Its been a while since I’ve blogged. Mostly found myself taking a needed break over the summer. Which doesn’t mean the absence of stories. Life continues to write itself, including a road trip through Oklahoma.
In any case I figured I would start to fill in the gaps with intention of getting back on the horse come fall, beginning with this short reflection I penned back on Canada Day:
I’ve been sitting with mixed feelings all day. It actually surprised me to experience just how visceral my reaction was to seeing Canadian flags flying around the city today. I’m having a hard time separating what it has tended to symbolize over the last couple years from what this day is supposed to mean. I am reminded that the landscape remains deeply divided, personally, politically, nationally, spiritually, and morally.
And yet, as I sit here in front of this image- a flag on my left, the canadian museum for human rights on my right, the grand symbolism of the Church looming across the river behind me, I am reminded that there is a truth that stands taller than our divide.
As these three things intersect in my own life- my faith in God, my place in society, my inherent vocation to bear the image of God in this world by attending to the margins that all three of these things can potentially create when neglcted and used wrongly- In each of these things I find a reflection of hope. In each of these things I see an equal need for healing and a renewed sense of calling to heed the needs of the oppressed, to champion the rights of others over our own, and to be what I would call more “christlike’, beginning with myself.
The more I read scripture the more evident it becomes that one of the primary expressions of Sin/sin is division. And one of the primary ministries of Christ is healing these divisions for the sake of a hurting world. The struggle is seeing this take shape in the here and now when such hopeful images seem disguised by the shadows of this present age. There is a glimpse of the sun though promising that it will return with a new day, even as it now begins to set if for a while.
Perhaps this is what Canada Day can celebrate and acknowledge. The idea that now, even as the shadows linger in the background, is precisely the time to get to work, to begin to reimagine our vocation and to find ways to be Christ to the world.
The Stories of my Life 