more pilfering from The Gum Thief

"A few years back I had to organize my son Brendan's, funeral. Joan was completely wrecked, and I was barely keeping it together. I remember sitting there with the funeral director, trying to think of what to say in the death notice or whom I could invite to speak. I drew a blank, and the director, an older guy - white hair, a head shaped like a stone dug out of a Scottish field, a guy who'd been through a trench or two - suggested that no one had to speak and we could recite grade school stuff like the Lord's Prayer. He said that most people know it by heart, and we could all get through the proceedings with a sliver of dignity.

He must have smelled my breath-tequila-because he looked at me a moment, then went to his desk and pulled out some very peaty Scotch, almost like soil syrup, and poured both of us a few fingers. He told me that most people who come to arrange services don't believe in anything. He said that if he's learned anything from doing his job, it's that if you don't have a spiritual practice in place when times are good, you can't expect to suddenly develop one during a moment of crisis. He said we're told by TV and movies and Reader's Digest that a crisis will trigger massive personal change - and that those big changes will make the pain worthwhile. But from what he could see, big change almost never happens. People simply feel lost. They have no idea what to say or do or feel or think. They become messes and tend to remain messes. Having a few default hymns and prayers at least makes the lack of crisis-born insight bearable. The man was a true shepherd of souls. Why don't men like him run for public office?"

Extract from The Gum Thief, by Douglas Coupland.

Painfully insightful. Chillingly honest ... "if you don't have a spiritual practice in place when times are good, you can't expect to suddenly develop one during a moment of crisis."

Lessons in life:

#1 - growth through adversity is not automatic, it requires the right (disciplined and faithful) response to the adversity.

#2 - if a faithful attitude cannot be cultivated when times are good, don't expect it to magically appear when the going gets tough.

Conservatives & Politics

This has been an issue buzzing away in my brain ever since the comments about the definition of marriage and civil partnerships. Christians always seem to be protesting against gays but never protesting against the wrong treatment of gays.

I wonder if part of the problem is the current system of western politics - based around special interest lobbying.

Things get done in politics today by coalitions around issues. Human nature being what it is, it is really hard to get people to agree on anything these days - therefore the 'voice' put out by various groups is usually black and white, without any nuance.

Generally conservatives (politically and theologically) are opposed to gay marriage and feel they can impact public policy if they put up a united front. As soon as nuance is added to the debate coalitions get scared that they will lose the majority vote they think they need.

I want to be clear, I'm not at all trying to justify this - for example it is wrong that conservatives do not speak out enough against violence to homosexuals. I'm just saying that our whole political process makes that hard to do so. The bigger issue is the need to change how we do politics. (Indeed, I would argue that films like Milk protray how the gay rights movement only started to make ground when they started to adopt this style of politics themselves as well - it is the only way to get things done at the moment but it actively encourages division and factionism, the them and us mentality.)

Nicked from The Gum Thief

I seem to be pilfering from books I'm reading at the moment. And they all have titles about stealing ... it is just a coincidence. Honest.

A few years ago it dawned on me that everybody past a certain age - regardless of how they look on the outside - pretty much constantly dreams of being able to escape from their lives. They don't want to be who they are any more. They want out... Do you want out? Do you often wish you could be somebody, anybody, other than who you are - the you who holds a job and feeds a family - the you who keeps a relatively okay place to live and who still tries to keep your friendships alive? In other words, the you who's going to remain pretty much the same until the casket?

The Gum Thief, by Douglas Coupland.



A great quote for our age. As a kid we spend all our time wishing we were about 20 - with all the independence and freedom that would bring - and then the rest of our lives wishing we were 20 again ... with all the independence and freedom that would bring!?


Instead the Apostle Paul said this:

"But godliness with contentment is great gain." (1 Timothy 6: 6)

Wow. Our world could do with a big piece of that. Ummh, contentment. Happy to be the person God created you to be, right now, right here.

Stolen from The Book Thief

I wanted to tell the book thief many things, about beauty and brutality. But what could I tell her about those things that she didn't already know? I wanted to explain that I am constantly overestimating and underestimating the human race - that rarely do I ever estimate it. I wanted to ask her how the same thing could be so ugly and so glorious, and its words so damning and brilliant.

taken from The Book Thief by Markus Zusak.

What an accurate depiction of humanity and what a biblical one. People - created in God's image with all that divine potential, and yet fatally flawed by sin. So ugly and so glorious. That is humanity. That is the gospel.