And it's here...

find me and my new and proved-to-ring-true thoughts at www.sacredimperfections.wordpress.com

Sianara, blogspot!

new blog coming soon!!

so the Festival of Faith and Writing pretty much changed my life and i've decided i need to start writing more as really it's the only thing that keeps me from going completely insane. or rather it's the only thing that makes me accept my insanity, even laugh at it. so stay tuned, i'm gonna transfer some old posts over there and get the links and blurbs and pics all set up and then i'll post a link here!

What I've Learned Thus Far

*I wrote this for my 'Forging the Kingdom' aka 'International Development' class. We were supposed to write about our experience working with our assigned Community Based Organization, but I chose a different approach.*

This year at Wycliffe College has given me deeper insight into what it means for Christians to live out and work for social justice. Unfortunately the CBO I was assigned to work with, Prison Fellowship Canada (PFC), had little to do with this enlightenment, although I was blessed to be partnered with Rick and Ellie who I have deep respect for. The LEAP II training was valuable to an extent, as I learned how important it is for an organization to be able to articulate their goals in such a way that allow a particular vision to be realized. However, the only work I did with PFC afterwards involved mere editing and re-editing the PD MAP so it could meet the standards of World Vision, and this was slightly frustrating. Mere semantics, it seemed, was key for the donors to be aware of the precise aims (resiliency, hope, economic and relational ‘progress’) that would ‘most certainly’ be reached in a stated allotment of time, so the funding would keep rolling in to keep the project afloat. And I began questioning how exactly in is that one can rate, measure and assign a monetary value to such things as resiliency and hope, and if that is somehow an incredible adventure in missing the point. It is our mandate as followers of Christ to live and breathe compassion, mercy, and justice whether or not any “progress” is made for the people we are working with. As Paul said in 1 Cor. 3:6, we are to plant the seed and God alone makes it grow. Sometimes there will not be measurable ‘progress’, and this will most certainly be frustrating, but it won’t make our efforts any less valuable in the eyes of the Lord. As Oscar Romero once said

We cannot do everything, and there is a sense of liberation in realizing that.
This enables us to do something, and to do it very well.
It may be incomplete, but it is a beginning, a step along the way, an opportunity for the Lord’s grace to enter and do the rest.
We may never see the end results, but that is the difference between the master builder and the worker.
We are workers, not master builders; ministers, not messiahs.
We are prophets of a future not our own [emphasis mine]

I learned this semester that the Results Based Management style of development work is not a framework that I’m very comfortable working in. It’s too bad that it seems to be the only one that World Vision operates within, and thus too bad that they are the organization that is mostly responsible for teaching our only development class. If I had any suggestion for Wycliffe, it would be to recognize that there are other ways of seeking after social justice and we need to be hearing the voices of those operate from those perspectives (like Mary Jo Leddy or the folks at the Catholic Worker, Word Made Flesh, or even the Jeremiah Community).

For me, the paradigm-shifting education happened in my other classes, such as Theology of Culture, Towards a Christian Political Economy: The Writings of Bob Goudzwaard, and Postmodernity: Towards a Biblical Worldview, all taught by the brilliant and wonderful Brian Walsh, and Ethics of Wealth and Poverty taught by Reginald Stackhouse. In these classes my mind was opened to realize that Jesus did not come to earth to merely bring personal salvation to our individual little souls so that we could go to heaven when we die. While personal salvation is important, it is an incomplete picture of the whole Biblical Story, which is far more of an epic and sweeping narrative than this. Jesus came to restore shalom to a broken world.

Shalom – a beautiful Jewish concept that I have fallen in love with. It means ‘wholeness,’ ‘deep peace,’ or ‘complete harmony’. And this shalom is to cover all of creation – a restoration of justice, goodness, and light; a reversal of poverty, injustice, oppressive societal and global structures, damage to the earth, idolatrous economies, and all of our relationships – with God, with others, with our communities, and with the planet over 6.5 billion people call home.

Brian Walsh taught me, among many things, that Christianity is to be subversive – a threatening and radical opposition to the dominant economic, political, and cultural powers that are trying their hardest to squeeze all the shalom out of our world for their own selfish gains. We are to fight against the forces of materialism, consumerism, individualism, oppressive global capitalism, greed, the commodification of sex, unjust political policies and practices, violence, and the desire for economic progress at all costs, to the detriment of our global neighbours. In the words of Bruce Cockburn (who Brian taught me to have a deep appreciation for), we are to “kick at the darkness till it bleeds daylight.” And how are we to do this? Well, we must to more than critique or condemn the dominant culture. And it is not enough to try to be relevant to it by creating so called ‘Christian’ versions of the same stuff (aka Jesus-branded products, music, books, etc.) Andy Crouch says in his book Culture Making that we are to create new culture. We are to live in such a way that is a ‘city on a hill’ for the masses to see and be in awe of. We are to live holistic, shalom-inducing lifestyles that will “invoke and embody the alternative” in a wide range of human practices, as Shane Claiborne and Chris Haw prophetically wrote in their book Jesus for President. Meaning, as a litany from Wine Before Breakfast said,

If the powers render you homeless, build homes.
If the powers reduce sexuality to a commodity, enter into faithful covenant.
If the powers rob you of your children, then take them back.
If the powers create domination, then embrace sacrifice.
If the powers despoil creation, then plant a garden.
If the powers take away your wealth, then give away freely.
All of this is ‘kicking at the darkness until it bleeds daylight.’

We are to infuse our lives with practices that restore shalom to every dark corner of our world. If we see the lack of shalom anywhere, be it loneliness, poverty, confusion, or a need of any kind (for a home, for a friend, for a new couch), it is our God-given mandate to restore shalom to that situation as best as we can – by having compassion, standing along side people in their struggles, and trying to find a way to meet their needs so that they can live the kind of life that God created them for – a life of flourishing and deep community that brings love, joy and peace. We must be faithful to our covenantal calling – to be God’s people by doing his will on earth – restoring shalom, bringing healing to places of brokenness, and thereby erecting signposts of the Kingdom as we do it with smiles on our faces and light in our eyes.

Yesterday I went to a conference on ‘Kingdom Economics’ at People’s Church and I bought a book by David Dark called The Sacredness of Questioning Everything. The title pretty much sums up what I’ve been told not to do my whole life because we are supposed to have faith. But questioning is not the opposite of faith, I’d say apathy is. Questioning can lead to a faith that is deeper, more raw, authentic, and passionate, a faith that has no choice but to spur us into action. Action that can bring comfort, healing, justice, hope and love to those who need it most. And as we do so, we begin to reflect the Imago Dei more and more with each step.

One thing that I’ve been questioning this semester is the word “development”. It started bugging me during Brian Walsh’s class, Towards a Christian Political Economy: The Writings of Bob Goudzwaard. Goudzwaard’s main thesis that he exposits in all of his writing is that the West has given itself over to the idolatry of ideology: the ideology of economic and technological progress at all costs. He begins his book Hope in Troubled Times with a parable:

In the eighteenth century, a European explorer happened upon an island in the South Pacific almost completely denuded of vegetation, trees, fresh water, and animal life. The island, named Rapa Nui by its inhabitants and Easter Island by the explorer, was populated by only a few unwell people and by hundreds of gigantic, spectacular stone-sculpture idols. Even now the best engineering minds have scarcely grasped how the islanders could have sculpted and positioned the colossal statues. According to the few survivors, though the island had been fertile and had supported thousands of inhabitants, the chiefs and priests had promised that stone gods would deliver prosperity the likes of which had not been seen before. The people had been seduced by a kind of progress that becomes a mania, an ‘ideological pathology,’ as some anthropologists call it. Caught up in that mania, the islanders gradually off-loaded their practice of caring for each other and the island to their stunning stone creations, the perceived source of their prosperity. But the stone idols, spectacular marvels of human engineering, exacted a punishing revenge instead. Chillingly, their insatiable demands for resources consumed their makers and the island’s once abundant life.

The book argues that in a vastly different environment, contemporary “ideological pathologies” not unlike the one that ravaged Easter Island lie at the foundation of some of today’s seemingly irresolvable global problems. The spectacular forces of Western progress today – unprecedented marvels of human achievement such as contemporary market forces, technological development, scientific progress, the state, and power unleashed – have become elevated to the status of position just like the stunning stone idols on Easter Island. We have allowed this idolatry of ideology to consume us so that we are willing to do anything to protect our economic interests, even though we are ignoring the needs of 2/3rds of the world’s population. It’s like we are about to sit down for dinner with our extended family, yet we tell 7 out of the 10 of us, those who are the most vulnerable, like the children under six and the aging elders, we tell them that they must go sit outside in the cold while we gorge ourselves on an abundant feast as they blankly watch us with hungry gazes. That is what our insatiable desire for more, for better, for richer, for stronger, is doing to the human family, and it is disgusting.

The word “development” implies a sort of “progress,” and the economic and political models we teach to the Majority World are ironically the ones that have gotten us into this idolatrous predicament in the first place. With sky high deficits, economic collapses happening all the more often, and billions of dollars spent on warfare to secure Western “interests”, just what do we think we have to teach the people of the Majority World? It is not feasible for the entire world to consume as much as we do – the Earth simply has not enough resources for everyone to overindulgence. Goudzwaard’s book Aid for the Overdeveloped West is a cry for the West to seek help – to see the world as it really exists, and that our overstepping our boundaries – our buying into a global economic structure that cyclically perpetuates the widening gap between the rich and the poor, that divides labor between the haves and the have nots, forcing the poor to sell us their resources and make stuff for us for cheap, and then charging them insane amounts of interest when they have to borrow American dollars in order to buy things on the global market – to the extent that the poor countries are transferring more money to the rich countries in debt payments than they are receiving in humanitarian aid and relief, the fact that we are overstepping God’s boundaries like this is disgusting. It’s unjust, and it has splintered bits of broken shalom mashed to pieces all over it. We are the ones that need help – to value people over profits, community over enterprises, and life over luxury.

One final image that Goudzwaard painted for us in Hope in Troubled Times was the difference between the two economies – the one of this world that is marked by ruthless competition, greed, ethno-centricity, and injustice, and the other economy, the one that is rooted in values of covenantal faithfulness, jubilee, taking care of the widows, orphans, aliens and marginalized, one that is content with our daily bread, and does not hoard treasures on this earth that are destroyed by moths and maggots. The first economy is represented by a circle, because it is cyclical, it perpetuates itself, it takes on a life of its own and possesses its makers with a force that seemingly cannot be stopped. The second economy is represented by the cross. This symbol illustrates that the only possible way to break out of the circle is to accept the reality of the cross. The cross represents the only genuinely anti-ideological stance. All efforts to survive and maintain overindulgent life at any cost must be crucified, following Christ’s example. Jesus died in complete poverty, in the renouncing of all earthly power, renouncing his own interests, and in the abandonment of his divine identity. In dying he became stronger than the powers of the kingdom of darkness, which seduce and imprison people and nations in their relentless search for wealth, power, and a sure identity built up with glimmering stuff.

Which brings me back to my first lesson, why Jesus came to earth. He came to restore shalom, to defeat the powers that are controlling our world and return creation to the state that it was breathed into existence to be – a world of justice, harmony, peace, and covered from East to West, North to South, Minority World to Majority World – in love. May we seek to show compassion, mercy, and love to those who need it most – regardless of the end results that we may never see, and regardless of whether or not people ever ‘develop’ according to our standards – but soley because as we do so, we reflect the Image of our Creator ever so brightly, becoming more human in the process.

Easter Vigil

Last night I went to the most intense, beautifully dramatic, ancient feeling, creative, awe-inspiring Easter Vigil at Church of the Redeemer in downtown Toronto. My breath was taken away.


When I arrived the historic parish was in partial darkness, and I was given a candle and a bell, and stumbled down the center aisle to sit with my friends, who thankfully were looking for me too, or else I would have been stumbling in the dark for quite a while. As I sat down I took in my surroundings: dark, ancient feeling stain glass windows, the high medieval arches, the cold, cobblestone walls contrasted with the rich, robust, mahogany beams.

Within a few minutes the Reverend appeared, our friend Andrew Asbil who has presided at Wine Before Breakfast, and he was dressed in pure white,almost glowing priestly vestments. He slowly walked into the center spotlight, looked solemnly over the congregation, and said,

"It all starts with a cry."

He was talking about a newborn, who enters this world almost intuitively feeling the weight of the misery that is to come, and echoes it all with a cry. He went on to talk about his own children (this is an Anglican priest, remember), and how often they have cried out to him in the night many, and how tonight, WE are those children, crying out, "Aaaabaaa! Where are you? Why did you leave?" For in the darkness between Good Friday and Easter, Jesus had died, and we were left here, and it was almost as if God himself had left.

The lights went down and he left the stage, and a procession of the candle-bearers, deacons, cross-bearer (i don't know if that's their real titles but it works for now), dressed all in white robes, came down the aisle, and the candle-bearer, Amy Fisher's friend, who was the cutest little 36 year old I'd ever met, raised her tall candle high, and chanted eerily: "The li-ght of Chriiiist" and the congregation responded, "Tha-anks be to Gauuuuud" and this happened three times during there walk down the aisle. We all had to turn towards the cross as it was coming down, so our backs would not be towards it. Then the deacons who were holding smaller candles lit the candles of those sitting on the end of the pews, which so happened to be me, and then we solemnly passed the light down the pews.

What followed was the telling of the entire sweeping epic of the Scriptures, from beginning to end, through chant, scripture readings of creation, the exodus, captivity and exile, and the coming of the Liberator, the Christ, all accompanied with the most incredible choir that made the stories come alive with their sound effects (wind, rushing water, dissonant sounds and awe-filled wondrous sounds), plus exotic instruments, steal drums, instruments i don't know their names. Then there were incredible old familiar gospel songs like "Dry Bones" "I went down to the River to pray" that were quite peppy and we all sang along. It was incredibly moving, and i felt like i was part of a world renowned dramatic performance.

Then came the renewal of our baptismal covenant. We had to affirm again our belief that as God liberated the Israelites from Egypt, and as Ezekiel say the resurrection of the dry bones, so we buried with Christ in his death, are risen with him in newness of life, liberated from the curse of sin and alivened with the Spirit. Then the entire congregation was sprinkled with water using these fir tree branches that were dipped in water. As the choir sang, the priest walked solemnly around the whole church, dipping and sprinkling us all. My heart pounded and then soared, pounded and soared. I was loving this.

The dramatic climax was equally as incredible: The priest declared that "He is Risen!!" and the congregation all rung their bells loudly and shouted, "He is Risen indeed! Alleluia! Alleluia!" speaking "Alleluia" for the first time since Ash Wednesday. We kept ringing them as the choir sang a bright and glorious chorus, as the lights all came on and as the altar, which had been stripped bare on Good Friday, was redressed with bright tapestries, and flowers were brought up to adorn the altar from all sides, and our priest friend Andrew was adorned in golden and blue stitched priestly vestments. Stunning! And how fun to ring those bells, with 500 others, for like 10 minutes!!

Then was our first Eucharist celebration of Easter, and then the priest completed his homily which he had started in the beginning: Christ is here, he is alive, our cries have been answered in him, there is hope.

We sang more, the choir sang more, we finished with some historic, rich prayers, and then the party began! Live music, wine, good food, and great new friends to meet! I love this church!

And so I came home, inspired, and having to write the prayers for our Easter celebration today, I wrote this:


Easter Sunday Prayer Litany
'River'service at St. Anne's Anglican Church
April 4, 2010


One:
Glorious Risen One, today we rejoice that you did not leave this world in darkness, but you came to awaken it to new life with the eternal light of your presence,that you showed us the way to everlasting harmony with You, with all of our sisters and brothers, and with all of creation. We rejoice that though you entered into the darkness of good Friday, and though you allowed for the full wrath of the powers of this world to be unleashed upon you, that was not the end of the story. Because you arose from the grave, we can say together:

All:
Light is stronger than darkness
Love is stronger than hate
For we know that our Redeemer lives
And we’ll stand with him on that day

One:
Living Savior, indeed we do rejoice that you did not remain in that cold, dark cave,
forever to be forgotten in the dusty pages of history. But as you rose you defeated the very power of death, and with it, you loosened the grip of sin that had held all of creation. We pray, Lord, that all those experiencing today the lingering effects of that curse, those suffering from isolation, oppression, persecution, and infinite sadness, that they may find fresh strength in the good news that this need not be the end of their story. For we remember together:

All:
Light is stronger than darkness
Love is stronger than hate
For we know that our Redeemer lives
And we’ll stand with him on that day

One:
For those who lack food, work, or a home, for those who seem to have lost their way, for those who are sick, in pain, or are grieving, for those who fear the future, for those who fear the present, or are paralyzed by fears from their past, may you comfort and strengthen them, and may we remind them, in word and deed, that because of this day, Death is swallowed up in victory. Where, Oh death is your victory? Where, Oh death is your sting? Thanks be to you, oh God, who has given us the victory through Jesus Christ our Lord. For it is true what we proclaim together:

All:
Light is stronger than darkness
Love is stronger than hate
For we know that our Redeemer lives
And we’ll stand with him on that day

One:
But in the meantime, Lord, before that day, we remain in a world that seems to be overcome with darkness and hate. We hear of wars, of earthquakes, of famine, of disease. We pray for your healing presence Lord, to rush through the nations, for peace to become more than a distant dream. We pray for your wisdom to flood through the minds of our nations’ leaders, that they may advocate for the weak, the poor, for those in distress, and for the crying earth. And let us find comfort that this is not the end of the story, but we await the final act of the drama that is yet to come, when Christ will come again to restore Your Reign of Peace forever upon this earth. Until then, we pray that we may always be reminded, that because You have risen today:

All:
Light is stronger than darkness
Love is stronger than hate
For we know that our Redeemer lives
And we’ll stand with him on that day


One:
All this we pray in the name of the Father our Creator, the Son our Redeemer, and the Holy Spirit our Sustainer.

All: Amen.

Wine Before Breakfast

So I was asked by my *favourite* professor Brian Walsh to preach at Wine Before Breakfast, an alternative morning Eucharist Service that he coordinates at Wycliffe College every Tuesday morning at 7:22am. It's the most amazingly creative, intelligent, musically gifted, justice-seeking and Jesus-loving community that I've ever been a part of. It's liturgical and ancient-feeling, yet on any given week the band (which is phenomenal) is playing U2, Bruce Cockburn, Leonard Cohen, or Alexi Murdoch, and sometimes Taize, hymns, and worship choruses. The litanies are all written by members of the community. And there's Eucharist each time, a common cup and loaf passed around as we serve each other. It completely nurtures my soul.

And so naturally I was *terrified* when Brian asked me to preach. It was in December, the day after my oral exam in his Theology of Culture class, and he emailed me to say that he was making a pastoral suggestion - that I should be preaching at Wine Before Breakfast. I was overwhelmed with both fear and joy, mostly because I completely adore this brilliant man, and also because the last time I preached, I well, had to say that I was "sharing" because that church didn't believe that women should preach. Also, everyone who had preached so far at Wine Before Breakfast was uber creative, intelligent, and all getting their PhD's or already had them, and I felt totally inadequate. But, with hesitation, I agreed. And then prayed a lot, and started prepping early. The passage he gave me was Mark 14:1-11, the anointing of Jesus by Mary of Bethany. It could not have been a more perfect passage for me - there is SO much in this on issues I'm passionate about, like women, poverty, and worship; I could have written a book! But alas, I wrote an 11 minute (exactly) sermon, and here is, for your reading pleasure:


In Memory of Her
Mark 14:1-11 (click here for the text - it will help, trust me!)


On my first day at Wine Before Breakfast back in the fall, I saw a familiar face. It was the beautiful face of my old roommate from my undergrad at Queen’s University, whom you all know as Amy Fisher [a member of our community]. We hadn’t seen nor talked to each other in 6 years, and the first thing that I knew I had to do was apologize to her. You see, back in those days, Amy was on her was to being a Salvation Army Officer, aka pastor, and back then I was under the impression that this was just plain wrong. The multiple churches that I had be raised in, all conservative, mainline Evangelical – the longest denomination that we had belonged to being Baptist – all had the policy that only men could be pastors, elders, and deacons. This was, I was told the natural order of God, and it was all I had ever known, so for me, the fact that men were the leaders was as normal as the fact that only women could give birth – it was their God-given responsibility – it was just the way it was. For, I was told, first God created Adam, than Eve. Men were the head, women were the body. Men were rational, and thus natural decision-makers, and women were emotional and sensual, and thus better suited for nurturing, helping roles. Jesus chose 12 disciples – all male – and thus established an apostolic succession that only included men.

I don’t have time today to address the various problematic hermeneutics that are used in every one of those passages to come to the conclusions that my former churches did. However, the scene that Mark portrays in the reading today clearly shows that Jesus didn’t care much about what was considered to be the “normal” social structure of the day – the patriarchal society in which men occupied all the positions of power and authority, and women were treated as little more that cattle – property to be owned, objects to gain pleasure from, machines to produce an heir. This is not how Yahweh had intended things to be.

For in deliberate and heightened contrast to the (male) scribes and chief priests who were conspiring to have Jesus killed at the beginning of today’s passage, and the (male) disciple Judas who betrayed him for a sack of coins at the end of the passage, Mark tells the story of a woman whose symbolic action would cut to the heart of what it means to be a true disciple of Christ and an heir to his coming Kingdom.

It was Passion week, the beginning of the end. And just as Jesus had finished describing the destruction of the seemingly-permanent Temple – as Andrew Asbil so beautifully explained to us last week, Jesus now seeks to tell his followers that this very thing would also happen to him. He was the temple that was about to be destroyed. Jesus would soon embody what he has been teaching his followers about discipleship all along – self-sacrifice, self-denial, “taking up the cross” – losing your life to find it – all of this would be epitomized in Jesus’ act of surrendering his life at Calvary.

Jesus chose for the Passover and the Feast of the Unleavened Bread to be the scene in which this final conflict will take place – here we are “plunged into the deepest heart of Jewish symbolic life” - these feasts were a reminder of Israel’s liberation from slavery and oppression in Egypt, through the wilderness towards the freedom of the Promised Land. New Testament scholar N.T. Wright notes that Jesus had been acting as the new Moses, doing striking things that were signs of the coming freedom (healing the sick, casting out demons, giving sight to the blind, and elevating the marginalized). And in this story it is no different – Jesus was eating at the home of a leper, once again not caring about the “normal” social barriers of the day.

Enter a woman, Mary of Bethany, who boldly disrupts the gathering of the men, and with one exorbitant act of extravagant, uninhibited worship, broke a jar of fragrant, costly oil and intimately pours in over Jesus’ head.

The disciples and the other men were shocked, for the symbolism would have been clear- everyone in the room would have understood what she was doing. Ched Meyers notes in his commentary on Mark Binding the Strong Man that she was anointing him as King – for this was an illusion to the stories in 1 Samuel 10 and 16, the anointing of Saul and David by Samuel the prophet. In her act of love and adoration, not only was she declaring Jesus King, but also she was assuming the office of a prophet – one who speaks and acts for God. A woman – speaking and acting for God.

The men in the room were indignant – Who does she think she is? And so they reacted with fake piety, pretending to care for the poor. And Jesus rebukes them, telling them to leave her alone, that she has done a beautiful thing to him, and “the poor you will always have with you.” Now, this line has been used by many Christians to justify their apathy towards the continued existence of poverty, but their interpretation is a rather a horrid twist on what he is really saying. Bryant Myers, VP of World Vision, notes in his article "The Poor Always With Us?" that Jesus is mirroring the statement in Deut. 15:4 – “there shall be NO poor among you, for the Lord will bless you in the land that the Lord your God is giving you for an inheritance, IF ONLY you will strictly obey the voice of the Lord your God.” But they DIDN’T obey God, which is why there ARE poor among them now. Poverty was NEVER God’s intention, there had always been more than enough resources to go around, if only they had been faithful to their covenantal promises, of Jubilee, not hoarding their daily bread, and other commandments of mercy, hospitality, and justice. But they weren’t faithful, and so Jesus is SHAMING them by saying that there will always be poor because they’ll never fully hold to their covenantal promises. Which is the very reason that Jesus needed to come for them at all, and be anointed by this woman as King.

With her action, she had understood not only that he was King, but that he was a good King –one that would die for the ones he loves– as she was also, as Jesus pointed out - preparing his body for burial.

She understood that he was unlike all the Kings that Israel had ever known – he would not rule by control, manipulation, domination, or brute power – but he was a servant king, a suffering king, a self-sacrificing, loving, compassionate King – and thus, she understood what all of the (male) disciples could not – their Messiah was going to die.

And thus, he was worthy of such an elaborate sacrifice on her behalf – over a year’s wages it cost – it would have likely been kept aside and sold by her family in time of need – it was her savings, her family’s only security in case of a crisis.

In lavishing it on Jesus, she was releasing her grip on her very security – like us withdrawing all the money in our savings account, or liquidating our assets, cashing in our RRSPS, selling the family jewelry, or precious heirlooms that have been passed down through the generations – and giving it all to Jesus in worship, adoration, and declaration of his Kingship.

THIS is the true nature of discipleship. Not arguing over who would be first or who would have the most authority like James and John, and certainly not giving into cowardice for monetary gain like Judas, or for fear of the crowds, like Peter. True discipleship was embodied by this woman in a costly, extravagant, beautiful, fragrant love for Jesus, a love that beckoned her to relinquish all that which made her feel secure. This over-the-top display caused the anger of those in the room. But she didn’t care – her act came out of her deep insight into WHO Jesus truly was, and out of her abundance of love for him. She abandoned all that was so precious to her and poured it over his head, in an act that declared him the true King over Israel, and the true King over her life, and a King that could be TRUSTED because he was GOOD.

My friends, today I am not that woman. In fact, these days I find myself feeling rather uncomfortable, or even embarrassed, when someone seems to know or worship Jesus in a way that I consider to be over-the-top, extravagant, or even slightly emotional. Perhaps it’s the aversion I have to not being labeled an “emotional woman,” or aversion to the theology and politics that tend to come out of some of the churches that solely encourage a personal, intimate relationship with Jesus, and seem to forget that he also came to bring good news to the poor, liberty to the captives, and justice to the oppressed. I feel that these days, I resonate more with the disciples who wanted the woman to just go away, and were rather angry with her exorbitant act of devotion. I tend to want people who talk about or worship Jesus in a way that seems too intimate, too unnecessarily demonstrative to just be quiet, stop it or put those hands down already, you’re embarrassing yourself! Or me.

But I haven’t always been this way. I remember once being a slight resemblance of that woman, back in the days when Amy Fisher was my roommate. For despite all the things that now irk me about those churches I used to go to, one thing they taught me was how to intimately love Jesus and worship him with all of my being, despite what was going on in my life, despite the depression or the confusion or the lack of direction, or lack of faith. To lay all that I am, all of my security and my insecurity, all of my broken SELF, at his feet.

For despite how over-the-top that woman’s actions must have seemed, Jesus was so moved by the beauty of her “embarrassing” extravagance, that he promised that wherever the gospel would be proclaimed in the whole world, what she had done would be told in memory of her. Yet, sadly, she has not been remembered, for the story has been overlooked as merely a nice thing done by an unimportant woman, rather than a powerful act that cut to the very heart of discipleship when all the “important” others missed the point. May I then suggest, my friends, that every time we eat the bread and drink the wine together in memory of him, that we also give our fragrant, lavish, self-abandoning adoration of Jesus - in memory of her.

holidays that make you feel like crap (?)

Three occasions I don't usually pay attention to - Valentine's Day, Family Day (here in Ontario), and the beginning of Lent - were all smooshed into the last few days, and they all tried really hard to make me feel like crap. On the 14th, I got a FB wall post from a guy I know saying "happy singles awareness day," my roommates all left me alone to be with their closest kin on Family Day (mine are currently in London, India, and Chicago), and Lent - well, you feel like you have to give up things you love.

I admit, my younger self would have given in to the evil plots of these days. Usually I hate V-day and shrug it off as a mere hallmark holiday, designed only by candy, chocolate, and flower companies to make a quick profit from the foolish and love-struck. In my even younger days i would have spent the day feeling sorry for myself that the only card i got was from my father, signed with, "Don't worry, you'll always be *my* valentine." But as I grew older, cynicism, i thought, was much wiser. Write it all off due to corporate manipulation, as smugness and self-righteousness is much better than loneliness.

As for Family Day, well, this is relatively new in Ontario and I've been away for the last 4 years, so we have no tense history together. But my younger self probably would have been sad that my nieces and nephews live so far away, and my parents were in India, and I don't ever see my cousins anymore, and my grandmother didn't get the last letter I wrote to her before she died.

And lent - well, this would have only conjured up vague and ill-placed sentiments about giving up chocolate, or giving up complaining (in my philosophical-ish days)for reasons I wasn't really sure why. It had no terrible place in my past, but it wasn't really important either.

But happily I am able to report, all three occasions failed in their attempts to drag me down. Tried as they might have, I beat off their efforts with a stick I like to call optimism.

I decided to redeem Valentine's Day by celebrating it's original intention - the people who I love in my life - rather than being sad about the people who aren't or angry at corporate manipulation. So I created a hand-made card for my non-romantic Valentine's Day date Trenko, an old friend from Queen's whom I kinda love to death. We had a good old fashioned date - made dinner, complete with wine, went to a movie, and talked and laughed for hours. Good times! At church the next day I gave out little loli-pop heart flowers, which I also made out of construction paper by hand, thank you very much. Even though a certain someone, who I may or may not have had a crush on at one point, commented that he hated V-day and burned one of the heart petals in the palm-ash fire we had outside (a tradition of the Anglican church, to burn last year's palm Sunday branches in order to get the ashes for Ash Wednesday, the first day of Lent). Still, I remained cheery. And when another boy - who, of course, i don't have a crush on - overdid it a little by showering me with candy (my favourite, though - baby sour keys!), a store-bought sickly-sweet and sparkly card, and multiple card-board cut-outs of hearts and cupids, I remained rather calm, un-cynical, and appreciative. Afterwards, Chinese food with a table full of great friends to celebrate the Lunar New Year (also, it was Transfiguation Sunday, how's that for a jam-packed Post-Modern 3-in-1 celebration!) topped the day off with me feeling full and rather contented.

As for family day, I celebrated it with my brother (um, in the Lord) Kyle from Wycliffe, who drove more than one hour to see me and stayed for two nights on our living room futon. We watched multiple episodes of the Office, the phenomenal film Whale Rider, Martyn Joseph and Bruce Cockburn videos, read NT Wright articles out loud, danced to the new Josh Garrels song Zion and Babylon, ate all those sour keys, and made veggie pizza. When a boy called for me (the same one who showered me with gifts - and by the way, cannot speak hardly a word of English, being brand new to Canada from Mexico!) - he answered the phone, and we told him he was brother - perfect! Brother Kyle left after our meditative morning prayer service the next day at 8:08am, and as he drove away I somehow felt like I was part of the greatest family ever.

And now it is the first day of Lent, and this year, it is rather deep and meaningful. I belong now to a church that is very liturgical in it's practices, St. Anne's Anglican Church in Toronto (River is the name of the service - it's very creative and justice-seeking and wonderful). It's liturgical in the sense that it follows the ancient traditions of the Church in order to celebrate the whole story of God in a very rich and symbolic manner. The lectionary calendar is followed, meaning every day, week, and month, pertains to a certain event in the story of God as written in the Scriptures - the Creation, the Fall, the Exodus, the Wilderness, the Waiting, the Exile, the Liberation with the coming of the Messiah, the Crucifixion and Redemption, the Resurrection, the Ascension, the Future Hope - so that in one year, you've re-lived it all together as a community. So now we are in the season of Lent - the Wilderness, the Waiting, the Preparation for the Messiah culminating in his surrendered life, at Easter, and subsequent Resurrection, defeating the powers of death, slavery, and exile, and bringing restoration, redemption, and hope to the people of God.

So those are a lot of big words, and even bigger concepts which I am struggling still to understand - the mystery of it all is great. But this year, I am giving up something big in order to prepare myself for Easter - social connectedness, a.k.a, Facebook. It might seem like a silly thing to some, but honestly, for me, i pretty much love being in the loop, connected, wittily bantering with and sharing links and articles and vids and pics with friends. However, recently it's gotten to the point where I waste hours on Facebook, and not always because i want to be "social," but because I basically want to edit and control my image . With a new profile picture, a new quote, another comment here and inside joke there and witty one liner there, I become too obsessed with how I am perceived, that I micro-manage by online image to death. And it's starting to make me feel rather ill. So. I'm going to spend the time more wisely, doing the read and studying like a good seminary student should, and praying for the wisdom to not freakin' care so much about others think, and start caring more about how others are doing.

And so, holidays that would have at one point made me feel like crap, I throw my glass of water (that is now half full) in your face!

India