I live in a world with angels
God rides the bus with me
But if I put my head down
And turn my music up
Maybe I won’t have to think about it
Maybe I won’t hear him speak
And maybe I can still feel in control.
A world with Angels
Kamloops
This morning I’m in Kamloops.
I only have a motel room here for a few hours, so I’m not long in Kamloops, but I’m here for now.
Every time I come here, sailing down through the bald dry hills of Barriere, I think, “What a marvelous place to hide.” To me, it feels distant. Wild, remote… yet comfortable. The kind of place where nothing big or turbulent happens; just an isolated little spot in the interior, buffered from the churn and bustle of Big Places.
I think, “I should work hard and make a lot of money and come here to live. I could marry a nice Barriere girl and work odd jobs and be at peace and comfort, tucked safely away behind the hills. Let life be lazy, let it be slow, and let me rest in it.”
Jesus tells a story about a rich man who did exactly that: he carved out a little niche of comfort for himself and made sure that he had enough to carry him through to the end of his life.
But the end of his life was that very night; God looked down and said, “You fool.”
God will go to necessary lengths to teach us necessary truth. It’s part of his compassion. It’s a necessary truth that we can’t trust in our own control and that we can’t build our own security. For we Canadians, who live comfortably in a wealthy country, the illusion is powerful. But the truth is that we need to find our security elsewhere, wherever we are.
The psalmist writes,
You are my hiding place and my shield; I wait for your word. — Psalm 119:114
I should leave Kamloops soon; the road is not growing shorter while I sit at a motel desk.
False Hopes
But those who hope in the Lord will renew their strength. They will soar on wings like eagles… – Isaiah 40:31
Boy oh boy, If putting something on a bookmark could make it real, no Christian would ever be tired! How often have I seen this particular gem on a fridge magnet?
Sadly, what no motivational bookmark ever bothered to point out to me is that this verse is a conditional. It describes a dynamic that exists for those who hope in the Lord. It was only recently when I was thinking about the kinds of things that I hope in, when it occured to me that the “hope in the Lord” bit might actually make a difference.
Actually, what struck me most of all was how incredibly destructive false hopes are. We all have them. You know what yours are. Here are some of mine:
- I hope all the barriers to my project at work will spontaneously vanish.
- I hope the girl of my dreams will walk up to me and pour out her undying love for me.
- I hope my boss will give me a big bonus, “just because”.
- I hope I will pass my second driving road test without having to practice my parking.
- I hope that stupid thing I did will just not have happened so I don’t have to say, “I’m sorry.”
Honestly, wouldn’t all these be fantastic? Hey, they are all fantastic – pure fantasy. (They also all involve no work on my part. Hmmm, I wonder what’s behind that…) Basically there’s a huge part of me that just wants to sit and be showered by love, wealth, comfort, prestige and fortune, without no action required from me.
The only problem is… these hopes are false. They’re not going to happen. As pleasant as it is to sit and dream about how nice things would be if they did happen, they won’t. But they’re more than just fantastic.
They’re draining.
Can I tell you what it does to my gut when my project is weeks past deadline because I was busy hoping that barriers would disappear when I should have been taking action? I don’t think I want to. But it makes me feel tired at the end of the day.
Or how it feels to be at loose ends in a lonely house, eying the telephone and wanting her to call, even though there’s no chance of it happening, because you never broke the ice? Now there’s a mean brand of neurosis not worth sharing. I’ve never seen *that* on a Christian bookmark. It’s not particuarly invigorating.
How about the boundless joys of not apologizing, and the day you realize that people are far away because you’ve been pushing them away with your own pride?
It might be most apt to say that things like these are little pockets of death that creep into my life.
Neil Anderson talks about desires and goals; things we want and things we set out to get. He talks about choosing wisely the things we set out to get, because if ever they are unattainable (“blocked goals”) we get angry, frustrated, disappointed, crushed, worn out, jaded… We shouldn’t bank on things we don’t control, on things which hinge on other people’s choices and actions.
Wanting what we can’t have is a tiring business, and picking our hopes has a massive part to play in how much bounce we keep in our bungee.
I feel a little bad because this post comes entirely from a negative direction – talking about false hopes, things I need to be rid of, little bits of death, things that drain me.
But in some way, highlighting these things is encouraging, like a trudging man looking down and seeing for the first time a ball and chain binding his ankles, and asking “How can I be free of this?”
It’s once we start seriously asking God, “How can I be free of this?” and listening to his response that things become exciting and invigorating.
Please pray for me
I guess the story of my life is a complicated one; the good news is I’m not going to share it all here 
But this blog unveils a very small piece of the story. The cold stats of my postings testify to an intense, almost manic level of reflection through Lent. I don’t know that I’ve ever thought so much or churned out so much text in so short a period.
Then Easter came. Since my last posting on Maundy Thursday, I have been bombarded with such a flurry of happenings, incidents, and episodes that blogging has been utterly cast aside. I am seeing the hand of God at work in the real world, in my life and in the lives of others. (It’s terrifying! 
)
This is, I think, a landmark time for me. It is, I pray, a new spring. A fresh spring and the culmination of many seasons of dormancy.
I’m an intensely proud person. I’d rather give a diatribe than hear one. I’d rather write a post than read one. I’d rather speak than listen. And I never, ever, ever ask for help if I can ever help it. So here I’m asking!
Please pray for me. I feel like this is a crucial time. It’s a time when I may come under spiritual attack. It’s a time when I need to humble myself and ask for the prayers of those who know me and love me.
I don’t know what you should pray – can I ask you to ask God? Just pray and ask him, “What should I pray?” and then pay attention to the thought or picture or idea that comes to mind.
Thank you. I’m grateful for every one of you. The fact that anyone has *ever* visited this blog is a source of joy to me. So to my Mom and my Dad and my sister Janet and my brother Tim and my Aunt Lila and my cousin Carla and all my friends – Aliana, Alyssa, Shaun, Brad, Trish, Chris, Corey, Elly, Mark, Joe, John – and everyone else who I can’t name: I love you very much and I thank God for you.
Disclaimers Because I’m Posting Real Personal Stuff On the Internet
If you’re a random internet stranger who browses your way to this post, well, just know that God loves you, and he wants me to love you too, even if I don’t yet 
. (Yeah, this is a weird post and if you browse the archives of this blog you’ll see that most other posts are totally unlike this. They tend to be uptight and analytical – generalized and abstract and very very… safe)
And if you’re someone who finds this post 25 years in the future (because nothing on the internet ever really goes away) – if you’re one of my kids that I don’t have yet – if I’m a public figure and you’re trying to dig up dirt on me – if I’m ever accidentally famous and you’re a curious internet surfer- please remember that we are made to live in the here and now. The author of this post is dead and gone. But – there is a man, of the author’s likeness, bearing his memories and living in your world, your time and place. Seek out the living man and not the dead.
The 12 Steps – Step 3 – A Decision
In this series of posts, I’m reflecting on the 12 steps of Alcoholics Anonymous.
They form a remarkably practical, powerful presentation of the Christian Gospel which is gloriously free from Church language and culture. They are simple to understand, difficult to follow and they hold a massive treasure. The greatest testimony to their worth is that they have proven themselves in the lives of many.
Step 3
“Made a decision to turn our will and our lives over to the care of God as we understood Him.”
For this step, I’m going to examine the assumptions hidden inside – the claims about who God is, and who we are.
Made a decision
This step means believing:
- We can decide!
- We can choose things!
- We are not animals driven by instinct and urges!
If we have been led to believe that we are a product strictly of our genetics and our culture and our brain chemistry – then taking this step will not deliver us from badness. Genetics and culture and brain chemistry will have to deliver us from badness, because that is all there is. To stop taking a drug, we’ll probably have to start taking another drug. We may struggle to make a cosmic case as to why the one drug is better than the other.
This step demands a belief in something more than a natural world of cause and effect. This step demands a belief in decisions as real things.
Decisions are real things; we can make them; We have the power to make real decisions.
to turn our will and our lives over
- We have a will!
- We have lives!
Our will is that thing we have which enables us to make real decisions. Our decision making center, it is above and beyond natural cause and effect. The Step 3 universe is not built out of a complex web of fated dominoes sprinkled with random chance.
Another belief - we can turn it over. I’ll admit, I’m not sure of all the implications of saying “I can turn my will over to… “. At the very least it means there is a thing outside myself which is able to receive my will. And another hidden belief - I won’t die if I turn my will over!
(It’s valid to say this is an assumption of any of the steps – “Following this step will not cause you to die.” Just as it’s fair to say that another assumption of any of the steps is “Following this step will help you escape from the badness.”)
over to the care of God
More claims about the nature of God!
- God is able(powerful and willing) to receive my will and my life (without me dying).
- God is greater than my will. (else how could he receive it?)
- God is greater than my life. (else how could he care for them?)
- God is willing to care for my will and life – he will not refuse my turning over.
The use of the word care is special. We can’t use the word care about everything. Rocks don’t care. Gravity doesn’t care. This is an emotional word. And God cares. God takes care.
In order to take care of our lives and wills, God must be able to prevent certain bad things from happening (e.g we die) and ensure that certain good things keep happening (e.g. we keep living).
So to follow this step, we accept that God has the concept of good things and of bad things. (Otherwise how could he know which stuff to stop and which stuff to perpetuate?)
Mind you, we already knew that back in step 2, because if God is restoring us to goodness, he must necessarily have the concept of goodness. The assumption in Step 2 is that sanity is good, otherwise we wouldn’t be taking the step.
as we understood him
Now here is a controversial statement. This is what is most likely to make someone look at the 12 steps and say, “Look, they’re not Christian.”
But this far into the steps, “God as we understood him” is not a completely open concept.
If we have walked to Step 3, we have already accepted these things about God:
- He is greater than we are
- He is greater than our life
- He is greater than our will
- He is sane
- He is external to us
- He is powerful enough to restore us to goodness
- His nature does not preclude us from restoring us to goodness – he is, in some case, willing
- He can receive control of our will and our life
- He cares
- He has a concept of good and bad
- It matters that we believe in his existence
- He does not change his nature (at least in the time it takes to restore us to goodness)
Wow!
Given the picture the steps present of God and of us, it’s clear that a faithful follower of the steps is bound to certain views. I am not a God (I am powerless; I must turn over to God). I am not a meatsack (I have a will). I’m sure there are more worldview premises that can be dragged out from the steps thus far, but I think these are a good starting point.
There is another massive belief in the clause, “as we understood him”. It assumes we can hold an understanding of God that is serviceable enough to deliver us (practically, tangibly, presently- not just abstractly) from badness.
Not a perfect understanding of God… But an understanding of God that is at least powerful enough to turn our lives completely around.
Perhaps the greatest gem of this step is that we don’t have to understand God perfectly in order to trust him with our lives and wills. But it’s terribly important that we believe.
The 12 Steps – Step 2 – A Sane Power
In this series of posts, I’m reflecting on the 12 steps of Alcoholics Anonymous.
They form a remarkably practical, powerful presentation of the Christian Gospel which is gloriously free from Church language and culture. They are simple to understand, difficult to follow and they hold a massive treasure. The greatest testimony to their worth is that they have proven themselves in the lives of many.
Step 2
“Came to believe that a Power greater than ourselves could restore us to sanity.”
I love the 12 steps because they’re so terse; every word adds a critical stone to their foundation. Let’s look at the phrases in this step.
Step one left us mired in a badness we were powerless against, by our very nature. Step two outlines a way out.
Came to believe
Why came to believe? Why not, “Believed”, full stop? There’s big wisdom here because there is a journey in believing. Although we can profess anything, we can’t just flip a switch and change our belief.
And why believe? Why should believing have anything to do with addiction or powerlessness?
If a Power exists, it exists. If it doesn’t, it doesn’t. What does our believing matter? What does it say about “a Power” that we are required to believe in it if we want to stop drinking?
a Power greater than ourselves
Greater means better. It means more good – in this case, more powerful.
could
What are the implications of could? The first implication is that the Power is powerful enough to restore sanity. This means a lot!
Does an insane power restore sanity, or does a sane one? When we say a Power could restore sanity, we are saying that the Power is sane; that we choose to believe in a sane Power.
Saying, “could” also implies there is nothing in the nature of the Power that prevents it from restoring. Conditions may apply, but it is possible. It is able to. There’s a distinction here.
Picture in your mind an Olympic swimmer who wakes up one morning, and finds that he is suddenly terrified of water. He is powerful enough to win the race – he has trained hard enough, has enough strength – but he cannot. He stands at the side of the pool, bone dry yet shivering, because something in his nature is holding him back. He is powerful enough, but he is unable.
Saying could means that circumstances exist in which the Power is willing (if it has a will) to restore.
restore us to sanity
There is a potent claim here - I am insane. It means that I, in the life I am living now, do not perceive the world as it really is. Insanity means interacting with the world in a way that is not based on the truth of things.
This is an admission that I hold to and live in a false reality.
There is another claim, hidden in the word restore. The assumption is that there was a time when I was not this way. It means that before the badness caught me, I was sane. I was truly well and I can again be so.
This means there is a goodness. There is a good life, to which we can be restored. If you do not believe in a previous goodness, restoration has no meaning for you. We don’t restore things to rubble, corrosion and chaos. We restore things back to the beautiful things they once were. The opposite of restoration is destruction and vandalism.
As with the first step, we don’t need to be saved from abstract insanity or generic insanity or from someone else’s insanity.
I need to be restored from my insanity, the badness that I suffer from.
Came to believe that a Power greater than myself could restore me to sanity.
It should not be surprising that when we look at the language of the step, it’s presuppositions and assumptions all carve out the nature of “a Power” that is the nature of God as the Bible describes him.
This step is talking about the Christian God; it is Biblically derived. These are not my opinions – these are historical facts. The AA program grew out of the Oxford Group, which based its principles on the Bible.
This step has stripped its language about the Christian God down to the most general, most concise statement needed to fight alcoholism. Yet the Christian God he remains.
The “Christian God” is the God that Jesus Christ believed in. The picture of “a Power” described in this step – a sane, willing, capable power that has control over the goodness of life – is exactly the picture that Jesus had of his Father.
And the picture of the world – the badness, the insanity, the unmanageability and the powerlessness – is exactly the picture that Jesus had of the world.
When he saw the crowds, he had compassion on them, because they were harassed and helpless, like sheep without a shepherd. — Matthew 9:36 (NIV)
The scroll of the prophet Isaiah was handed to him. Unrolling it, he found the place where it is written:
“The Spirit of the Lord is on me, because he has anointed me to preach good news to the poor. He has sent me to proclaim freedom for the prisoners and recovery of sight for the blind, to release the oppressed, to proclaim the year of the Lord’s favor.”
Then he rolled up the scroll, gave it back to the attendant, and sat down. The eyes of everyone in the synagogue were fastened on him, and he began by saying to them, “Today this scripture is fulfilled in your hearing.” — Luke 4: 17-21
The 12 Steps – Step 1 – Powerless
In this series of posts, I’m reflecting on the 12 steps of Alcoholics Anonymous.
They form a remarkably practical, powerful presentation of the Christian Gospel which is gloriously free from Church language and culture. They are simple to understand, difficult to follow and they hold a massive treasure. The greatest testimony to their worth is that they have proven themselves in the lives of many.
Step 1 – “We admitted we were powerless over alcohol—that our lives had become unmanageable.”
The first step starts with an assumption – there is such a thing as badness and we are caught in it.
There are two bold claims in this Step that point to the source of our suffering.
- We are powerless.
- Our lives have become unmanageable.
These two claims seem to fly in the face of most everything we are taught growing up. We’re taught to work hard (a good thing), achieve much (another good thing), and be as powerful as we can be. We are taught to be in control; to be the kings of our own world.
This step counters: ”We are caught in badness and we cannot get out.”
The Bible says we are slaves to sin and death: caught, enslaved, and powerless. The Biblical picture is not that we have merely failed to be hardworking, diligent and upstanding. It is not that we’ve just doing a bad job of upholding our childhood teaching.
We have failed and we are doing a bad job, but the Biblical message, and the supposition of this step, is that our failure is innate, inevitable and chronic, because it comes from who we are. This is our powerlessness.
The first step is to STOP. Stop denying these forces exist. Stop trying to cope; stop trying to manage. Stop holding on to a false image of power that keeps us from receiving a true understanding of what power is, how it works, and where it comes from.
We shouldn’t think abstractly about this. This is not a theological premise but the very present reality of our own situation. The step does not say, “I am subject to an abstract master.” No. I am subject to alcohol. Specific. Tangible.
If we’re interested in mind games, this step will not help.
If we are serious about changing our real lives, we must looking at what is causing us misery. We won’t address alcohol problems by talking about general problems of sin and suffering. We must address our problems with alcohol.
There is a massive assumption in this step. This step assumes, in life, there is goodness and it assumes there is badness. It assumes that goodness and badness are knowable. In order to take this step, we have to first know that those things which alcohol is bringing into are lives are bad. They are a problem.
We have a problem. That we can’t solve.
Emotional truth
Emotions are like a leaky roof.
A leaky roof is always leaky; its real state (the truth of it) never changes. But the experience changes on a daily basis and is entirely dependent on the weather.
God’s purpose for us is that we be made whole. Unfortunately I often have that leaky roof relationship with God – when I feel fine I don’t have a problem, do I? The difficulty with running on feeling is that it flops up and down. It suffers delays; often it takes a long pattern of behaviour before the full force of feeling follows. Often it takes a long pattern of behaviour reversal before feelings are finally reversed.
One of the things that confounds me and trips me up on a daily basis is that it’s easy to know how I feel in a given moment (it’s a simple gut check :- ) but truth is not necessarily so apparent. One of the daily struggles of the Christian faith for me is to constantly remind myself that I have to seek the truth.
Of course, this is in no way an exclusively Christian dilemma – how many parents have told their children,
“You don’t feel like it? Do it anyway.”
Shoveling Snow
This winter is the first winter that I’ve been responsible for a piece of city sidewalk. Shoveling it, that is.
Over the past two weeks we’ve had 46cm of snow fall; and it’s been exciting to shovel snow. I mean, *really* shovel it.
First there’s the powder. Big massive hills and mounds of it. Heaping shovelfuls of sparkling powder that catch the moonlight as you fling them in a glittering arc up the snow-mountain beside the walk.
Once you’ve scythed through the powder drifts, you get down to the hard-pack. You can wear yourself out with a shovel on this stuff. So you don’t use a shovel. You take your metal scraper and you give it one good shove underneath, and hhhhrrroecccck, the hard pack comes loose from the sidewalk in great huge slabs.
It’s more fun than picking at a scab, to see it peel away, revealing the beautiful concrete underneath, perfectly clear and dry. [Obviously I wouldn't know firsthand what fun picking at a scab entails - it's a nasty and disgusting habit. So I obviously have received... reports of the morbid fascination involved. It's morbid fascination has been reported to me.]
But hhhhrrroecccck, up come the slabs of hard-pack, and they’re heavy, but they fling so beautifully and once you dispose of them the walk is beautiful and gray and wide. It feels good.
It’s a theologically honest work, is snow shoveling. A cluttered, uneven, drift obstructed walk is just a little bit of the chaos that creeps in on our lives, and clearing it out is a small fight against that chaos, one piece of our mandate to subdue the earth.
It’s honest labour, physical labour, and it tires me out. I can’t do it perfectly. This bugs me. There will always be little patches on the walk, there will always be times when I can’t get to it right away. But I don’t shovel because I think I can ever “get it all done”. I can never keep the snow from coming again.
The piece I can do I ought to do, because some of my neighbors will walk across that walk, and they might not be young or fit or strong or able to keep their balance on a bumpy slick snow trail.
So on the snow comes, and it comes, and I wait for the grace of God, who will make a chore perfect in the very end.
I suspect that there will come a time when the romance will die down and it will feel very mundane, or draining, or oppressive. But I pray not, and that time is not tonight. So I thank God, and I wait for his grace, grateful that he partitions things in seasons.
Awake
Well, it’s 8:15 in the morning and I am awake. (I guess this blog is too – unless blogs never sleep but only grow thin. What is the right metaphor for blog activity, anyway?)
I’m back from Africa; this blog went to sleep for three weeks while I was away.
The good news is, I’ve found a potential answer to jet-lag – just don’t sleep during transit, until you are so ridiculously tired that your body doesn’t care what time it is. Doing this successfully took me through two nights of sound sleep on arrival in Africa, and it has taken me through two nights of sound sleep on arrival back home.
So now, after an 8:30 bedtime and a 7:30 arousal, I’m awake.
My return voyage started about 1o PM Nov 30, (MST) and it finished just around 10 PM Dec 02 (MST). Highlights included a 9 hour layover in Schiphol and a two and a half hour tarmac delay. But it was okay, because once on the plane I was fed a “Delicious Pizza Snack”. All the old staples of intercontinental flight were there, including the Smoked Almonds and the crying infant during take-off.
I was just happy we were taking off; snow across northern Europe had cancelled flights and closed some airports. Praying on the tarmac that you get to take off doesn’t rank as top on my list of happy times. Not when the pilot comes on the microphone (an hour after he promised you a ten minute delay) to say,
“The good news is that we’re at the front of the queue and not cancelled. The bad news is that (obviously) we’re still at the gate and that air traffic control has told us to wait half an hour (for no reason I can see).”
But half an hour later, there was something magical about the sweet, sweet sound of the captain’s voice,
“Cabin crew, please arm the slides.”
The lady beside wonders what this means. I tell her – it is the wonderful news that some horrific disaster might possibly happen. We are leaving the gate.
Total flight delay was just over four hours, but who’s complaining?
This was my first time flying out of the country after the security craze took off.
Oddly enough, the only time I had to take off my shoes was at Kotoka airport in Accra. They even gave me a pat down at no extra charge. The closest I had come before this was in Canada, where the officer gave me a look and asked if my shoes would set off the detector.
“I sure hope not.”
“Does that mean you’re not certain?”
“No, I’m 99% sure they’re fine”.
I breezed through; nothing here but rubber and leather and glue, baby. Metal gromits and fancy laces ends need not apply.
So that was all right, but Schiphol gave me the full body scanner treatment with a follow up wanding when the zippers on my removable trouser legs annoyed the scanner.
I can see how airport security could be troublesome if you have strongly held boundaries and if you’re not compliant. Me, I love nothing more than avoiding conflict so the fact that they eyeballed all my possessions didn’t really trouble me. Besides, I’d forgotten my belt at home
But now that’s all over, I’m back and I’m awake. Hopefully I’ll find some time to write up some salient bits of the trip. Photos will appear once I decide the best place to put them.
Home is best.