Life

T.E.E.N.S.

Phil Callaway

Someone asked me recently what I do. I said, “I follow teenagers around the house. I shut lights off. It's a full-time job.”
We are a SITCOM family: Single Income Teenage Children Outa Money. Squinty-eyed prophets of doom programmed us to believe that when teenagers arrived I would lose my sense of humour, my dignity, my wallet, and my hair. They were right about the first two. Oh sure, we've had our moments of fear and uncertainty. We've shed some tears, bought some headache pills and lost some sleep. But five keys have kept us thriving at a time when so many are just surviving. Here they are:

Life Imitates Fly Fishing

communications

I stumbled over a friend at a local trout fishing hole the other day. We share shopping privileges at a local Cariboo-Chilcotin cow town and normally only get to visit at funerals and on town day. It was a treat to chat without the usual pressures. Noticing my relaxed demeanor, Randy immediately tried to steal one of my fishing secrets. Because of it, he almost came to a delightful end.

Do Dishes, Unite the Family

Phil Callaway

On my refrigerator are pictures of friends and family and animals and one of my dad falling off a chair laughing. There are magnets too. Imitation cabbages, cauliflowers, bittermelons, and pumpkins — all fitting the decor of the kitchen. The dieter's favourite Bible verse is there: “He must increase but I must decrease.” Here are a few of my favorite fridge magnets:

Challenging Assumptions

Will Ingram

Philip Jenkins should be read by anyone interested in the future of Christianity. In The Next Christendom, Jenkins called attention to the fact that the growth of the Church in the “global South” was a phenomenon that had been largely overlooked but which will have dramatic effects upon the future of our faith. “In our lifetimes,” he observes in the earlier book, “the centuries-long North Atlantic captivity of the church is drawing to an end.”

The Worst Stories Ever Told

amymaclachlan

Are there women out there who actually enjoy reading books that target Christian women living cookie-cutter lifestyles where men are hopeless and helpless, and women must tend the family and keep the home fires burning? What about books like Alice Munro's Hateship, Friendship, Courtship, Loveship, Marriage, where a mind is challenged, lives are deep, dynamic and multi-faceted, and not everything has a happy ending? Even for those who like their fiction “lite,” surely there are plenty of worthy novels out there to entertain.

Marketing Spirituality

Joel Coppieters

Walk Through the Bible founder Bruce Wilkinson may not have been a total unknown when he wrote The Prayer of Jabez, but the little book's nine million sales were certainly helped by marketing creativity. The list of spin-offs include three children's versions, The Prayer of Jabez Journal, The Prayer of Jabez Devotional for Children, The Prayer of Jabez Devotional for Adults, The Prayer of Jabez Bible Study, The Prayer of Jabez for Women, a 90-minute audio version, a video, the musical companion The Prayer of Jabez Music … A Worship Experience, backpacks, jewellery, Christmas ornaments, vanilla-scented candles, mouse pads, and even a framed painting of Jabez. After refusing a proposal for Jabez candy bars, licensing agent Leslie Nunn Reed told the Los Angeles Times, “We want to be careful about not over-commercializing this.”

Eternal Mystery

Fairley Ritchie

Joan Chittister writes that friendship “colours the very air we breathe. We can see it in the eyes of old women, in the kitchens of the women they love. We can hear it in the voices of one young woman giggling to another over the phone. We can feel it beating in our own hearts on lonely rainy days in faraway places.” It has fascinated philosophers, spiritual teachers and mystics, artists and poets, yet remains “eternal mystery, eternal desire.” Chittister draws in threads from classical scholars such as the author of Ecclesiastes, Cicero, and Ælred of Clairvaux, “who wrote a theology on friendship founded on the belief that 'God is friendship.'” But these views of spiritual life faded. “In a world dominated by war, famine, plague, and oppression, the God of Love lost out to God the Judge and Jesus the Lord.”

Yodeler's Patience

communications

I could sense his presence long before I could see him. The spring sunshine had a cast to it that seemed to make my binoculars crystal clear. Feeling his presence, I slowly glassed the meadow all around me, then the forested edge and finally the steep hill behind the small marsh to the east. There were birds everywhere, but I sensed something more than birds. Letting the field glasses dangle around my neck, I sat back on my heels in the cover of some willow scrub at the meadow's edge.

They Cause Us to Despair

Harris Athanasiadis

“In centuries past, influential Christian thinkers … have penned literature that continues to influence Christians today. The Foundations of Faith series unearths these works for a new audience of twentysomethings hungry for revolutionary material that speaks to their lives…” So reads the back cover of each book in this new series. The goal, clearly, is to get theological/spiritual classics read by a younger generation.

Seven Juicy Subjects

afaiz

That Phyllis Tickle is absolutely smart; and a fun writer to read. Her introduction to her slim volume, Greed, is worth the price for the whole package. (That could be said for any one of these books.) She runs through a history of Christianity, bringing it to our world today: “This culture [is] faced with issues of human responsibility and training and social management, even of human manipulation, for which no prior intellectual guidelines exist and for where there is not yet a fully realized shared imagination.” Yup, that pretty much sums it up — the Reformation is done, Christendom is gone, the landscape has shifted. Infused with knowledge from science, psychology, medicine, from other social and political sciences our understanding of religion is brought into sharper focus. (See the Letters to the Editor in this magazine the last few months as readers discuss the Virgin Birth as metaphor.)

Learning to Walk

Phil Callaway

My angel daughter grabs my omelet with both fists and hangs it from her little brother. Within seconds, milk is everywhere. Plates crash to the floor. Hollering ensues: the kind that peels paint from walls. I stand quickly to resolve the situation, banging my left knee hard on the underside of the table. Clutching at the wound, I accidentally smack my knuckles on the sharp table edge