office work really can kill you

this was a fun article to read as I stare at the shared HP LaserJet color printer that sits on my desk that everyone uses to print from.

clipped from www.digitaljournal.com The supposedly benign laser printer emits dangerous particles into the air, an Australian study discovered. Watch out, office workers — new toners can be as harmful to your health as cigarette smoke. Digital Journal — Even though most offices have banished smokers from the workplace, there’s a surprise health threat as potentially dangerous as cigarette smoking: the laser printer. As BBC News reported, Australian scientists have discovered that some office printers emit a dangerous amount of toner in the air, possibly causing health problems ranging from respiratory irritation to cardiovascular problems. The scientists even noted some of these floating microscopic particles may be carcinogens.

waking up

Awakened within a dream,
I fall into my own arms.
......What kept you so long?

remembering

This happened 10 years ago, around this time of year, so I thought it might be a good time to share it.

It is a hot, humid, August morning in Lamoni, Iowa. I am sixteen years old. In a huge gym filled with empty bleachers that will soon groan under the weight of 1500 teenagers, I sit on a low riser. Having just rehearsed the song we will be singing, the choir I sit in the midst of is abuzz with anticipation of the worship that will come, what the day holds, and where they will go to escape the heat.

“Excuse me everyone! We need someone to say a prayer in English at the end of today’s service! We have someone praying in Spanish but need someone to pray in English! Any volunteers?”

Silence sharply hits the buzzing choir. No hands go up. My mind races through the four days I have just experienced in this strange, foreign space that is the Midwest of the USA, which each day seemed increasingly far away from my home in Canada. Too many times had I heard prayers that started with “Dear Father…” too many times had I witnessed male-dominated leadership; too many times had I wiggled uncomfortably in my seat with a dissatisfied feeling in my stomach.

“I don’t mind” I hear myself say, as I watch my hand raise.

“Great! Thank-you!” replies the one on the pray-er quest.

I don’t think much of volunteering. Praying in worship is something I have done many times at home in the comforting space of the Pacific Northwest. I’d just have to speak a bit louder, that’s all. Teenagers trickle-in and fill the huge space, and the high-energy worship launches. I prepare myself as I normally would, paying attention to the words of others, listening carefully to what the songs and scriptures are saying in order to echo their words. At the end of the service I confidently step out of the choir and moved forward to wait for the microphone to be passed to me. I take hold of the microphone and look out at the gathered group, the beauty of this diverse gathering, the sense of anticipation and possibility that is so palpable in a group of teenagers, stirs me deeply and fills me to overflowing. I take a deep breath, close my eyes, and begin to pray:

“Loving Mother God…” I feel like I’ve just stepped off a cliff into a great abyss of uncertainty. Falling into the oceanic depths of chaos, the tehom as I would call it now, feels a bit lonely, but not cold or desolate, just uncertain.

The rest of the prayer has disappeared from my memory. I remember looking down at my shirt just after saying ‘amen’ and realizing that I was not anonymous; I had “Pacific Northwest Delegation” emblazoned across my chest. It would not be long, I thought, before I was hunted-down and reprimanded. But a mob of pitch-fork-wielding teenagers never showed up, and the only comment I received before running away from the crowded gym that morning was from the choir director who thanked me. I realized that maybe the tehom was not quite as lonely as I thought.

From the vantage point of my 26-year-old self, everything else in my life seems to radiate out of that point, that moment of truthfulness and prophecy, a time of saying ‘yes’ not just to saying a prayer, but to something much deeper and larger
It is a hot, humid, August morning in Lamoni, Iowa. I am sixteen years old. In a huge gym filled with empty bleachers that will soon groan under the weight of 1500 teenagers, I sit on a low riser. Having just rehearsed the song we will be singing, the choir I sit in the midst of is abuzz with anticipation of the worship that will come, what the day holds, and where they will go to escape the heat.

“Excuse me everyone! We need someone to say a prayer in English at the end of today’s service! We have someone praying in Spanish but need someone to pray in English! Any volunteers?”

Silence sharply hits the buzzing choir. No hands go up. My mind races through the four days I have just experienced in this strange, foreign space that is the Midwest of the USA, which each day seemed increasingly far away from my home in Canada. Too many times had I heard prayers that started with “Dear Father…” too many times had I witnessed male-dominated leadership; too many times had I wiggled uncomfortably in my seat with a dissatisfied feeling in my stomach.

“I don’t mind” I hear myself say, as I watch my hand raise.

“Great! Thank-you!” replies the one on the pray-er quest.

I don’t think much of volunteering. Praying in worship is something I have done many times at home in the comforting space of the Pacific Northwest. I’d just have to speak a bit louder, that’s all. Teenagers trickle-in and fill the huge space, and the high-energy worship launches. I prepare myself as I normally would, paying attention to the words of others, listening carefully to what the songs and scriptures are saying in order to echo their words. At the end of the service I confidently step out of the choir and moved forward to wait for the microphone to be passed to me. I take hold of the microphone and look out at the gathered group, the beauty of this diverse gathering, the sense of anticipation and possibility that is so palpable in a group of teenagers, stirs me deeply and fills me to overflowing. I take a deep breath, close my eyes, and begin to pray:

“Loving Mother God…” I feel like I’ve just stepped off a cliff into a great abyss of uncertainty. Falling into the oceanic depths of chaos, the tehom as I would call it now, feels a bit lonely, but not cold or desolate, just uncertain.

The rest of the prayer has disappeared from my memory. I remember looking down at my shirt just after saying ‘amen’ and realizing that I was not anonymous; I had “Pacific Northwest Delegation” emblazoned across my chest. It would not be long, I thought, before I was hunted-down and reprimanded. But a mob of pitch-fork-wielding teenagers never showed up, and the only comment I received before running away from the crowded gym that morning was from the choir director who thanked me. I realized that maybe the tehom was not quite as lonely as I thought.

From the vantage point of my 26-year-old self, everything else in my life seems to radiate out of that point, that moment of truthfulness and prophecy, a time of saying ‘yes’ not just to saying a prayer, but to something much deeper and larger.

poetry and gappy theology

Is there enough poetry in our lives? Today my teacher, who is first generation Chinese-American was telling us how much Chinese love poetry, they put it everywhere: on teapots, in landscape paintings, around the door of a home, on a flower vase, wherever there is a little spare space a few characters of poetry can be added.

Poetry doesn’t seem to occupy the same sort of space – literally or metaphorically – in our North American lives. In fact, I find that poetry tends to actually make people rather uncomfortable: “I don’t get it” folks say, “That’s pretty, but what does it mean?” folks wonder.

But the more that I study theology, the more I try to preach or write about what I dis/believe, the more I try to connect in pastoral yet challenging ways with my fellow spiritual pilgrims, the more I find that poetry offers far more possibility than any other form of writing or speaking.

I presided over a church service this weekend and found that the best way to communicate what I wanted people to learn or take away was through the hymns – the poetry. I find that people are at such different places in their spiritual journeys, and needs are so different, that most communities need “gappy” theology. By “gappy” theology, I mean theology that has enough gaps to allow people too find and make their own meaning. By this I don’t mean hymns or poetry that have no meaning or completely relative meaning, but rather different layers of meaning that can speak differently to different people.

I too find myself, far too often, trying to tie people down to thinking exactly the way I do, believing exactly the way I do – I find myself thinking “if only this person could read exactly what I’ve read, and hear the lectures that I’ve heard, then they’d see things the way I do!” But then there's the experiences I've had, the people I've loved, those who've loved me, the things I've seen... all of that has influenced the way I see the world and the way I do theology. How could I ever convey that totality of life theologically?

I speak of poetry as a revelatory distillation of experience.... Poetry is the way we help give name to the nameless so that it can be thought. The farthest horizons of our hopes and fears are cobbled by our poems, carved from the rock experiences of our daily lives.
-Audre Lorde "Poetry Is Not a Luxury" in Sister Outsider

Maybe poetry is a way of doing theology in a way that both honours the fullness of our lives and allows enough space for others to enter in.

Three things are too wonderful for me;
four I do not understand:
the way of an eagle in the sky
the way of a snake on a rock
the way of a ship on the high seas
and the way of a man with a woman
-Proverbs 30:18-19

a breath of fresh air

The other night while I was walking home at the end of a long, hot day I found some surprising refreshment. I noticed that as I walked along the street, the temperature and taste of the air changed dramatically when I stepped beyond the first bank of concrete buildings, and set out across a tree-lined street. As I kept walking I noticed huge shifts in the temperature and quality of the air, from stuffy and hot next to buildings, to refreshing and cool next to plants and trees. It was a very immediate and obvious reminder of my/our own total dependency on the world around us - particularly the green, growing world, for our survival, and the necessity of plants for our lives to flourish.

I also found myself thinking about the unexpected places where I find breaths of fresh air, or the times when i don't even realize that I need fresh air until it comes whooshing over me or gently wafts into my nostrils. Sometimes I think my life (our lives?) become stagnant and muggy and stale so gradually that I don't even realize what has happened until something awakens my senses, either by rushing in and shaking me up or gently and softly permeating me.

Once I'd had my first taste and sniff of fresh air during my walk the other night, I kept looking for those fresh breaths the whole rest of my way home. My nostrils were so entranced by seeking out that sweet soft air that they managed to sniff it out even in tiniest gardens along the way.

When the air of our human lives is so heavy and hot and thick, can we dare to sniff out wisps and whispers of sweet green goodness? As in the city, which may seem void of such lushness, yet where I found fresh air, we may find those whispers in unexpected areas, from unexpected people, in books we may have once turned our noses up at, or in the flotsam of our consumed and consuming lives.

The grace and power of greenness (what mystic Hildegaard Von Bingen called veriditas) can enliven and restore the soul, and is woven deeply into creation by the One who desires our flourishing. May we be blessed by its goodness.

summertime...

...and the livin' is easy.

Here's a little summer treat, a lovely quote from Ralph Waldo Emerson, made all arty by yours truly. Enjoy. (click image to see larger, better quality version)

the table

The table: locus of our lives together. "No matter what, we must eat to live" says Joy Harjo in her poem "Perhaps the World Ends Here":

perhaps the world ends here

By Joy Harjo

The world begins at a kitchen table. No matter what, we must eat to live.

The gifts of the earth are brought and prepared, set on the table. So it has been since creation, and it will go on.

We chase chickens or dogs away from it. Babies teethe at the corners. They scrape their knees under it.

It is here that children are given instructions on what it means to be human. We make men at it, we make women.

At the table we gossip, recall enemies and the ghosts of lovers.

Our dreams drink coffee with us as they put their arms around our children. They laugh with us at our poor falling-down selves and as we put ourselves back together once again at the table.

This table has been a house in the rain, an umbrella in the sun.

Wars have begun and ended at this table. It is a place to hide in the shadow of terror. A place to celebrate the terrible victory.

We have given birth on this table, and have prepared our parents for burial here.

At this table we sign with joy, with sorrow. We pray of suffering and remorse. We give thanks.

Perhaps the world will end at the kitchen table, while we are laughing and crying, eating of the last sweet bite.

I adore this poem, and this weekend as I was drafting this blog entry I kept coming back to the poem. I find myself sitting at a multiplicity of tables in my life.

There is the lunch table with my work colleagues where we sit in the cafeteria of the Bay department store downtown and discuss everything from movies to politics to meditation.

There are the lunch tables at school where our busy student lives collide for hours/minutes/moments to eat and share in our common chaos.

There is the familiar dinner table I grew up at that is still in my parents home, where I know I can always go, knowing I'll leave full.

There are the tables at church, old and new, small and large, where I sit crowded in with all sorts of people I love.

There are the dinner tables of friends: varied sizes and types, with their vinyl benches, wooden chairs, office chairs, couches and laps, formal and informal.

And there is the table in my own home, where I set down dishes that hopefully read "love" and bring out food that contains part of myself and my com/passion.

I like to believe that tables are always holy places, be they adorned with decorations at the front of a church or weathered and sitting in the middle of a park. Sitting down together to eat is a sacred act, or else we would not have had a history of so many cultures where who one ate with, what one ate, and where one ate meant so much. Is your table a holy place? How can we endeavor to make all of our tables holy places?

the rub of theology

When some of my friends and I talk theology we often find ourselves at some point rubbing our own skin or touching each other to try and show what we're trying to get at. "It's about this" one of us will say, stroking another's hand or arm, skin on skin, the intimacy of touch and the basic-ness of body as demonstration of the type of truth we are trying to articulate.

Why is it that this sensual act is where "the rub" is with theology for me and for much of my community? There is something very important to me in the act of touch, in the act of closeness. I think it is in part due to one of the most basic elements of my theology: this life and these people in this place at this time deserve my love and compassion. My metaphysical world is not void of non-material substance that is of value, but I try to remember the value of the material world as well, which I think is also central to Christian theology.

Our flesh is so precious: our contemporary cosmologists, our physicists, tell us that matter is extraordinarily rare in our universe. This body that sits typing is made up of more empty space than matter, and the universe has even more empty space. How precious and wonderful and rare we all are with our tiny amounts of matter in relation to the vastness of space. Christian doctrine backs up this preciousness of the flesh as God takes to flesh and becomes incarnate, in-spiring and enlivening our skin and bones, not only in the body of Jesus but in the dry bones in the desert, in ha-adamah the first earth creature, in the water, in the wind, in the bread, in the wine, in our tongues.

And yet these spirit-imbued fleshy bodies are fragile and vulnerable. We need each other for protection, for touch, for creating new life. And we need food to eat and shelter and warmth and clean water, for we are easily hurt; we simply cannot survive alone and exposed. Perhaps it is this very vulnerability that causes us to doubt so much our own preciousness, to doubt that divinity would dare to move in this weak flesh, these frail bones.

Ludwig Feuerbach told us in the mid-1800's that our idea of God is merely a projection of ourselves - or more specifically for Feuerbach, Man. More recently, feminist philosopher of religion, Grace Jantzen, took up this notion of projection and dared to suggest, with help from Luce Irigaray, that projection does not necessarily have to imply atheism. If our projections are ethical, ideal and life-giving, then they ought to draw us toward being more, toward becoming divine ourselves. Becoming divine, says Jantzen, ought to be the goal of all religion.

Could the frailty of our flesh be part of what has precluded some philosophers and theologians from allowing this possibility of allowing ourselves divine projections and moving toward those projections? How could something divine come from this frail flesh, they might ask. To which I would respond - how can divinity come from anywhere else but right here? *Shannon caresses her own arm*

As a friend spoke the other night of the frailty of human bodies, I was struck with a sense of awe for life, and compassion for all life. I am surrounded by fellow beings who are living with pain: watching my grandma in the hospital, watching friends and family members recover from surgeries and accidents and traumas, experiencing the unreliability of my own body - the brokenness of it all can be overwhelming. Yet we are here and we are alive and we are together and divinity breathes anew each moment, even right here where my wrist hurts, and right there where stitches close your wound, and right there where the pain is so deep we cannot touch it, and right there where new life defiantly begins. Right here, in this flesh is where we find "the rub" of theology, is where our religious lives take shape, is where all life becomes divine.


Ludwig Feuerbach. The Essence of Christianity.
Grace Jantzen. Becoming Divine: Towards a Feminist Philosophy of Religion.
Luce Irigaray. This Sex which is not One. and Sexes and Genealogies.

transformed by God

I spent the summer between my third and fourth years in University doing church camps and reunions at the Community of Christ campground at Lewis River in southwest Washington. That summer I had a transformative experience that changed the way I approached my whole life.

It was a very intense and busy summer. Included in that busy intensity were a lot of joys and wonderful experiences, but there were also a lot of struggles and challenges that went along with the fun of being at camp. One week towards the middle of the summer, I found myself in a very difficult camp where there were many stressful issues to deal with including challenging campers and staff. One morning towards the end of the week I was feeling particularly overwhelmed and asked the directors if I could have a bit of a break for about an hour. I walked beside the creek that is on the campground until I arrived at a lovely waterfall that I had heard was up the hill. There I sat down on a rock to rest a bit and collect my thoughts. I cried a little and thought a lot. I contemplated what had happened, how I was feeling, and how I would deal with the rest of the week ahead of me. As I sat there contemplatively problem-solving by listening and relaxing, I had a sudden rush of insight or revelation. Insight that, although simple, felt profound. The insight was that I did not want to simply give up on what I was doing. This was profound because I compared it to how I had felt in the preceding years when I came up against difficulties and challenges in my life. In most stark contrast was my experience in my computer classes: when I was computer programming and hit a problem that seemed un-solvable, I would feel like I wanted to give up. But this camp experience was different. Although the problems seemed just as unsolvable as a difficult computer program, I did not want to give up.

This realization had a profound effect on me because it made me look at my life choices in an entirely different light. Why should I keep doing something that I don’t want to stick with in tough times, when I’d found something else that I wanted to stick with even when it seemed to be an impossible challenge? That summer I began to seriously contemplate and discern what a career in ministry might look like for me. That fall I decided I had a lot to learn about ministry, so I decided to attend theology school. And then the following spring I was accepted at Vancouver School of Theology. Theology school has been challenging too, but there has always been an underlying commitment to the work I’m doing, which has kept and continues to keep me from giving up entirely.

If I dig even deeper into why it is that I refuse to give up, I would probably have to say that it has to do with a desire to serve God and neighbour with my whole being. And if I were to dig deeper into where that desire to serve God and neighbour comes from, I arrive at a simple but complex and profound answer: love. When I think more about my summer in Lewis River I realise that at that point in my life I was still holding very close to my heart an experience of the love of God that had transformed me. I had gone through a very dark spiritual place where I doubted God, doubted love, and doubted myself.

One night at a retreat, I walked a twisting labyrinth path that had various stations, and a cd to accompany the journey. At each station within the labyrinth the walkers were to listen to a different track on the cd that each was listening to on a personal cd player with headphones. The station I remember most clearly and vividly was one that had cushions sitting in front of a mirror, so that one could sit down on the cushions and then look at oneself in the mirror. As I sat down, the cd played soft music, and then a voice track began: “Look at yourself in the mirror” it said. “Look at the beautiful child of God that you are. You were made in God’s image and you are loved by God.” With those simple words came a rush of tears – a sign that I have learned for me often means I am experiencing a deep truth. And I realised that in my pain and searching I had lost track of that simple yet profound truth: that I am made in God’s image and loved unconditionally by God. It is this profound truth that my desire to love God and neighbour flows from.

I want to let God’s complete love for me and the whole world take over my whole self: body, mind and spirit. I want that overwhelming compassion and unconditional love of God for all life to take over and determine each and every step I take. I want to travel along paths that challenge me, that force me to be the very best version of myself, and to use all of my skills and gifts. My life has been transformed by God, mainly by God’s love, and I want everything I do to reflect that transformation.

(excerpted from my sermon this morning)

what it means to be alive

"This is life, this is what living is all about."

I found myself saying this phrase or something close to it on multiple occasions this week. This past week has held some crazy times for me. First of all, I'm not living at my place right now, for about the past 10 days I've been staying at the house of some friends' while new flooring is put into the place where I live. I feel like a bit of a refugee. Second of all, in the midst of this disruption to life, on Monday night my grandmother (my Mom's Mom) had a bad fall and hurt herself very badly. Her skull and several vertebrae fractured. For several days we were not sure if she would make it. About seven and a half years ago my grandfather on the same side fell too, had a terrible head injury, and never recovered. You can imagine how spooky it was for the family to have this similar event with grandma. She is recovering now, but it will be a long recovery, and there is no way to know for sure what a "full recovery" will look like for her.

It has been a huge thing for me to be able to go see her in the hospital in Chilliwack (1.5 hour drive away), to hold her hand, to listen to her snore, to stroke her back as she sleeps. She is a beautiful and incredibly strong person, so it is also difficult to see her in such a weak state.

My Mom is the eldest of seven siblings, and we are a very close family, but it has been a struggle to get through this very intense and stressful time together, another thing added on top of the multiplicity of stresses and strains that seven people plus their spouses and children are already under in regular day-to-day life.

And in the midst of all of this I have realized that this sort of thing is exactly what life is about. Life isn't about picture-perfect family gatherings and smooth sailing all the way. Life is messy, life is painful, life is maddening, life weighs heavily, life is tenuous. And then life is also beautiful: the sound of my grandmother's snoring, the touch of her soft hand, the big bear hug from an uncle, the beautiful honesty and truthfulness that comes in a plea for help. This is what it means to be alive, beautifully, joyously, painfully alive.