Clarion: Journal of Spirituality and Justice

Jesus Could Come Tonight (All Hallow's Eve) - Kenneth Tanner

 

Jesus could come tonight, folks. Keep those porch lights on, those jack-o-lanterns lit, and welcome the children (and your neighbors) as Jesus would.

 

In America, this is unfortunately just about the only hour or so left anymore where anyone might come to our door or we might freely go to the door of anyone. Don’t turn your porch light off, leave for the night, or play the part of an early Scrooge. Kids are watching to see if you are a good neighbor. And be generous with the candy!!

 

As Christians celebrating All Hallow’s Eve, we do not seek to glorify the occult or anything satanic but Halloween (like Ash Wednesday) is a good time for us to let death and other things that scare us into our celebrations and conversations, especially with our kids, especially in a culture that denies death and sweeps it under the rug and keeps it in darkened closets or locked in the attic, the business of morticians and gravediggers, where nobody says a damn thing about it.

 

That has to change for us to be healthy.

 

Contemporary America needs something like Mexico’s Day of the Dead and this is as close as we get to one. We can use celebrations like Halloween to help kids overcome their fears because we trust a story of light and resurrection that transfigures and defeats death and darkness.

 

A child learns by these festivals, as G.K. Chesterton understood, that “limitless terrors ha[ve] a limit, that these shapeless enemies have enemies in the knights of God, that there is something in the universe more mystical than darkness, and stronger than strong fear.”

 

For a really beautiful take on this same message, watch this brief, amazing video:

 

Halloween: Trick or Treat? 

 

All the blessings, this night and always,

Kenneth+

Beyond the Wittenberg Door - Brian Zahnd

Five-hundred years ago on All Hallows Eve (the day before All Saints Day) Martin Luther nailed his Ninety-Five Theses to the door of the All Saints Church in Wittenberg, Germany. Professor Luther was proposing a theological debate, what he got was a revolution. What Luther unwittingly launched that day in Wittenberg was one of the most momentous movements in church history: The Protestant Reformation. Among the many consequences of the Reformation was that the Western Church separated into Catholic and Protestant churches. One way of describing the Reformation would be, “there arose a sharp disagreement, so that they separated from each other.” (Acts 15:39)

So here we are now, five-hundred years down the road — five-hundred years beyond the Wittenberg Door. And finding ourselves half a millennium beyond the Wittenberg Door, how should we think about the Protestant Reformation? I have a few thoughts.

First of all, Commend It.

The Church of the Renaissance had become scandalously corrupt. Too often Popes were worldly emperors and bishops worldly princes with little authentic spirituality. Moral laxity among the clergy and a hierarchy marked by avarice and greed compromised the witness of the Church. A Church mired in empty ritualism where the sacraments were often used as a means of control threatened to rob people of the gospel. Something had to change. When John Tetzel arrived in Wittenberg selling indulgences (think “vacation passes from Purgatory”) as a fund-raising scheme for St. Peter’s Basilica in Rome, hawking his wares with tawdry slogans like, As soon as the coin in coffer rings / The rescued soul from Purgatory springs, well, this was all too much for the young professor of theology, Martin Luther.

I admire Luther for the courage it took to challenge the corrupt system and call for reform. Luther was not only risking his clerical career, he was risking his life. Many would-be reformers had already been burned at the stake. Martin Luther has to be regarded as one of the most courageous (and successful) prophets in church history. So for bringing desperately needed ecclesial and theological reform to a corrupt and misguided Church, I commend the Protestant Reformation.

But I also Lament It.

I lament the Protestant Reformation for the tragic division it brought to the Church. We didn’t end up with a Catholic Church and a Protestant Church…we ended up with something like 10,000 Protestant denominations. And Word of Life Church (the church I pastor) belongs to the second largest Protestant “denomination” in America — non-denominational.

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The Ecological Import of Hopkins’s Sacramental Vision -- Jennifer Doede

Lecture presented at the “Sacramental Approach to Ecology Conference,” Trinity Western University, Oct. 7, 2017.

Gerard Manley Hopkins’s vision and poetics give us a strong basis for a robust sacramental ecology. However, Sally McFague, an American Christian feminist theologian, in her book Super, Natural Christians would question this claim about Gerard Manley Hopkins, the 19^th century Jesuit priest and poet. She claims that Hopkins renders invisible or transparent the horizontal array of creation to the vertical referent of Christ. In this paper, I want to contest this idea. Sally McFague in her book Super, Natural Christians praises Gerard Manley Hopkins for his “integrated sensibility, [his] ability to see the natural and the supernatural worlds together” (58,59), but she criticizes his vision of the natural world as understanding nature only as a symbol or instrument to move us toward knowing the divine. She believes Hopkins depicts nature as a means to an end, without its own integrity and purpose. As brilliant as McFague’s book is, she fails to see Hopkins’s sacramental vision as giving nature its full due. However, I want to say  his poetry enacts a double-vision that recognizes, honours, and affirms both realities without compromising the value of either.

McFague draws on three models to illustrate the history of Christians’ relationship with nature: the Medieval model, the Enlightenment model, and the Ecological model. Both the medieval model and the ecological model convey humans and nature as subjects, whereas the Enlightenment model depicts only humans as subjects, thus consigning nature to mere objectified resource. She praises the medieval model for its portrayal of humans as created and governed by God and interconnected to all other forms of life, but she criticizes this model for its failure to recognize intrinsic worth in nature. Nature is never significant in and for itself but rather is reduced to a symbolic or allegorical framework to benefit Christians. The Enlightenment model illustrates the deterioration of the medieval understanding of Christians connectedness with nature, viewing nature only as resource and humans are the sole subjects in the world. There has been an ontological shift; no longer is nature seen as symbolic of God’s relationship to humanity; nature serves humanity. Nature is now utterly object, subjected to human desire.

Download the full paper: The Ecological Import of Hopkins Revised Version

More popular than Jesus - by Paul E. Ralph

"More popular than Jesus." ^{_{John Lennon, 1966}}

 

I grew up the baby of six, in a house predominantly filled with women. 

Wonderful women. 

Women full of life and laughter.

Women who enriched my sense of what it meant to be a boy, and ultimately a man. 

‘Noticing up’ came with the territory I guess.  Literally and figuratively.  I saw beautiful women who, among so many other things, enjoyed all of the usual trappings of adolescence.

Make-up.  Fashion.  Boys.  (Yes.  We mustn’t forget the boys.  I could name them.  Each and every one.)

I adored my sisters.  And I loved my mom also.  Still do.

My sisters filled our house with music.  Record players seemed to be everywhere and so did the sounds of the 50’s, 60’s and 70’s.

Elton, the Beach Boys, James Taylor, Rod Stewart, disco, the Mammas and the Pappas and everything in between.  But mostly there was the Fab Four and their melodious mantras of frenzied freedom.

“All you need is love, (listen for it) …altogether now, na, nana, na na”

“Love. Love is all you need,” they chanted. 

I believed it for a very long time.  Now I call bullsh*t. 

According to Abraham Maslow, not to mention my stomach, we also need food.  We need food, water, warmth and rest.  And these are just the basic needs.  We also need safety and security, and we need to belong.  Then there is our desire to accomplish something of value, and to feel like we’ve accomplished something of value.  It would seem, that in the end, we would also like to be deeply fulfilled in our lives. 

Yet that lyric lingers in my head.

 

When Holy Mercy Touches the Dust of Death - Brad Jersak

Luke 7:11-17 

Jesus Raises the Widow’s Son at Nain

¹¹ Soon afterwards he went to a town called Nain, and his disciples and a large crowd went with him. ¹² As he approached the gate of the town, a man who had died was being carried out. He was his mother’s only son, and she was a widow; and with her was a large crowd from the town. ¹³ When the Lord saw her, he had compassion for her and said to her, “Do not weep.” ¹⁴ Then he came forward and touched the bier, and the bearers stood still. And he said, “Young man, I say to you, rise!” ¹⁵ The dead man sat up and began to speak, and Jesus gave him to his mother. ¹⁶ Fear seized all of them; and they glorified God, saying, “A great prophet has risen among us!” and “God has looked favorably on his people!” ¹⁷ This word about him spread throughout Judea and all the surrounding country.

What happens when a holy God touches an unclean man?

And what happens to a holy God when he is touched by an unclean man? How we choose to answer may depend very much what we believe holy means. And it may depend on what unclean means. But most of all, how we think about holiness, uncleanness and what happens when they touch must be informed by Jesus answer to that question. In the Gospel story of the widow of Nain, we find an answer. We see holiness in action.

What is holiness?

When our human ancestors first saw lightning fall from heaven and set a tree on fire, their minds were also ignited with ideas of God and holiness and the dangerous, destructive power of holiness. When our spiritual ancestors, the newly liberated Hebrews first gathered at Mount Sinai, they thought of holiness as not only powerful, but radioactive and infectious. Holiness had touched the mountain and if an animal touched the mountain, it needed to be killed … from a distance (Exodus 19:12-13). Holiness was deadly. Laws were established to boundary holiness. DO NOT TOUCH!

When the priesthood was given special provisions for handling holiness, keeping these regulations was associated with stewarding the Holy and with being holy. When the religious establishment meticulously kept these laws, they eventually saw themselves as holy. Holiness was law-keeping. Or conversely, holiness was avoiding law-breaking. Holiness was not sinning (however you defined it). Holiness focused on sin avoidance inevitably became moralistic and puritanical. Christianity’s holiness movements could measure one’s sanctification by what you didn’t do. Holiness virtually became synonymous with self-righteous practice and rendering moral judgments.

The holiness of Jesus

In Christ God recalibrates our sense of the Holy. “Be holy as I am holy” is unveiled as “be merciful, as your heavenly Father is merciful.” In Luke 6:32-42, the holy mercy of God is marked by refraining from judgments, indiscriminate grace and hospitality, radical forgiveness and enemy love. If you want to be holy as God is holy, be merciful as your Father is merciful.    

But Christ not only teaches us holy mercy. In the story of the widow of Nain, he shows us holy mercy. In this story, we see the holy power and holy mercy of God revealed in Christ as life-giving compassion. Holy God sees this poor widow, already grieving the loss of her husband and now, her only beloved son. And holiness reaches out to touch them. This is the holiness that came down from heaven, was incarnate of the Virgin Mary and the Holy Spirit, and became man. This is the holiness of God revealed in the humanity of Jesus Christ. This is the holiness that sees our hurt, our misery, our grief. This is holiness rooted in mercies of God, that cause him to come down and be with us. When we think of the word Holy, we must think of the mercies of God.

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Reversing the Reversal: George Grant, Contemplation & Action - Ron Dart

George Grant was drawn to Martin Heidegger for the simple reason that Heidegger was, probably, one of the most severe critics of the modern way of doing philosophy and the western understanding of mind and what it means to think.  Heidegger was convinced that western philosophy had lost its way, and rationalism led to a cul-de-sac that diverted the longing pilgrim from a deeper notion of being. Heidegger’s commitment to philosophy had a great deal to do with returning to the ancient way marks and a pointing of the way to wisdom and contemplation. Grant was convinced that the clearing that Heidegger was a guide towards offered more possibilities than the sterility of modern philosophy.

Grant was not only drawn to Heidegger’s commitment to contemplation and wisdom as an antidote and corrective to rationalism and a hyper activism, but Heidegger’s turn to the ancient Greeks was a turn that Grant also made, but did so with a difference. Grant agreed with Heidegger that much modern philosophy was lost in a dark wood with few paths out, but he differed with Heidegger on what wisdom and contemplation might mean on the journey.

Reversing the Reversal: George Grant, Contemplation & Action - Ron Dart

George Grant was drawn to Martin Heidegger for the simple reason that Heidegger was, probably, one of the most severe critics of the modern way of doing philosophy and the western understanding of mind and what it means to think.  Heidegger was convinced that western philosophy had lost its way, and rationalism led to a cul-de-sac that diverted the longing pilgrim from a deeper notion of being. Heidegger’s commitment to philosophy had a great deal to do with returning to the ancient way marks and a pointing of the way to wisdom and contemplation. Grant was convinced that the clearing that Heidegger was a guide towards offered more possibilities than the sterility of modern philosophy.

Grant was not only drawn to Heidegger’s commitment to contemplation and wisdom as an antidote and corrective to rationalism and a hyper activism, but Heidegger’s turn to the ancient Greeks was a turn that Grant also made, but did so with a difference. Grant agreed with Heidegger that much modern philosophy was lost in a dark wood with few paths out, but he differed with Heidegger on what wisdom and contemplation might mean on the journey.

Seeking Reconciliation One Moment at a Time David R. Clements

Mt. Thom, Chilliwack, BC, July 2017

 

Seeking Reconciliation One Moment at a Time

David R. Clements

Chair, Department of Geography and Environment

Professor of Biology

Trinity Western University

¹⁵ The Son is the image of the invisible God, the firstborn over all creation. ¹⁶ For in him all things were created: things in heaven and on earth, visible and invisible, whether thrones or powers or rulers or authorities; all things have been created through him and for him. ¹⁷ He is before all things, and in him all things hold together. ¹⁸ And he is the head of the body, the church; he is the beginning and the firstborn from among the dead, so that in everything he might have the supremacy.¹⁹ For God was pleased to have all his fullness dwell in him, ²⁰ and through him to reconcile to himself all things, whether things on earth or things in heaven, by making peace through his blood, shed on the cross.

Colossians 1:15-20

One of my mentors in this field of creation care is Cal De Witt, who was the founding director of the Au Sable Institute of Environmental Studies. Cal tells a story of one time when he was preaching a message on Colossians 1:15-20 to a Latin American audience through a translator. But the real translator in the story was the Holy Spirit. The repetition of “all things” in the passage became obvious to the audience who wound up in something of a frenzy chanting the Greek “ta panta!” Maybe this audience can give the chant a try…

Why is Paul emphasizing ta panta so much? How should that speak to us today? Ever since the beginning we’ve had a separation problem. We put everything we don’t think is important at arm’s length. Are not the beautiful flowers important to God? What about the spiders? Or the snakes? Wait you say – I like nature but I don’t like those particular creatures. But then what happens to ta panta? And do we put God’s creation in a little box – a television, a computer screen for looking up the parts of nature we like on google? A phone screen where we “like” a particular photo from a hike that a “friend” of ours took? Do we make God’s creation a mere backdrop for the drama of God’s salvation of people? Or is our Savior the cosmic Christ who died for ta panta? Is doing some activity in nature a recreational activity in the sense of merely a “hobby” that some people like to do, or is “re-creation” essential to being human as part of the great reconciliation that God is accomplishing?

THE ACCUSER (OR, “HOLINESS AND DREAD”) – MICHAEL FRACK

There is an idea currently extremely popular among the spiritual elite of my generation—an idea which is neither spiritual nor elite, but rather unspiritual and elitist. It is the carnal passion for mere dread of a “God” whose lust for physical suffering evokes this emotion of dread as, above all things, the only proper response to the deity’s intense hatred of the human race—or at least, of most of it. Those few whom he has chosen to save, he has only chosen to save because he cannot see them—he has thrown the Blood of Christ over them like a paper bag with holes punched out for breathing, but covering everything else. But if that paper bag were removed, and he were to see the real person underneath, he would be bound by his own holiness to destroy them immediately. All for his supreme pleasure.

Is this the God of the Bible? Is this the one who came “to give them life, and life to the full,” (John 10:10) “to bind up the brokenhearted, to proclaim freedom for the captives and release from darkness for the prisoners” (Isaiah 61:1)? It seems much more like the one who comes “only to steal, kill, and destroy,” and to set traps to watch men fall, then pounce on them for falling, levelling accusations against them for their utter incompetence before the holy standard, and stripping them of the dignity of even the choice of trying. Such a being takes delight in the despair of humanity, a glee and satisfaction in the idea of man’s utterly unsatisfactory condition.

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God’s “Wrath” as Anthropomorphism Discussed in the Church Fathers

St John Cassian, Institutes

Chapter 3.

Of those things which are spoken of God anthropomorphically.

For if when these things are said of God they are to be understood literally in a material gross signification, then also He sleeps, as it is said, Arise, wherefore do you sleep, O Lord? though it is elsewhere said of Him: Behold he that keeps Israel shall neither slumber nor sleep. And He stands and sits, since He says, Heaven is my seat, and earth the footstool for my feet: Isaiah 66:1 though He measure out the heaven with his hand, and holds the earth in his fist. Isaiah 40:12 And He is drunken with wine as it is said, The Lord awoke like a sleeper, a mighty man, drunken with wine; He who only has immortality and dwells in the light which no man can approach unto: 1 Timothy 6:16 not to say anything of the ignorance and forgetfulness, of which we often find mention in Holy Scripture: nor lastly of the outline of His limbs, which are spoken of as arranged and ordered like a man's; e.g., the hair, head, nostrils, eyes, face, hands, arms, fingers, belly, and feet: if we are willing to take all of which according to the bare literal sense, we must think of God as in fashion with the outline of limbs, and a bodily form; which indeed is shocking even to speak of, and must be far from our thoughts.

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Chapter 4.

In what sense we should understand the passions and human arts which are ascribed to the unchanging and incorporeal God.

And so as without horrible profanity these things cannot be understood literally of Him who is declared by the authority of Holy Scripture to be invisible, ineffable, incomprehensible, inestimable, simple, and uncompounded, so neither can the passion of anger and wrath be attributed to that unchangeable nature without fearful blasphemy. For we ought to see that the limbs signify the divine powers and boundless operations of God, which can only be represented to us by the familiar expression of limbs: by the mouth we should understand that His utterances are meant, which are of His mercy continually poured into the secret senses of the soul, or which He spoke among our fathers and the prophets: by the eyes we can understand the boundless character of His sight with which He sees and looks through all things, and so nothing is hidden from Him of what is done or can be done by us, or even thought. By the expression hands, we understand His providence and work, by which He is the creator and author of all things; the arms are the emblems of His might and government, with which He upholds, rules and controls all things. And not to speak of other things, what else does the hoary hair of His head signify but the eternity and perpetuity of Deity, through which He is without any beginning, and before all times, and excels all creatures? So then also when we read of the anger or fury of the Lord, we should take it not ἀνθρωποπαθῶς ; i.e., according to an unworthy meaning of human passion, but in a sense worthy of God, who is free from all passion; so that by this we should understand that He is the judge and avenger of all the unjust things which are done in this world; and by reason of these terms and their meaning we should dread Him as the terrible rewarder of our deeds, and fear to do anything against His will.

For human nature is wont to fear those whom it knows to be indignant, and is afraid of offending: as in the case of some most just judges, avenging wrath is usually feared by those who are tormented by some accusation of their conscience; not indeed that this passion exists in the minds of those who are going to judge with perfect equity, but that, while they so fear, the disposition of the judge towards them is that which is the precursor of a just and impartial execution of the law. And this, with whatever kindness and gentleness it may be conducted, is deemed by those who are justly to be punished to be the most savage wrath and vehement anger. It would be tedious and outside the scope of the present work were we to explain all the things which are spoken metaphorically of God in Holy Scripture, with human figures. Let it be enough for our present purpose, which is aimed against the sin of wrath, to have said this that no one may through ignorance draw down upon himself a cause of this evil and of eternal death, out of those Scriptures in which he should seek for saintliness and immortality as the remedies to bring life and salvation.

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A Sacramental Approach to Ecology - Erica Grimm

  

Dr. Erica Grimm

This has been a season of weather watching. Wildfires swirled out of control in our interior, in the peat fields of Greenland and throughout Europe. Whirlwinds Franklin, Harvey, Irma and Maria wreaked category 5 fury, meanwhile 1/3 of Bangladesh sat under water. A warmer ocean is like a giant engine that uses warm moist air as fuel (NASA) Record high temperatures–three years running­­–warmed the ocean, melted ice caps, and scorched the earth. Rising sea levels produced by ice cap melt exacerbate flooding, while bone-dry areas burned. Extreme weather, increasing in frequency and severity is our new normal. it is clear from the scientific evidence that human beings have changed the chemistry and physics of the planet– the ocean has acidified, warmed, lost oxygen–shifting global weather cycles; ushering in a new geological age some call the Anthropocene (the current geological epoche beginning in the 18^th century when for the first time, human activities have changed global climate and ecosystems).No one here needs to be convinced of the urgency of our global environmental situation, or the irony of Francis Bacon’s conviction that nature could be conquered (Novum Organum, 1620). Rene Descartes believed science would make humans masters, possessors and dominators of nature. In retrospect, this sounds shocking in its arrogance. Now, weather and science tell us otherwise. Never masters, we are an integral part of nature. Laudato Si addressed the churches devastating misunderstanding of the word “dominate”, identifying the ecological crisis as a spiritual problem (Pope Francis, On The Care For Our Common Home). Decoupling scientific and humanistic-spiritual traditions while possessing, mastering and dominating the earth has created what some are calling the 6^th Extinction.  

“Irreversible end of civilization” and “the size of the remnant depends on how much we change now” are phrases seared into my memory (Seizing An Alternative: Toward an Ecological Civilization). Profound loss is the sorry legacy of a mechanistic model of the universe, loss of forests, loss of ice, loss of cold, loss of species–according to the wildlife conservancy ¼ of the earth’s species will be extinct by 2050. Extinct is forever. Human caused climate change has halted the fecundity of what can only be described as the paradisal flourishing of the Cenozoic Era (dozens of millions of years).

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A Meditation on Anger - Rob

A meditation on anger

I've been meaning to write this one for a long time now, but, well, life happens.

A few months back I was on a retreat. It was a great time. Lots of new people, lots of drinking. Not so much new info, but free room, board, and drinks.

There was a gentleman on the retreat, who's name I now forget. Long story short, he was married. Had two kids. Seemed like a really nice guy. One night, while drinking and partying, this gentleman got mauled by two girls on the retreat. They were shamelessly hitting on him. They knew he was married, but didn't seem to care. One was all over him. He resisted at first, but he was loaded and eventually stopped resisting so hard. He did not make out with or sleep with either girl. I ended up walking him back to his cabin, and then returning to the party.

The point of this story is what was going on in my head during the incident.

I was angry. Furiously, unbelievably, angry. Angrier than I have been in a very long time. So angry it was hard to breath. Granted I had been drinking, a lot, but I am not an angry drunk.

My anger perplexed me.

But as I walked, holding my anger out to God, it started to make some sense.

Katharine Hayhoe: A leading climate scientist, and an evangelical - Lloyd Mackey h/t Wayne Northey

Chart on the right: How Fossil Fuel Money Made Climate Change Denial the Word of God

Wayne Northey: Sadly, faith and politics have been a toxic mix that has led to enormous denialism (like Holocaust deniers) in the Plymouth Brethren/evangelical communities Hayhoe was raised in. Her appeal to Christians to embrace what Catholics call “a preferential option for the poor” is to be noted over against for instance the depiction of evangelical deniers in this article: “How Fossil Fuel Money Made Climate Change Denial the Word of God“.

A recent interview, “‘This is not going to end well’: Author Barbara Kingsolver on climate change“, by Anna Maria Tremonti on The Current program (CBC – Canadian Broadcasting Commission) underscores the dire emergency. In it we learn that annually now, we humans voraciously use 125% of the earth’s resources. This is utterly unsustainable – and will have catastrophic consequences on just about every scale, from continuing extreme climate blow-outs to gargantuan flooding of coastal cities to greatly exacerbated international conflicts, amongst other disasters.

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Lecture: Evelyn Underhill & C.S. Lewis - by Ron Dart

Review of Arnold Shives' "Alpine Anatomy" - by Ron Dart

Alpine Anatomy: The Mountain Art of Arnold Shives (2012)

Arnold Shives has obsessively hiked, climbed and depicted British Columbia’s mountains since the early 1960s. The fiftieth anniversary of his first extended mountaineering expedition seems an apposite moment to reconsider his work and life in the range of contexts that he himself created through the two activities that have been the focus of his practice: mountain climbing and mountain picturing. This book is the result of that reconsideration.

—Foreword

Arnold Shives is one of the most creative and probing mountain artists on the West Coast, and Alpine Anatomy: The Mountain Art of Arnold Shives ably and amply illustrates why this is the obvious case. The compact hardbound edition of Alpine Anatomy brings together, from a variety of informative sources, essays about Shives from such artistic and mountain worthies as John Grande, Bill Jeffries, Edward Lucie-Smith, Darrin Martens, Toni Onley and Glenn Wordsworth---it, also, is a superb survey of Shives’ outdoors and mountain art work from 1961-2010. There are many fine photographs of Shives at different mountain locations in the book that track and trace his mountain journey from the late 1950s to the present.

The Influence of Tom Thompson, Emily Carr and the Group of Seven - Arnold Shives

Arnold Shives @ Cezanne's Mont Sainte-Victoire

The Influence of Tom Thompson, Emily Carr and the Group of Seven

My earliest “art” memories are of a pair of late nineteenth century oils on canvas, portraits with grey-brown backgrounds, that graced the wall of our home, along with a couple of reproductions by the same artist; and I also recall several reproductions of work by Emily Carr and the Group of Seven.  

Emily Carr and the Group of Seven. By the age of nine I came to feel a kinship with them; in fact, sometime before I turned ten, I felt a calling: that to become an artist would be a part of my destiny.  Were the above artists, famous for their celebration of the Canadian wilderness, responsible, at least in part, for my childhood epiphany?  Quite likely.  

And what about those 1890 oils of a man and his wife – just how do they fit into this story?   It turns out that those portraits are of my great grandparents Reuben Booth Belden and Claire Peel Belden, and were painted by Claire Belden’s brother, Paul Peel (1860-1892). Was I influenced by kinsman Peel?  Of course I was, growing up as I did imbibing the mythology surrounding this talented painter who, after a dozen years of art education in London, Philadelphia and in Paris, achieved recognition; yes, and then, after a brief illness, died, in Paris, age thirty one.  I admired his undeniable skill and, of course, there was the gravitational pull of family relationship, but his academic style and the sentimental subject matter for which he is best known, did not resonant with me at all.

The man who commissioned those two portraits - Peel’s brother-in-law - warrants a few words.  Reuben Booth Belden, an American living in Toronto, and in partnership with his brother, published Picturesque Canada; The Country As It Was And Is.  This two-volume book is regarded as the most important - and controversial - guide and tribute to Canada in the post-Confederation period. George Monro Grant was the editor, and the important illustration component of this highly ambitious project was under the supervision of Lucius O’Brien (1832 – 1899) who himself produced many of the 540 wood engravings – an astonishing number - and commissioned other artists, such as F.M. Bell-Smith (1846 – 1923).  The latter was an advocate of a uniquely Canadian school of art with an orientation to Canada’s wilderness landscape.  The following quote from Bell-Smith’s Wikipedia page is germane: “Later artists, including Tom Thompson, Emily Carr, and the Group of Seven, contributed to this focus on Canada’s natural environment in art.” 

A Sesquincentennial Message from Jean Vanier

Wayne Northey: This I can celebrate!

Though he has lived in France for many years, and elsewhere in Europe before that, Jean Vanier remains as Canadian as delight at winter giving way to a new spring. His parents had a powerful impact on Canada’s emergence as a mature and independent country, and so it was natural for him to join in, even across the Atlantic, in the joyfulness surrounding the country’s 150th birthday party. But that joy, he reminded his fellow Canadians, comes from encountering each other with love. “Joy is when we meet people – not above them, not below them, but as children of God.”

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Columbus Day? Brian Zahnd

It’s Columbus Day in America. Sort of. While still a Federal holiday, less than half the states observe Columbus day. And in some states and in many cities today is observed as Indigenous Peoples’ Day. Where Native Americans still have a fairly visible presence Columbus Day can be a bit awkward.

Growing up in Missouri I knew Columbus Day as the celebration of the “discovery” of America. Which lets slip the obvious fact that the story is being told from a European vantage point. When I arrived in Spain for the first time I hardly “discovered” Spain. Yet from my perspective I was making a new discovery. (I did refrain from claiming to now own Spain.)

Contrary to what you may have thought, Columbus did not arrive on the shores of an empty wilderness, but on the shores of a world more populous than Europe. Tenochtitlan (Mexico City) was larger than any European city. But armed with guns, steel, and germs, and driven by the conquistador’s lust for gold and slaves, the population of the Americas was decimated. Columbus discovered America like that asteroid discovered the dinosaurs.

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Postcards from Babylon - Brian Zahnd

At the end of Peter’s first epistle — a letter to believers living in the eastern provinces of the Roman Empire — the apostle cryptically says, “She who is in Babylon greets you.” What does Peter mean by that enigmatic phrase? Why does Peter end his letter by referring to some mysterious woman living in the once great but now insignificant city of Babylon? The answer to this question has to do with the long and bloody history of empire and the new kind of empire that had just began to emerge in the world, a new empire in which Peter plays an important role.

In the Hebrew scriptures Babylon is the prophetic icon of empire. Empires are rich and powerful nations that, in their arrogant assumption of a divine right to rule the nations and in their conceited claim of possessing a manifest destiny to shape history, intrude upon the sovereignty of God. Peter sees Rome as the contemporary equivalent to Babylon — the latest economic-military superpower deifying itself and asserting a sovereignty belonging only to God. “She” in “Babylon” is the bride of Christ, the church, the community of those who through faith and baptism have renounced the idolatrous belief that Rome is the savior of the world and that Caesar is Lord, who now boldly confess that it is Jesus who is the world’s true Lord and Savior. This is an audacious claim to say the least! It’s this controversial and dangerous claim that periodically landed Christians in prison and the Coliseum. That is, until the church in the era of Constantine found a way to compromise with the empire and make the convoluted claim that somehow both Christ and Caesar were Lord — one in heaven and the other on earth. Goodbye early Christianity, hello Christendom.

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How Fossil Fuel Money Made Climate Change Denial the Word of God - Brendan O'Connor

How Fossil Fuel Money Made Climate Change Denial the Word of God

Brendan O’Connor

 

Filed to: ANOINTED BY BIG OIL

WN: The supreme haughty superiority of Christians who just know all the massive, irrefutable science about human-caused climate change — as the massive scientific support for the Darwinian theory of evolution — are all a big hoax, “because the Bible tells me so…”

An outstanding yet sobering article analyzing the move by white American Evangelicals (with lots of white Evangelical Canadians in their train!) may be found here.

excerpts:

“There’s a wing of the evangelical church that’s historically distrustful of science and of modernity,” Meyaard-Schaap, the YECA organizer, told me, citing the publication of Darwin’s On the Origin of Species in 1859 and the Scopes Monkey Trial in 1925. “This was a faction of the church that had been here for a while, who had significant cultural power and saw that power diminishing,” he said. “In the face of what they saw as significant threats to their identity, that wing of the church decided that their best reaction was to retreat, to pull away from public life, to invest in their own institutions, to calcify this resistance to modernity and science.”

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