My iPod crashed – long story, not terribly interesting – and I have to rebuild. A good opportunity to bringsome theology to my music. Here's my opening salvo; I could use your help for more.

Earlier this year I had an email exchange with my favourite sparring partner, Rev. David Webber, over the fact that rural issues are not well covered in the magazine. A few weeks later I had a passionate email from a lady in Saskatchewan who was expressing the opinion of her friends that the Record does not do enough stories about the western part of this country.

My shirt bears the logo of a popular designer who came to the fore 20 years ago. I paid about $30 for it at a discount clothing store which sells overruns and the previous year's fashions. The shirt would have cost me about twice as much if I had bought it in season. It was “tailored” in Indonesia. I have no idea where the cloth was made, where the button were manufactured, but I'm pretty certain it wasn't in the United States where the company which slapped on the logo is based.

Juno is a well-made movie; it is modest, with a strong script, great dialogue, charming performances from charming actors and a great indie soundtrack. The movie is set in some ideal world, where love reigns and hope prevails. When the title character, a teenage girl, gets pregnant, her parents are supportive, her boyfriend waits on her and her friends rally around her. She gets a few dirty stares but the movie has no interest in the politics of teen pregnancy. It's a quiet story of a remarkable girl going through an extraordinary year.

Remember the Buddhist monks last year, leading anti-government demonstrations in the-land-now-called-Myanmar. The Religion Newswriters Association (there's an association for everything!) named them the “top religion newsmakers of 2007.”

With friends like Bruxy Cavey who needs enemies? Cavey is a pastor with The Meeting House, a non-denominational church in the Toronto area. He's also the author of The End of Religion: Encountering the Subversive Spirituality of Jesus. In the preface he writes, “Religion uses rules to force our steps, guilt to keep us in line, and rituals to remind us of our failure to live up to those rules. In doing this, religion adds more weight to those who are already burdened with life's hardships. But Jesus offers us the rest we're searching for.”

If you want to read my column (hi, mom!) this month, you'll first have to do some homework. I'd like you to flip around the […]

Can you buy a better car than a Honda Civic? Or for that matter a Toyota Corolla? I don't know if you can. For approximately $15k you get a really decent car—four wheels plus a steering wheel, comfortable seating, a decent trunk, pretty good fuel efficiency and intermittent windshield wipers. For roughly the same amount of money you can get a Pontiac G5 or Vibe or a Kia Rio5. There are equally fine cars in that price range offered by Chrysler, Mazda and Ford. The Ford Focus is a perfectly acceptable choice.

For I was hungry and you gave me something to eat, I was thirsty and you gave me something to drink, I was a stranger and you invited me in, I needed clothes and you clothed me, I was sick and you looked after me, I was in prison and you came to visit me. – Matthew 25: 35, 36

Bald eagles are diving lazily into the Pacific, outside this cottage on a northern Gulf island, three ferry rides away from Vancouver. In a few […]

The following is an email exchange I had with a commissioner in the weeks following this year's General Assembly.

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.)

It's become popular not only to make fun of the church and people of faith, but to attempt to attack or topple Christian tenets. Books like The Da Vinci Code and documentaries claiming archeological discoveries of the bones of Jesus and his family appear to threaten the very foundations of the Christian church. Our society has forgotten and neglected its roots, and we've lost the Sabbath. Church has moved from the essential institution at society's hub to a blip on the weekend radar, wedged between hockey practice and the scratch-and-save sale at Sears.

Assuming that the media has done its job, the hype surrounding the impending blockbuster movie season should be kicking into high gear by now. One of those titles coming fast and furious down the pipe is the third installment of the Spiderman movie franchise. The first two have a great track record… I must admit my more literary and theological side likes it when I get to “geek out” about the surprising theological depth of something usually better known for its special effects.