Author Archive for Paul Loewen

Let’s face it, we all use tech­nol­ogy. The fact that we’re read­ing from oth­ers on a blog is evi­dence to that fact. Jeanette and I use email as our pri­mary com­mu­ni­ca­tion method. It’s quick. It allows peo­ple to respond on their own time. And it doesn’t inter­rupt life the way a phone (espe­cially a cell phone) does. As we’re get­ting used to all this tech­nol­ogy, many peo­ple of older gen­er­a­tions (mine included) are opposed to some of the move­ments among the younger crowd. Tex­ting, face­book­ing, etc. They scare us. “It’ll reduce face-to-face inter­ac­tion,” we say. “They’ll spend all their time in front of a screen,” we add. And it’s prob­a­bly true — we’re spend­ing more and more time in front of screens. “We didn’t spend that much time watch­ing TV,” some would say. But the plethora of con­tent on TV and the myr­iad of infor­ma­tion avail­able on the inter­net really makes that point irrel­e­vant. There wasn’t all that much to see on TV back then. Now there is. And at first the inter­net wasn’t all that great either. Now it is.

And now those con­ve­niences can fit in our pockets.

I have no doubt that the level of face-to-face inter­ac­tions has gone down over the past fifty years. But the other day I had a thought — when the phone was intro­duced, what were the ini­tial reac­tions? I can’t know for sure, but I can ven­ture a guess: “It’ll be a time-saver,” would say the opti­mists. “It’ll limit inter­ac­tion,” would say the pes­simists. I have no doubt it did both. With each tech­no­log­i­cal shift comes a back­lash. From face-to-face we went to phones. Before that we had mail. Each time we lose a dimen­sion of the con­ver­sa­tion. With phone we lost the facial expres­sions. With let­ters we lost the tones, pitch, and empha­sis of the human voice. With our cur­rent tech­nol­ogy, we still lack the nec­es­sary dimen­sions to have a full con­ver­sa­tion. Any­one try­ing to sort a prob­lem out through email knows what I’m talk­ing about.

At the same time, the phone and let­ter did not destroy human inter­ac­tion. Email cer­tainly hasn’t. Face­book won’t. Tex­ting is inca­pable. We don’t need to be so afraid of these tran­si­tions. Peo­ple will always need human inter­ac­tion. No screen can replace that. The changes in tech­nol­ogy are com­ing at a faster rate, and at some point we’ll all find our­selves a lit­tle behind the curve. If that’s the case, don’t fret! Human inter­ac­tions will always rely on face-to-face relationships.

Tak­ing Heart,

Paul Loewen

I was in the check-out line at Super­store. The cart was full of items. As always, the lineup was ridicu­lously long. I glanced back over my shoul­der and saw a woman at the end of my line. She was wear­ing a pur­ple sweater, under­neath which was a black t-shirt. She was a rather large woman, and the sweater was unzipped, so I could see what was on the t-shirt. The words “Abor­tion is Homi­cide” jumped out at me.

I couldn’t help but think, I agree.

But I couldn’t also help but think, Woman, what are you doing?

I would argue that the thought was cor­rect. I would agree on her stance of moral­ity. At the same time, I will argue that her approach is so wrong it is almost laugh­able. When you wear a t-shirt like that (or carry a sign, etc.) you do sev­eral things:

1. You make your mes­sage visible.
2. Peo­ple see your message.
3. Peo­ple react to your message.

For most of the peo­ple, this is exactly what they are try­ing to do. The prob­lem is:

1. People’s ini­tial reac­tions will be neg­a­tive. Even I, who agreed with the mes­sage, recoiled at the pre­sen­ta­tion. You’re being awfully judg­men­tal, I thought.
2. Peo­ple will label you as a “freak,” and refuse to lis­ten to any­thing else you say. Your approach will actu­ally lessen your credibility.
3. You may hurt some­one. I did a pre­sen­ta­tion on abor­tion in one of my classes. I talked about why I believed it is not right. But I was con­stantly reminded (dur­ing the prepa­ra­tion) by Jeanette that I needed to approach it as if some­one in the class had had an abor­tion. In other words, approach it with love.

Love. That’s where I think the shirt (and the woman wear­ing it) got it all wrong. Yes, I agree that abor­tion is wrong. But do I pro­claim it like that? No, you approach it with love. Always love first. Always.

Tak­ing Heart,

Paul

Canada Day was warm, and so Jeanette and I went with some friends to Birds Hill Park to spend some time on the beach. Appar­ently a few other peo­ple had the same idea. The beach was packed, and we spent a good amount of time in the water. When you looked around, you didn’t really notice any sig­nif­i­cant amount of Cana­dian flags.

When we weren’t cool­ing our­selves off in the water, we went up onto a field to throw a fris­bee and foot­ball around. At first we were closer to the beach, but we started to drift a lit­tle bit away. I was fac­ing the beach, and so my back was towards a ser­vice road and a small grove of trees. The foot­ball flew over my head, and I turned to chase it. It bounced against the legs of another man, stand­ing in a group and talk­ing with some fam­ily and friends.

I was imme­di­ately hit by a wave of Cana­dian flags: pinned to trees, painted on faces, on shirts, draped over pic­nic tables, and on just about every other sur­face imag­in­able. Big smiles were plas­tered across the faces of the peo­ple present.

While I went to pick up the foot­ball, I had to con­sider what made these peo­ple dif­fer­ent than me. The first dif­fer­ence was obvi­ous: they were East Indian. The cir­cum­stances led me to the con­clu­sion that they were immi­grants, hav­ing moved here to Canada prob­a­bly not that long ago. And what was remark­able was how much they seemed to cel­e­brate Canada. They very obvi­ously thought Canada was a great place to live. They were happy to be here.

Maybe we’ve all been desen­si­tized; we spend our time com­plain­ing about taxes, road con­di­tions, gov­ern­men­tal poli­cies, and the stuff that dilutes the truth: we live in a remark­able coun­try. It shouldn’t take fifty-seven Cana­dian flags worn on the backs and faces of a cel­e­brat­ing fam­ily to remind me of this.

Tak­ing Heart,

Paul Loewen

I inter­rupt my reg­u­larly sched­uled series to bring you this blog entry. This is my fifth time being directly involved in the Man­i­toba Marathon. And I love it. The atmos­phere is elec­tric. Peo­ple are ner­vous, tired, exhausted, in pain, proud, and more exhil­a­rated than ever before. They cheer each other on, they race against each other, they push each other.

Four friends and I decided to test our bod­ies and see how well we could do. Ever since Feb­ru­ary we’ve been train­ing as a team for the relay, want­ing to see how well aver­age folk could do. We’re not track stars. Run­ning is not our career, nor even our main hobby. We all had expe­ri­ence, but we weren’t intense run­ners. And so we trained. We ran together every sec­ond or third Sat­ur­day morn­ing. It was a great expe­ri­ence. Our team fin­ished strong, 11th out of 705 teams, at 3h 0m 30s.

A while back, I wrote a small poem on a piece of paper. One line read, “God gave me legs and so I run.” That still holds true today. Eric Lid­dell, the guy made famous by “Char­i­ots of Fire,” said, “I feel God’s plea­sure when I run.” I still remem­ber once see­ing a TLC show about the human body, and they said the mus­cles are designed to be run­ning, not walk­ing. In other words, we were made for this. God cre­ated us to run. And so I run. And in doing so, our team prayed that we would bring glory to God.

He gave me legs and so I run! Using our bod­ies for their intended pur­pose to God’s glory is one of the purest and most won­der­ful expres­sions of worship.

Tak­ing Heart,

Paul

Jeanette and I try to visit the show homes when they’re on. They are undoubt­edly beau­ti­ful homes, with fan­tas­tic lay­outs. We walk through, oohing and aahing at the design, amazed at how cre­ative homes have got­ten in the past decade or longer. We have a dream of one day build­ing our own home, and it’s neat to look at the homes and con­jure up ideas for what our future home might look like.

What’s inter­est­ing to me is that the lay­out and design of show homes is indica­tive of some trends in soci­ety. Over the next three weeks, I want to throw them out there. At the same time, I want to make it per­fectly clear that, while the show homes may indi­cate some things about soci­ety, I have absolutely noth­ing against those who live in them or buy them. I have friends who just moved into a show home, and it’s wonderful.

Trend #1: We are build­ing our­selves homes with more space and for less people.

If you jour­ney through show homes, you’ll notice that they range from about 1,400 to 2,600 feet. Within that space, you’ll also notice that, almost always, the num­ber of bed­rooms is 3. Includ­ing the mas­ter bed­room. Twenty or thirty years ago, the homes would have been smaller and the num­ber of bed­rooms 3–4.

Con­clu­sion drawn: we need more space, and we’re hav­ing less kids. I don’t know whether it’s the wide­spread accep­tance of birth con­trol, or an unpar­al­leled lust for money, or the fact that both par­ents often need to work to sus­tain a family’s spend­ing habits, but it looks to me like we are invest­ing more in our per­sonal and play space than in our lineage.

Indeed, a show home we tra­versed through two years ago had glass doors lead­ing to the mas­ter bed­room. It also had very flimsy dec­o­ra­tive wooden designs cre­at­ing par­tial walls. I’m pretty sure a thirty-pound child at 3/4 speed could have brought it tum­bling down.

Now, I’m not sure whether builders are build­ing and we’re just buy­ing, or our demands, needs, and wants are dic­tat­ing their designs, but it is strange to me. Do with it what you will, but the next time you walk through a show home, take a glance at just how kid friendly it is. And whether it’s friendly to 1, 2, or 4.