For eight months now, the number one question I’ve been thinking about and reading about and discussing with friends is this: How does homosexuality mix with the Christian faith?I began seriously asking this question in October when someone whom I deeply love came out as gay, but the question had already been raised in other friendships I’ve had with lovely GLBT people, and also in my efforts to figure out my own sexuality, which turned out to be less straightforward and more “fluid” than I thought...
On Wednesday, I found out that I would be making $3000 less at my two jobs this summer than I had originally thought, due to misunderstandings and cutbacks. God was gracious, because He also gave me overwhelmingly fulfilling experiences that day, confirming that I'm working where He wants me to work. I went home and looked at my bank account and budget. I saw that I'd still have enough to get through my last semester of school, but I wouldn't have much money going into 2010. I had wanted to save up some money for next year, because I plan on continuing my non-profit and pastoral work in the Downtown Eastside, the poorest neighborhood in Canada, likely without a very stable income....
Easter weekend is possibly the busiest weekend of the year, and likely will be the busiest for the rest of my working life. I do look forward to next year, when I will not have to juggle writing final papers with planning and playing in Maundy Thursday and Good Friday and Holy Saturday and Easter Sunday services...
So today I was thinking about prayer. I recently realized that I'm not very good at it. I've been praying my whole life, and it's taken me all 25 years to figure out and confess that the majority of what I've labeled "praying" has actually been one of two other things: talking to myself, or talking to other people with my eyes closed. I am being too harsh with myself? I don't think so. It's not that I don't think God has heard me - I believe He's patient and merciful and listens even when I'm messing it all up. But it's time for change...
If you've ever wanted to know about the way I currently make sense of Creation and Evolution, as a biologist-turned-seminarian, I would like to lay that out for you in this blog entry. (Warning... this is going to be long.) To do so, I will be summarizing a fantastic lecture I heard last week called "Evolutionary Creation," by Denis Lamoureux. Denis is a professor of "science and religion" (the first tenured Canadian prof in this field) at St. Joseph's College at the University of Alberta, and he has three doctoral degrees: dentistry, theology, and biology. This guy knows his stuff!...
Sexuality and gender identity have been hot topics lately, especially in the Christian circles in which I participate - at school, at church, at work. Though most Christ followers are well-intentioned (I hope), I've seen a fair amount of violence and insensitivity in ways many of us choose to talk about homosexuality (or same-gender-attractedness (SGA) - a term that I'm really warming up to), and more disturbingly, in the ways we behave (or don't behave) toward same-gender-attracted folks...
My life has revolved around food as of late. I may have mentioned that I work at Jacob's Well, and I may have mentioned that we have a couple of urban gardens, nestled between a tofu factory and a sausage factory. I don't know if I mentioned that because we're not doing so well financially (ie. not receiving full paychecks), Jacob's Well has decided to give the staff a share of the gardens as part of our payment. So every week I take home a bag full of fresh green things from our Downtown Eastside gardens...
