Return of a Prodigal

Contaminated sites reclamation...

2010-06-12T12:37:00.002-04:00

Quite frankly, the pictures are horrifying.

Wildlife specialists hosing off oil soaked pelicans. Volunteers building protective barriers, ankle-deep in pools of shimmering slick. Minimum wage oyster shuckers, now unemployed, heading home to past due bills and hungry mouths. Humanity’s greed, tangible in the form of thick, black sludge, spewing from a hole in a pipe. An inky smudge on both a satellite photo and our history.

Sadly, we have been here before. And, unless there is a fundamental shift in all of us, we will be here again.

Now I am not an activist. I have never taken part in a demonstration. I have signed very few petitions. I don't rescue stray cats, although I liked the band. In fact, I regret to admit that I have rarely fought for anything other than my own selfish pursuits, my own short-sighted ideas of happiness, my own comfort. Beg me for spare change and most likely I’ll pass you by. Cock-block me on a Saturday night out, however, and we’ll have a problem. Much, you see, is backwards in my heart. I know it and I don’t like it. I have no doubt that most of you can relate.

As a Christian, and a lackluster one at that, I have long been told that this world is not my home, that I will one day wander streets of gold, the cares of today all but forgotten in light of eternity. It is a lovely thought if you think gold streets and mansions are neat , but as a number of Christian and secular authors today agree, there is a huge danger in this 'only visiting this planet' thinking, one that has allowed the wide-grinned snake oil salesmen we call politicians to rake in cash hand over fist for years with little or no accountability. These “God-fearing” men, as they claim to be, fight passionately against “key” issues like abortion, euthanasia and gay marriage, while they rape the earth - the very thing their God created and called good - with zero regard for its inhabitants. And for what? Money. The devil, it seems, may look more like an oil barrel or a fat Texan than a mischievous little fellow with horns, red tights and a Steve Buscemi mustache.

But it’s easy to pass the buck, isn’t it? Those bastards, we cry, disgusted.

In his oddly likable, haunting little ditty on Illinois' famed serial killer John Wayne Gacy Jr., folk wunderkind Sufjan Stevens offers this:

And in my best behavior
I am really just like him
Look beneath the floorboards
For the secrets I have hid

Interesting...and scary.

While the consequences of my actions rarely spread beyond guilt, a pouting liver and the usual two weeks of anxiety following an annual STD test, it is true that they pale in comparison to the current environmental catastrophe. But the question remains: am I really that much different than the inbred looking men in expensive suits from BP, Transocean and Halliburton, swearing in before the Senate committee? Is their desire for money and power really any worse than my own shopping list of wants? Is their corner cutting any different than mine, or do we, pardon the upcoming pun, share hearts that have become darkened and crude?

To be honest, I’m not sure.

What I am sure of though, is that I don’t like that question. And I don’t particularly like dead turtles and crabs and sharks and dolphins washing ashore on tides of black, the long-term consequences to be shouldered by my nephews’ generation. So what then are we to do?

A couple of things I guess.

First, we need to be vocal and active in putting an end to the things that make our stomachs crawl when we see them on the evening news. The time for sitting quietly by and allowing blood to be shed for the sake of oil, or kids to be raped at the hands of monsters in Cambodian brothels, or our poor and mentally-challenged men and women to be forced from their homes and into the streets in the name of gentrification is over. We need to get off our lazy asses and do something. Stand up for something. Fight for someone and something other than ourselves, no matter how busy the week was, or how comfortable the couch.

And second, we need to take an honest look inside. I’ve already admitted that I don’t like where my heart is at much of the time. Where is yours? Will I continue to be a hypocrite and crucify others when my heart is as unclean as theirs? I probably shouldn’t. Instead, I should sort myself out, and pray that the redemption in me might just help bring about the redemption of those around me, and then of course, if it's not too late, hopefully redeem the living, breathing planet we have been so very blessed and entrusted with.

No more ecosystems destroyed by corporate greed, unhealthy, government-sponsored dependancy on waning natural resources, or preventable disasters. No more water foul in need of a bath. No more oil spots on our legacy.

A Good Story...

2010-06-01T11:12:00.003-04:00

Inundated daily with sour tales of selfishness, greed and corruption, we are a people, a society, in dire need and want of good stories.

Nowhere is this desire more evident than ABC’s hit television show slash giant SEARS commercial Extreme Home Makeover, where for one week a community dons blue t-shirts and works its collective ass off to take care of decent men and women in less than desirable circumstances.

And so with misty eyes we watch as Ty and his quick-to-tear band of designers scurry here and there, trying to get their special projects just right. The fruit of their efforts drops our jaws: Hope, in the form of custom made homes erected from the ashes of former lives, giving independence to the disabled, sanctuary to the weary and strength to those who it often seems would have made it through whether a camera crew had ever appeared on their doorstep or not.

To be sure, it is a beautiful thing. Maybe even a glimpse of Heaven on earth. But there are many ‘angels among us’ whose stories are never told; whose sacrifices in the here and now are never rewarded with lavish backyards, luxury bathrooms and micro-fibre sectionals.

A recent Facebook message came from one such character.

I first met Darryl Thiessen in the mid 80‘s at Grant Memorial Baptist Church. Even then, he was an eccentric cat, his thick, unruly mane of hair often tucked into a bowler top hat, long before ‘seeker services’ made such a sight in church somewhat commonplace.

Almost a decade my senior, Darryl was the star sunday school teacher and camp counsellor, the first person we looked for upon entering the church for any reason. With him, the mundane and boring had a funny way of turning into a great time. For example, every friday night Darryl transformed the nicely paved church parking lot into a Formula One course, where, generally for the grand finale, he would pack us in to his ratty old Datsun, hit the gas, and see how much air he could get off the grass lip that separated the lot from the field. They were great days for a group of nerdy Christian teens scared of both “the world” and spending eternity in hell. With Darryl, our ragamuffin crew felt oddly cool and accepted.

While it is important for youth to feel this way, what separated Darryl form the rest of the pack was his genuine concern for us. It wouldn’t be a stretch to say that this is what defines him.

One glorious afternoon during free time at youth retreat at Bird River Bible Camp, my friend Trevor and I stumbled upon a black garbage bag, tucked lovingly into a rock crevice. Further inspection revealed that we had found the mother lode of all mother lodes: a stack of Playboy magazines - there was a God! That the magazines were from a decade before meant little to us. We were too distracted by the large breasts and thick disco bushes of pubic hair to notice.

Unable to keep our good fortune to ourselves, we figured we’d tell Darryl. After all, he was cool. He let us talk about sex, drugs and rock and roll in Sunday school. He occasionally said the word “shit.” Hell, he’d probably find it funny.

He didn’t.

Of course, he pretended he did. That is until we went for dinner and he retrieved and burned our prized find. Chuckling at our disappointment, he answered our queries about how he could do such a thing with a simple answer: “because it isn’t good for you to look at crap like that.” And with Darryl, that was the reason. He didn’t do it out of obligation to the camp, or the church. He did it because he genuinely cared about us. While Darryl knew the world in which we were growing and wrestling, and let us talk openly about it - for many of us it was the only unthreatening forum in which to do so - its tentacles would not touch us on his watch.

As the years went on, Darryl would disappear for months on end, planting trees in vast swaths of slash in northern BC. Other than a random surprise visit at the church here and there, Darryl, we eventually realized, was gone. He had moved to BC and left a huge hole in Winnipeg.

Nearly a decade and a few phone calls later, the world’s tentacles wrapped tightly around me, Darryl showed up in Whistler for a visit. At the time, I was an anxious mess. Thanks to a cocaine-fueled panic attack, I had recently quit using and was also working on abstaining from my other favourite vices: smoking and drinking, which no doubt put me on edge.

As it is with close friends, it was like time had stood still. We walked and laughed, sipped beers (abstaining didn't go too well) and had heart to hearts. Darryl, kind soul that he is, made it clear that he was OK with where I was on what he called “the journey”. And that I needed to be too. God had a plan, he always assured me. All was good.

Over the next year, Darryl - and his amazing crew of friends: Shane, Chuck, Kate and more families than there is room to list - quite simply held me up. They leant me their time, their ears, their homes, their advice and, most importantly, their unconditional love.

On one particular evening, having just finished what would be my last drug deal, my then roommate Mark and I accompanied Darryl to an after church shindig at someone’s home. About an hour in, Mark looked at me, his eyes filled with concern - which was odd coming from one of Canada’s most notorious bikers - and asked me if I was OK. Next on the scene was Darryl with a hug.

Whatever demon I was wrestling with that night was a tough as fuck. From the moment I arrived, I hadn’t felt right. I was tired and weak...and hurting. Tears rolled down my face. I had no idea where they were coming from. I just wanted to run.

When God chooses to reveal his face, it sometimes isn’t what you expect - for me he's even appeared as a golden retriever, but that's another story. That night, however, he looked an awful lot like Darryl, Mark and a bunch of ‘churchites’ I had long before vowed never to be like. I remember wondering what the fuck was going on. And then I heard the words, “let’s do communion.”

I don’t know who said it, but to this day, I’m glad they did, because I have always hated communion. It always felt forced. The super spiritual would cry while the rest of us would watch them, wondering what they have that we didn’t. Sometimes, much to the chagrin of my folks, I’d just plain refuse it. Why force it, I figured? It was a silly ritual. Manufactured emotion. That and it always added a half hour to a service.

On this night things were different. There were no ushers or little plastic cups. No emotion evoking worship songs or drawn out exegesis. There were simply a handful of good people, Darryl at the helm, passing the juice and bread around and then praying for me. Yes, praying for me.

The Facebook message I received the other day from Darryl said the same. “Hey Mighty, miss you, Bro,” it read, “hope everything is good in TO...I have your's & Sean’s [another good friend of ours] pictures on my prayer wall, praying for you regularly.”

Funny how some things never change.

You see, after BC, Darryl packed his bags and headed south to Chicago’s inner city where for nearly a decade he has lived at JPUSA, a Christian commune full of those set on acting out the biblical call to abandon self and take care of others. For Darryl, this doesn’t just mean the poor. It means the addicts, gang members and the mentally and physically challenged. It means everyone he meets, really, including the two roommates with whom he shares a tiny little living space (300 sq. ft small).

On a visit to Chicago a few years back, I stayed with my now long time friend and noted something interesting on a tour of the shelter: Darryl is still Darryl. No different than the guy I met in the 80s. He’s still eclectic, content and happy. And it’s infectious. The environment may be depressing, but faces light up when Darryl walks in the room, the way ours did all those years ago.

And in a way, there is humour in it all, as his Facebook message relayed something else, something that brings me to tears, because of its irony. “I got my Religious Visa,” he wrote, “so I guess I'm an official full time missionary.”

Darryl: You always have been, my friend. You always have been. And that is what makes yours a great story. One that deserves telling.

To launching a beat up Datsun off a grassy ramp, Christian metal concerts in roller rinks, deep dish pizza in Chicago's finest establishments and many more years of friendship: Here’s to you, my brother.

Congratulations on the Visa. I know how long you’ve waited for it.

Thanks to you, I don’t doubt that God has a plan. All is good.

Telling Secrets...

2010-05-06T17:01:00.001-04:00

A few years ago now, I submitted the following column to my editor at the Winnipeg Free Press, who politely rejected it, asking if I could submit "something a little more timely." To be honest, I was stymied. None of my other submissions had been rejected. And none of them had been timely either. (I'm not a fast enough writer to be timely... I need to wrestle before setting pen to paper.) There was something more, I figured, my sensitive ego bruised. After much consternation, I wrote it off to the fact that the word masturbation - see paragraph one - was probably banned from the faith page thanks to the paper's style guide, and as much as he had probably loved the piece, was under strict orders to turn it down. Silly, I know, but that rationale made me feel much better.

A few months back, a friend of mine gave me a fascinating coffee-table book entitled Post Secret, the spawn of a community art project that encouraged people to anonymously mail their deepest, darkest secrets to an address in Germantown, Maryland. For every comical admission - "I stole valium from my epileptic dog" - there are 20 heartbreaking ones - "I am in therapy learning to love myself for the first time...I am 26." To be honest, it is hard to make it through a few pages without tearing for two reasons: 1) The secrets are gut-wrenching and the brokenness palpable, and 2) shockingly, they are also your secrets.

While I have mentioned Buechner's Memoir, Telling Secrets in other posts, I believe that never have his words been more timely...making the column timely.

Telling Secrets

A number of years ago at Cornerstone Christian Music Festival, held just outside of Chicago, Illinois, Christian recording artist and Jesus People USA (JPUSA) member, Glen Kaiser took the stage and confessed to the thousands in attendance that he had a problem with “masturbation”.

According to a friend who was there when the word rolled off Kaiser’s tongue, an awkward silence descended upon the crowd, the numerous pairs of darting eyes confirming that no ones’ ears had betrayed them. In an instant, a spiritual superhero ‘became human, the line between rock star and fan erased by the honesty of a fellow pilgrim and the telling of a secret.

Understanding his influence, Kaiser could have talked about anything that night: the evils of secular music, the call to take care of orphans and widows, the benefits of communal living. He could have focused on walking the “unsaved” through the “sinners’ prayer”. Instead, he chose to be vulnerable, took ownership of what he considered to be a major struggle in his life, and ultimately established a seemingly uncomfortable yet solid common ground on which he and his audience could stand. An important talk about sex, lust, love and forgiveness followed.

Before going on to discuss the suicide of his father and his daughter’s nearly fatal battle with anorexia, Presbyterian minister and author, Frederick Buechner, says this in his frighteningly potent memoir, Telling Secrets: “I have come to believe that by and large the human family all has the same secrets, which are both telling and very important to tell. …They tell what is perhaps the central paradox of our condition – that what we hunger for perhaps more than anything else is to be known in our full humanness, and yet that is often what we fear more than anything else.”

In November 2006, Ted Haggard, then the pastor of New Life Church, a mega-church located in Colorado Springs, Colorado and the leader of the National Association of Evangelicals was removed from both positions having been accused and eventually confessing to both purchasing drugs from and having sexual relations with a male prostitute.

A vocal opponent of homosexuality and same sex marriage, Haggard’s fall from the pulpit to the motel room became fodder for liberals and gay rights activists, his hypocrisy yet another stain on the already discoloured history of Christianity. “…There is a part of my life that is so repulsive and dark that I’ve been warring against it my entire life,” he wrote in an apology letter to his congregation.

Was there any way this fiasco could have been avoided?

What if, like Kaiser, Haggard had have been able to admit his struggle, if not to the congregation, to the board, his wife, or even just a trusted friend? Would such a confession have led to personal healing (I do not mean from his homosexual tendencies, but rather from the internal torment and guilt of not being fully known and therefore living a double life)? With such knowledge, would his confidante(s) have been able to help him remain accountable? Most importantly, would such an admission have fostered an atmosphere of love, accountability and healing for those with similar struggles?

Christianity has long been marked and marred by the poor choices of its leaders. In fact, I suspect many of the biblical characters (both the leads and extras) would blush were they to see their stories nicely laid out in print for the world to read. But on which and from what do our priests and pastors reflect and draw their Sunday morning sermons? Quite often it’s the colossal screw-ups.

As one that messes up constantly, I find great hope in the fact that shysters like David and Jacob somehow found favour with God. I also take comfort in the fact that God can take my mistakes, my secrets, and use them for good. Why then is admitting them to both others and myself so hard? And why, like Adam, do I continually try to hide things from the only One who truly knows everything.

This is the tension in which we live: wanting to be known and accepted in our completeness, but afraid of the rejection that might accompany such a complete understanding.

And so, in an attempt to avoid the potential rejection, like Haggard, we live secret lives, hiding behind various masks fabricated to win the approval of others, or at least give the impression that everything is ok. In doing so, however, we run a very serious personal risk: “It is important to tell at least from time to time the secret of who we truly and fully are,” Buechner offers later on, “even if we tell it only to ourselves – because other wise we run the risk of losing track of who we truly and fully are and little by little come to accept instead the highly-edited version which we put forth in the hope that the world will find it more acceptable than the real thing.”

Despite what they say in Las Vegas, from what I’ve seen, Johnny Cash is correct when he growls “As sure as God made black and white, what’s done in the dark will be brought to the light.” Like it or not, God uses secrets. A host of 80s televangelists can attest. What I’m now coming to understand is that the sin may lie as much in the concealing as in the doing. And if that is the case, I suspect it would be a lot easier to volunteer my darkness than have it dragged out of me.

Could God’s greatest elixir lie in our telling of the truth of our lives? Is the un-edited version of us the only version that God can truly use? If so, who are we to keep secrets when withholding them, it seems, only does more damage than good?

Sexual cycles and the big picture...

2010-04-13T10:42:00.001-04:00

The line was long.

So long that it snaked its way around the sanctuary, down the centre aisle to a stage that housed a large wooden cross already littered with hundreds of little white pieces of paper. I don't remember, but I suspect there was music. A moving worship song, perhaps. Maybe a hymn.

Each of the thousand or so men in attendance that weekend had come to Calvary Temple for one reason: to attend a seminar on “Sexual Purity”, or simply just sex, that three letter word most of us act out as if spelled with four. There were young and old. Short and tall. Suave and awkward. Married and single. To be sure, it was a less attractive bunch than one might expect for a group wrestling with desires of the flesh. Nevertheless, it was a group bound by a common denominator. A nemesis. A foe.

Having just moved back to Winnipeg from Toronto the week before, and battling the worst case of bronchitis I can remember, the last place I really wanted to be that weekend was sitting amongst what I felt were a bunch of guilty church-goers given to surfing porn when their wives were at choir practice. My father, ever concerned with my lackluster relational track record and noting my developing penchant for promiscuity, mentioned it on a number of occasions. "I think it would be really good for you," he'd say. "At least go check it out. You can always leave if it's not for you."

And so, sitting in the church parking lot on a nippy Winnipeg evening, I decided to give it a whirl...with one simple condition: I would only stay if I knew someone with whom I could sit. I mean, who wants to sit alone at a seminar on sexual purity? Creepy.

Not three steps in the door I heard my name, "Hey, Shayne!!"

Fuck.

It was Tom, a long time friend from the church of my youth. Worse, Tom's a great guy, so my excuse for bailing had officially vanished.

Over the course of the next two days, with numb behinds from uncomfortable pews, we heard story after story of seemingly harmless pleasures turned costly addictions. Lives risked for a moment of pleasure. Broken marriages. Shattered souls.

We also heard from men with incredible resolve, some having, get this, actually saved themselves for marriage and sang the praises of having done so. Others, despite the mess they had made of their lives, had been able to find redemption, abandoning their old ways to become men of integrity. Loving husbands. Exemplary fathers.

The choice was ours we were told. No matter what we were caught up in. No matter what we had done. There was freedom...and it was closer than we thought. Paper and pencils were handed out.

The most haunting part of the weekend came when one of the speakers asked that we bow our heads and close our eyes."If you were sexually abused, I want you raise your hand," he said in a compassionate tone.

Unable to resist, I quickly scanned the room.

Arms shot up all over the place.

My eyes focused on one individual in particular. Middle aged, overweight with a thinning pate and jeans pulled up well above his waist, he was the text book definition of the word loser. I had seen him earlier in the day and not so innocently guessed why he was there. Prostitutes and porn, I had deduced, pretty sure it wasn’t due to success with the ladies. Slowly, his body trembling the way it does when one is trying to quieten sobs, he raised his hand.

My heart broke. I felt sick.

“You fucking asshole, Shayne,” my mind yelled. “You fucking asshole.”

In a culture where we either brag or are embarrassed to admit the ease with which we have given and continue to give ourselves away, the topic of sex is vast, complicated and daunting. While I could take this blog in a million different directions - and probably will in upcoming blogs - the point I want to make here, however, has less to do with the utter mess we’ve made of sex in general, than it does with, quite simply, how our sexual cycles impact others.

You see, almost every man in the room that weekend was living out some sort of negative sexual cycle, whether it manifested itself in hours locked in the basement with a laptop, $50 hand jobs at a local den of iniquity or simply over-capitalizing on God given looks or pick up lines in nightclubs. Some had created their cycle out of insecurity and loneliness. Many, as the show of hands suggested, had been unwillingly dragged into one at a young age by an abuser - who was most likely also acting out a cycle. What I have now come to understand - and ironically aired for the first time with friends on the way to a strip club - is that unless these cycles are broken, we all become abusers.

Like it or not, we live in a world where, based on demand, capitalism has spawned a great deal of ugliness, and freedom is often denied to the weak and the poor. Nowhere is this more prevalent than in the sexual realm, where in small villages in Cambodia children are kept in dungeons to fulfill the demented cravings of sex tourists, and closer to home, young women trapped on reserves are lured into prostitution rings and strip clubs with the promise of modeling contracts. People, like our little brothers and sisters, bought and sold as fodder for someone’s perversion. Change in someone’s pocket. Human beings reduced to cum receptacles and commodities. Harsh, I know.

Whether you stream free porn online, joke with friends over $10 beers in a strip club, or take part in an interesting new trend: massage parlour stags - you feed a demand and an industry that thrives on human rights atrocities. With every dollar. With every click through.

Before you laugh off my thesis as conservative rubbish, allow me this: Am I naive enough to believe that your avoiding pornography, for example, will put an end to child sexual abuse? Of course not. But at least it’s a start. Do I hope and trust that all of us, blessed with the freedom to live the way we want, will choose to engage in activities that fights for others’ freedom, rather than condemn them to slavery? I do.

I write this now not to take a moral high road, but first and foremost to remind myself that my decisions here and now impact others. Interestingly, we need not be molesters to damage and abuse. But none of us like to be tied to the far end, the loosely connected bits that even disgusts us. Sometimes, however, we need to be reminded that no matter how loosely we think the connection to be, or how minute our contribution, in the big picture, we are still co-conspirators.

What we wrote on the pieces of paper that weekend, and later lined up to tack to the cross for what I will admit was not only a stunning and humbling visual, but where true freedom lies, were our deepest darkest sexual secrets. Today, I have many more to add to that list. My prayer, however, is that from here on in, no one ever, anywhere, has one to add because of choices that you or I have made.

Lord, forgive us our sins and bless those whom our weaknesses and poor decisions keep from freedom.

"...I am an angel with an incredible capacity for beer."

2010-01-28T18:00:00.000-05:00

I used to love the word broken.

So much, in fact, that I was going to tattoo it in a classic handwritten script on my neck, a permanent reminder of my how I viewed both myself and the world around me. Tainted. Flawed. Damaged beyond repair. Marked like Cain.

And while I think the current state of affairs supports such a theory, it wasn’t until someone I love very much started throwing the word around during weak, lengthy defences of poor decisions that I began to see it for what it truly is: An abandonment of hope. An excuse. A get-out-of-jail-free card.

It should come as no surprise that we all have the capacity to do great good or unspeakable evil, one moment feeding the homeless, the next feasting on the insecurities of another. But what then do we let define us? Good cop or Bad cop? Saint or Sinner?

Sadly, many of us have spent so much time in life’s penalty box, having lost so many of the little battles, that we have grown apathetic to the fight, convinced that victory is a pipe dream. And so we build our houses on the sand, basing our self-esteem on how fucked up we are. We chuckle at our self-abuse, brag about our infidelities and addictions and balk at those who don’t share in our self-destructive pursuits. Disturbingly, we relate more to Californiacation’s degenerate sex and alcohol obsessed protagonist Hank Moody and Sex and the City’s hedonistic temptress Samantha Jones than we do anyone with a hint of character and integrity. And for some reason, we’re proud of it. We wear our brokenness as a badge of honour. As a title belt of folly, to which we cling for dear life as if it were the only thing that could set us free.

In his must-read book The Return of the Prodigal Son, the late author and Catholic priest Henri Nouwen has this to say when describing the Rembrant painting that so captured his heart: “The soft yellow-brown of the son’s underclothes looks beautiful when seen in rich harmony with the father’s cloak, but the truth of the matter is that the son is dressed in rags that betray the great misery that lies behind him. In the context of compassionate embrace, our brokenness may appear beautiful, but our brokenness has no other beauty but the beauty that comes from the compassion that surrounds it.”

Once again: "...but our brokenness has no other beauty but the beauty that comes from the compassion that surrounds it."

Simply, there is no beauty in our brokenness.
There is definitely no beauty in the breaking.
There is only beauty in a brokenness redeemed by compassion.

And so I am left with a choice: will I fall at the feet of my God, my family, my community and accept a compassionate, loving embrace and be redeemed? Or will I continue to wander around in my tattered and torn rags, peacocking as if they were the latest showing from Prada?

In a world, as a close friend recently pointed out, that glamourizes empty pursuits as cool, the former will be tough. It will be counter-cultural. It will scary. It may generate some light ribbbing from friends. But I suspect it will be worth it.

I wonder how the word Redemption would look in a nice Old English script.

Amazing Grace...

2010-01-16T15:09:00.001-05:00

The calls are coming more and more frequently these days: my parents on the other end of the line, quietly relaying news of the positive test results and disheartening prognoses of close friends. Some are surprising: Innocent check-ups gone frighteningly awry. Spots on x-rays. People, quite simply, taken in the blink of an eye. Others, however, are less surprising: the grand finales of battles fought valiantly for years or months against crafty replicating cells that seemingly always get the upper hand. Home hospices set up in living rooms. Family members huddled around hospital bedsides. Teary-eyed goodbyes. Final breaths. Funerals.

Each call is sad. Each call a sobering reminder of my own mortality. The fragility of our existence. The human condition.

The call a couple of weeks back was more of a warning than anything. "Lorna Dyck isn't doing well," explained my mother in a pained tone. "Allan thinks she'll make it through the weekend, but he's not sure how much time she'll have after that. She's only taking ice chips now."

Ice chips...not good.

While I have known Mrs. Dyck for as long as I can remember, it has only been only over the course of the past few years, mostly via telephone updates from my parents, that I have come to know her as Lorna.

Rewind.

Having lost her leg to cancer at age 16, Mrs. Dyck was never hard to miss, moving with stealth-like ability through the halls of the church on her crutches. Although such a sight is an inexplicably interesting thing for a kid, more intriguing was the ever-present smile that graced her face from Sunday to Sunday as she went out of her way to greet you by name. Even then, I remember wondering why she was always so happy.

Over the years, as my parents and the Dyck’s became good friends, I started receiving frequent updates about their family. I listened as their two sons and one daughter grew into young adults, as my father's bond with Allan deepened into a heartfelt respect, and as my mom’s adoration for Lorna was mentioned in nearly every call. I also listened as the cancer came back, the way it had a number of times before.

Not long ago, during a visit to Winnipeg, I stopped in at the church on a Sunday morning. Weeks earlier, Mrs. Dyck had been told that this time the chemotherapy, would be strictly for the pain. Essentially, that the end was near. That morning, as the congregation belted out worship songs, Mrs. Dyck, with that same great big smile I remember from my youth, reached over the pew that separated us and gave me a hug, telling me how good it was to see me there. For the remaining 35 minutes of the service, I literally fought back the tears, my stomach muscles sore when it finally ended.

To list the many reasons why that hug, in that environment, meant so much to me would turn this blog into a novel. Let it suffice then to say this:

I have always been hyper-aware of how I am seen, how I am perceived in that building. I have done my best to play the part of the rebel, strolling in fashionably late, often in the same outfit I was in at the bar the night before. I have long looked at the people around me and judged myself unworthy, having pissed my innocence away in what I now understand has always been a blatant cry for help to to the heavens. Surrounded by those who are able to find fun in board games and clean jokes, in car rallies and cream soda; beside those who don’t find enjoyment or self-worth in self-abuse, I feel lost and alone and afraid. It is there that I see the chasm between the man I have become and the man I should be...and so I hate the place. I hate the music. I hate the walls. I hate that I hate.

Somehow, in some way, if but for a moment, Lorna’s hug bridged that gap. A single, thoughtful gesture, offered by one who had so much more to worry about, had a profound impact.

Amazing Grace how sweet the sound...

A few weeks later, I added Lorna as a friend on Facebook and thanked her. There, over a few emails back and forth, she explained that over the years, and always from a distance, she had spent much time not only praying for me, but also, as she put it “hurting and rejoicing over your journey.”

That saved a wretch like me...

I asked her a few questions about her faith, and in what would be her last response, she responded by writing about being OK with having a “simple faith.” She also wrote about having watched Allan’s mom, a woman she offered “only had her grade 9, and weakly at that...,” work her way through book after book, wrestling with complex doctrines, all in an attempt to get to know God better. “I watched how it changed her into a person who was selfless and hated when she sinned because it caused a chasm in her ability to serve and to be with her Father,” Lorna wrote. “And that was what I wanted!!! I was jealous to have that in my life. I've spent my whole life, from the time I met her, in the same way: Loving to learn of my Father, because I could. In all the years I've been studying and learning and discovering my Father, I really only feel as if I'm scratching the surface of what there is to know.”

I once was lost, but now am found...

On the morning of Sunday, January 3rd, 2010, Lorna went to meet the Father she had spent her whole life trying to get to know. My parents called to tell me the news later on that evening. But for some reason I already knew. At around 3 o’clock in the afternoon, hung over and tired, I went to my room, and had, as one of my favourite writers once put it, “a colossial-fucking-go-to-pieces,” which is something I haven’t done in years. And I prayed...asking God why he would take so many good people - so many calls - when the world is in such dire need of good people, of good stories. Silence.

Laying there, my pillow soaked with tears, I remembered something. When my grandmother passed away, the pastor explained that while our memories of her should bring a smile to our faces, they should also act as a catalyst for us to live the way that she lived, to do things the way she would have done them, to touch others the way that she had touched us.

Was blind but now I see...

In Lorna, I met someone who, despite having every reason to be bitter at her circumstances and angry at God for setting the whole blasted thing in motion in the first place, chose not to get caught up in a pity party. Rather, she chose to draw as close to Him as possible, understanding that every moment was a gift and that true beauty lies not in a body that can turn against you in the split second, but in a heart abounding in love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, gentleness and self control.

God, may Lorna live on not only in our memories, but in our actions. Take care of your good and faithful servant. Give her a hug for me.

Christmas

2009-12-25T09:33:00.000-05:00

For as long as I can remember, it has been a Stephens' family tradition to read the biblical account of Jesus' birth following the candle lit service at Grant Memorial Baptist Church on Christmas eve.

Seeing as how this is the first year in recent memory that I have not joined my family for a frigid Yuletide in Winnipeg, albeit 12 hours late and in absence of the candle lit service - I decided upon awaking this morning to do the same. Beside my absent roommate's' cute miniature tree - adorned with odd ornaments like Gretzky avec Rangers uniform, Darth Vader and the Pink Panther - I cracked open my not-nearly-read-enough Bible, took a sip of my lukewarm Bailey's and coffee (instant, of course: Second Cup is closed) and turned to the first chapter of Matthew, skipping the long, boring and theologically important genealogy (So and so begat so and so).

Whether you buy into it or not, when stripped down, the story is pretty simple, fascinating and would make for an interesting movie (immaculate conception, unique GPS, mass infanticide and a dash of frankincense).

The Story
Prior to consummating their marriage, Joseph finds out his lovely bride-to-be, Mary is pregnant, a plot thickener no doubt. Being what the text offers as a righteous man, Joseph decides he's going to divorce her - another paragraph says "while he was trying to figure a way out..." - but is then visited by an angel in a dream who gives him the details: there had been no drunken carousing with another one of the town carpenters...rather, it was the Holy Spirit that had impregnated his fiance. "...do not be afraid to take Mary home as your wife," the angel explains, "she will give birth to a son, and you are to give him the name Jesus, because he will save his people from their sins."

And you thought you had some messed up dreams.

Imagine if you will, guys, finding out that your fiance is pregnant. An exciting thing to be sure...if the two of you had been intimate - it's Christmas, so I'm choosing light terminology. I suspect, unless she was an absolute angel whom you'd never witnessed a bit tipsy and flirting with your friends, you'd be a little pissed off and hurt. Chances are good, like Joseph, you'd be ready to load up the donkey and move out of the shack. You might even send an email to Maury Povich.

And then the dream. Today, we'd write such a thing off as emotional distress: the angel represents such and such, the Holy Spirit a manifestation of the pain of betrayal or some gibberish. Nevertheless, Joseph does what he is told, or commanded, and off they go to Bethlehem, although the reason for the trip (the census) isn't mentioned in Matthew, only in the gospel of Luke.

(Note: the biblical text is confusing as hell. It's the first time I've actually understood the whole "if the biblical text was manufactured, you'd think they'd have polished it up a bit" argument.)

[Enter an interesting supporting character] King Herod is one crafty mofo. After learning that the Messiah is to be born in Bethlehem, he arranges a sit down with the Magi (wise men or scholars) and tells them that they should continue to follow the now infamous star and then report back to him, so that he too could go and "worship". Of course, he had zero intention of doing so. When they, being wise men and all, clue in to his real intentions (the aforementioned mass infanticide, which he later carries out), they exit stage left - after presenting the baby with gold, frankincense and myrrh - without so much as sending the good king a text message. The Christ family then splits Bethlehem for Egypt, only to return after Herod's passing.

And that's Matthew's account...

Now while it might seem that I have an aversion to mangers and shepherds, let me be clear that I am not, although I am allergic to hay. When combined, the two gospels make for a much more well rounded story, including an angelic choir and the Inn sans vacancy. But what then is the point of Christmas? It would seem that whether or not there were goats present at the manger birth, or if the baby Jesus was wrapped in "swaddling clothes", the story is much bigger than the ever present Nativity scene perched upon the piano in the Stephens living room each December could ever possibly capture.

You see, despite what marketers have done to Christmas, or Xmas as we'd seemingly rather call it (easier to text and write, I guess), it isn't about dysfunctional family gatherings, credit card debt, a 70% Off Diesel Boxing Day event , or work parties that lead to lengthy conversations with HR departments. Rather, because of Jesus birth, and that one thing alone, it has cosmic significance. Why? Because if the story is true, that same cute baby depicted in the school plays hung on a cross as a criminal thirty something years later after saying some pretty profound things. Things that rubbed and continue to rub a lot of people the wrong way. Things that all of us can either accept or reject, but either way need at some point to make a decision on. And even though Christians have made a bloody mess of the whole thing, and the atheists have chosen not to believe, Christmas - the event, not the day - like it or not, is a turning point for all of us. Either way has consequences.

And so, as you sit alone, or celebrate with friends or family today, take a moment to reflect. What and why do you believe what you do? And how does it impact your life?

Merry Christmas all.

The Imposter

2009-10-09T16:22:00.000-04:00

While known predominantly for his bestseller,The Ragamuffin Gospel, a weighty tome on the forgiving and loving nature of God, author Brennan Manning's most important, most culturally relevant thoughts might just be penned in his often overlooked work, Abba's Child.

In it, Manning describes an important revelation that came to him during a twenty day silent retreat in a remote cabin in the Colorado Rockies. "As the days passed, I realized that I had not been able to feel anything since I was eight years old," he explains. "A traumatic experience at that time shut down my memory for the next nine years and my feelings for the next five decades. When I was eight, the impostor, or false self, was born as a defense against the pain. The impostor within whispered, "Brennan, don't ever be your real self anymore because nobody likes you as you are. Invent a new self that everyone will admire and nobody will know."

I suspect that the majority of us share a similar story. In fact, we could probably just swap our names with Brennan's in the above quote and sign off on it as our own. Whether at age eight or twenty-eight, there probably isn't a person alive that hasn't forged from their pain an impostor to help make things a little better, to take the focus off the seemingly unlovable, broken schleps we feel ourselves to be. And so we hide. Hide behind a smile, weight, bravado, alcohol, sexual conquests, humour and even religion. We are the class clown, the school druggie, the cheerleader, the Sunday school teacher, but we are never truly ourselves. And sadly, many of us, myself included, years later, find ourselves trapped behind masks that have become far too familiar, far too much like home.

In his life changing memoir, Telling Secrets, author Frederick Buechner concurs. "The world sets into making us what the world wants us to be, and because we have to survive after all, we try to make ourselves into something the world will like better that it apparently did the selves we originally were," he says. "...the original, shimmering self gets burried so deep that most of us end up hardly living out of it at all. Instead, we live out all the other selves which we are constantly putting on and taking off like coats and hats against the world's weather."

As a kid, I spent a fair amount of time at Grant Memorial Baptist Church. Truthfully, although we went a bit much (3-4 times a week on average), I didn't really mind it. My parents were good enough to not let it interfere with my hockey schedule, so other than being the last ones out of the building every Sunday thanks to my mother's incessant socializing (love you, mom), it wasn't that bad. When it became bad was during the secular music embargo at my house. Not that I didn't like Michael W. Smith's sentimental electric piano pop songs, because I did and still do (please don't tell). Simply, it was not being able to play Platinum Blonde, Ozzy and G&R during mini stick games or Atari battles with friends that sucked (and created a chasm between my friends and I). I remember one time trying to convince David Todd that the Christian band Mad at the World was actually the new David Bowie album I had somehow scored. Needless to say, it didn't go over well.

And so the teasing began. Oddly, seeing as I had a bad haircut and carried a good twenty pounds of excess baby fat back in those days, the teasing was church related. At that point, when I wasn't being invited out as much on account of my "faith", it became clear to me that whatever God had to offer me in the here and now couldn't compare to the acceptance of my friends. And that is when my impostor was born.

I won't get into the gory details of my impostor in this blog. Let it suffice to say, however, that he is alive and well, wreaking havoc at times. But I am aware of him now. And while I very much dislike him, the impostor has helped me through the good and the bad and any hating of the impostor is, as Manning later goes on to explain, self-hatred. So it is with gentle hands that the mask must be removed.

As we roll into 2010 and resolve to hit the gym more, watch less pornography, stop smoking or become better parents, let's, if but for a moment, peek out from behind the masks we have worn since God knows when, if only just to remind ourselves of who we truly are: lost and broken men and women who were fearfully and wonderfully made when stitched together in our mother's wombs (I admit I stitched a couple of Bible verses together there). To be sure, much shit has happened since. We have done horrible things and had horrible things said and done to us. But it will all be redeemed, whether we have abs or money or the perfect marriage or amazing children or not. Those lies are what got us here in the first place.

And so new decade, I introduce you to me: a sensitive little (still little after all these years) boy from the prairies who despite the tattoos, foul mouth and penchant for Jack Daniels (notice the impostor needed to list those), still listens to Christian rock, misses ham sandwich lunches with his Grandma in Morden, MB, and would one day love to grow up to be just like his dad. And I think I'm beginning to be OK with it.

Happy New Year, all.

A toast: to removing the masks, quieting the Impostor, and finally accepting who we truly are, not what the world has told us to be.

Anxiety

2009-08-10T17:21:00.000-04:00

The first attack was the worst.

It came without warning, somewhere between the rooftop hot tub and the living room. Somewhere between the lines of coke and the 30th or 40th cigarette. Somewhere between the red wine and the two girls waiting for me in the living room.

It had all the signs of a heart attack: shortness of breath, rapid heartbeat (like just sprinted 100m fast), tingling in the extremities and instant sweat. Having just sat down on the couch, the overwhelming sense of fear shot me right back to my feet and out the door, ignoring the girls' queries as to where I was going. I needed to get out of there. I made a beeline for my room, ditched the towel and got dressed. If I was going to die, it couldn't be at my own house party. And please God, anything but a drug overdose. My family would be mortified.

I don't remember whether it was hot or cold outside. Winter or Summer? Couldn't tell you. All I remember is wandering around an unusually silent Whistler Village, heart pounding in my chest. I headed straight for the clinic: CLOSED.

"I can't call 911," I remember thinking to myself. "I'm stoned out of my mind."

And so I walked. And walked fast. And cried. And prayed to a God to whom I'd been silent for a very long time.

"God, I swear I'll never touch that shit again," I pleaded, making what was probably the most genuine promise of my life.

It's amazing what goes through your mind when you're not sure if your heart is about to explode. For some reason, it was my younger brother Cam that came to mind. Seven years apart, I'd never really been around enough to be much of a big brother. Sure, we'd played mini sticks in the basement and I used to throw him around in the pool, but he had no idea who I was. "He's going to be the kid at youth group who's older brother died of a fucking overdose," I thought, disgusted with myself. I need to write him a letter.

What that letter said, I am not sure. I returned to an empty apartment - the party had since ended - and crawled into bed, my heart rate a little closer to normal. With shaky hands I chicken-scratched something or other about not being around enough and asking for forgiveness for how I was convinced I would be found in the morning. I'm sure there was much more I was planning to say, but I passed out before I could put it to paper.

In the end, my heart never exploded, although it very well should have. Rather, I'd had my first panic attack. For a solid year following that horrific event, I wrestled with my mind every time the sun went down. A flutter of the heart or pain in my arm would awaken a terror in me so grandiose that most nights I fell asleep with an Ativan tucked into a dry spot under my tongue. During that time, I refused to sleep in my room, choosing instead the couch, the same CD playing night after night: tried, tested and true things that somehow, and for no good reason, just narrowly kept the monster at bay.

For those of us who tend to repeatedly put our hands in the fire, fear can be a wonderful motivator. It's been over a decade now since that night, and a decade since I've touched drugs (the illegal ones, anyway). Once in a while, I can feel the monster's presence, lurking at the strangest times. The other night it passed while I was laying in bed trying to fall asleep. It's how I imagine it might feel brushing shoulders with a ghost.

And as much as I hate it. As uncomfortable as it might get. It acts as a reminder. A reminder of the terror that could be. A reminder that life is fragile. That the mind is fragile. That no matter how much I can bench press or how hard I can punch, I can be rendered useless in the blink of an eye, with one simple, random surge of adrenaline.

And if my heart should explode one night, then ultimately I was warned. The promises made, the important things that come to mind when you feel it may just be your last moment on earth, the things so quickly forgotten when the sun rises and lights up your room, inviting you to live another day, those are the things that should and need to be done. There are letters to be written and people to visit and places to see. I suspect that should we do the things we promise we will and avoid the things we promise to avoid in a moment of panic, then truthfully what would we have to fear? Dying, perhaps. But not death.

"Reach for the sky, because tomorrow may never come."

A Long Way from Home...

2009-08-09T12:35:00.001-04:00

It was fun while it lasted.

Almost two decades now, to be exact. Highballs of vodka-water-cranberry and bottles of imported stout, almost always, whether wanted or not, and often at the whim of a friendly, pour-happy bartender, accompanied by shots of Jack Daniels or Jagermeister or something tasty with a funny name and hangover-inducing sweetness. The result, of course, was witty comments, fake Irish accents in small US towns, cross-country hitchhiking journeys and Johnny Cash grumbling over the speakers of rental cars snaking along picturesque highways. It also provoked gut-busting laughter during late night handstand competitions on shaky fences, pick-up missions or watching a friend in tight jeans eek his way into the splits regardless of whether he was in a bar or on the cobblestone streets of a small prairie city.

Lifelong friendships were forged. Drunken heart to hearts held over late night nips at Sal's or ten dollar pints in the back booths of dimly lit strip clubs; tears shed during the sobering up moments of head-bobbing and wobbly-kneed stupors...and hugs, not the cheesy 'bro' hugs prevalent in UFC entrances, but real, meaningful ones, in the airports of various cities upon the arrival of a close friend.

There were concerts snuck into and bars kicked out of. There were anxious moments squaring off with bouncers over outstanding debts for services rendered by exotic dancers. There was even an impromptu cunnilingus demonstration on a pillow shaped like a vagina by one of the most charismatic people you have ever met. There was the Grand Slam at Denny's, breakfast at the Nook, red wine sipped and Pavarotti sung en route to watering holes (while driving), and always way too many cigarettes.

But there was also much darkness. Bad decisions made in the mindlessness of an alcohol induced haze. Faint morning memories of parking sideways, car crashes, picking fights, embarrassing conversations and turning what once were platonic relationships into awkward hellos and messy power struggles. And so many conversations with jaw clenching coke heads, money hungry strippers, insecure porn stars, B-list celebrities and gangsters planning very bad things, of which you too were involved.

People were hurt: physically, mentally, emotionally and spiritually. A broken ankle is nothing compared to the loss of innocence. A $5000 meal a disgrace when supported by the addictions of a bedraggled and broken lot. Punches, as impressive and cool as they may have been at the time, seen as pointless and scary when the adrenaline wore off -- Was blood really coming out of his ears? Oh, how everything can change in a split second.

Simply, I'm sick of the anxiety that tag teams the hangovers. I'm sick of crawling around in darkness when there is light all around. I no longer care to wake up in uncomfortable beds or couches or in strange places, sometimes alone and sometimes in the arms of, if even for a moment - an angel who may or may not have seen through the facade, but hoped no matter how brute or animalistic or dirty things got, that she was cared for or liked or maybe even loved. I'm sick, quite honestly, of the man I've become. Of the morals I've abandoned. Of the innocence I've lost.

To be sure, I am a prodigal. I turn for home now less because I truly want to, than that I have to. The far land has been good to me, but cannot define me, because I am more than it's many seductions. It will eat me alive. It has done so already.

I'm not sure what the road ahead looks like, or if anyone will kill the fattest calf upon seeing my worn out shadow crest on the horizon. I just know that I have been told where to turn when I am weary and heavy-laden. That there is love and mercy and grace in abundance there. And that forgiveness trumps judgement when we are man enough to ask. As tough as it will be, I think I am there, ready not only to ask for forgiveness, but also to forgive myself.

As tough as it will be to tell...

This is my story.