Dreams Unlocked

Peter Mansbridge: Calm, Cool, Collected and Canadian Its interesting how a sub-story of the Ottawa shooting has been the startling difference between Canadian and American broadcasting. I am unable to get any Canadian channels so I got all my news through CNN last night. It seems like the American media thinks it is serving us well by bringing is a dozen "experts" who analyze every single aspect of a story down to whether the types of socks the shooter was wearing can tell us something about his religious identity. (i made that up - but wouldn't be surprised if CNN found some sartorial theologian who could make the connection). This won't change how America reports the news - this is just an observation by american media on Canadian media. American news is far more obsessed with celebrity and dramatic "breaking" events than reasonable thoughtful observation. Exceptions might be Meet the Press or 60 minutes that take a bit longer to tease out a st

"In all that deep darkness, a miracle was preparing". That is a line from Gilead, a novel by Marilynne Robinson. The context is that the narrator is discussing a long time when he was single. As a pastor in a small town, he was seen as quite a catch, so many daughters and nieces were presented to him. But, no one caught his eye. This caused him to feel sad and lonely. In every life we go through periods of deep darkness. Its almost like our time in the womb prepares us for similar times of murky shadow times. It might be helpful to consider that when we find ourselves in those times that a miracle is in fact being prepared. For the character in Gilead, the miracle was the woman who would become his wife. The woman tells him "You ought to marry me." The effect was so tremendous that his response was: "That was the first time in my life I ever knew what it was to love another human being." Darkness is ok. Shadow seasons need not frighten us. Becaus

The scientist (Cornell professor Dr. Jonathan Butcher) and the pastor (me) answer some questions from students. So, I'm a pastor. Part of my job is preaching. I share the preaching load at our church with our interim lead pastor. Since he's the lead guy, he preaches slightly more than I do. I want to share with you a little bit about what it's like to prepare and deliver a sermon. And one thing to please not do to your pastor immediately after he or she preaches their sermon. I normally start my preparation for my sermon Monday morning. I print out the text in the version I will preach from and in Greek, so I can access both the Greek and English while reading and making notes. I read the Greek first to get a good handle about how it sounded when it was first written. Then I read through the passage several times, making notes and waiting for an outline to emerge - After about an hour I have a pretty good idea of how the passage is laid out. Now, it's time