - religion - without being bound by endless rules & regulations. In each chapter Farley dissects the "Christiany jargon" and much of the double talk that encompasses churches today. Farley presents many interesting perspectives on long standing beliefs. He also challenges his readers to re-examine everything we thought we knew about the Bible.

It's very easy to dismiss what Farley proposes in The Naked Gospel, but I believe that the challenge is to actually consider what he writes and challenge our personal faith & beliefs. Overall I enjoyed this book & I look forward to rereading it again. I always enjoy a challenge, to re-examine what I believe & why I believe it. And that is why The Naked Gospel is second on my top 5.

3. Food Inc. was first an award winning documentary. The documentary explores what we, in North America cannot live with. A fast, easy, cheap, and tasty meal. McDonalds, Burger King, KFC, Wendy's, all reign king in our fast paced society. But we, as humans, at the top of the food chain have lost one very important thing. Regard for the welfare of the animals that sustain & nourish us daily. Since the documentary debuted a participants guide has been released. It includes personal interviews with many who participated in the documentary. Each chapter is a separate essay from the agribusiness industry, popular critics of the industry itself.

Personally this participants guide answers many of the questions that the documentary proposed. Where does my food come from? Who processes it? And, how can I feed my family healthy foods affordably? The documentary and this book go hand-in-hand. I recommend that anyone who watches the documentary read this book, or vice versa. In many ways Food Inc. started me on my personal journey find out where my food comes from. And that is why it is third on my top 5.

4. Dead Aid, is as exactly as it sounds. Moyo, a native of Zambia explore Aid. How western countries have continually thrown money at many African countries needs without truly understand the issues behind the apparent poverty and lack of economic prosperity. Billions of dollars have been spent all in the name of "helping" Africa. While the intentions of the western world may honourable. The truth of the matter is that the citizens of impoverished countries rarely, if at all see any of the funds in which the world's governments continually send. More often than not corrupt leadership, and poorly run local governments pocket the money and the people of the country continue to go without what we call the basics of life.

Moyo spends much of the book talking about the problems that many of the African countries face. Her unique perspective as a native of Zambia adds an air of credibility to what she writes. She is uniquely qualified to offer solutions on many of the problems that Africa faces as a whole. It is this uniqueness that first drew me to this book. Many have written about aid and the issues that Africa is currently dealing with, but it is Moyo that makes this book a worth while read. And that is why it is fourth on my top 5.

5. The Story of Stuff is simply an exploration of how we get what we buy. Leonard is a fact driven author, through her facts she strives to get to the bottom of a story. She writes about the extraction of raw materials from the earth has devastating affects on our environment and our society. Diamonds mined in Sierra Leone do not just have environmental consequences but also human ones, child labour. Leonard's perspective challenges readers to rethink what we buy, why we buy it and how can we buy better.

This book has caused me to once again think critically about how I can be a better Christ follower in today's world. How do I become a better steward of what God has given? How am I personally responsible - because of the stuff I buy - to the mistreatment of our planet? Leonard easily lays out solutions to our extraction and manufacturing problems that we are currently dealing with. As it stands now we can never fully eliminate harmful chemicals from extraction of raw materials or in the production of products that fill store shelves. But what drew me to this book was how Leonard presents real solutions that the everyday consumer can take. And that is why it is fifth on my top 5.

... and now, back to my book...

my story...

2010-07-11T18:39:00.001-06:00

For the first time in my entire life I was fired. I had never been fired before. It hurt, it stung. But as usual they always try and put it in the nicest way possible. “We’re going in a different direction” or “I’m afraid we’re going to have to part ways.” My personal favorite and, as usual luck not on my side, I was on the receiving end of “I think we’re going to be done now.” Why can we say the ‘fired’ word anymore? In one-way or another that’s what all of those above statements are saying. Fired! For some reason it has become a social faux pas, the human ego can no longer survive an assault like that.

I’ve recently finished reading a book called ‘The Ego Boom: Why the World really does revolve around you’. In this book the authors present the idea of the “You Sell”. The You Sell is a philosophy that all major corporations and marketing firms now follow. Essentially it goes as follows: products are no longer marketed as aspirational items. The old way; if you own this diamond necklace or this sports car then you’ll be beautiful, rich, and all of your problems will disappear. The same diamond necklaces and sports cars are now directed at us with the “You Sell” in mind. The new way: you deserve this car, or you are already good enough for this necklace. Society now drives headlong into an egotistical frenzy in which people’s feelings are paramount. This now means that ultimate truth is no longer of any value. People can no longer say what they’re really thinking or feeling without the immanent threat of feelings being damaged.

In August 2008 I quit my job at a local bank. The short version is that I was incredibly unfulfilled, and wanted something in which my gifts could be used. Surprisingly enough, that was not in a bank handing out other people’s money for eight hours a day. Still needing to complete a four-month internship so that I could graduate from the degree program that I had been working through for 5 years, I was led to a growing church in a bedroom community outside of my hometown. So in September of the same year I began my associate pastor internship at this church. While I was technically an associate pastor my main role and my personal focus was youth. The church had no preexisting youth group established and from day one that was job one on my list of “to do’s” given by the lead pastor. I was one of three pastors working at this church. There was the lead pastor, Alan. He had been in the ministry for well over twenty years working at various churches all over Canada. He, like many pastors, started out as youth pastor. His wife, Rebecca, was the secretary and administrative assistant. Finally, there was another associate pastor beside myself, Jon. His main role was small groups and Sunday morning worship. Having no jumping off point from a previous or current youth pastor I was forced to improvise and fly by the seat of my pants most of the time. Normally interns are placed with a direct mentor who is working in the field that the intern is interested in. Since Alan was a youth pastor for many years and I was not technically a youth intern the college faculty decided to forgo normal protocol and allow my internship to commence. So I went and I did. I started a Friday night youth meeting, ran evening Bible studies during the school year, and met teens for cokes (let’s be honest, it was Starbucks… their choice). And so it went, while it wasn’t without fault I plodded along trying to do the best I could on no experience. The lead pastor, Alan, did offer advice and comments from time to time on what I was doing and what might work better. But for the most part that advice was few and far between. Alan set precedent from the beginning that he liked to meet with each of the associates weekly, one on one for personal discussion and to touch base about each ministry under his direction. From the beginning these times were, for me, marked with things done wrong, improvements needing to be made and a general sense to do better. In early December it was put forth by the board of the church that I was to be hired as a full time youth pastor. The congregation voted and I received one hundred percent confidence from the church. As of January 2009 I was officially employed. I was a pastor, something I had been working toward for many years. So now that I wasn’t going anywhere I began to make more permanent decisions about the youth ministry. So I continued to do and go, the youth ministry was officially going, the monthly Bible study continued, and eventually enough interest was generated that the lead pastor, Alan thought it best to start a junior high ministry. So I went and I did. Through this time my weekly meetings continued and I began to dread them, knowing that each time I was going to receive criticism and a call to do better and improve. Coming away from each meeting I felt belittled and unworthy. I even remember saying to a friend and former youth pastor, “I hate my job! Don’t get me wrong I love the kids and doing the ministry, but I hate my job.”

One afternoon in early November, Alan met with me for what would be the last time. The usual criticism and call to do better came. But what was different was the ultimatum had been given. I was to step it up, do better or he would be forced to “let me go”. So as I had done many times before I stepped it up, I did more and I did it better. Or so I thought. Less than a month later, on a Friday morning, one month shy of a full year, Alan asked to speak with me in his office. We sat down and my ears heard what I never expected to hear. “I’m sorry Jared, but we’re going to have to be done now.” The cop out to “You’re fired”. So at the end of December 2009 I was no longer a youth pastor, I was no longer employed. My wife, who was four months pregnant at the time with our twin girls, and I were stopped dead in our tracks. Stunned and completely unsure of what do to next. We eventually moved out of this bedroom community back to our hometown and began to put our life back in order. But it wasn’t going to be easy.

I have left many details out of my story. I feel that they are not relevant to my purpose here and they would not be flattering to the church or its current pastors. Quickly following my departure from that church I slipped into a depression, partly from sheer exhaustion, or what Christians call, being burnt out. But also from shock, hurt feelings, betrayal and many other factors. As I write this, I am still wading through my depression, dealing with my loss, and learning to be a new parent among many other things. Much has changed in my life in very little time. That is why I decided to write this. To work through not only my depression and feelings from being fired from what I loved but also to figure out who I am now. I am still Jared Brandes, I am still a husband, a father, a brother, a son, and most importantly I still claim Jesus Christ as my Lord and Savior in my life. But what does that mean? I was born and raised in an evangelical, Christ following home. I attended church from the time I was born. When I was young I believed as my parents did. When I grew older I began to reshape my beliefs to my own experiences of Christ Jesus. I attended an evangelical college and for a short time worked in an evangelical church. But what does that all add up too? Through this blog I hope to explore what it means to be a devoted follower of Christ. Could evolution have happened or is creation the only way to go? What do I believe about tattoos or drinking? Heaven, Hell? All these and more I hope to unwrap as I wrestle with some of the core Christian beliefs and ultimately find out who Jesus Christ is to me, Jared Brandes.

an emerging missional church

2010-02-04T15:28:00.001-06:00

jared brandes is an emerging missionalist.

a while ago that was my facebook status & since then it has provoked some feedback from friends wishing to know more. so in this post i hope to better explain what i meant in that status. but before explaining my personal stance with emergance & mission let me give definition to those who may need it.

emergence* - "The principle of emergence was developed to explain the ways organizations (churches) develops and adapts in differing environments. Contrary to popular notions that they develop through some top-down, pre-determined, well planned strategy, emergence theory shows that complex systems develop from the bottom up. Relatively simple clusters of cells, or groups of individuals, who individually don't know how to address a complex challenge, when they come together will form, out of relatively simple interactions, an organizational culture of a higher complexity that can address these challenges. In other words, the answers to the challenges faced by organisms and organizations (churches) in changing environments tend to emerge from the bottom up rather than get planned beforehand from the top down. This is why we describe missional leadership as the cultivation of environment within which the missional imagination of the people of God might emerge."

missional* - "A favorite term I use to describe a certain type or mode of church, leadership, Christianity, etc. For example, a missional church is one whose primary commitment is to the missionary calling of the people of God. Missional leadership is that form of leadership that emphasizes the primary of the missionary calling of the people of God's people, etc."

in chapter 2* of Hirsch's book he discusses the different modes of 'church' that Christendom has evolved into through three different eras. he explores the apostolic and post-apostolic mode, the christendom mode & the emerging missional mode. each having its own distinct period of time with varying degrees of influence. he uses six distinct categories in his exploration. 1) gathering style, 2) leadership ethos, 3) organizational structure, 4) sacramental mode or means of grace, 5) position in society and 6) missional mode. for example the apostolic mode (AD 32 - 313) was clearly influenced by Christ himself, they did not have specific buildings and were often "underground" because of persecution. their organizational structure was cell driven & decentralized. the apostolic mode of church operated on the fringes of society.

later the development of the christendom mode (313 - current) of church was influenced from the top by none other than Constantine himself. the christendom mode of church changed in many ways. the church moved from not have a sacral building to having a specific place of worship as central to the experience of church. the leadership was institutionally ordained clergy, thus giving the christendom mode an operating style of pastor-teacher. sacraments were now restricted to the institution & because of Constantine declaring Christianity the official religion of the state it moved into the center of society and surrounding culture. the other major shift within the chirstendom mode was that the church moved from sending out missions to attractional missions.

lastly Hirsch presents the emerging missional mode (past 10 years), this mode rejects the need for dedicated church buildings. its leadership ethos reverts back to the apostolic and post-apostolic mode, being very decentralized. the practice of sacraments moves completely away from the christendom mode in which sacraments could only be experienced in church. the emerging missional mode opts for a meal version of sacramentalization. also its place in society is once again on the fringes and is not central to culture. this mode also reverts back to the practice of sending out rather than attraction.

for many months i have been expressing to family and friends that the way we are "doing" church is no longer the most effective way. please do not read this to mean that i don't think any of the previous modes have been ineffective. many christians today have come to know Christ in a very real way through the very familiar chirstendom mode of church. i would also argue that both the apostolic and christendom mode has been the best way of "doing" church thus far. it also must be known that i have a deep love for The Bride. i do not wish to condemn Christ's mate, i only wish to challenge her and her leaders to a higher standard. we can do better!

since first starting Alan Hirsch's book i have been deeply excited to very depths of my soul. Hirsch has been able to articulate what i've been feeling & thinking for a long time. admittedly i am only part of the way through the second chapter of his book. but it seems to me that his emerging missional mode of church is the direction in which we as christians need to be heading. people often comment that the biblical way of church was the best but because of the way cultural & society has developed its no longer possible. i disagree. we can accomplish the biblical mode of church, with some adaptations. i believe these adaptations can be found in what Hirsch is calling the emerging missional mode. in my opinion we must as the body of Christ head in this direction.

in the words of Hirsch "...the truly liberating thing to realize is that Christendom was not the original mode of the church, and hopefully it will not be the final one. It is high time for us to dethrone Constantine; as far as matters of church go, it seems he is still emperor of our imaginations. The church now faces the challenge of discovering mission in a new paradigm while struggling to free itself from the christendom mindset. Or in the words the ever insightful Loren Mead, "We are surrounded by the relics of the Christendom Paradigm, a paradigm that has largely ceased to work. These relics hold us hostage to the past and make it difficult to create a new paradigm that can be as compelling for the next age as the Christendom Paradigm has been for the past age."

so to conclude i feel i must state that my facebook status was incorrect. i myself am not an emerging missionalist but more of a subscriber to this way of doing church.

so, what do you think?

are we as the church still operating in the chirstendom mode?

do we in fact need to shift to a emerging missional mode?

* definitions taken from "The Forgotten Ways - Alan Hirsch" pages 279-280 & 284, emphasis added.
* information on era specific church modes taken from "The Forgotten Ways - Alan Hirsch" pgs 64-66

52 days

2010-01-15T10:35:00.000-06:00

fifty-two days and counting.

That is how long it is until Karis and I have been married for 2 years.

Before we got married I knew - obviously - that we are very different people. Both of us were raised in very different homes with different styles of parenting. None of which is bad in any sense. But because of these things we have vastly different ways of doing things.

One of the most obvious differences between Karis and I is, that I am inherently neat. Everything has its place and when its not in use it belongs in its place & when it is in its place it must be there nicely. Please understand that I am not saying that Karis isn't neat... it's just... she's not, at least not as much as I am. But being the loving woman that she is she continually tries her best to be as tidy as I like things. Mess equals stress. But when everything is neat & tidy then that's one less thing to stress me out.

Now let me bring this home for you. Millions of people watched the hit television comedy called F.R.I.E.N.D.S. Later in its ten season run the characters, Chandler & Monica got married. For those of you who did watch this show will remember that Monica is psychotically neat, Chandler is not. One day Chandler discovered a locked closest at the back of their apartment. After trying for a long time to get into the closet he finally dismantled the hinges on the door and popped the closet open. What he discovered was nothing less than incredible. The closet was completely full of junk, strewn about in a complete disaster.

So as Karis tries her best to be neat because she loves her husband and understands how it effects my mental state.

She too has a closet like Monica's on FRIENDS, and here it is...

say nothing if you agree

2010-01-13T14:51:00.001-06:00

Thanks to my lovely sister-in-law I am now currently awaiting a free book in the mail to read & review.

So what does that have to do with this new blog?

Well...

The deal is, they'll send you free books to read as long you write a review of the book on your blog & other current book sites.

So that's the deal.

You can check it all out here.

The List

2009-12-29T15:39:00.001-06:00

Many of you now know that Karis and I are expecting in May, what some might not already know is that we have recently found out we're now expecting twins. Now that the initial shock has worn off both Karis and I are extremely excited and are looking forward to the challenge. We are also happy to have both sets of our parents within a half an hour drive and all have expressed their willingness to help out in whatever way we may need.

Along with their willingness to help out once the babies have arrived both Karis' parents and mine have also told us that they would be willing to help out now by buying a few baby items for us. So at the request of my Father below is our wish-list (so far) for baby gear.

Car seat (Infant to toddler) X2
Crib X1
Crib mattress pad X1
Sheets
Graco portable playpen
Baby sling X2
Double stroller
Dresser
Receiving blankets
Changing pad
Bottles
Bibs
Diapers
Clothes
Booster seat/high chair X2
Soothers
Breast pump
2 way baby monitor
Misc toys
Various hygiene items

This of course is not everything, but its a start at least. Feel free to purchase anything & as much of the items as you'd like.

A Moment of Clarity

2009-12-21T14:10:00.001-06:00

Have you ever had a true moment of clarity?

I mean a moment whether created out of a trauma or joy. A moment in which you seemed to have an out of life experience. A moment in which you were able to observe the life you're living from a distance.

In my own life I have recently experienced such a moment, unfortunately the catalyst for this moment was a traumatic experience. One which I hope to share soon, once I fully understand. As for now I'll just share my moment of clarity.

Simply, it was a bucket list.

For those of my readers who are unfamiliar of the concept. A bucket list is simply a list of activities one wishes to do before "kicking the bucket" (death). This list is usually written or thought of late in life when one is nearing the end of his or her life. While I am not - knock on wood - close to death & I wish to live my life with no regrets I have however gone through my life so far saying or wanting to do things and for whatever reason, just not doing them.

So today I'd like to share my bucket list & hopefully give myself a head start into crossing items off the list.

1. Attend a live Toronto Maple Leafs hockey game.

2. Travel back to Thailand.

3. Write a book(s).

4. Speak to Canadian youth.

5. Be debt free.

6. Obtain my Master Degree.

7. Own a home.

8. Adopt a child from a developing country.

By no means is this complete, final or written in stone for that matter. What I believe cannot be done is items cannot be removed, this list can only be added upon. Some things have more importance than others, but all of the above are things I wish to accomplish before the end of my life.

Best of 2009...

2009-12-12T14:47:00.002-06:00

Two-thousand-and-nine will soon be on its way out & many new things have been learned, experienced and in some cases forgotten.

So the most memorable things of 2009 deserve a shout out, in no particular order of course.

So here are the best...

Book

Band & Album

Commercial

Movie

Video Game

Musical

TV Show

There it is, my list of the best of this past year. I look forward to what 2010 will bring. But wait... some of you are thinking that I've forgotten something. Well you right & wrong, I haven't forgotten. I've saved the best for last.

In August I found out I was going to be a father in May 2010.

A "Get-together"

2009-11-25T13:09:00.002-06:00

As I often do & have done in the past, I will take some of my wonderful youth to Starbucks for a coffee and to hang out. Being that the Lawson Heights mall location is the easiest and simplest to get to we often sit outside Starbucks hanging out; watching shoppers go by.

Last week I had the pleasure of taking two of my youth to Starbucks in Lawson Heights and we happened to meet Tim, who is the other associate pastor at MBC and Mike who served at MBC a few years ago. Upon approaching their table it looked to be a regular gathering of two friends with much in common. Fortunately for me this was only at first glance. After chatting for a few minutes I noticed two distinct stacks of books. It needs to be known that both Tim and Mike enjoy reading, theology & exploring their faith through authors such as: N.T Wright, Ben Witherington, and many more. I now knew that this was no ordinary get together. They had a purpose in meeting each other that morning, it was to exchange thoughts, quotes & ideas about the respective books they were currently reading.

This was a book club...

So, myself and the two youth I had with me said goodbye, ordered our drinks and sat a table a few feet away. We entered into our own discussion of various different topics, when out of the corner of my eye I noticed Tim had opened one of his three books he had brought, turned to a page that was filled with (pink) highlighter and proceeded to run his finger along a highlighted quote while reading it aloud.

For those of you who know Tim, this comes as no surprise. So, as I often do I tease him, which means I quickly grabbed my iPhone & took a picture as proof.

Take a look & enjoy...

Rainn Wilson & SoulPancake

2009-11-17T13:52:00.001-06:00

First, my apologies. It's been a few weeks since I've been here to update. But in my own defense, I was away at a pastoral retreat and then I had a nasty cold for a week.

Fear not... I am back and almost healthy.

Anyway...

I know that most of you have heard of Rainn Wilson. He is currently playing the role of "Dwight Schrute" in NBC's Thursday night comedy The Office. He also recently made a small guest appearance in Michael Bay's new film; Transformers 2: Revenge of the Fallen. And for those of you needing a little reminding, he played the preppy arrogant professor of astronomy at Princeton University. Many people assume that Wilson is exactly like his character Dwight. But in reality this - in my opinion - couldn't be farther from the truth. While he still is fairly quirky - to put it mildly - this is a deeply spiritual & thoughtfully complicated man.

Wilson, his wife & family are members of the Baha'i Faith. He is involved in many charitable organizations and has recently returned from Haiti, seeing first hand what his charitable involvement is doing.

In March of this year, Wilson launched the webpage SoulPancake, which I discovered through reading the most recent issue of Relevant Magazine.

So what is SoulPancake?

Essentially SoulPancake is a place where people from all different walks of life can come together and talk about spirituality, creativity & many others. Wilson promotes his website by saying; "Where do you go on the Interwebs if you want an irreverent, fun, and profound take on God and Art and the Soul and Faith and Beauty? Fox.com? Maybe. But maybe also here..."

Many different topics of discussion are featured on SoulPancake daily. But for creator Wilson, the webpage is about the people, the community. Without the community the site would shrivel and die. People are encouraged to share what's on their minds, to be real & talk about what's on your heart all the while being appropriate in their discussions.

I find SoulPancake interesting for a couple reasons. First, that a celebrity such as Wilson would take time to invest in an idea like this. Second, the discussion & debate aspect that SoulPancake encourages as a necessity for survival. I have visited SoulPancake daily since discovering it a couple weeks ago and I have even written on a topic or two. I encourage you to do the same. Check it out, take a look around, see what people are saying. And maybe, just maybe, you'll have something to say too.

Check it out... SoulPancake

Let me know what you think...

Should Christians Celebrate Halloween?

2009-10-27T09:26:00.000-06:00

Halloween is this coming weekend and for generations Christians across the globe have been divided on whether we should recognize or even celebrate such a day. In fact this is something that I have been wondering for many years. I now think of it because it a few short years I may or may not be dressing up my child to wander the neighborhoods, knock on doors, and and ask for candy with a cheerful "trick or treat"!

So below is an excerpt from Ben Witherington's blog on the very subject. Read it, and let me know what you think. Should Christians celebrate Halloween?

_______________________

"Ghosts and Goblins, tricks and treats, houses of horror and costumed heroes and villains. Should Christians have anything to do with such practices, or is it just harmless fun? Believe it or not, Christians are about equally divided on this issue. Perhaps a little history is in order to help us decide this matter.

In the first place, the term Halloween is in fact a modified form of All Hallow's Eve, that is the day in the Christian calendar before All Saints Day. It has nothing whatsoever to do with the British celebration of Guy Fawkes Day (i.e. a celebration of the attempt to blow up Parliament) or the modern or more ancient practices of Bonfire Night, which may or may not derive from the ancient Celtic celebration of Harvest Night or Samhain.

The Wikipedia article on the subject suggests the following conclusions----

"Many Christians ascribe no negative significance to Halloween, treating it as a purely secular holiday devoted to celebrating "imaginary spooks" and handing out candy. Halloween celebrations are common among Roman Catholic parochial schools throughout North America and in Ireland. In fact, the Roman Catholic Church sees Halloween as having a Christian connection. Father Gabriele Amorth, a Vatican-appointed exorcist in Rome, has said, "[I]f English and American children like to dress up as witches and devils on one night of the year that is not a problem. If it is just a game, there is no harm in that."^[1] Most Christians hold the view that the tradition is far from being "satanic" in origin or practice and that it holds no threat to the spiritual lives of children: being taught about death and mortality, and the ways of the Celtic ancestors actually being a valuable life lesson and a part of many of their parishioners' heritage. Other Christians feel concerned about Halloween, and reject the holiday because they believe it trivializes (and celebrates) "the occult" and what they perceive as evil. A response among some fundamentalists in recent years has been the use of Hell houses or themed pamphlets (such as those of Jack T. Chick) which attempt to make use of Halloween as an opportunity for evangelism. Some consider Halloween to be completely incompatible with the Christian faith due to its origin as a pagan "Festival of the Dead." In more recent years, the Roman Catholic Archdiocese of Boston has organized a "Saint Fest" on the holiday. Many contemporary Protestant churches view Halloween as a fun event for children, holding events in their churches where children and their parents can dress up, play games, and get candy. Jehovah's Witnesses do not celebrate Halloween for they believe anything that originated from a pagan holiday should not be celebrated by true Christians."

It is not a surprise that the bringing of the practice of celebrating Halloween in America is credited to the Irish Catholics, since they in particular had a robust celebration of the saints--- for example St. Patrick's Day. The practice of celebrating All Hallow's Eve is especially associated historically with the Catholic tradition for another reason as well.

In Catholic tradition (cf. the various Orthodox Church traditions) there are the spirits of some dead persons in purgatory and some in limbo. It is understandable that the notion that there are spirits out there who are neither in heaven or hell, but in an unresolved state, perhaps in Sheol or the land of the dead would eventually be connected with All Hallow's Eve, the day those spirits wander the earth longing for the resolution of their eternal fate.

All Saint's Day by contrast celebrates the saints who in fact have made it to heaven and obtained the beatific vision. In neither case does the celebration of these days have anything to do with the occult, or with the glorification of evil, Satan, demons, or the like. If one wants to read a creative interpretation of All Hallow's Eve by a conservative Protestant writer, Charles Williams novel All Hallow's Eve is the ghost story for you.

It is of course true that most persons, including most American Christians by now do not celebrate All Hallow's Eve or All Saint's Day as a holy day, but rather merely as a holiday, a day for children to dress up and go trick or treating. The earlier Christian celebration is either forgotten, ignored, or its meaning neglected.

Conservative Protestants might well object to the practice of Halloween on the grounds that it offers up a theology of the afterlife they do not agree with (i.e. they do not believe in purgatory or limbo), but it would be well if they evaluated the practice on the proper historical grounds, and not make the mistake of thinking the practice originally had purely pagan much less demonic origins, which is not in fact true. Some churches today in fact have used the occasion to teach children about the saints in heaven and how they got there, especially focusing on the martyrs and the book of Revelation.

There are however other reasons for Christians to pause before simply indulging the cultural celebration of Halloween, not the least of which is that the message children actually get out of the practice is that if they dress up in costume someone will give them sweets and treats that are in fact generally of no nutritional value, if they are not positively bad for their health and dental hygiene.

But lest I be accused of being the Grinch that stole Halloween, may I just quietly suggest that Halloween could be used as a time that children could bear witness to their faith--- dressing up in costumes representing the heroes of faith, chronicled in texts like Hebrews 11. In so doing, they could use the occasion of a holiday, to remember once more a holy day-- the celebration of all the saints who have gone into the living presence of God who one day will return with Christ to reign on earth, as that great hymn "For All the Saints" reminds us."

______________________

What do you think?
Should we as Christians participate in Halloween activities?

Turn Off...

2009-10-20T15:41:00.000-06:00

Sometimes people surprise you, when you least expect it.

There is a young woman in my youth group, she is a typical 18 year old in today's society. She loves friends, school, movies, music, church, youth, facebook, cell phones, Twitter, TV, and many more.

I would expect nothing else.

On Sunday she surprised me.

As I often do I was arranging a time to hang out with her. We talked details, where and when and the like. Then I told her that I would "facebook her" and let her know my schedule for the week. She stopped, looked at me and told me most convincingly that she is taking a break from facebook.

I was completely surprised.

Please do not misread these words to intend negative things about this young woman, she has & always will have my utmost respect.

But for a teenager who is so plugged in I was in shock. I do not know what brought on this facebook hiatus and the absence from the biggest social networking site in the world. However I have my suspicions, all of which I'll hide away in my youth pastor like mind. Whether she knows it or not, this young woman in tackling a much larger issue. Today many things are in our faces. TV, music, movies, billboard ads, facebook, twitter. I find that this can cloud out other more important things. Our heavenly Father. Today I was reading my sister-in-law's blog as I often do. She is doing something similar. Until mid November she will not be blogging, something I know she enjoys a great deal. But as this young woman in my youth group and my sister-in-law know, there is something more important.

For the girl in my youth group, facebook is crowding out the presence of Jesus and my sister-in-law's blogging is the noise that drowns out the voice of her heavenly Father.

I don't know where you're at in your journey with Jesus, but I find this challenging. I am challenged to step back from the things that crowd out Jesus and spend time unplugged from everything. It's easy to let things like music, facebook, movies, TV, and more drown out what Jesus is trying to say to us. But I know that it's worth it.

So I challenge you this week to log out of facebook, turn off your cell phones, stereos, and TV's and let the God who loves you infinitely speak & work in your life.

may 2010

2009-10-11T09:00:00.027-06:00

well the cat is out of bag.

in may 2010 karis and i will be parents.

i am quite positive that i am feeling every emotion possible these days.

but the one that stands out the most is excitement. we have been married for almost two years and it has been fantastic. i won't bore you with the details, the reason being is that i'm sure you could visit karis' blog and read all the details you wish.

so why the move to blogger? simply, it offers better privacy options than wordpress.

karis and i are on a journey into parenthood. for the most part we'll experience similar things. but on the same hand we'll have very different experiences. so, as someone who loves to write i felt it will most appropriate to share my thoughts on my coming parenthood and the changes to my ministry as i become a father.

so for all those faithful readers that have made the move with me from wordpress, i hope you continue to enjoy my thoughts, musings & experiences as once again my life is in transition.

as you may have noticed when my blog loaded in your web browser. my blog has no name. this place is currently untitled. that is where you, the reader come in. what should this place be called?

Rubicon

2009-10-07T13:07:00.004-06:00

It flows 29 kilometres long through northern Italy, beginning in the Apennine Mountains and finally emptying into the Adriatic Sea, near the “boot” of Italy. It also marked the boundary between the Roman province of Cisapline Gaul in the north and Italy to the south. The Rubicon River is most notable as a part of Roman law in the time of Caesar. The law prohibited any Roman army from crossing the river; if such an action was taken it was considered an act of war. In 49 BC Julius Caesar crossed the Rubicon with his vast army in an effort to make the journey to Rome faster. This made an armed conflict with neighboring Italy inevitable.
“Crossing the Rubicon” is a phrase that was derived from the actions of Julius Caesar in 49 BC. It has survived today to refer to an action that cannot be revoked or an action with permanent consequences with extreme risk. This is similar to a phrase today, “passing the point of no return”.
Passing the point of no return (PNR) originated as a technical term used in air navigation. It referred to the point during a flight at which, because of fuel consumption a plane can no longer return to its airfield. After the PNR a pilot of a plane had no option but to continue to their intended destination or land at another airfield. In this sense, the phrase implies an irrevocable commitment, just as Julius Caesar crossed the Rubicon and an armed conflict ensued.
How often do we encounter our own PNR’s or Rubicon’s?
Since discovering the concept of the Rubicon River it has struck me that there are many points in our lives in which we must commit to actions that are risky and unchangeable. Just as Julius Caesar crossed the Rubicon with his army and started a conflict with the neighboring country that I’m he did not want. We make the same mistakes per se just as Caesar did. Every choice, no matter how small or large has a certain amount of consequences. Even when we’re not thinking about our choices we may encounter a Rubicon.
A
Job?
Spouse?
Bible School?
When you think about the choices in your life – large & small - many of they may be a point in which you couldn’t return.
How will that knowledge impact the choices that lay ahead of us?

Stunned Sadness...

2009-10-07T13:07:00.003-06:00

*WARNING*
The following post contains graphic content that may not be suitable for all ages. Reader’s discretion is advised.
________

Last week I had the pleasure of auditing a modular class at Bethany College called Youth Culture. Going into the week I was expecting a class packed full of facts, trends & revolutions that are coming from today’s teens. For the most part that wasn’t the case. With that being said there were golden nuggets of information that I found interesting and helpful.
On the third or fourth day of classes the professor showed us an episode of Marketplace with Wendy Mesley from the CBC. This particular episode of Marketplace was on tweens. Essentially a “tween” is someone who is not yet a teenager but is not a child (Figure that out!?). The tween age group is generally between the ages of 9 and 12 years.
Surprisingly enough this is a legitimate culture among that age group today with enormous amounts of self-identification. Companies across the globe are now beginning to tap into this market. Three girls in the tween age range were documented for several weeks. Everything from home life to the trials at school was filmed.
One young girl who was 11 years old at the time this Marketplace episode was filmed talked about many things that did not surprise me, the she dresses, acts & talks was the least of my concerns while viewing this program. Two things stood out to me.
The first being…
The seeming lack of control the parents were willing to assert over their child,
and second…
colourful jelly bracelets.
These bracelets are similar to the Livestrong ones that became very popular several years ago. The main differences are that there is no message inscribed on the bracelet and instead of being flat and wide these jelly bracelets are thin and round. They can be found in any colour of the rainbow and can have different meanings as well, something we’ll come to in a moment.
The 11-year-old girl who I mentioned above talked about these bracelets so calmly that I was in shock. She did not just call them coloured jelly bracelets, but instead she referred to them as “sex bracelets”. Tweens today are using these bracelets to signal their sexual availability.
Here’s how they work:
A young girl of no more than 12 years of age will wear anywhere from two to twenty bracelets at a time of all different colours. A young boy will then approach a girl and try to snap off a bracelet of his choice. If he succeeds then the young girl who had the bracelet snapped off of her must perform the sexual act that is attached to that particular colour. Each bracelet colour has a different meaning and all meanings are widely known, which means the boy knows what this young girl will have to do before he even grabs for a bracelet. Many tweens also claim that they are worn as “badges of honour” to let any young boy looking know what sexual act she has preformed. Tweens also claim that it’s simply an urban legend and the bracelets are merely for fashion and have no sexual meaning whatsoever. That does not negate the fact that many schools in the U.S have banned the bracelets from being worn in school. Whatever the case, whether urban legend or simply to look “cool” many young girls are now being sucked in the world of sex long before they should be exposed to such things.
I know many of you who are reading this and have faithfully plowed through this long post are wondering: What do the bracelet colours mean?
Well here’s your answer:

Pink - give a hickey
Purple - kiss a partner
Orange - kiss
Yellow - hug
Red - lap dance
Clear - whatever the snapper wants
Glittery Yellow - hug and kiss
Glittery Purple - French kiss

So many horrifying thoughts and words enter my mind when I think of such things going on in schools today. I am angry beyond belief! Angry at parents! Angry at schools! Angry at the kids themselves!
But what far outweighs my anger is sadness. I am sad at the state of teen culture today. I am sad as a youth pastor. Sad because it seems that no matter what I do, tweens today will only undo it not long after the words have left my mouth.
I am simply experiencing stunned sadness…
What happened to 9, 10, 11 & 12 year olds watching cartoons on Saturday mornings and having sleepovers & playing dress up with his or her siblings?
What happened?