There is no experience quite as powerful as a Saskatchewan storm cloud unleashing all its voracious fury on your single head – alarming your nerves, alerting your sensations, triggering your fear and wonder. This is the sound of rain. This is the feeling of water. This is the power of God.

The darkness of my Val Marie home in the night, blanketed by the sound of water splashing against the water-logged bentonite clay outside my window. The splashes of light from outside and the pounding symphony of creation as it bangs against the door and the grassland hills in the distance. A crackle. A boom. Pitter patter. Its mourns for an Adagio and then, in an instant, accelerando.

What is the tempo marking of nature?

Is this a cry? Or a celebration?

How can I sleep with this noise? The sensation of energy in the air? Life is happening now. How do I sleep? This is the meeting of the skeleton of nature - the sky, the earth, the clouds in between. It is my delightful purgatory to be stuck here in Val Marie, happening now. How do I sleep?

Encountering God is worth it in Saskatchewan.

I want to be born again!

The flying spaghetti monster succeeded in finding a meat-ball mate. And, as a celebration, he told a Bolivian priest to hijack a plane. In other religions, we call these people terrorists. In this one, we point out that he is a former drug addict.

It would also receive a lot more media coverage.

What a fascinating dichotomy.

-------------------------------------------

Every now and then I hear about a friend, or a friend of a friend, who has somehow come to the faith. It happened to me twice this past summer. And neither time did I rejoice; honestly, I experienced a serious degree of regret. For a couple reasons:

Firstly, because I am not certain people represent Christianity very well. Mostly because I don't, but also because I know that the Christianity that these people are attracted to is actually based on a sense of security through Biblical story of the Resurrection of Christ.

Secondly, they quickly adopt the ideas and beliefs of Christianity rather than considering what they truly mean. This is perhaps because the wrong people have brought them to the faith; people who claim faith in Christ and what he has "accomplished" through his death, and are generally conservatives with strong beliefs. That are undeniably oppressive. (On a side note, I know several people who would argue that these views wouldn't reflect Christ today. I have issues with this idea, but I probably agree with them).

Thirdly, the version that they get of Christianity is feel good completeness. It isn't the dismay and despair that Christianity can cause in a person's soul. And, almost certainly, it isn't a life of self-administered hardship, where one refuses to live according to the same values of our culture - where the moral concern is global, and real, and pressing. The Christian lifestyle is entirely uninvolved in oppression. In all of its manifestations. And this is challenging, and frustrating, and necessary.

The two people I know who came to the faith this summer had very different "evangelized" experiences. One was told many times about my third concern by a close friend of mine, and still found something appealing, and is trying to adopt the faith and the worldview. When I heard that this was the story of her evangelizing, I felt more comfortable with her adoption of the spirituality.

The second person missed out on all of the lifestyle stuff, and managed to adopt the views of Christianity that I find most volatile. One of his close friends is a lesbian woman - a friend of mine.

He says that this summer he finally began to understand why homosexuality is bad. My guess is that he was told by somebody, who claims to have more experience, and pretends to have everything sorted out in their head.

They aren't close friends anymore. My lesbian friend is broken up over it, the other friend does not quite understand what he has done that has so negatively affected the relationship other than share his recently adopted beliefs.

I have a friend that is going to a Bible School in New Zealand, and he recently sent me a letter that states that he now understands that his friends in Regina desperately need Jesus. My question is, do they?

-----------------------------------------

I read in a friend's facebook today that he feels religion is for those people who are trying to avoid hell, and that spirituality is for those people who have been to Hell and are fighting their way back.

Come listen children, to a story...

I was just at a Bible Study - one of the few that I have attended in the past 12 or-so months that has used the Bible exclusively as its resource. It was refreshing, and felt entirely untainted. Regardless, there were many comments that made the entire experience slightly more aggravating to me than I was fully prepared for; I felt as though people weren't entirely prepared to devote themselves to an authentic study of the Bible.

There was one comment in particular that caught me off guard. We were discussing Matthew Chapter 11, and included in this topic are some verses that discuss God providing the gift of understanding to "children" rather than to the "wise and intelligent." This actual lead to good discussion - one comment in particular was quite impressive: Jesus is using the term Children metaphorically to refer to the Gentiles, who are, as children, being introduced to God with open arms for the first time through Jesus' ministry. These gentiles include those of the actual people-group, as well as those social-gentiles, such as the tax-collectors, and lepers, who were now being welcomed into a spiritual relationship with Christ, or God. Whichever Jesus was.

This was the good comment.

The second comment was the one which inevitably develops out of any conversation with Children and Religion - and it is that the truth of the religion (apparently the atonement of Jesus on behalf of man) is simple, so simple that children are able to comprehend it and believe it.

I'm a teacher. I study and try to understand how human's understand knowledge. No information is simple to the human brain - it all must be understood, no matter how insignificant it is. Atonement? Simple? I don't think this is true. In fact, I think that the religious basis of Atonement is so convoluted that is cannot be understood at all. And not just as a result of our human nature and capacity for knowledge - I am almost convinced that it is poor theology. Circular in logic, self-sustaining. But, if true, enormous in its implications.

And is this the basis of our religion? Or, perhaps our spirituality? Atonement? I hope not. If it is, I should check into something else - I'm not sold on it. Parts of it I understand - certainly the fallen nature of Man, and the confusing, mysterious power of God. I accept this; otherwise God is not God and Man has no excuse for what we are.

But... if our spirituality is simple, why do we study it intently, in small and deeply personal groups?

Why do we have religion? Something that Jesus demands?

And why do we allow the religion to establish rules and traditions? I thought this was simple - everybody would understand it, and buy into it.

I'm hesitant about anybody calling Christianity simple. If this is the case, they simply believe in it and its simplicity. If this is the case, then they are unsure of how this actually plays out in their life - Atonement. Certainly it must affect their life - and this is not simple. How does it do so? Their very action? Is it merely to help others realize that they have been atoned for? I hope not.

If it is, I should check into something else - I'm not sold on it.

And I am not prepared to establish the foundation of my existence on something simple, self-sustaining logically. I need something more. And I would like to this that God provides that, and that it is anything but simple. It is mysterious and elusive. BIG, confusing. Not simple.

Certainly not to us. *though I like the idea that Atonement is only one of God's thoughts

Even if it should be.