dorothy day

On this International Workers Day (May 1), here are some quotes by Dorothy Day. Today marks the 91st anniversary of the publication of the first issue of The Catholic Worker in 1933. Dorothy, her brother John, her daughter Tamar, and a few others distributed the first run of 2,500 papers in Union Square for a penny a copy and by the end of the year, circulation had grown to 100,000. 

From this little paper sprouted houses of hospitality, soup kitchens, co-ops, and farms which have offered spiritual and corporal works of mercy.

Here is an excerpt from her editorial in that first issue of The Catholic Worker.

For those who are sitting on benches in the warm spring sunlight.
For those who are huddling in shelters trying to escape the rain.
For those who are walking the streets in the all but futile search for work.
For those who think that there is no hope for the future, no recognition of their plight, THE CATHOLIC WORKER is being edited. It is printed to call their attention to the fact that the Catholic Church has a social program.
It’s time there was a Catholic paper printed for the unemployed. The fundamental aim of most radical sheets is the conversion of its readers to radicalism and atheism.
Is it not possible to be radical without being atheistic?
Is it not possible to protest, to expose, to complain, to point out abuses and demand reforms without desiring the overthrow of religion?
In an attempt to popularize and make known the encyclicals of the popes and the program offered by the Church for the constructing of a social order, this news sheet was started.
…The price of the paper is one cent a copy, in order to place it within the reach of all. And for the unemployed it is distributed free to those who wish to read it. Next month someone may donate us an office, who knows? It is cheering to remember that Jesus Christ wandered this earth with no place to lay His head. The foxes have holes and the birds of the air their nests, but the Son of Man has no place to lay his head. And when we consider our fly-by-night existence, our uncertainty, we remember (with pride at sharing the honor) that the disciples supped by the seashore and wandered through cornfields picking the ears from the stalks to make their frugal meals.

Practice Resurrection - 2

 As people of the resurrection, we are to live in light of and in the power of the resurrection.

It's easy / easier to see this in spring... how else do you understand and live as a resurrection person? 

Eastertide

Eastertide is not a word we use very much, especially in evangelical circles. We barely use Advent and Lent. 

Eastertide is the liturgical season in Christianity that celebrates the Resurrection of Jesus Christ. It begins on Easter Sunday and lasts for 50 days, ending on Pentecost Sunday. 

Over this season, I want us to celebrate resurrection.

Over these next 6 weeks (from now until Pentecost), will you join me in focusing on Resurrection in our everyday lives? 

• It can be as simple as a special candle you use for your meals during Eastertide 
• or as elaborate as travelling across the world to meet new people. 

Whatever it is, will you show us a picture and tell us about it in a few words? 

• Plant spring flowers (maybe a new variety this year)? Show us! 
• Get up to see the sun rise on a Sunday morning? Tell us about it! 
• Take a new route to work or school (maybe taking more time than necessary in honour of the mad farmer)? Share it!

3 simple steps to this:

1. Add something to your day that helps you practice resurrection. (1day or 50 days - it doesn't matter)  
2. Take a picture and write a description in 1-50 words.  
3. Share it with me via an email, Facebook.
   I'll share some of your photo-stories with everyone here each week.

Practice Resurrection - 1

Wendel Berry’s poem "Manifesto: The Mad Farmer Liberation Front" is one of my favourites. 

The last line of this beautiful poem calls us to “practice resurrection.” Yet the calling to practice resurrection fits inside the context of present-day culture.

Our world entices us with shiny things that have no long-term, lasting value, Berry asks us to invest our time differently. He entreats us: spend your lives following God, building strong communities, and remembering what matters.

When Berry says, “practice resurrection,” he asks us to remember that Christians are the witnesses to Christ’s one-time resurrection. We demonstrate the power of God’s redemption of the world in how we live and love. Practicing resurrection is obeying Jesus’s call to love our neighbours and our enemies.

Love the quick profit, the annual raise,
vacation with pay. Want more
of everything ready-made. Be afraid
to know your neighbors and to die.

And you will have a window in your head.
Not even your future will be a mystery
any more. Your mind will be punched in a card
and shut away in a little drawer.

When they want you to buy something
they will call you. When they want you
to die for profit they will let you know.

So, friends, every day do something
that won’t compute. Love the Lord.
Love the world. Work for nothing.
Take all that you have and be poor.
Love someone who does not deserve it.

Denounce the government and embrace
the flag. Hope to live in that free
republic for which it stands. 

Give your approval to all you cannot
understand. Praise ignorance, for what man
has not encountered he has not destroyed.
Ask the questions that have no answers.

Invest in the millennium. Plant sequoias.
Say that your main crop is the forest
that you did not plant,
that you will not live to harvest.

Say that the leaves are harvested
when they have rotted into the mold.
Call that profit. Prophesy such returns.
Put your faith in the two inches of humus
that will build under the trees
every thousand years.

Listen to carrion — put your ear
close, and hear the faint chattering
of the songs that are to come.
Expect the end of the world. Laugh.
Laughter is immeasurable. Be joyful
though you have considered all the facts.

So long as women do not go cheap
for power, please women more than men.
Ask yourself: Will this satisfy
a woman satisfied to bear a child?
Will this disturb the sleep
of a woman near to giving birth?

Go with your love to the fields.
Lie easy in the shade. Rest your head
in her lap. Swear allegiance
to what is nighest your thoughts.
As soon as the generals and the politicos
can predict the motions of your mind,
lose it. Leave it as a sign
to mark the false trail, the way
you didn’t go. Be like the fox
who makes more tracks than necessary,
some in the wrong direction.
Practice resurrection.

“Manifesto: The Mad Farmer Liberation Front” from The Country of Marriage, Harcourt Brace Jovanovich, Inc. 1973. Also published by Counterpoint Press in The Selected Poems of Wendell Berry, 1999; The Mad Farmer Poems, 2008; New Collected Poems, 2012.

John's Gospel - feet

When you read larger sections of scripture in one sitting, connections between passages can stand out.

We often look at these two passages (John 12:1-11 and John 13:1-17) separately.  

But did you notice that both of these passages have the act of washing of feet in them?

• In John 12, Jesus' feet are washed with perfume by Mary.
• In John 13, Jesus washes his disciples' feet.
• In both passages, the disciples are present. I wonder what they were thinking. I wonder if they made a connection. 

Worship and service are connected. They are not to be divorced from each other. It's not one or the other - it's both.

• We worship. And worship costs something. This is part of why the author of Hebrews tells us to "continually offer to God a sacrifice of praise" [Hebrews 13:15].
• We serve. And service costs something. In Luke's Gospel, Jesus tells people to count the cost: "those of you who do not give up everything you have cannot be my disciples" [Luke 14:33]

John 12:1-11

Six days before the Passover, Jesus came to Bethany, where Lazarus lived, whom Jesus had raised from the dead. Here a dinner was given in Jesus’ honor. Martha served, while Lazarus was among those reclining at the table with him. Then Mary [this is not Mary Magdala] took about a pint of pure nard, an expensive perfume; she poured it on Jesus’ feet and wiped his feet with her hair. And the house was filled with the fragrance of the perfume.

But one of his disciples, Judas Iscariot, who was later to betray him, objected, “Why wasn’t this perfume sold and the money given to the poor? It was worth a year’s wages” He did not say this because he cared about the poor but because he was a thief; as keeper of the money bag, he used to help himself to what was put into it.

“Leave her alone,” Jesus replied. “It was intended that she should save this perfume for the day of my burial. You will always have the poor among you, but you will not always have me.”

Meanwhile a large crowd of Jews found out that Jesus was there and came, not only because of him but also to see Lazarus, whom he had raised from the dead. So the chief priests made plans to kill Lazarus as well, for on account of him many of the Jews were going over to Jesus and believing in him.

John 13:1-17

It was just before the Passover Festival. Jesus knew that the hour had come for him to leave this world and go to the Father. Having loved his own who were in the world, he loved them to the end.

The evening meal was in progress, and the devil had already prompted Judas, the son of Simon Iscariot, to betray Jesus. Jesus knew that the Father had put all things under his power, and that he had come from God and was returning to God; so he got up from the meal, took off his outer clothing, and wrapped a towel around his waist. After that, he poured water into a basin and began to wash his disciples’ feet, drying them with the towel that was wrapped around him.

He came to Simon Peter, who said to him, “Lord, are you going to wash my feet?”

Jesus replied, “You do not realize now what I am doing, but later you will understand.”

“No,” said Peter, “you shall never wash my feet.”

Jesus answered, “Unless I wash you, you have no part with me.”

“Then, Lord,” Simon Peter replied, “not just my feet but my hands and my head as well!”

Jesus answered, “Those who have had a bath need only to wash their feet; their whole body is clean. And you are clean, though not every one of you.” For he knew who was going to betray him, and that was why he said not every one was clean.

When he had finished washing their feet, he put on his clothes and returned to his place. “Do you understand what I have done for you?” he asked them. “You call me ‘Teacher’ and ‘Lord,’ and rightly so, for that is what I am. Now that I, your Lord and Teacher, have washed your feet, you also should wash one another’s feet. I have set you an example that you should do as I have done for you. Very truly I tell you, no servant is greater than his master, nor is a messenger greater than the one who sent him. Now that you know these things, you will be blessed if you do them.

Holy Week

 
We are approaching the high point of the Christian year - Holy Week - that last week of Jesus' life on earth before the cross and the resurrection.

There are so many things to reflect on:

• Mary anointing Jesus.
• Jesus's entry into Jerusalem on the back of a donkey.
• Jesus's actions in the Temple courtyard.
• Some of Jesus's parables.
• Judas Iscariot, one of Jesus's disciples, arranges to betray him. 
• Jesus celebrates the Last Supper with his disciples.
• The sham trials.
• Jesus's death on the cross.
• His burial.
• The silence of Saturday.
• The resurrection of Jesus.

All of these tie together.
They don't take place in isolation.
They are all part of the story of what God is doing.

Let me encourage you, this week, to take time to read the accounts. If possible, read the account in each gospel; read the whole section in one sitting. There is something powerful about reading the whole account.

• Matthew 21-27
• Mark 11-15
• Luke 19-23
• John 12-19

Carry On - Mumford & Sons

If this is what it's like to be unholy, man
If this is what it's like to be lost
I will take this heresy
Over your hypocrisy
And count any cost
 
These words are from the last track, Carry On, on the new Mumford & Sons album Rushmore, really caught me. 

I don't know what caused Marcus Mumford to pen these words. 

When I listen to them, my mind goes to John 8:1-11. 

• The story captured there is of the religious leaders, the theologically sound, the legalistically holy, bringing a woman caught in adultery to Jesus. 
• They are declaring her unholy and lost. 
• By the law they are right. 
• Jesus could easily be declared the heretic by not helping them stone her as the law prescribed. 
• Instead, it would be such hersey that would get him crucified. 
• It is possible. that they have set up this act of adultery, hence the absence of the man in the adultery sin, in order to catch Jesus out. 
• It is the religious leaders who then become unholy and lost when Jesus reaches deep into their own souls and asks which of them is perfect enough to throw the stone. 

Ultimately, it is Jesus' love and salvation that glows across the Temple as this story ends. The hypocrites go off to hide, and a woman declared lost and unholy is found and sent to a new and different life, with the mercy and amazing grace of God.

A lot of the Church today is much the same as it was that day when Jesus walked the temple courts and forgave a woman caught in disgrace. 

I am aware of “holy” men who try to catch out brothers and sisters in Christ for theological error; judging and damning almost for fun.

I am seeing a couple of emphases in the church in Canada. They become the driver in the spiritual life. And in doing so, they become errors.

There are those who concentrate on theology.

• Pure theology.
• They think that they have seen better than Paul’s through a glass darkly, they are near infallible and somehow their job is to call out the lost and unholy with wrong doctrine. 

Legalism too.

• People are in and out, depending on how they perceive or respond to the law, that list of dos and don’ts. Sometimes it is going to certain places, or listening to certain music, or being friends with, or a list of other things. 

Theology and the law have their place. But we need to be led by Jesus, his love, his way of life, and his ability to work through the tensions and conundrums of behaviour and judgment, as he did with the woman dragged to him in the Temple. 

With Jesus and his grace as the energy of faith, I don't have to hold all the exact same theologies with brothers and sisters and be in close fellowship. I can also be part of what Jesus is doing in re-humanising those lost and unholy in the eyes of others. 

Discipleship is a daily dilemma of decision-making. 

If that is heresy, I’ll take it. 

Discipleship, following Jesus, being a Christian is about staying as close to the Jesus of John 8 as I can. I want to follow him so close that I gather his dust on my clothes.

quite the week

Janice & I returned from Uganda & Ethiopia on Tuesday (25 March).

• That day, a knob on our dryer broke... I ordered a new one.
• My watch strap also broke... I ordered a new one.

On Friday - Saturday (28-19 March), I went to Kitchener to be with my parents because of a procedure my father was having - they were unable to complete it... awaiting news of the next step - CAT scan scheduled for Tuesday, 8 April.

On Saturday evening (29 March), the power went out due to an ice storm... It was not restored until the afternoon of Thursday, 2 April). 

The evening of 2 April through to early morning (3 April) we had a major thunderstorm with lots & lots of rain.

On Friday (4 April) we drove to Kitchener to spend some time with my parents and then back to Guelph to be with Nathan & Sam & Alma & Arthur.

On Saturday (5 April) we went to Wterford for the funeral of a good friend's mom.

On Sunday (6 April) Janice & I spoke at OCC (Orillia Community Church) about our recent ministry trip to Ethiopia & Uganda.

It's been quite a week!

And I know that there are many in Orillia who are still without power.

Thankful for the hydro crews that are working hard and praying that you get connected soon. 

Federal Election 2025

Canada is in the midst of a Federal Election campaign. We go to the polls on 28 April. You can find all the information about where to vote here (this is the link for Simcoe North)

And my, is there ever a lot of misinformation being spread.

• So many don't know what federal, provincial or municipal responsibilities are.
• So many are not checking the facts about what they are sharing.
• So many share blindly about whatever party they have always voted for. 

Here's my basic approach to people who blindly or thoughtlessly share political memes: 

• if you have always voted for the same party, you really haven't thought about what you are voting for; you are simply pro (whatever party);
• if you agree with everything your candidate / party says, you really haven't thought about what you are voting for; you are simply pro (whatever party).

Here is who I have voted for over the years (I have voted lots - but only 1x per election!) (listed alphabetically):

• Conservative (in some of its different versions)
• Green
• Independent
• Liberal
• NDP
• & I have refused a ballot provincially (you can't do that federally). This is better than spoiling a ballot, as it gets counted separately.

So check out what the party is saying.
Don't just blindly repost memes.
Ask questions.
DO NOT vilify those who vote differently than they do.

And as followers of Jesus, we recognize that NONE of the parties are the same as the Kingdom of God.

As followers of Jesus, we pray for all the candidates and for our nation. 

Jesus words on the cross

Yesterday, I received an email from a popular pastoral resource with the headline: "What Jesus' Words on the Cross Teach about Leadership: The seven leadership principles modeled in his last seven statements."

I have said this more than once, but it needs to be said again: this is NOT what the cross and resurrection is about. 

Turning Jesus' final moments into a leadership seminar or a corporate playbook is wrong. I consistently warn pastors and others in East Africa not to listen to North American leadership ideas - they are often so wrong, as they are here. There is a huge difference between "climbing ladders" and "carrying crosses." I think there is a book or at least an extended article in there. 

I and many others have long been concerned about the North American church's leadership fixation. But framing the cross as "leadership principles" is just so wrong - I have cancelled my subscription to that resource.

• The cross is the ultimate surrender;
  it is not a strategic leadership move.
• When Jesus said, "Father, forgive them,"
  he wasn't demonstrating conflict resolution skills;
  he was demonstrating mercy in the face of ultimate injustice. 
• "It is finished" isn't about project completion;
  it is the fulfillment of God's cosmic redemption.

The cross invites us to look upward in worship, inward in repentance, and outward in service—not to discover principles we can use for organizational success. 

The cross is the place where our striving ends and grace begins. 

The cross is the place where the language of human leadership falls silent before the language of sacrificial love.

Lent, and I think that much of North American evangelicalism misses this, is about entering into and experiencing the mystery of "the glorious riches of this mystery, which is Christ in you, the hope of glory." Colossians 1:27

Praying for Goma, DRC

There has been a major escalation of the crisis in Goma, Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC). After years of conflict, a rebel group, M23, out of Rwanda has now claimed control of the provincial capital, which has caused hundreds of thousands to be displaced. 

I have a friend, who lives in Uganda and travels regularly into the DRC to encourage and support the Congolese followers of Jesus. 

• Over two million residents are in the dark without electricity or Internet access. 
• Gunshots and explosions are everywhere. 
• Many humanitarian aid agencies are based in Goma and cannot provide assistance.
• There are dead bodies in the streets 
• Hospitals are overwhelmed by casualties.
• Many are without access to food, water, or shelter. 

A bit of background. 

The Rwandan and Ugandan wars of aggression and plunder have ebbed and flowed for nearly three decades. Both countries have invaded the Congo twice, 1996 and 1998, fought each other on Congolese soil over mineral resources (2000), and have sponsored militia groups inside Congo for decades. What we are witnessing today, is the latest escalation of a persistent crisis enabled by their western backers – US, UK, EU, France – to name a few. Ugandan troops are now in the DRC at the request of the government to help fight the rebels. 

The United Nations Security Council has held two emergency sessions to address the crisis in the Congo. Virtually all of the nations have called for Rwanda to withdraw its soldiers from the DRC and stop supporting the M23. However, no concrete action has yet to be taken in spite of the pleas of the DRC's foreign minister. Germany and the United Kingdom appear to be taking baby steps to possibly withhold aid from Rwanda.

For over six decades, the DRC has been denied the fundamental rights of peace, democracy, and justice. From the assassination of Patrice Emery Lumumba to the ongoing plunder of its vast resources, has remained at the mercy of Western-backed dictators, foreign-sponsored militias, and multinational corporations, all seeking to exploit its immense wealth—at great cost to the Congolese.

Keep Congo in your Prayers!

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