In Support of Non-Violence that Looks Like Violence
A little while ago I was asking if maybe violence was necessary sometimes. For myself, I still take a perspective of non-violence is a discipline and direction that I want to live my life, but…
A Sermon on Potlucks And Sharing Meals
Potlucks is the oldest and most consistent tradition that we have at theStory. From our very first meeting as a community, we met in each other’s homes and ate together. The importance of such a…
The Universe Is Made Up Of Stories
This excerpt is from Sapiens: Any large-scale human cooperation – whether a modern state, a medieval church, an ancient city or an archaic tribe – is rooted in common myths that exist only in peoples…
Guilt and Empathy Are Both Attempts For Connection
Guilt and empathy are not two things that you would normally think would go together. But I’ve been thinking lately of their connection on two different levels. The first is that empathetic people generally are…
The Stories We Tell Ourselves And What Drives Us To Action
One of the aims of November was to ask ourselves the question of “now what” in regards to some of the current issues around us. The one’s I suggested to the lead team were the…
Simple Belief Systems Should Be Affirmed
Humans have this need to summarize and simplify our belief system. When you ask people what they believe in, at the core of their being, you get very concise answers. You hear things like God,…
Is True Consciousness Possible When You Hold Onto Faith?
Faith by it’s very nature is a choice to hold to something that cannot be proven. It is a choice of hope despite the lack of evidence that any exists or does not exist. Those…
Does Church Shape Us, Or Do we Shape The Church?
One of the things I’ve grown passionate about with our church is to really spell out and communicate our church practices. As it is these types of practices form us into certain kinds of people….
Nihilism vs Faith
When you allow yourself to explore all philosophical and religious angles, you will come face to face with the world of nihilism. And after exploring all the different options, nihilism becomes quite attractive because it…
Sheltered Workshops Fulfills a Need
I wrote this because organizations like Wawanosh Enterprises should be defended on issues like this. Turning a service like this into a political and economic issue hurts everyone involved. It ends up becoming about making…
Dallas and Celeste
A few years back, this guy with big, dark rimmed glasses sat in our church with his friends. One year later, he sat quietly in a living room in Saskatoon across from me. At some…
A Perfect Example of Why The Sarnia Observer Needs To Die
It’s a nice Sunday afternoon, I’m reading through the news. An insane image shows up of a man on fire on the front page of the Observer forty minutes ago with the headline “Flames at…
Rooted: A Sermon On Staying
Communities have different ways of remembering who they are and where they came from. For instance the wider church community throughout the entire world remembers this through the scriptures. Countries have constitutions. Businesses have logos…
Staying
Without roots of love, we easily become slaves to our own desires, using the place where we happen to be as a staging ground for our ambitions and manipulating the people around us so they…
Voting Federally in Sarnia-Lambton in 2015 (I Guess I’m Voting After All)
My political leanings vary daily. I read anarchist literature for fun. I’m currently reading Che Guevara’s biography. My religious leanings side heavily with those of the Christian anarchists and liberation theologians and anti-colonial thinkers and…
Living An Intentional Life: A Sermon On Intention
We all wake up every single morning. We all go to bed at night. We all eat. We all breathe. We all live in houses. We all have relationships. What ends up happening with all…
Norway and Iceland Photos
I had the privilege of going to Norway and Iceland for three weeks a few months ago. We rented an RV in Norway and drove around the fjords and marveled in the beauty of the…
Learning Things That Cannot Be Taught: A Reflection On Relationships
The liturgy, like the feast, exists not to educate but to seduce people into participating in common activity of the highest order, where one is freed to learn things which cannot be taught. -Aidan Kavanaugh…
When Money Determines Everything
Without the existence of a rich set of criteria for evaluating the application of time, money quickly becomes the lowest common denominator that defines whether or not time is being spent in a worthwhile manner….
City Hall Should Move Into Bayside Mall
link (a letter I wrote for the Sarnia Journal) Sir: Former city councillor John Vollmar recently criticized council for “vetoing” two offers to purchase Bayside Mall. He suggested we should count our losses and let…