WE LIVE IN A CULTURE OF DEVOUT WORSHIPERS!

“The easiest practice of reverence I know is simply to sit down somewhere outside, preferably near a body of water, and pay attention for at least twenty minutes. It is not necessary to take on the whole world at first. Just take the three square feet of earth on which you are sitting, paying close attention to everything that lives within that small estate.” – Barbara Brown Taylor, in An Altar in the World

            Oh, and, as I’m sure Ms. Brown Taylor would concur, preferably leave your smart-phone indoors.

            Settling aboard a flight the other day, I was again reminded we live in a culture of devout worshipers. As I glanced about the cabin, I noted virtually every head was bowed in reverence although I’ve long since learned such does not equate to every eye being closed.

            Perhaps I was particularly sensitive to the reality having just paraded through business class where I’d struggled to resist declaring “look up, look up, your redemption draweth night!” (By the way, who’s the rocket scientist that suggested boarding airline passengers front to back? but enough from cattle class.)  Further, I was departing on a one week self-imposed sabbatical from social-media so my anti-technology antennae were on full-alert.

            Can somebody please tell me what’s up with our mind-boggling obsession with mobile technology that threatens to strangle what’s left of the few social-skills that survive in the public domain? I mean, honestly people, I’m not interested in an epitaph that reads: “I too was addicted to that hand-held god. Call me!”  What does the future hold for a populace scarcely managing a grunt of acknowledgement at a seatmate prior to frantically consulting that ubiquitous albatross for the latest spam?

            And, let’s not be mistaken here, this less-than-smart preoccupation with the so-called smart-phone is as rampant within circles of people of faith as it is without. I weary of walking into pastors’ meetings to find ninety per-cent of attendants cuddled up in a corner yakking on cell phones. If my self-esteem is directly related to the amount of time I spend on an IT-drip than I’ve got bigger problems than I know and so does my congregation!

            Ok, ok, to be fair, at least the infatuation with smart-phones has solved one problem well summarized by the wag who asked: “What’s the similarity between the guy trying to give up smoking and a newcomer to a nudist colony? Neither of them are sure what to do with their hands.” So is that what this is about, then – feverishly scrolling, punching buttons, scanning puny screens, all in an effort to avoid the awkwardness of our social insecurities?

            If so, Jesus must be immensely proud of us for trying to convert the world to the unique nature of the Christian perspective all the while aligning ourselves yet again according to the pattern of the status quo! I suggest we do well to periodically consider that the greatest communicator of all time did so without the aid of a smart-phone and its incumbent access to the myriad of communication venues swirling in cyberspace.

            So I took Ms. Brown Taylor’s advice to practice some reverence and went and sat by the sea for seven days sans electronic encumbrances. Curiously, it may have appeared to onlookers that I was essentially doing nothing; but such a conclusion would be inaccurate. I was ‘revering’ or ‘reverencing,’ words that come instructively close to ‘refreshing.’

            Or, to cite the late, great prophet Richie Mullins, I was clearing my head because “the stuff of earth competes for the allegiance I owe only to the Giver of all good things.”

It's past time to stop exploiting the Sherpas!

“[The Sherpas] carry the weight of every expedition, confront the most terrible of hazards and come to the rescue of every benighted party.” – Wade Davis, author of Into the Silence: The Great War, Mallory and the Conquest of Everest

            Recent news of the deaths of 16 Sherpa guides in an April 18 avalanche in the Khumbu ice field on the south side of Mt. Everest leaves me stunned! I’m dazed not only because it’s always tragic when so many people die at once, but perhaps even more so because of an emerging story behind this horror.

            Unless you’re into mountain-climbing and its history, which I am not, you’re likely unaware that on June 7, 1922, seven Sherpas similarly died assisting an expedition led by Charles Bruce. Compensation to their families amounted to less than 60 British pounds each.

            Word is that today’s Sherpa earns roughly $6,000 per season to make numerous treks guiding climbers paying up to $100,000 for a chance to reach Everest’s infamous summit. The government of Nepal, which receives millions of dollars in licences and climbing fees, is reportedly offering the families of the latest victims something around $400 in compensation.

IN BUYING POWER, THAT AMOUNT IS LESS THAN WHAT THE BRITISH DISPERSED ALMOST 100 YEARS AGO! Should we really be surprised that, following the most recent fatalities, some 400 Sherpas who worked on the mountain have walked off the job, shutting down all expeditions just as the annual climbing season begins?

Contrary to public perception, Sherpas are not mountain-climbers by nature. In fact, there is not even a word for mountain summit in their language. In keeping with their Buddhist heritage, the idea of risking one’s life while in this incarnation in order to crawl across rock and ice into nothingness is the apex of delusion.

It was the British mountaineer, Arthur Kellas, who back in 1916 first identified the Sherpas’ capacity for endurance and their cultural disposition to embrace the intimidations of life with apparent calm. Thus they became the foundation upon which all subsequent Himalayan climbing expeditions have relied.

Hopefully it goes without saying that it is long past time to stop the exploitation of the Sherpas by those fortunate enough to live in the first-world! Regardless of whether society is based on a Christian or Buddhist worldview, fair treatment of your fellow man is Diplomacy 101. Shame on all who think and act otherwise!

Can the technology, if you can!

"As long as the general population is passive, apathetic, diverted to consumerism or hatred of the vulnerable, then the powerful can do as they please, and those who survive will be left to contemplate the outcome." — Noam Chomsky

            As part of a recent family getaway, I was ordered “offline” while out of the country!

            No smart-phones allowed at our son’s “destination” wedding, I was told - meaning no e-mail, Facebook, Twitter, or Linked In. No Instagram or Instagrunt! Access to lots of pints, for sure, but not to Pinterest!

Books were permitted, thankfully, enabling me to encounter the ever-perceptive Chomsky’s insight as noted above.

Sure enough, the sun rose every morning on schedule despite the fact that North America, the self-anointed center of the universe, was far away. I didn’t even know there’d been an early May snowstorm in Alberta until I returned. So sorry to have missed dat!

Among the many reflections that occupied my thinking while on my social-media sabbatical was how easy it is in what we call “normal life” to become swamped by the trivial. That led to some meaningful thought on what it means to live in a culture where so much of our time and energy is consumed by that which is comparatively and ultimately inconsequential.

One of the things that gets we preacher-types in hot water very quickly these days, of course, is any attempt to define for the masses what pursuit or priority qualifies as consequential or inconsequential. So, in the interests of living another day, let me simply articulate several personal apps I derived from my ocean-side musings while on social-media holiday.

I will endeavor to live my life with a greater aversion to the insidious lure of social-media to be encumbered by a virtual placard about my neck that declares: “Do not disturb! I’m too busy with “my stuff!”

I will better engage the necessity of realizing that preoccupation with “my stuff” is at the core of much that is ignoble and ugly in an increasingly narcissistic culture. It is NOT “all about me.”

I will commit to spending more of my mental energy each day via the perspective of considering how much importance the people of South Sudan, Syria, Ukraine or the West Bank would attach to my “problem.”

And I will persevere in asking all people – regardless of race, handicap, sexual orientation, political or religious preference – “hey, wuzzup!?” and truly mean it, no strings attached.

PRAIRIE CHRISTIAN ACADEMY AND "ANTI-GAY" ALLEGATIONS

Prairie Christian Academy and "anti-gay" allegations

“Can a man scoop a flame into his lap and not have his clothes catch fire?”  Proverbs 6:27

            In the late 1930s, Fergus Kirk, co-founder of Prairie Bible Institute (PBI) at Three Hills, Alberta, Canada, pulled his sons from the local public school in opposition to the nature of certain literature considered required reading.  For his insurrection, Mr. Kirk spent a few days cooling his heels in jail presumably on charges of some form of parental-approved truancy.

            Against this background, Prairie High School – from which I graduated forty years ago next month – was formed. The school, now known as Prairie Christian Academy (PCA) and operated under the Golden Hills School Division, initially functioned without government accreditation. When provincial endorsement was eventually acquired, the ideological orientation in Alberta was significantly different from that which prevails in Alberta today.

             For one thing, the premier at the time was a lay preacher, William Aberhart, who had established a fundamentalist Bible school in Calgary known as the Prophetic Bible Institute (PrBI). Aberhart’s successor, Ernest C. Manning, had studied at PrBI and regularly preached on the Alberta radio airwaves.  It was not uncommon in those days, for someone directly associated with PBI – a graduate of the school, in one instance - to serve as MLA for the Three Hills area. In brief, the conventional wisdom that governed the public square within Wild Rose Country during the 1940s was decidedly different than that which prevails in the 21^st century.

            Such came to mind recently when stories of “anti-gay” Christian schools like PCA and Calgary’s Heritage Christian School (HCS) garnered front-page headlines about government funding being awarded private schools perceived to be at odds with Alberta human rights legislation. PCA, for instance, reportedly received seven million dollars to modernize its facility.

            This scenario involves nuanced matters that cannot be adequately addressed here. That fundamentalist Christians are also taxpayers is but one of many relevant issues in the discussion. Nevertheless, one pertinent point crosses my mind as I observe the debate unfold.

            As the Fergus Kirk anecdote suggests, one doesn’t need advanced training in neuro-science to grasp that conflict between the standards of Christ-followers and those of the political-corporate world(s) is inevitable. If, as schools like PCA and HCS maintain, they’re primarily committed to “truth” as they perceive it, it’s incumbent on their decision-makers to seriously consider that, last time I checked, truth is not driving the bus when it comes to the political and corporate sectors. Power and profits dominate therein and whatever ethical or ideological compromises need to be made to attain and retain such is merely the price of “doing business.”

            When I thus read the spokesperson for the Palliser School District (to which HCS belongs) declare that the offending statements regarding sexual behavior had been removed from HCS’s website, I can’t help but shake my head in disbelief. That’s because, as I know and you know, simply removing such from the web is irrelevant to the fact that those lifestyle expectations will remain in force at HCS. My point is not whether or not places like PCA and HCS are entitled to believe and require whatever it is they believe and require; the issue at stake here is that Truth requires far more than merely rearranging window dressing. 

            The Bible verse noted above – which I’ve lifted from its strictest context because I firmly believe that money/materialism represent the immorality-of-choice in the North American religious world – is most instructive here. Hop into bed with any government or corporate entity these days and you will indeed pay a price - the magnitude of which cannot be calculated by QuickBooks.