Dreams Unlocked

Year of the Borat. I had submitted this list to Relevant, because I write movie reviews for them. They decided to use their movie editor's list instead of mine. I notice he ripped off one of my lines. When I submitted my list, I wrote: "Here is my completely subjective list." He used the exact same line. Well, here's my list. I welcome your thoughts on where you agree and disagree with me. 10. Tsotsi – This film won best foreign language Oscar in 2005, but was released in 2006 in North America. I’m guessing most readers have not seen it, as it only grossed 2.8 million at the box office. The story centers on a young thug in South Africa. He carjacks a rich white couple’s Mercedes. Later he discovers their infant child in the back. The child changes his life. This is a beautiful and brutal film. 9. An Inconvenient Truth – It’s amazing that this film succeeded in the way that it has. It is based on a lecture Al Gore has given hundreds of times around the world on the ...

The funniest picture of Adam ever taken. I went to see The Last King of Scotland yesterday afternoon. Amazing film. Forest Whitaker is riveting in the role of Idi Amin. The theater was packed - I took one of the seats that are supossed to be for wheelchairs. the movie had already started - I figured if someone in a wheelchair came, I would leave. In fact there was someone in a wheelchair next to me - the mayor of Vancouver, Sam Sullivan ! Sullivan is the first quadreplegic ever elected mayor of a large city in the world. Sullivan is more conservative then the other guy who ran against him - Jim Green. Green had more policies that would have helped the homeless and addicted. After the movie I ended up in the elevator with Sullivan and his partner who does just about everything for him. 2 other guys were in the elevator with me - one guy was a real piece of work. Some quotes: "So this is what the mayor does all day - goes to movies! HA HA HA" (He was the only one laughing) ...

Adam contemplates snow in Regina. Wasted precious moments of my life in stupid Pacific Center yesterday and today. Why do I even bother? I roam around thinking I'm going to get a good deal on ..... what? I really have no need for anything. I have more clothes then I can wear at one time. I probably have several dozen books I have not read yet. I can buy music cheaper and faster on-line. I live my life combatting various spirits - the dominant one in our culture is the spirit of consumerism, and it exerts its influence on me from time to time. Like yesterday, I bought a sweater that had been marked down. Today, I looked at it and decided I didn't NEED it, so I'm going to return it tomorrow. Money saved, not spent. I started reading a new book by Vincent Lam . Lam is a doctor in Toronto. This is his first book and it went ahead and won the Giller Prize! Nice going Vinnie! (you can read more about it if you follow the link on his name, above.) I'm not a huge fiction fan, ...

MERRY CHRISTMAS FROM SANTOSH, FELICIA AND ADAM! ! !

Had a nice morning and afternoon, just reading the Peterson book. This evening Felicia and I drove to Moose Jaw and went to the Temple Gardens Mineral Spa . It's a fairly well known mineral pool and spa. We were booked for massages. The mineral pool was nice. My massage therapist was named Karma Klassen - I am not making this up. We had a fairly lengthy chat as she worked on my muscles. Her parents just decided on the name - she was karma. The Klassen came when she married a mennonite from Moose Jaw. Turns out Karma attends a small baptist church. Her husband also works with severaly handicapped adults in a care home. I recommended Nouwen to them to read. After our massages we had dinner at the hotel - it was good too. There is a casino attached to the spa. We walked around in it - I don't think I've ever been in a place so bereft of joy. It was the saddest thing I have seen in a long time. Sad people sitting zombie-like in front of these obnoxiously loud colourful machine...

The guy from the fireplace came today and they have agreed to pay for all the cleaning and are not charging us for the initial cleaning, so that's good. Took Adam swimming - He loved it. Saw Blood Diamond tonight. It made me wonder if the diamond ring I bought Felicia had innocent blood on it. Also - where did we get this idea that an engagement ring should cost 2 months salary? I chose 2 weeks salary as the figure for the rock I bought Felicia. It just seems so odd to me that you would price anything out according to 2 months salary. When you buy a car, you don't calculate how much you're going to buy according to 10 , 12 or 14 months salary. 2 months salary - sheesh. This new book by Eugene Peterson is fantastic. This is some of the best he has ever written. I see Peterson as a guy who crosses a lot of borders - he is well respected by both emergents and more mainstream evangelical pastors. I had a class with him at Regent on "Soul-Craft". I was always amazed ...

Today my Mom got someone in to clean out their fireplaces, which is I guess something you are supossed to do every now and then. The guy fnished the job and left. We were sitting in the family room where one of the fireplaces is located. As we're sitting there 2 things happen: 1. I notice that my nephew Jacob has black stuff on my face. 2. Felicia notices that her fingers are getting blacker and blacker. We start to look around and run our fingers over various things in the room. Everything - EVERYTHING is covered in a fine black dust - soot? The walls, the furniture, the Christmas presents under the tree. On close inspection it looks like a room after a fire has taken place - smoke damage everywhere. So we call the furnace company - the guy doing the cleaning had a hole in the bag of his vacumm cleaner!!! After several phonecalls with the company they agreed to pay all the cleaning costs, which will certainly be way more then the bill that was paid to get the fireplaces cleaned. T...

As you fly over Saskatchewan and look down it loooks like you are over the Northern Tundra. Everything is covered in white. Also, the streets and roads are all completely straight - perpendicular to one another. In the summer Saskatchewan looks like a quilt of perfectly shaped cubes. The weather is quite mild actually - a big diffeence from 2 years ago when we spent 4 days holed up at home while a blizzard raged outside. Another thing - Saskatchewan is white in another way - demographics. It's actually quite stunning, coming from Vancouver which has so many Asians. Good to be home - Was greeted at the airport by the parents, Asha, Mira and Jacob. Mira and Jacob hovered around Adam like he was the next big thing. They were quite impressed that the little fella could walk and talk. Adam was bemused by all the new attention. Hope to have a nice relaxing time, reading, movies, etc. Finished Grief Observed and am now onto Eugene Peterson's "Christ Plays in 1000 Places." Th...

I have been turned on to concepts of the Kingdom and Kingdom language recently. I think it all started with a seminal book I read about 3 years ago for a class at Regent. I'm betting most of oyu have never heard of it - your loss. Mortimer Arias' book " Announcing the Reign of God " was a pivotal book in my journey. Arias spells out how we should be viewing the kingdom. The Kingdom is the good news of Jesus. Somehow we have reduced the gospel to individual redemption. The gospel includes individual redemption but is far greater then that. Having a kingdom mind-set means looking at the current social systems, and saying there is another way to live. Mercy trumps justice. I am saying this stuff because tonight 4 churches: the Pentecostals, Christian Reformed, Mennonites and Baptists came together for a special service to celebrate Christmas. The offering collected went to support Covenant House . It was an excellent time. Special thanks to Adam Wiggins of Pacific Chur...

Last night we hosted a wine and cheese party for our floor. Out of the 11 other people that live on our floor, 5 came over. It was really fun. We had 3 kinds of cheese, crackers, red wnd white wine, baklava, fruit and other goodies. It was really great getting to know some of the folks on our floor. We have always talked about doing it so it was nice to finally pull it off. One of our neigbours is a concierge at the 4 seasons. She said one of the oddest guest requests was a guest from Texas who wanted 100 A&W ketchup packets. He said he really liked their ketchup - I guess. Finished " Joyful Exiles " so unfortunately no more excerts for you - buy the book. Have moved on to " A Grief Observed " by C.S. Lewis . This might seem like an odd choice - I'm not really grieving the death of anyone or anything like that. I just have a personal goal of reading everything Lewis wrote. In the past few weeks I've finished Miracles and Mere Christianity (sorry - I got ...

I forgot to put some James Houston in the last post, so here it is: "Our inner and outer selves become distended, leading to fragmentation, alienation, nonrecognition, inattention and loneliness. Loneliness is the result of ambiguous relationships, which in a technological society are bred by the double threat of meaninglesness and powerlesness. For the pursuit of power, which is the goal of technology, cannot provide meaningful relationships, but the omnipresence of technology produces only an illusion of power. As this illusion of power grows, legitimacy and shared meaning degenerate into superficiality. The conflict between power and meaning, along with the resulting loneliness and alienation, leads to other cultural disorders as well: fear, violence and the loss of selfhood. The disease of sociosis breeds neurosis - that is, social ills become individual ills. So we are all part of "the lonely crowd" as David Riesman desscribed our technological society. The blurring...

Another storm is headed towards Vancouver. We ran some errands this afternoon. The rain actually looked fake - like in a movie - it was just coming down so hard and with the wind blowing it, it was bouncing off of the ground. We're getting ready for a wine and cheese party for our neigbours tomorrow night. We've wanted to host a party for our floor for a long time. So how do you choose wine and cheese for a wine and cheese party? Consult the internet of course, where every answer to every question can be answered. I got 3 wines: a beujolais, a savignon blanc and a yellow tail shiraz - this last one is probably my favourite wine - it is also the best selling wine in B.C. I bought another bottle to make mulled wine with, if folks want it later on. For cheese I picked a soft, a hard, a semi-soft and a semi-hard. I have no idea what kinds they are, the spunky gal at Urban Fare helped me pick them out. Spent most of the day thinking and praying about the changes waiting first@night...

Today was one of those days when it was good to be a Dad. We took Adam to the top of Grouse Mountain It's like a Christmas wonderland up there - lots of snow, Santa's workshop (Santa was reading the Sun), a sleigh ride and a frozen pond that you can skate on. So we indulged in all the activities. The skating was the most fun as Felicia and I looked quite rusty out there. There are these things that look like walkers that new skaters use to help them - Adam was content just pushing those around on the ice. Went straight to a couple of meetings at the church after. There was a business meeting which was pretty much you would expect a church business meeting would be like. Anyways I'm pretty baked. More Houston: "Christianity has succumbed to the technologically surreal. Take for example, the recent film The Passion of the Christ. People wept over its celluloid presentation as they never would have reading the Gospel narrative because it was so much more vivid to the sen...

So Julianne turned me on to this site called sitemeter , which acts as a counter for how many visitors this blog gets. But here's the scary part - It also tracks where people are accessing this blog, what time you access it, how much time you spend - and even what site you looked at BEFORE reading my blog. For example - earlier today - sometime this afternoon my time, someone in Quebec looked at my blog - but I also know that this particular person also did a google search for "santosh ninan yaletown christian" which led them here. Someone else in Vancouver also did a search for "santosh ninan blog" which led them here. (Is this freaking you out yet? - short brown brother is watching you) What has been really interesting is to see where in the world people are reading this thing. There are the obvious suspects: Vancouver, Saskatoon and Calgary, where I have communtites of friends. But what is interesting is that in the past 24 hours there have been readers in T...

Well - Got a peek at my second child on the Ultrasound this morning. It was quite exciting. You could see the head, the mouth, the spine, arms and legs. How amazing that that child is so small but already has so many recongnizable features! We even saw the baby open its mouth and gulp something down. Adam was getting quite impatient while looking at the fuzzy images. I am really enjoying James Houston's book " Joyful Exiles ". Dr. Houston can be a bit esoteric when he speaks sometimes, but this book is not like that at all. This book is a sort of a summary of some of the important lessons he has learned in his rich life. I have met with Dr. Houston once in his home. We had tea and biscuits and I gleaned some wisdom from this amazing man. Worked out tonight - FINALLY!!!! Here's some Dr. Houston: "Hell is a journey into the loss of the self through contempt for others, a refusal to face the truth of oneself and a misunderstanding of freedom that leads to enslavemen...

Adam assumes the holiday position - sacked out on the couch watching Little Bear . More tampering with fonts, colourrs and templates on my quest to the most beautiful blog EVER. Spoke at First Baptist Church's Community Christmas Carol Sing. This is basically THE religious thing that downtown Vancouver comes to during the Christmas season. It was a packed house - 600+. There was lots of singing, stuff for the kids and treats afterwards. I was the closing act. I spoke on homelesness, but with a twist - I spoke about how you can live IN a home but not feel AT home. Many people do not feel "at home" in their lives. But the good news of Christmas is that Jesus says that he will come into our lives and make a home there with us. I had a couple of good jokes in there and it was all over in a matter of 5-10 minutes. I'm going to repeat the whole thing again next Sunday at another service. I read the comments yesterday with interest. It's been fun to read Julie's...

As you can see I've been fooling around with different templates, fonts, colours, etc. I like this one - Carla was using it, so I've followed her lead. The font appears small - I've enlarged it on this post. By the way - I've lost my site counter!!! When I made the template shift, it disappeared. I have had a difficult time adding a new one. this is a bit frustrating as I like to see how many people are reading this thing. Any techies out there able to help me out? Anyways - had another does of Christmas in Vancouver. Went on the bright lights train in Stanley Park. This was actually pretty good. The train goes for about 15 minutes through a well decorated part of the Park. There were a few odd images - along with Santa, snowmen and a nativity scene, there were also native americans and a leprechaun. The train took a turn into Bizarro world, when a dancing cowgirl on stilts came out and did a little jig. This was a real live person on stilts dancing around. I was wonde...

"Country Lane with Two Figures" Vincent Van Gogh We all have wounds. We all live in pain and disappointment. We all have feelings of loneliness that lurk beneath all our successes, feelings of uselessness that hide under all the praise, feelings of meaninglesness even when people say we are fantastic - and that is what sometimes makes us grab onto people and expect from them affection, affirmation and love that they cannot give. If we want other people to give us something that only God can give, we are guilty of idolatry. We say, "Love me!" and before long we become demanding and manipulative. Its so important that we forgive one another - not once in awhile but every moment of life. This is what makes community possible, when we can come together in a forgiving and undemanding way. -119 - "Spiritual Direction"

Here's the scenario: An Englishman marries a South Asian English Woman in London. They move to Sri Lanka - he to teach, she to work with an NGO. Said Englishman finds himself eating Nigiri Sushi and drinking Sake in a Sushi Restaurant in Colombo. Strikes up a conversation with a Canadian woman married to a Sri Lankan national. Conversation turns to Canada and Canadians. Both the Englishman and Canadian woman know of a Indian born man who grew up in Saskatchewan and now lives in Vancouver Canada. His name is Santosh Ninan. Friends, we no longer live in a global village - it is a global cul de sac. These kinds of things would not have happened 50 years ago, maybe not even 30 years ago. The world is small enough to fit into a Sushi resturant in Sri Lanka. This is stupid: Duct tape Bible. Just take your own Bible, wrap it in duct tape and you can save some $$$.

In response to the 2 posts from yesterday - yes Adam looks quite cute. Although when he is in his "grown up" clothes he does tend to push his weight around and give us condescending looks. Often he is better dressed then the rest of us. One time in Holt Renfrew I put this $300 Ralph Lauren blazer on him and let him run free. This blazer was pink/pastel plaid and looked more like what an elderly Miami retiree should be wearing while lawn bowling over Mojito's. Adam ran around Holt Renfrew much to the delight of the upper crust people shopping and working there. I hope it injected a little joy into their otherwise sterile lives. Had lunch with a new guy from first@night. I wanted to take him to this El Salvadorian restaurant on Commercial, but it was closed - so we went to a Caribbean place. I had the jerk chicken which was downright tasty. The owner sort of roamed around and made little snide comments at us - like "coke - we don't have coke!" They are shootin...

Had our staff Christmas perty tonight. It was pretty good until part of the table where the food wa being served caught on fire! One of the flames that was keeping part of the food warm fell and burned up the paper tablecloth!!! It was fun to chat with the different folks. I got to know our sound technician: George Lowen, who turns out to be quite a witty chap. We were discussing what I had posted a couple days ago - about movies that are being used as evangelistic tools (Passion, Nativity, etc.). George came up with this word that is soooo good: REPENTERTAINMENT. How cool is that word!!!! I love that - repentertainment. Kudo's to George for that one. Finished Nowen's Spiritual Direction today. Highly recommend this book - especially if you are exploring getting a spiritual director. I have recently gotten a spiritual director and I highly recommend that you start to pray if this is what God may want you to do.

Adam holds court at 950 Cambie with Lammy and the christmas tree. CHRISTMAS IN THE CITY!!!! First Baptist Church broke through the church walls and spilled out into the streets of downtown Vancouver - actually under the streets. We had a Christmas party at Robson Square - an underground open area under Vancouver's famous Robson street - between Hornby and Howe. There was music, activities for the kids, free hot chocoalte and popcorn. I was surprised at how much fun it was. Spencer did a set - reworked some old Christmas classics - did an amazing job. I was also pleased at another level - we took over a piece of the public square and proclaimed the Kingdom - and not in some crass offensive way. We did it by offering hot chocolate and good music. We blessed the community. Change is afoot. I also got to connect with an awesome new family that are a part of first@night - the Delgado's from Portland Oregan. Juan is from Chile and Katie from Portland. They have a cute daughter name...

I got an e-mail today inviting me to a special screening of the new Rocky film: Rocky Balboa . It has been sent out to pastors and other Christian leaders. Unfortunately, none of the cities that it is being screened at are remotely close to Vancouver. Apparently Sylvester Stallone has converted to Christianity and wants Christians to use this film to do Bible studies and sermons. there is a whole bunch of resources, similar to past campaigns with The Passion, Narnia, Da Vinci and The Nativity Story. There are Bible studies, sermon outlines and even a tract. There is a big box of stuff available for free to promote the film. Stallone's conversion has influenced the next Rambo film - Rambo rescues a bunch of Christian relief workers held hostage in Burma!!! I am not making this stuff up. If Stallone's conversion is genuine and real, that is pretty cool. I remember years ago seeing an interview with him, where he talked about how he could not believe in God because one of his son...

Entered into the Christmas madness with some shopping in the mall. I bought Felicia a pair of Pumas for her b-day (Nov. 15). Better late then never. I also got 3 Christmas movies: Charlie Brown Christmas Christmas Vacation and my all time favourite Christmas movie " It's a Wonderful Life" I try to watch it every year. I also like the very first Christmas Carol with Alistair Sims. I also have a soft spot for Christmas Vacation, back when Chevy Chase still had a career. Had an excellent meeting with some fellow church planters. Very encouraging.Had lunch with Spencer. Cyril came over. We ordered pizza and watched "Crimes and Misdemeanors." I've probably seen it at least a dozen times. Still a good flick. It's interesting - Christmas is supossed to be the busiest time of the year for pastors. But I find my calender actually slows down. This is because a lot of first@night's services get sucked into FBC's.