Through the River

Tomorrow morning I need to get up early and head to Rawdon Street to finish preparing to lead the reflecting and worshiping of our church community.

Tonight I’m outside smoking a cigar and drinking cider and beer. And I’m reflecting on the decade that has lead me here.

And at the beginning of 2000 I was taking a course on Psalms at Heritage Bible College and playing on the college basketball team (2000 Champions!). I was preparing a portfolio presentation for my application to go to Sheridan College for Illustration.

Reaching further back, I had grown up in the church. I attended a Christian private elementary school from Kindergarten to Grade Eight. After highschool I spent two years at the Bible College. I cemented my faith with certainty and arguments to prove myself against the unbelievers I would surely meet in art school.

In 2001 those two planes crashed into New York. My certainty and argumentativeness rose to a fever pitch. I believed that America needed to blow up Islam in order to save Jesus. In class I debated evolution. I became a young earth sciences scholar of the first degree.

Then one of my dearest friends told me a story about a wonderful woman who had died. She loved others and treated them as she would have them treat her. Her son was devasted by the loss of his loving mother so early in her life. And my sure, certain, and rocky foundation crumbled and sifted down into sand.

I used my influence to encourage our campus Christian group to engage issues that we could invite everyone to converse about – not just other Christians. Our topics included God Hates War, What Is Love? and What Is Religion?. We invited an Iraqi ex-pat to come and tell us what was really going on in the lives of people in former-Mesopotamia. And it worked. We were able to engage with atheists and muslims on these topics without worrying about protecting our own message too tightly.

I left art college and went back home. I became clear to me how much I had moved. I no longer was living in the rocky shore of certainty where my parents lived. I was living fully in the river. After a few months living in this frustrating mixture of truth cultures I moved to Toronto to live as I felt I needed to live. Five months later I was broke and broken (the good kind of broken). I moved home again, only to find that I was no longer at home. I was an adult, and needed to move out again.

Two jobs and one cross-country-roadtrip later I found myself out of the house, working a career graphic design job and involved in a relationship that would become a marriage.

Through my job (in Christian publishing) I found things. Postmodernism, Emergence, Conversations, Brian D. McLaren, tall and skinny Kiwis, Simple Ways, and a whole community of deeply committed spiritual folk who I never could have dreamed to have existed.

I discovered a love of God that didn’t revolved around a need that every brick in my truth wall be perfectly fitted. I could engage with people that believed differently than me and not feel threatened that my faith would be fragmented, nor that my own views would necessarily unjustly impact them.

I’ve talked with these people, I’ve read more books than is healthy, and I’ve begun to find ways to live what I believe again. Not everything is as it should be, but love is there. Hope is there. The Kingdom of God is here (and to come).

And now I need to get to sleep so that I can adequately serve our church community tomorrow.

Thanks to Jon and Mindy Hirst (and Dr. Paul Heibert). This wasn’t really a review of their lovely book. And unlike their writing seems to suggest, I don’t think I’ve arrived at any sort of final destination, but I do love the progression that happens in one’s life when you make that daring dive off the rocky cliffs and swim through the river to the valley beyond. Goodnight.

(I’m seriously devastated that I have cut a decade of my life down to a few paragraphs. There is so much I wanted to say, but I also wanted you to read this. Much love.)