NUDGINGS: a journey into the unknown

Read in the Babylon Bee [2019] U.S.-Bible scholars now claim the wise men didn’t deliver their gifts in person a few years late, as is commonly believed, but instead delivered presents directly to the Messiah using Amazon’s convenient one-day Prime shipping. “Instead of making the long, dangerous trek through the desert, the Magi simply hopped on Amazon and ordered gold, frankincense, and myrrh for one low price with free one-day shipping included,” said Dr. Brad Larson of Southern Baptist Theological Seminary.  “There really was no sense in going all that way when Mary and Joseph already had a convenient Amazon Wishlist all set up for the newborn king.” Of course, scholars think the wise men committed the gift-giving sin of going “off-list”, ordering Jesus things they thought He would enjoy rather then sticking to the list. “We appreciate the gesture, of course,” Mary reportedly told a source. “But diapers and a Starbucks gift card would have been a lot more useful. ...

“…  believing something to be true has nothing to do with whether it is true.” Marcus Borg (Convictions:How I Learned What matters Most) The story for today is a true story. Although if you remember this quote from Marcus Borg that I used last week,  that really doesn’t matter… The scene is in an ER waiting room in the downtown hospital in a large Canadian hospital.  It is just after midnight and the night is clear, but frosty and cold. A couple sat there through the night, waiting for their friends to reemerge from behind the sliding doors that they had gone into some time before. Here is their story as they told it to me. * * * * * * "As we sat there watching we could see the story playing out in front of us. We chatted for most of the evening with a woman who was well known to the staff, Her take on downtown life in the big city and her interactions with various hospitals was fascinating to us, the story of a unknown culture. She eventually got into a...

Since human civilization first began, people have been telling stories. Sometimes these stories were based on fact, sometimes not. But what many of these stories had in common is that they were a vehicle to pass along knowledge or understanding to those who were listening, a way of teaching some of the great truths of existence. In the words of Marcus Borg (Convictions:How I Learned What matters Most) “…  believing something to be true has nothing to do with whether it is true.” And so for this Advent Season, I thought I would take a look a a few of these stories… Mr. Rogers once said “The world needs a sense of worth, and it will achieve it only by its people feeling that they are worthwhile.” I recently read about a experiment. Someone took 3 glass jars, placed them about a foot apart, placed an inch of plain rice in each one and then an inch of water. Every day, this person looked into the first jar and said kind and loving things to the rice and water like ‘I love you...

This past week, I heard from another of my friends. She was empathizing with me and saying, ‘I know your life isn’t your own right now.’ And while I knew exactly where she was coming from, that she was in fact saying to me “Hang in there. Life will get better!”, it didn’t sit at all well with me. Why is that, I wondered? And so I spent the next little while mulling it over in my mind. Like most, if not all of us, I like to think I am in control of my life, at least to some extent, some of the time. […lol…] I like to think that I make the decisions as to how I respond to the things happening around me. But have I ever thought that my life is my own to do with what I wanted? As a daughter, a wife, a mother, a caregiver, as a woman, that concept seems foreign to my lived experience. So what exactly did it mean? I’m not at all sure that life is meant to be lived for oneself? That seems like something that would soon become boring and devoid of meaning.   I believe we were pu...

Last year we were celebrating 100 years since the end of WW1, "the war to end all wars” with church bells ringing out across our communities, Since then has anything really changed? The Middle East, as well as many other places on this globe, still reverberate with the sounds of of gunfire and of bombs detonating, as we gather again: the young and the old. There is sitll talk of the sacrifice made by many men & women, not just in World War 1 but in the many wars and conflicts since that time: all those  who gave their lives in service to their country, whatever country that might be. And so we remembered…. Achieving a lasting peace has become more and more important as the weapons of war have gotten more deadly, until we now have the capacity to end all human life on this globe. What about the millions of people whose lives have been turned upside down by this latest violence?  Do we remember those who have been killed either by enemy or ‘friendly fire’ or have lo...

“When life piles up on us it makes me question the notion that God does not give us more than we can manage. Fodder for a discussion.” From my email in-box This appeared in my email at a very apropos time. The 5 days over the Thanksgiving weekend had been horrendous, starting with being rear-ended at a traffic light and ended with my phone dying and needing to be replaced immediately, in order that I could deal with the fallout from the previous 5 days. Add into this mix, a husband recovering from surgery, the expectations surrounding Thanksgiving, doctors and physiotherapy appointments for me, all over a holiday weekend, and it becomes obvious why this email impacted me.  ‘God never gives us more that we can handle”, is an oft-heard quote, that never actually appears in the Bible. It seems to suggest a benevolent God, that watches over us, deciding just how far we can be pushed. It belongs to the belief system that has an all-knowing God out there who answers our prayer...

“If the only prayer you ever say in your entire life is thank you, it will be enough” ~Meister Eckhart, 13th century German theologian. We are celebrating the Canadian Thanksgiving this coming weekend, It will be a weekend filled with fall activities, with closing the cottage for another year, mulching leaves, or perhaps getting the garden ready for another long, cold, Canadian winter. It will be for many of us a weekend that finds the family gathered around a table filled with the bounty of another harvest, At church services decorated with fruits of that harvest, we will sing those old familiar thanksgiving hymns and perhaps listen to a sermon extolling those things for which we should be thankful in this land of plenty.  And then many of us will forget all about Thanksgiving until it rolls around again next year! For Meister Eckhart, though, it is none of those things. It s simply saying ‘thank you’ to our God quietly in prayer. He’s not talking about thanking those ...