Dear Eugene

Dear Eugene, Yesterday I talked about sex and violence and the Bible and just left it at that.  I intended good shock value, but I suppose I didn't get even an obliging scoff out of you, my dear seasoned pastor? There is this very ambitious recent movie , in it there is this very thoughtful passage of dialogue: K: How can you tell the difference? Can you tell if something really happened? Dr. Ana Stelline: They all think it’s about more detail. But that’s not how memory works. We recall with our feelings. Anything real should be a mess. Anything real should be a mess when we recall it.  Do you believe that? I love reading the Tanakh, or what Christians call the Old Testament, but that is not always the case. Growing up in church I found the Old Testament stories grew older, triter, and staler with every retelling.  To a sterilized mind the number of stories suitable for kids cannot be more than what my fingers can count anyway; not even a Dickens can kee...

Dear Eugene, This morning I got to sleep in for another 20 odd minutes, just enough to finish up a nightmare. I was running around in UBC, my alma mater, trying to reach the room where I am going to take a math test.  I thought I knew my way but was all wrong.  Then I went into strange corridors and eventually fell into a bog.  A pretty standard, by-the-numbers bad dream. I woke up and thought, Well, I'm glad that was only a dream.  After all in real life I have only one math test to attend to, no call for such high-strung melodrama... Then I woke up from my waking up and realized, No, I don't even have one math test to attend to in real life! Then I woke up yet again from my waking up to the waking up and realized, No, in real life every step is a test.  The same way in The Odyssey  Penelope tests Odysseus to prove his identity, asking him (actually Eurycleia) to do something that the real Odysseus would know better the difficulty and...

Dear Eugene, Growing up is as much about unlearning as learning. No one can survive without learning to preserve one's all-important self.  No one can truly live without dying continually in ways big and small to one's petty little self.  One doesn't need to trumpet a great religion or tall calling to know this much is true about life on earth. So what is the fine balance--if to speak of a balance is even a correct frame of mind to comprehend this contradiction?  Is there a scale to adjust how much I should choose to keep or lose myself?  A spectrum of just the right mix of give and take?  And based on what?  If I cheat the scale and did what I didn't mean to do, does it still count favorably to my humanity, or am I risking a deep-down rotting of heart that will one day produce a stench indisputable and inexcusable? Jesus said to his disciples, "Whoever wants to be my disciple must deny themselves and take up their cross and follow me.  For ...

Dear Eugene, The world does not take Hollywood seriously.  Never did, never will. She is easy to like, at times even to love.  But to trust her, to "put your faith in" her is to forget she has never meant to be more than flippant.  Her magnificent outpouring might sometimes be inspiring, but what must go on is only a show after all. The news headline asks: " As scope of Weinstein conduct widens, questions arise: who knew what and when? " We don't need Cohen to tell us, the answer is " Everybody knows ." " If there was ever an event that I was at and Harvey was doing this kind of thing and I didn’t see it, then I am so deeply sorry, because I would have stopped it ," Matt Damon said. Yes, of course, Jason Bourne, you "would have stopped it."  If only you knew.  You just didn't know that's all.  You would have if you could have. "This kind of stuff can’t happen," Damon proceeded to say.  As if he was bo...

Dear Eugene, I'm good at love  I'm good at hate  It's in between I freeze Leonard Cohen, "A Thousand Kisses Deep" There are people who can only see the worst in a person, and there are those who seek to redress the imbalance of love and hate by saying we should always try to see the best. My understanding is that it's the dangerous water of in-between that we are called to navigate.  At least this is my reading of the Bible.  It has always been the reading of good literature.  Anything that attempts not to take in the full measure of human reality appeals to either cynicism or superficiality, both willful blindness. A person may not be doing a good job navigating the dangerous water of in-between, but at least he knows navigate he must to stay afloat in this human business. I guess this is one of the biggest qualms I have with social media, that people would keep telling stories on dry land about their loves and hates, rarely make an honest attemp...

Dear Eugene, Last night my heart was disturbed.  A  Leonard Cohen song gave her solace and she finally gave in and gave way. She gave in to give way to The Way. "Every time someone tells a story, and tells it well, the gospel is served," you once said . "I think the key word (...) is served .  I didn't mean (the gospel) is proclaimed every time someone tells a story; (I mean) it is served . When stories are told people begin to get a sense that life has value and meaning, and that they are significant. And then they start looking for the significance, 'Where's the meaning?' 'Where can I find significance?' But until people begin to realize their embededness in creation, and in suffering, that they aren't just accidents along the way, they really don't hear the gospel story. So, the important word is served ." Again I cried last night when I heard the lines : Behold the gates of mercy In arbitrary space And none of us de...