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The pursuit of truth (Pt. 1)
I’ve had a number of conversations recently where the topic of truth has come up. Without exception, someone inevitably says, “There is no truth with a capital T. You have your truth and I have my truth. But there is no absolute Truth.” This is what many people believe postmodernity claims. I want to begin…
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Advent is life
The weeks leading up to Christmas brought an overwhelming spirit of anticipation to our household when I was growing up. In fact, the intensity of waiting to open our gifts on Christmas morn was too much for my brother and me to bear. Every December we searched our house high and low looking for our…
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Honouring the epic journey of food
I came across an article about the epic journey of sugar from a sugarcane field on the Hawaiian island of Maui to a nearby coffee shop down the road. It claimed the sugar travelled about 16,000 kilometres to arrive at its final destination a little over a kilometre away. It was shipped from Maui to…
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The ‘terroir’ of church
During our 13 years in Niagara, my wife and I grew to appreciate the beauty and complexity of the winemaking process. Wine is fascinating to me. So is its intimate connection with the Christian faith. Consider how significant Jesus made wine to our understanding of redemption. Jesus’ constant use of earthy images and metaphors to…
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Fast food church isn’t good for our health
There seems to be a growing interest in the “slow church” movement as an alternative to “fast food church.” What is fast food church? Sociologist George Ritzer in his book The McDonaldization of Society (1993) claims the fast-food industry has become the defining paradigm for more and more sectors of western society and increasingly the…
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Where you start matters
The fragrance of old books mingled with stale pipe tobacco washed over me like finely aged wisdom, fermented from years of deep contemplation. Every wall of the late history professor’s study was concealed behind rows of shelves fully stocked with hardcover and paperback treasure. My sense of gratitude for the invitation to come “pillage” Robert’s…
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Moving thinward (Pt. 5)
The brilliant Jesuit priest Pierre Teilhard de Chardin said, “The world is in truth a holy place.” He was echoing the words of the prophet Isaiah who wrote, “the whole earth is filled with God’s glory.” God’s presence and glory can be perceived anywhere if we have “eyes to see and ears to hear.” Yet…
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Moving thinward (Pt. 4)
One of my atheist friends told me about a unique encounter with a “holy” man that ignited her spiritual awakening. She met a Buddhist monk visiting the city she lived in, and her friend offered to tour him around for the day. They were amazed at the monk’s sense of wonder and childlike excitement, he…
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Moving thinward (Pt. 3)
One of the many fascinating events to occur in the Book of Exodus is God “leaving” the mountain of God (Mount Sinai) to travel with the Hebrews to the Promised Land in a portable sanctuary called the tabernacle. Yahweh tells Moses: “Have the people of Israel build me a holy sanctuary so I can live…
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Moving thinward (Pt. 2)
So what does the Bible say about thin places? Interestingly enough, in our Scriptures the human story begins in a thin place: the Garden of Eden. Regardless of one’s theology, and whether one believes the Garden of Eden is literal or symbolic, the narrative is clearly describing a thin place where humans experienced intimate and…
