A weekend's simple joys

Laughing in excess at the seminary games night.
Meeting and laughing with a roomful of people at the sem. games night.
Sleeping in.
Smoothie and granola for breakfast.
My teapot full of licorice tea.
Watching Bones and Criminal Minds online, and doing absolutely nothing.
Warm sunny days.
My seat in the library.
The knowledge that I'll be headed home in just under a month.
It's been a good day.

you know you're a library geek when...

1. You know the working schedule of all library staff, and if they are unsure when they are next scheduled to work, they ask you.

2. The head librarian assumes that you'll walk her out to her car after the library closes on Friday night.

3. A chair/general area is staked out as "yours", and if someone is sitting there when you arrive, they apologize, saying something like, "Oh, I'm sorry - I'm in your chair... but I was just leaving, so you can have it."

4. You hear a thump, bump and "ouch" on the other side of the library, and you know exactly who fell off their chair.

5. A group of students from your classes drops by "your chair" with increasing frequency as the semester progresses to ask for study help and advice on assignments.

6. You spend more time in the library than you do in your bedroom at least six days a week.

7. Your primary social life is with other library geeks in the library.  Your day looks something like this... wake up and prepare for day, go to library, go to class, eat lunch, return to library, go to class, eat supper, go to library until closing, go to gym, go to bed.

8. On Saturdays, you bring a thermos of tea, your go-mug, five or so texts, all your course syllabi and assignments, and plan to settle in for the day.

*I do not meet all the requirements of a library geek.  It's really a good life.  No complaints.

**Thanks for this list in part to Kelsey and Amanda, who DO fulfill all the requirements of a library geek, and began compiling a list last year.

A Picture is Worth...

A picture is worth a thousand words.  Or so they say.

These guys gamble millions of dollars the truth of that statement.  They pay big bucks to own your eyeballs for thirty seconds.  You call them commercial breaks.
A thousand words?  Or a thousand dollars?
Or more?  More on this later...

35031

What is the effect of identifying ourselves numerically?  Social insurance number.  Passport number.  Drivers licence number.  Student ID number.  At the Student Portal that allows me to access all my academic information, I type 35031 into the field as my user identification.  It rankles me every time.  After all, my friends call me Jenni.  Some call me Jennifer.  A few are allowed the honour of calling me J or Bee.  A few kids I've grown to love have taken to calling me G.  One calls me kohkum (grandma in Cree - a term of respect and affection).  The school?  The school calls me 35031.

After signing into the student portal, the welcome page greets me with a whole new set of numbers: 99.00, 98.00, 96.67, 106.00, 98.57, 97.00.  Those are my grades.  Sick, isn't it?

No, that's awesome!  you might say.  The grades are fine.  They don't have many places to go except down (which they most likely will... it's the nature of the beast), but that's not really a problem.  Or is it?  I would argue that we lean heavily on numerical values to interpret the world around us.  What about the number 8.90?  Does it look familiar?  Minimum wage.  What if I attached the number 16.50 to my job?  Or 25.00?  Would that change the way that I see myself?  The way that other people see me?  What if I decided to return to a 8.90 job?  Would you call me lazy?  Unmotivated?  Not a Type A personality?  Without real aspirations?  What then is the difference between a people who are labelled 56.80 or 78.00 or 98.10?  Library nerd?  Average?  Well-balanced?  Smart?  Stupid?  Needs to apply himself?  Needs to get a life?  There are certain assumptions that are made about me (by myself, and by other people), based on a simple set of numerical values.

Not only that, but the reduction of a person to a numerical label like 689 946 384 (not my real SIN number), or 35031 (my real student ID #) strips us of our face, our smile, our personality and character, our hopes and dreams, our lofty aspirations, our deepest fears.  

Or worse yet – do I (or someone else) somehow feel that I have elevated status as a result of my high numerical values, or the organizations that have offered to ascribe me with a numerical label (a Harvard student ID # or a Microsoft employee number)? Or, though I deny that arrogance, do I – deep in my heart – believe that I have more to offer to society as a result of my achievements? Are achievement, intellect, reason, rationality, and logic idols of Western culture? Think of someone who has a very limited intellectual capacity. Do I somehow believe that people are more or less worthy of love, and more or less capable of offering significant contributions to others based on my accomplishments? My intellect? My personality? My skills? My gifts, talents, roles? What will it take to reframe our beliefs about “us” and about “them” until we believe – to the very core of our souls – that we have neither more nor less to offer to the world around us than anyone else. How long until we no longer measure our worthiness on any scale except this one: I am significant and worthy of love – no questions asked, without any doubt – I have inestimable worth just as I am, on the basis of the fingerprints of the Maker of the universe on my very spirit.

Perhaps in a future blog, I will mull over my own insignificance in the context of God's enormity (a discussion that helps me understand the flip side of this coin), but I think I will leave that for another day. You are enough – just as you are – you have inestimable worth just as you are.  This is 35031... signing out.

Sunday morning

Warm spring sunshine streaming through the windows, warm enough to open the windows and let the fresh spring air flow through.

A berry and banana smoothie, filled out with hemp protein and greens powder, acai, pomegranate, and blueberry juice, and rice milk (my mom calls me healthy; my dad calls me "a health food store kind of person"... which he translates to mean "hippie" and "endearingly weird" in equal proportions - I think it's a compliment).

My journal and a Bible.

My grandma's old polyester patchwork picnic blankets layered out on the deck.

15 degrees Celcius (the thermometer reads 35 degrees, but that's because it's basking in the sun like I am).

Podcast  of a sweet sermon series (from Oregon... another place I'd also love to be).

Samgee the golden retriever lounging in the sun beside me, occasionally perking up his ears at the birds that flit about the feeder and land on the barbecue beside us, or bringing his soggy orange ball to be thrown again into the snow that still thickly blankets the back yard.

The remnants of my dad's current renovation strewn about the deck around me, reminding me of his love for restoring, redeeming, renewing things that are old, stagnant, or broken.

A beautiful Sunday morning.

Missing: community.  Missing: the motivation to seek out and sink my roots into a genuine Christian community.  Still hanging on: the longing to be connected.  Don't get me wrong, I'm not ditching church.  It's just that sometimes solitude is more soul-filling than singing.  And sometimes, regardless of my perceived desire for solitude, God desires me to seek to be connected and I choose solitude for the ease and simple pleasure of it.  Anyone brave enough to hold me accountable to that when I return to the place I don't yet feel comfortable calling home in the snowy land east in Manitoba?

Saviour and/or Social Activist?

My sociology instructor assigned to us a critical review of Brian McLaren's book "Everything Must Change", due March 8th (conveniently the first day back after reading week, to ensure that we all use reading week for just such a purpose... if only the instructors of my five other classes had not been using the same logic!) in a sufficiently "scholarly" format that one would not recognize it as a gut-level reiteration of the book's contents.  What follows are my musings, though incomplete and admittedly somewhat argumentative.


Already passionate about social justice, and with (arguably) a level doctrinal head, I object not only to McLaren's vilification of contemporary Christianity as only partially fair, but also to the theological framework upon which he builds his case.  

He writes truly, however, when he says "Far from being an esoteric and speculative distraction, our beliefs about the end toward which things are moving profoundly and practically shape our present behaviour" (p 144).  Too true - though he unfortunately uses it to bring into question doctrines considered biblical and foundational by most Christians.  This makes it ever more urgent that we begin our musings by looking to Jesus, the Son of God, not only a religious leader, nor only a social activist, but much much more - including both but not limited to either.  Let us not, in our pursuit of social justice, reduce the King of kings, the Maker of the universe, the Prince of peace, the Counselor and Comforter, to a mere activist.  Even if we elevate him to the status of All-time Greatest Activist deserving of Albert Nobel's prize, we will still not encompass the unimaginable enormity of his character.  Is He Lion?  Lamb?

McLaren, claiming that the church has "tamed" Jesus (and rightly so... we have), attempts to take Jesus out of the confines of the box, though I feel he simply places Jesus in a new box - albeit a more up-to-date box.  Seeking to become a new kind of Christian, let us not subject Jesus to a new kind of domestication by painting Him to be only a new kind of social activist.  Social activism is, after all, today's most politically correct approach to religion in general, and Christianity in particular.  In the case that all humanity needs is an unprecedented social activist and not a Savior, then take your pick from the multitude who have sacrificed of their lives in the service of humanity - Gandhi, Mother Theresa, or Nelson Mandela will do just fine!  Instead, let us acknowledge the awe and wonder with which we must embrace all of who Christ is, instead of only accepting the puzzle pieces which fit into the simplified-and-easily-understood picture we would sometimes rather accept.  Let us not delude ourselves into believing that simply because we cannot wrap our finite minds around His multifaceted character, we have licence to redefine His character to suit our whims.  Let us trust that in all His mystery, and in spite of the widespread suffering that we so often assume discredits His reputation, He is both good and sovereign.


Let us trust that as we learn to see Him increasingly as who He is instead of who we think He is, we will become like Him, therefore extending the reach of His arms, not because He is incapable of healing all the world's ills with one snap of his fingers, but because He chooses to give you and I the freedom to choose whether we will participate with Him, in the redemptive mission on which His Father sent Him.  Our God is, after all, a Junkyard Artist.  He is a specialist in taking the apparently ruined, the trash of humanity, the heaps of discarded and disregarded garbage left in the wake of rampant consumerism, and transforming it into something new and beautiful, reflective of His awe-and-worship-inspiring character and covered in His unique fingerprints.


McLaren hits the latter nail on the head.  With a working understanding of political economy, and an active imagination capable of envisioning a future characterized by the pursuit of justice, mercy, and compassion, McLaren provides the reader with a creative new lens through which to look at the realities of the world around us.  Only let us - again and again - re-center our lives on the Christ of the Cross, the Tomb, the Resurrection, and Eternity lest we replace Him with a less controversial and more socially palatable, but sadly emasculated figurehead.