NUDGINGS: a journey into the unknown

During a discussion of reading tastes the other week, I made the statement that until recently, though a voracious reader, I only read fiction. When I was asked why that was, I was hard pressed to come up with a reason. However for the last 8 years, I have read non-fiction equally voraciously.    As I have been thinking about this and what made the difference, something became apparent to me. I read and still read fiction because it lets my mind explore many different avenues, all avenues with no definitive answer (unless it is ’who dun it’ in a mystery). I have become ‘friends’ with the characters entering into their lives.  Nonfiction on the other hand, was about facts and discoveries, interesting in themselves as things to know but not leaving anything for my mind to discover.  Perhaps I was reading the wrong nonfiction books, I don’t know. I do know however that the nonfiction I have been reading for the last 9 years positively begs for my mind to engage with it.

“Voting is a decisive act of Christian faith  that I matter, society matters, justice matters, and others matter.” Richard Rohr, OFM This coming Monday there is a Federal by-election being held in my riding. I hope everybody will get out and vote and yet I know that is not going to happen. There will be lots of excuses; excuses about the weather, about one  person’s vote not making a difference, about the quality of the candidates, etc. etc.  As I told my children when they got to the age where they could vote, “If you don’t vote, you can’t complain about the government you get!” [And we know how people love to complain about politicians!] Then there is the fact that if you go to church on a Sunday near an election, you won’t hear much about it. Because, ‘don’t cha know’, Church and politics don’t mix. Despite the fact that the Christian religion began its dominance as the major religion of the Roman Empire in the 300s under the auspices of the emperor Constantine, we were

“Time is how you spend your love.” Zadie Smith I wonder why I have never thought of love in just this way. It strikes me as being not only true but also an easy way to test whether or not I am really following the new commandment from John 13:34-35. “Let me give you a new commandment: Love one another. In the same way I loved you, you love one another This is how everyone will recognize that your are my disciples - when they see the love you have for each other.” It is easy to give lip service to the idea of this kind of love but far harder to actually put it into practice. We all have excuses as to why we can’t. We are too busy, too old, too poor. The excuses go on and on.  But what is the most precious commodity that we all have? Isn’t it time? Once a day, an hour, or even a minute has passed, we can never recapture it. Unlike material things we can’t hoard it like the Rich Fool [Luke 12:13-21]  or can we invest it in such a way that it will accrue interest and multiply

“ Why? Why? Why? Why am I writing my blog? What is it that has kept me doing it for almost 6 years? How could I possibly find so much to write about?” These thoughts and others like them whirl about in my head at night when I can’t sleep. The suggestion that I write a blog came out of the blue, a suggestion that it took me almost a year to act upon. The beginning of this blog also owes it existence to my introduction to EfM ( Education for Ministry), an adult education course in modern biblical scholarship within the Anglican community and my experiences there. As I said to anyone who asked why I was writing a blog (and by inference, why would anyone ever read it!) my goal was to make people think about their faith. Not to convince them of what was right or wrong, but rather to have them consider another way of looking at their faith and how it impacts their lives. It seems that this is not actually true any more … or so I discovered this past week as I was reading ‘Honest to