Shifting Shifted Shifty

Relevant My Ass

2007-01-11T13:58:00.000-06:00

My sister beat me to the punch on this post, but I figured it was too good to exist in only one place on this great thing called the internet. Christmas Eve day, my sister and I went to church and, while in the parking lot, I noticed this scene. This picture is unadulterated and yes, the kazoo says "Jesus Loves Me."
While doing some reading for one of my classes this quote stuck out to me, it seemed applicable somehow: "the majority of current church practices are cultural accommodations to a society that no longer exists" (Eddie Gibbs & Ryan K. Bolger, in Emerging Churches)

Christmas

2007-01-06T14:40:00.000-06:00

Well, Christmas is over, and as Jenny insinuated, I’ve been a deadbeat in the realm of posting. Funny how I just said I was going to be back and then disappeared for 3 weeks. I’ve been thinking about why I put off on posting, and the best reason I can come up with, besides a certain amount of lethargy is fear. I have decided that I am afraid of people’s judgments. So here is my attempt to say, “screw it” and write unafraid of people’s assessments of me.

But back to Christmas, This year was one of the best Christmas’ I think I’ve had in a while. I don’t think that I can place one thing that made this Christmas any more Christmassy than the last, but somehow it came off that way. But in an attempt to share why my holidays were good here is my list of favorite Christmas ‘things’ from 2006:

Relaxing in my basement with friends, sipping tea/coffee, watching the fire on my TV and listening to Christmas music.
Playing Crokinole with my family around the kitchen table while listening to the Sufjan Stevens Christmas album.
Waking up without the sound of an alarm in my ear.
Hunting for Christmas music. Here are my top ten favorites of this year (in no particular order):
a. Come Thou Fount of Every Blessing – Sufjan Stevens
b. We Wish You A Merry Christmas – The Muppets
c. Have Yourself A Merry Little Christmas – Coldplay
d. Christmas (Baby Please Come Home) – Deathcab For Cutie (or U2 for that Matter)
e. Little Drummer Boy/Peace On Earth – David Bowie & Bing Crosby
f. Fairytale of New York – The Pogues & Kristy McCall
g. Put The Lights On The Tree – Sufjan Stevens
h. Joy To The World – The Trans-Siberian Orchestra
i. Happy Holidays (Beef Wellington Remix) – Bing Crosby
j. Darcy The Dragon – Roger Whittaker
A Christmas Day fondue with some family friends that involved 4 different types of fondue.
Playing Settlers of Catan.

All in all it was a good break, one that restored and refilled me to the point where I am now looking forward to the coming semester. The thought of another 3 1/2 months of school is no longer something to start a spiral down into depression. I get to be a Teaching Assistant in class that excites me, I get to take a class with a brilliant man whose knowledge of the Bible is scary and highly interesting and I have less on my plate so I’ll be able to take moments to breath and enjoy being where I am, something that often got lost in scheduling last semester.

Merry belated Christmas and happy New Year.

Return of the brother

2006-12-15T23:39:00.000-06:00

I’ve been gone a long while. At times it has pained me to be gone, at times I could have cared less, but now I have a desire to return. Some have referred to returns such as this as the “second season” of their blog, don’t know if I buy into the fact that my blog even had a first season, but here is the second.

Tonight marks the end of the first semester of my final year at bible college, as I drink my now cold (and therefore disgusting yet irresistible) Starbucks coffee I can’t help but feel that my return to this blog is due to some Stockholm Syndrome-like attachment to writing after 7 semesters pumping out paper after paper. Well, no matter the cause, I’m back and, in this, the “second season” of Shifting Shifted Shifty I think I’m going to try things a little differently than the first time round. I am starting out this time round nobly attempting to not have another stint of Whining Whined Whiny. May not happen, I have no shortage of material around about which to whine, but I’ll try gosh darn it.

Bruce Campbell has nothing on me when it comes to campy

2006-04-03T20:03:00.000-05:00

These past couple weeks have been interesting. They have been chocked full of wonderful experiences. Actually, since my last post things have been quite a bit less frustrating. I had a couple really good conversations soon after that restored my faith in humanity.

One of the good conversations I had was with a friend that I have worked with for the past couple summers at camp. The question of whether I am ‘compatible’ with a Christian summer camp has been running through my mind for the past month or more. I just am not Mr. Evangelism. Not to say I ever was, but now I wonder if how some camps (there are some camps out there that are pretty good with the whole evangelism thing) do the classic evangelism thing is even really ethical. Is it right to build conversion into a big emotional event that makes an alter call more like a feeding frenzy than a step in a journey towards God? Is it right to just present “the Gospel message” over and over while neglecting the fact that “the Gospel message” is one point along a difficult process and that there is a lot more to Christian life than praying the prayer?

As for being compatible, I have no clue if I am, but I do see the potential for change and growth around me. The conversations I’ve had, like the one with my friend, have gotten me excited about the future of camp.

That being said, its now time for my next rant. Peace. I think that is one of the most overused words in Christianity. Every bloody chapel at school and half the conversations I have, all of them end in “go in peace” or “I hope God gives you peace about ______” or “well, whatever you do, make sure you have a peace about it.”

Here’s my question? Why do I always have to be at peace? When I hear that, I think of all the cases in history where nations or people or organizations have been “at peace” and have grown complacent because of that. They have ended up stagnating, or being left unprepared when a real struggle comes. The fall of troy pops into my mind (I know, I know, probably wasn’t a giant horse...) they got complacent and felt at peace and look where it got them. I frankly don’t mind being uncertain about my decision to go apply at camp. I have many doubts and fears, I don’t know if I’m the best person for the job but I feel like that is where I should be. In many ways I don’t want to go back. I don’t want to have to deal with potential staff who may be ‘trouble’, I don’t want to have to deal with constantly struggling against what I see as a system that could be improved, I don’t want to have to experience the potential piety of people who haven’t faced the shit in their lives. But, that being said, I definitely experience an excited energy when I think of what could happen next summer.

Mad

2006-03-16T09:45:00.000-06:00

I’ve been meaning to write for a while, but I’m not exactly sure what to write about. I feel like all my frustrations have lost focus and I’m just banging my head for no reason any more. I find myself getting mad at things in church and school and in friends and I don’t even know why.

Today I sat in on a chapel about lamenting the sucky things in life and how there is hope on the other side. For my school that is mighty impressive, typically the concept of God not feeling near is something to be dreaded at all cost. Going through “the dark night of the soul” (man that phrase has started to chap my ass) today seems to be something to get out of as soon as possible and to dread more than Godzilla. But today I actually heard someone say that it was an okay place to be. It blew my mind, and I should have been jumping up and down for joy but I was still pissed.

Despite the chapels better message however, I couldn’t look past the low lights, interpretive dance with a candle involved. I couldn’t see that the service was actually a move to something I see as a more ‘authentic’ (for lack of a word that buzzes a little less) faith. There were no delusions that life is going to be great as a Christian. No one during the service pronounced that God heals all your troubles, at least not blatantly, instead they focused on hope that things will probably get better.

Maybe I was blind to the positive because in the class I had just before chapel I had to contend with someone talking about how if you become a Christian God will save you from your alcoholism. I nearly punched the guy. He later went on to say that God heals all and if all we do is pray to God than we’ll have a rosy life.

WHAT THE HELL! Does this guy lived in the world as we know it? Its messed up, I spent 5 years of my life nearly house bound because of Chronic Fatigue. Did I get better when with the unshakable faith of a 9 or 10 year I prayed for healing? No, I spend years struggling with being sick, depressed and otherwise shitty. Did God heal one of the few people at a church that is about to die who could actually help heal the church? No and now his family doesn’t have a father.

I have to say, if you’ve never dealt with a chronic illness or anything really serious in your life or in your family’s life than you should just shut the hell up about things you haven’t experienced. If you have never eaten an ice cream cone, how can you help someone else understand what it is like and how to do it? At least you can’t and be correct. Be careful all you who have had a fairly painless life so far, recognize how lucky you are and don’t claim that there is some quick and simple fix to everyone else’s life.

Call me Ishmael, I mean Brother Mark

2006-03-05T02:44:00.000-06:00

I just realized that I have yet to explain the name of my blog. I’ve been going on this for quite some time and I have been remise in sharing why I chose the name I did.

The name Shifting Shifted Shifty was birthed out of my first year at college. Within the first 2-3 weeks living in dorm I started hanging out with 3 other guys quite a lot. Within another month we had been christened by our friends as ‘Team Shifty” where the root of that term came from I cannot remember but oddly enough it stuck. Soon the four of us were known throughout the school as Team Shifty and developed a reputation to go along with our name.

Since that first year in college the word “shifty” has held a special place in my heart (just to the right of my cockles). So when I started up this blog I decided that there would be no better word help express what I’m going through.

At its most basic shifting, shifted and shifty are how I see my life. As I’ve said, my blog is a place to put forth ideas that I’m working through. It is my place to work out where I may be going on my journey (spiritual, mental, life whatever you want to put before “journey” is fine with me), that is the shifting part. It is also my place to say how I see things. It is a place to express my opinions that I have, whether they are firm or not, they are the opinions I have shifted to after some thought. Finally I also recognize that I may be way off on some of this, I don’t claim, as I’ve said before, to have it all together, and I don’t think I ever will. I’m imperfect and therefore so are my ideas and faith. One might say that I’m a shifty source when it comes to matters of life.

Shifty has also come to mean community. I spent hours with my fellow Team Shifty members my first year, we’d be up until 1 or 2 every night, talking, watching TV or doing whatever else came to mind. With those 3 other guys I was free to speak my mind, work things out with their help and not fear being looked upon as stupid. Team Shifty was a place where I could be open, and that is what this blog is to me, a place where, no matter how stupid, trivial or wrong my opinions may be, I can work things through and express them.

As Paul Graham said in his article which NinjaNun pointed me to:

The trouble with keeping your thoughts secret, though, is that you lose the advantages of discussion. Talking about an idea leads to more ideas. So the optimal plan, if you can manage it, is to have a few trusted friends you can speak openly to. This is not just a way to develop ideas; it's also a good rule of thumb for choosing friends. The people you can say heretical things to without getting jumped on are also the most interesting to know.

I like and want that.

That is why this is Shifting Shifty Shifty.

Duck Duck...GreyGoose?

2006-03-01T15:49:00.000-06:00

Well, I survived yet another year at Youth Quake, that wonderful retreat that a certain bible college in the middle of Saskatchewan just north of Moose Jaw. Now this is my fifth year in attendance, and second as a sponsor, but it is my first since I’ve earnestly started thinking about things a little deeper. And lets just say it was…um…interesting at points. Okay scratch that, man was the speaker awful. Screw beating around the bush, the speaker made me angry. Maybe I’m getting a bit cynical in my ‘old age’ (nothing like a bus full of screaming high school students to make someone barely out of high school himself feel like an old geezer), but have youth speakers always resorted to that many jokes about shit, piss and vaginas? Because if so I don’t remember it.

Even though I don’t know if I agree with the content many Christian speakers feed their audiences anymore, at least most have some. This guy just told story after story, all irrelevant to any sort of message, at the end of each time he spoke he’s throw something out, claiming that he had been talking about that all along. It was ridiculous, I even had a 15 year old boy in my youth group complain about the lack of content. YOU KNOW its bad when that happens. For the most part when I was in grade ten if a speaker would have spoken about his kid crapping his pants and tasting it I would have cheered him on. It takes A LOT to get a 15 year old guy to say there was no content in a speaker’s talk.

Here, allow me to give you the ‘cole’s notes’ of our dear speaker Jason’s weekend worth of talks:
Said Jason about himself:
-I am insecure about myself
-I don’t think much of my child who is “dumber than a bag of hammers”
-I am an awful parent who does not think through my actions and
therefore should not be trusted with the spiritual wellbeing of 3500 youth.

That brings me to a side note. Why do youth workers feel the need to be cool? Why do we as a collected whole (myself included in this) try so hard to win the approval of the kids we minister to? I saw an illustration that gives a good representation of how Christian leaders should be (or at least an okay representation (see diagram below, and no those aren't lasers). How come youth workers struggle so much with this? Why can’t we just duck? Why do so many of us need to be the center of attention when we are actually called to be a pointer to the center of attention?

On the bus there was one youth pastor who hogged the PA system and basically ran the show on the bus, the problem with this was that another youth pastor was actually in charge. So for 8 hours there and 8 hours back I had to grit my teeth as this man who claims to want to lead people to God basically shouted “LOOK AT ME!” but never ducked.

Well I think that has been more than enough ranting about Youth Quake, it wasn’t all bad after all. I did get to have some good talks with the guys I’ve been working with and it is a fun weekend.

I'm coming back to the heart of worship, because its all about me...

2006-02-22T19:09:00.000-06:00

For Christmas some friends of the family gave me a gift certificate to Blessings ‘my local Christian marketplace’. I hadn’t been into a Christian bookstore in quite some time and was curious to see what I could get with my $25 of gift certificate goodness. After looking through all the little pencils, bumper stickers and Willow Tree angels I got to the back of the store and their music department. And what did I find there? Music I didn’t really want to buy of course, but out of all the CD’s one in particular stood out. It was a sampler/ep for a band named Rock and Roll Worship Circus.

I was stunned, utterly shocked that there would actually be a band with that name. I came close to buying the $3.99 sampler just so I could hear the music of a band whose name typifies my current beef with church and my college’s chapel services. So much of what I see in a college chapel or church service is almost akin to a circus. The whole thing seems more like a free 30 minutes or hour of entertainment than a conduit to God for me.

I don’t understand worship services. Everyone stands and faces the PowerPoint screen and sings songs about how great God is and pathetic we are. Some people close their eyes, some sway and still others raise their hands as if the sky is about to fall or a bag of cash will soon be filling them. Is that what worshiping God is?

I feel like I don’t know how to worship. I thought for a while if I just closed my eyes and furrowed my brow it would come, if I just wanted it bad enough I’d be able to worship. That didn’t seem to be the case. I just stood their wanting to peek out of one tightly shut eye and see some sign that what I was doing was actually worship.

I’ve been doing research on this whole topic lately and one word that kept popping up is the Greek term latreia. This word is often translated as worship, but can also, or perhaps more accurately, be translated as service or sacrifice. That is something I often see as lacking in my experiences during church and chapel. Nowadays when I am in a worship service I feel like the whole thing is all geared towards me. The whole thing is about making me feel a certain emotion, making me feel comfortable and at home when I’m singing, or painting or whatever people do to ‘worship’ these days. What has happened to the whole service and sacrifice thing? Maybe I should be closing my eyes, furrowing my brow and raising my hands when I put a loonie in the offering plate.

Rappers can be geeks too

2006-02-21T23:45:00.000-06:00

A friend recently put me onto this song by a rapper named Flame and I love it. I have no idea what mind even thinks of writing a rap like this but it is amazing. Although the best part of it all is seeing a white, 50 year old (roughly) theology professor attempting to dance to it.

Keep it real and in context.

I've got ants in my pants

2006-02-18T14:52:00.000-06:00

I was talking with a friend on the drive home from school last week about smart people, not so smart people and all the shades in between. We were talking about the people who just get it. Those people who never seem to work, can write papers with blinding speed get the 4.0 GPA. And then we talked about those people who just don’t get it. Those people who try and try, they study long hours, read and reread their books and still barely scrape by.

That conversation, along with a few comments from steeplesandpeople got me thinking about my faith and those people who have what has become known in the realm of all things Christian as child-like faith. Its like I’m the one who’s barely scraping by in my faith and those child-like buggers are getting the 4.0. Their faith never shakes, they always seem happy (unless the plight of the poor overwhelms them), they know scripture and have a verse for every occasion, they don’t slip up and drop an f-bomb and they loath Harry Potter. They have it all together and, while I sound condescending, I crave to be them at times.

But is that what I really want? A professor of mine spent a period of my pastoral theology class talking about doubt last semester and I can’t help but ponder that now. He talked about how doubt is a crucial part of learning and isn’t that what Christians are all trying to do? Learn about Christ and how to be more like him? I love what Frederick Buechner said when describing doubts, they are “the ants in the pants of faith; they keep it awake and moving.” Buechner even goes on to say that certitude is the greater killer of truth and faith. I have rarely seen an ounce of uncertainty in someone who gets praised for their child-like faith.

On one hand I wish I could have it all together and understand it all. I’m even trying to put it all together and understand it. But on the other hand, I’m scared spitless that I’ll one day believe I have it all together. I hope I don’t, and never will, appear to have it all together.

I don't want a D.Min!

2006-02-15T14:20:00.000-06:00

I have always dreamed of my own blog, even gone so far as to make a few, unfortunately they never get anywhere. I'm quite, how shall I say...Motivationally challenged, and the idea of writing post after post seemed too much like writing assignments for one of my professors. Thankfully though I've found the motivation I need. Ranting about my professors. At least among other things. I'm in my third year of a B.A. in Youth Leadership, that wonderful degree dispensed by many Christian institutions to pump out youth pastors. And while I do love working with youth, I'm struggling to love some of the stuff I'm being taught, by my school, by my church and by 'The Church'.

So here is where I've decided to come. To work through those things that I just don't get, and hopefully get some input besides the stuff I'm getting from those people with Ph.D's, D.Min's and the like (I don't think I'll ever get over the humor of a pastor having a D.Min).