I love Samuel Beckett <3

Oh Boy!

I recently found the original series of Quantum Leap at my library and grabbed at the chance to revisit my childhood- Tuesday evenings at 6pm on BBC2, watching Sam Beckett leap through time to become different people and fix their problems with his right hand man Al and their computer Ziggy.

I love the far fetched story lines, Sam leaping into a spotty teenager who fixes his car with nitrogen oxide to win a race and save his sister, him becoming a mafia member to unite two star crossed lovers, traveling to Texas to win a farm girls heart, only to bump into young Buddy Holly and change some lyrics into their well known ‘Peggy Sue’ from ‘Piggy Ooh’, Sam running into 5 year old Michael Jackson in the mens room to teach him the moonwalk.  And all this in 45 minutes.  Fantastic.

And not only did Scott Bakula play Samuel Beckett in the show ‘Quantum Leap’ but he rose to greater heights and starred in the new Star Trek series as Captain Jonathan Archer in the new ‘Enterprise’, what a way to go!

 

One hero into two best loved shows. Swoon.

Hvarf-Heim

In the last 15 months, I’ve revisited some deep hidden instrumental roots, once spurred on by the likes of Mogwai and Kruder & Dorfmeister, and have discovered the gentle, yet somewhat bizarre, beauty of Sigur Ros.

An Icelandic quartet formed in 1994 by Jonsi Birgisson with six albums, eight EP’s, three movies and a haunting sound that, if you let it, will infect your deepest parts. And since their 2005 release of Takk, that I only discovered last year [thanks Sarah Braun!] I’ve been eagerly awaiting a new arrival.  Boy, was I suprised! Their new albim Hvarf-Heim not only caresses my auditory senses, but delights my visuals with their new movie filmed solely in Iceland.  I await the day that I get my hands on a copy…….

With alluring composition and rousing lyrics that at times could be mistaken for English, Hvarf-Heim describes, with wonder, the nature that surrounds the members of the band, personal experiences, and goodness knows what else. It’s gentle and easy Icelandic utterings, can at times, if allowed, instill a new sense of awe within us.

Note: Symptoms whilst listening to Sigur Ros can include; tears, wonder, bewilderment, reverence, surprise, inquisitiveness and melancholy. 

marks in time

A searching eye reads every life’s chapter;
And those who tread on our footsteps are just passers
Who walk on by through our story and the times that we have spent.
Those marks you have left will be left in cement for those that can see.
And for those that can read-they will read the words that you have left.

It is just to some, a mark in time;
But for those that you know you have left marks in their heart-
And in mine.

Each seeking eye sees your season’s chapter
And those who tread in your footsteps aren’t really just passers
Who walk on by, but those who will shape those marks you have left
And take them to heart-remoulding their own life’s cement.
Because they can read those words you have left.

It is to them a great mark in their time
For those that you have loved-
And in mine.

i missed church

today was the first time in my entire christian life that i have missed church because i’ve been sick. i think, in fact, in the almost 5 years of following jesus, i have missed church four times, three of them being because of retreats, holidays etc, and only once because i’ve been ill.

i felt a pang of guilt this morning as i woke to find myself still in a state of pathetic ‘cold’, and panicked last night when i tried to get a hold of a friend to take over some things for me at church. but i’ve been thinking again about what church means to me. was my guilt driven from missing out on community? or did it come from another place of worrying about what people think of me and my ‘performance’?

it was about four years ago when i first realized that i wanted to work for the church, dreaming about those i could help, guide, advise, enjoy life with, share ideas with, inspire, be encouraged by and encourage, ‘comfort those with the comfort that we ourselves have been given’ and the rest of it. but somewhere along the line of working in the church building five out of the seven days in a week, that i have forgotten these long past hopes, dreams and passions. maybe in re-visiting these ideals once again, with a few more young years of young experience, i will see a new shape to them.  

it is [Jesus] who gave the apostles, the prophets, the evangelists, the pastors and teachers, to equip God’s people for works of service, so that the body of Christ may be built up until we reach unity in the faith and in the knowledge of the Son of God and become mature, attaining to the whole measure of the fullness of Christ.then we will no longer be infants…..instead, speaking the truth in love, we will in all things grow up into him who is the Head, that is, Christ.

[ephesians 4:11-15]

maybe it is time for me to stop ‘performing’ and striving to achieve, and think about the things that spur me on….

Facebook Generation [this could, maybe, possibly be a small rant, or something similar]

I like to check my Facebook, but I won’t tell you how often. 

Each log in session takes me around 25 seconds, and after that, it takes me another 15 seconds to browse quickly, the updates of the day.  Just this evening, in those exceedingly short moments, I learnt that: one british friend has become single, a Canadian friend [through her ever so addictive 'crack' berry] updates us on the fact that she is ‘happy to have Sally because she misses Benjamin’, a church friend’s wife has a cold, another church friend swam two hundred meters, another british friend handed in her dissertation, and finally, an old classmate updated his religious status to ‘atheist’. So there I have it. Fast friendships- it is surely the dawn of a new era! I can freely live in another country, socialize, work a job, learn about a new culture and gain new and valuable experiences, without the haunting guilt of leaving old friends behind, because each day I can stay in touch with two short clicks of a button, and therefore have as many friends as possible. 

One friend of mine recently tagged this growing phenomena as ‘an unruly circus’, after having to plough through a week’s worth of invitations to ‘how hot are you’, ‘what is your barbie doll’ and ‘compare me to you, I can handle the truth’. 

A recent statistic stated that more than 18% of the fifteen thousand [and growing] different applications are ’self esteem tools’, and another 24% are used to bring self esteem ‘through others’.

‘TIME’ writer Joel Stein recently commented

 ”in the pre-internet days, neither of us would have even thought of calling each other friends. We’d have called ourselves friends of friends who met once and yet, for some reason, kept sending each other grammatically challenged, inappropriately flirty letters with photos of ourselves attached. Police might have gotten involved”      

 

Of the sixty five million [estimated in January 2007] people that are Facebookers, I guess I can say I have a few ‘friends’, people I know from days of ‘yore’, students who I work with, family members [in total of two], actual real friends who I’ve met and interacted with for several years, some, over two decades [astounding] and fellow Church staff members.  And I shall confess, I regularly ’spring clean’ [as a friend most recently coined] my ‘friends’ list, using rough guidelines such as ‘have I actually met this person?’, ‘do they really remember me?’ and ‘I will keep this person if; 1. they are in my hometown and I have interacted with them on a meaningful level, 2. they are in my current place of residence and I attend church/work/are friends with this person.[If you happen to fall outside of these boundaries, I duly apologize, and affirm that you are a valid person, you are worth knowing, you just don't need my 'friend' status to verify yourself [and it is probably because we haven't spoken for at least six months] ].

Now, I do wonder, what it is that makes the average of 250,000 people [since January 2007] join Facebook every day.  That totals a rough 97,750,000 to add to January’s first estimate, almost twice the population of the United Kingdom. Is it something distracting to do in the average sixty minute lunch breaks? Or is it a tool for self validation? If so, there are an awful lot of un-validated people out there, which is a whole other social issue in itself. I know for myself, Facebook is a quick-fast tool to keep up to date with people I care about. Another alarming issue. Or is it?

WHAT AM I SAYING!? I call myself a ‘friend’ and all I can muster is a few lousy seconds of my day to people I ACTUALLY care about?! What kind of care is that? And what drives me to tell the world whether or not I am single/married/engaged and what my particular sexual orientation is!? What drives us to express to our entire Facebook community how we’re feeling that day, when I am pretty sure, half of them really wouldn’t think about it, unless you were friends!

Let’s go back to the 1700’s, when British refugees fled good ol’ England to settle in New Brunswick and the like. I will call myself Jayne, and I am a 17 year old daughter of a large and quite un-wealthy family, and I am desperate to marry my next door neighbour [because that was how it was done in those days-people actually talked] Jonathan, a 19 year old farmer’s boy with great prospects. Alas, I have to depart my strange land, and leave my love behind [picturesque of 'Princess Bride' romantic and all that]. Now, A.G. Bell had another 186 years until his genius of the ‘telephone’ struck, and I am pretty poor with no family prospects to pay Jonathan. Plus, we were fleeing and all. I have to leave behind my fair and most lovely of loves, with no assurance that I could just drop him a line on Facebook, or maybe even meet him on MSN after my sixth months of harrowing sailing.

So, to break those of us with romantic hearts, Jayne and Jonathan were doomed to failure. Letters would probably take months to depart and arrive, depending on sailing, whether or not the other received the note [similar to the Royal Post really...], whether the boat actually arrived [as in, it didn't sink or crash into random icebergs/large fish.... ? ]. I would have to find myself a nice Canadian man ['woohoo I hear some of you cry].  

But in real life, this is similar. I up and move continents, now without fear of ‘loosing friends’ because of some great internet application. I can now spread my life across the world without worrying what I am missing out on.

[I have occasionally stopped to consider that these people, are in fact, only meant to be in my life, and I in theirs, for a short period of time, for some reason or another].

I like having friends. I have over two hundred of them on Facebook, and I am sure that the amount must mean something to someone out there, because please, I really need my life to be worth something right now.

Or, however, I could just actually call some of them, because lets face it, being face to face with a computer screen really does have its down falls…. 

cartoon

i’m a big fan of cartoons, especially ones with something subliminal…. 

Cartoon by Dave Walker. Find more cartoons you can freely re-use on your blog at We Blog Cartoons.

Star Trek, Hemingway and empty spaces

In his short time in Paris, Hemingway’s many experiences with his wife, new people, books, travel and addictions seemed to enrich his outlook on life. In his book ‘A Moveable Feast’, Hemingway encounters a passion for betting at races, and once he discovered its corrosive effect, writes; 

 When I stopped working on the races, I was glad but it left an emptiness.  By then I knew that everything good and bad left an emptiness when it stopped. But if it was bad, the emptiness filled up by itself. It if was good you could only fill it by finding something better.      

 

I have a somewhat irrational love for Star Trek, especially TNG. I revel in the idea of living a large life of exploration, excitement, phasers, transporters, and I will, guaranteed, get the goosebumps at Picard’s words ‘Make it so’. I love the idea of Data’s character consistently looking to be more human, I love the complex relationship between Picard and Doctor Crusher, I love Georide’s ability to have a deep concept despite his blindness [and I loved him even more when I discovered his voice as a narration for the book of John, 1John-3John and Revelation in The Bible Experience ] and I love their constant quest for communication and peace.  

Now, I cannot go comparing Star Trek with Hemingway. That would be a literary sin. But I can understand the thought of emptiness that Hemingway describes. At the end of a show, be it Star Trek or Battlstar Galactica [the new one...] I feel an emptiness, I fall back to reality and remember that these characters, despite how well I feel I know them, do not exist, and my life is in fact, not on board a space ship, not fighting the notorious Borg or Cylons, I do not fly a fighter jet and I cannot just pop in on Picard for a nice catch up, or spend an afternoon with Data teaching him how to be more human [see episode 'Data's Day' season 4/5 for a great example of this!].  

And I do have the queer feeling that this is what Hemingway describes as ‘everything good’ that fights it’s way to be better than your last ‘good’ experience. In no way am I going to describe fictional television as a ‘bad’ experience.  It is our 20th century ‘word of mouth’ story telling [but I don't believe it takes place of imagination through reading....] and a great way to exit reality for a short, but healthy period. But can this ‘good’ addiction be even worse?   

I am writing this shortly after watching the final two episodes of Star Trek Next Generation, Season seven. And I’ll admit, I cried. Well no actually…..bawled.  I felt an emptiness where childhood friends once were, and a loss at something that has been a part of my life for a very long time. Now all I have is re-runs, fun as they are, not all that nutritional…. 

Knowing Jesus is definitely an all round ‘good’ experience in every healthy way possible.  All traces of empty crevices have dispersed, and despite periods of dissatisfaction, I can truly say that I am whole, not by any means a cause of my own efforts, but completely by all that He has done for us. It is incredible to think of a God who first desired to fill some sort of an empty space with humanity with a twist of free will, and then to fill it once more with grace because of said creation’s own sore endeavors.  

Our God is the most poignant example of a space filler.  His effort to bridge gaps and fill expanse was the greatest sacrifice humankind has ever known. And yet He continues to fill personal gaps.

After a couple of thousand of years after Jesus’ sacrifice, my life began, and I was quite obviously born to a world with a God that desired to know me [surely the greatest compliment someone could ever receive?]  and I now see that I was continually chased, looking back and realizing people that God had placed in my life, experiences that forced me to look up a little more and wonder about my Creator, things in my life that have little or no explanation other than a more Celestial Being and paths I chose without knowing, that I now see, were nudged by the hand of my Heavenly Father.

[Gently, of course.]    

no news is good news…

so my week was not earth shattering, and neither did i have any variety of heavenly insight, revelation or wisdom from heaven. i did, however, decide a few things, have a ‘near death experience’, and made a few discoveries.

so let me fill in a few things for you. first. my decisions.

lent. it is always a season treated much like new years, with people dutifully making pacts with themselves and possibly co-workers to give up something, try something new or to quit a bad habit. and because i am human, and i like to think that i am ‘maturing’, i also decided, once more, to make an attempt at completing the 40 days with having given up something, and maybe created for myself a new habit. [after all, it takes 40 days to have a habit according to a book i read. i'd like a habit-i don't have one, and i heard they make your life more fulfilling]. and shock horror, i quit eating meat.

now now, don’t panic all you iron and protein counters out there. i have already had an ‘iron and protein’ talk from an unexpected source this year, so i have stocked up on chick peas, and i will eat fish, after all, it is local [yay!] so i am now officially, as of yesterday, an ‘in house vegetarian’. how new age of me. to clarify, this involves me eating meat only when i am at someone else’s house, or in a restaurant. i will not buy any kind of meat [except fish] to bring home, and for the 40 days of lent, i won’t eat it anywhere [except fish].

what an adventure.

i have yet to decide my new ‘habit’ but i would like to think that it is going to involve something nice and soul warming. i love to read, and according to one of my ‘discoveries’ i need to read more…..so i think i will attempt at reading my bible more, because i really like that book and i always go away from a session having been changed somehow……but i shall keep you updated.

now, to update you on other things. don’t panic please because my ‘near death experience’ has nothing to do with me nearly dying. but to make complete sense of this story, let me first update you on something else….

recently i had to leave someone that i really quite like, behind in another country so that we can both finish a few things where we live, before we share the same continent. so alas, after this sore departure, i felt at a loss with all this extra emotion inside me that i would quite like to give away. so, like any normal person would, i bought a plant and promptly named it, in the hopes that i could channel all this extra ‘emotion’ to something that would benefit….so let me introduce you to ‘jasper’, my house plant, or rather in british terms, my pot plant. [it lives in a pot ok?....it doesn't grow any kind of unsavouries thank you very much] so jasper, because he is green, goes with water for 2-3 weeks, however, i did not count for the extra warmth in our apartment from constant space heaters and variable temperatures/light sources.

so today upon arriving home from church, i find my plant in the ‘drooping’ position. near to tears i desperately watered him, prayed for him, and yes, whimpered quietly to ‘please come back jasper’. i think Jesus quite likes my plant because after dinner jasper stands tall and proud once again, still garland with party favors from our previous weekend. joy to resurrection and life!

and finally, my discoveries….

upon being quite at a loss for things to do yesterday afternoon, i took an IQ test. yes i know, i’m sure you can think of a thousand better things to do in vancouver on a nice day [of which it was not at all in any sorts even near to 'nice'] and i was presented with the result of 124. now who knows what to do with this score because i do not. but i was pleased to peruse at a graph of average people my age who take it, and i am plum in the middle of ‘above average’, although i would have been much more pleased to have been put in the category below ‘genius’ which read ‘gifted’, because ‘genius’ surely is way too pompous, and besides, it would not give me anything to work towards.

so, to improve my ‘verbal and language’ skills that accompanied my results [which were a little bit better than my 'math' skills.... truly i blame my british education...] i was prompted to read more. so i started reading a book called ‘the cloud spotters guide’ thinking it would be a nice play on words with some nice story about something nice, only to find it was actually what it said. a guide to clouds.

so much for an exciting life this week. a ‘redeemed’ plant who is in place of someone else i’d much rather have here in vancouver, a guide to clouds that is proving to be quite interesting, a useless exam result and a decision [somewhat leaning more towards the category of 'hippy'] to quit eating meat.[except fish.]

friends

[this is an old post resurrected this evening when i was reminded of these old thoughts, when old, but valuable, friends came for tea....]

 
THE LORD’S BEEN DOING SOMETHING REALLY DEEP in my heart lately, and especially so these last few weeks. i dont think the experience could be in any way described as ‘hormonal’ or even cliche, but i feel like im starting to discover something more about being, for want of a better word, human.

being of an emotional disposition in character, i find it very easy to connect quickly with characters from movies or shows, and i soon get lost within a voyeristic life-a life looking in on another. i’ve never really understood why, and in the past, lonliness has sent me to familiar characters for comfort. but lately, these familiar characters are revealing something new to me, and i know that it is only God that is speaking, purely because i can hear His voice through them. their experiences and their situations have been dreamt up by writers who share the same human quality as the rest of us, and express through something we can at least hope to understand, things we all share. and it encourages me that they are expressions of something real. although often heightened with comedy and unrealistic one liners, there are still characters desperately lonely, looking for fulfilment, searching for acceptance, being failed, feeling like failures, doing well, getting married, dying, being born, living and learning.

ive been meeting a friend recently who shares with me parts of her personal walk. everytime we meet and everytime she shares some more, i’m moved in my heart to realise what a beautiful exchange occurs. in being raw and honest with each other, we are playing out a state of ‘relationship’ that God intensely desires from us. and the more i meet with people i love, be it short or long, the exchanges we experience together remind me of my loving Lord who wants the same.

sharing these intimate and raw truths with one another creates something that you both experience-the time together goes beyond the systematic rule of number 1 talking and number 2 listening, and then in reverse, but it fabricates, through each word, something to experience together.
in the depths of a soul lies a longing to be in relationship-an echo of our creator, and in the deep of my spirit is a new feeling of discovery about humanity’s role with its creator. we are meant for relationship-that exchange of spirit that goes beyond a conformity, when you share intimately everything. and when that fear of rejection sets in, to carry on further.

and in being afraid of revealing yourself yet continuing to gently bare your soul, you engage in the most beautiful exchange ever known to man

from bags to richness

  i’ve been in deliberation, consideration and contemplation about the fast paced, easy living kind of life i’ve seemed to lead in these last four years, and to be frank, i’m not quite sure how much i have honored God.      

now don’t get me wrong, i’ve not switched gods, and i don’t worship a wooden statue. i’ve not given up my faith and i’ve been in church listening, growing and being in community.  i’ve read my bible and said my prayers, i’ve loved others and i’ve worked with children. but i’ve noticed a lot of ‘i’s. a lot about my salvation has been about me-and really, there is a cause for praise! i’m redeemed [saved] and made clean [forgiven]. my eternal destination is for sure [heaven] and my position before God is assured [child of].      

but what about this new focus that is causing so much buzz lately?what about my environment? after all, God let adam name the animals [so to speak-if you so desire] and once cast from eden with his wife, were made to work the ground for the food they would eat. so now here i am, living in a prestigious and fast growing city with demands for international cuisine at our fingertips, in a world where land is precious and overpriced, and consequently, so is its produce. we want rice and asian greens, indian spices and new zealand lamb, we want alaskan salmon and south coast tuna with european wine and costa-rican coffee. we want to drive 10 blocks to our local safeway to find the cheapest deals at no thought of production, the manufactory and the distance to arrive to our shelves.       

did you know the average north american meal will travel, in total, 2,500 miles?    

 we have lost connection with the food we eat, the way we consume and the results it has on the world around us.  so how the heck am i, one person, minimum yearly income, going to change the way i consume, when my local ‘community market’ is three times the price, organic milk costs me more than a bus ticket, twice, and to buy fresh produce still requires me to go and pick it off the shelves, with no thought of who has brought it to me?      

as a follower of Christ, i am called to be holy [set apart] so surely this means more than letting myself become a consumerist Christian who only cares about whether or not i get to heaven and disregard all the other commandments that Jesus gives us, and disregard the most beautiful creation without a care or a thought at the consequences of my actions?     

i’ve felt this way for 4 days total. i’ve been thinking about these issues since the summer and it’s lonely to be walking against the grain when the other way seems so much easier. i cried on tuesday when i realized that all the things i toss into the garbage don’t just magic away, but get thrown back into our earth [that was designed to be fertile and productive] with no care. every time i peruse an item in the store i am plagued with recycling consequences, questions of origin and thoughts about how good this really is. msg, artificially grown, genetically modified, radioactive, sprayed, handled shipped and displayed for days on end.     

so i started with banning plastic bags from my life. BANNED. i have enough safeway, buylow, shoppers drug mart, and non-descript plastic bags in my closet to last me till kingdom come, and each time one goes into the backyard bin, i am sending another group of chemicals into my much loved earth from which i expect an abundance of growth.   i now recycle. every thing. so much so that i have boxes and boxes of recycling that i desperately hope the garbage men will not leave on my back doorstep. i also earnt $6 on monday when i took a trip to my local recycle depot with my 50 bags of cans and bottles.    

i gave up safeway [overpriced and badly staffed], rice and crappy rubbish eggs and said ‘hello’ to new farm market [west 4th and vine], small shops and butchers with the hope that despite my wallet getting bashed, i am doing some sort of good for others.   

it is a small dent in a large crater of mistake and selfish desire, lack of care and focus on wealth. and although i, with a few others, walk a lonely road, maybe, in a ‘day of the triffids’ manner, will return to some agricultural roots, where focus is on richness rather than wealth.