Dear Eugene

Dear Eugene, I am still high on the news that yesterday Trudeau named David Adams Richards to Senate . Here I would like to share with you the spectacular opening paragraphs of David Adams Richards's " God Is. ". He is speaking in a language that I am still trying to learn.  I will let him speak for himself.  And for me. Enjoy! Yours, Alex ********************* Excerpt from the Hardcover edition of "God Is." Copyright © 2009 by David Adams Richards  Publisher: Anchor Canada A woman who recently started to read my books has asked me if I am a Christian. Strange how hard a question this is. If I say that I am not, the entire social fabric of my upbringing, of my parents’ and grandparents’ teachings and instructions, and the world and church in which I came to manhood, would make me a liar. But if I say I am a Christian, and a practicing Catholic, it very well might elicit a preconceived notion of what that means, which in itself is giving int...

Dear Eugene, "Is it me?  Please be honest and tell me, because I really cannot identify it!"  For the longest time that's how I've been pleading to my wife. I just couldn't figure out what it is about churches that suffocated me, time and again nipped my already-small flame in its bud.  I wanted to get along with people, move along the production line of God's Kingdom business, ride along the high tide of spirituality to reach high heaven.  But all I got was a bad case of sinusitis that lasted all seasons. "Could it be because it's a Chinese church?"  I didn't expect my wife to give me deep insight and sure enough she didn't. Later I came to realize, Yes, it might have something to do with culture, but, really, it goes much deeper and pervasive than that.  I am not a stranger to my culture's patriarchal, ham-fisted ways, but just because manhandling is carried out by another culture with more outward democracy, debonair finess...

Dear Eugene, We all worship something, don't we?  (With atheists being worshipers with the greatest faith--or, shall I say, the greatest suspension of disbelief.  But that's a topic for another day.) Social media like Facebook is really a shrine, a temple replete with our small concerns presented to our even smaller gods, cacophony of summoning chant to convoke a closer look at our own selves, a self-appointed, polished aspect of it, to rouse admiration maybe, sympathy maybe, pity and jealousy of equal parts perhaps and often, approval for sure, honesty and intimacy close to never, (incense) smoke gets in your eyes. Those who worship pleasure and comfort would document their pilgrimage to travel destination and eatery, often with pornographic close-up of things and people to attest their devotion.  Those who worship sex would post selfies taken with various objects of desire, inanimate items personified, people dehumanized.   You really want to be HERE!!  ...

Dear Eugene, Last week my son told me when he was at his short-term mission trip, he wrote a rap song with friends to tell about the Gospel, in which there was a line "You gotta know your religion," and a friend corrected him by saying Christianity is not a religion but a faith. My son protested, "How can Christianity not be a religion?  We all know it is one of the big religions." I said to him, "You might be right if you are a sociologist trying to find ways to categorize things, which is often an elusive and thankless task to begin with.  But your friend was onto something, that Christianity really is not a religion, if your definition of religion is a systematized way to access God or The Higher Power or whatever you call it, for whatever purpose you might have in mind." Then I continued, "What's more.  The Christian God hates religion--Oh, more than anything !  You've been reading your Bible; I am sure you can't miss that....

Dear Eugene, Lately I've been reflecting a lot on what makes a good shepherd--or even more importantly, what makes a true shepherd of God's people. Growing up in a family full of pastors, I am not a stranger to fighting within the church, sometimes full-blown civil war, both as witness and participant, so much so that at times I even accepted disunity in the body of Christ as part of God's modus operandi to carry out his will.  The world has done a better job discipling us than the other way around. N. T. Wright called the disunity in Western church the biggest scandal with which we have all colluded.  I call it the biggest ever anti-Gospel, anti-Jesus conspiracy. When everything goes well, we can all afford to be nice.  It is at time of crisis and conflict that we show our true colors: self-preservation, finger-pointing, outright denial, lies.  "Things come apart so easily when they have been held together with lies," I read this line just now.  (...

Dear Eugene, How is your summer? Mine is shaping up to be probably the most stressful summer of my life.  I haven't been writing to you too much lately, only because there really is too much I want to write to you about. I hear that you too had been entwined in controversy lately , about an "issue" that I know one day you will need to speak about one way or another. Over these past many years since knowing you, I had the scenarios played out in my head, trying to "see" how you would answer when one day you are put on the spot. The reality actually played out the way I imagined it.  You don't believe me?  Just ask my wife.  I verbalized my imagination more than a few times to her over the years.  I told her already your answer will not be the kind that people want, the kind that they could tweet and use your "position" to support their own prejudice.  I told her your answer will be the bleeding heart of a pastor. And yes, a bleeding he...

Dear Eugene, What is the biggest lie of religion?  You are a pastor, a "religion practitioner" in the eye of the world; you must have an answer or two for this question, I suppose? I think the biggest lie religion tells us is that once we are "in", once we have god--or, more like, god-ideas--in our pocket, we could stop asking questions (and hence keep giving answers). Summer is the travel season.  Everyone looks forward to one's next "get away."  No Christian I know ever asks, But Jesus has never "gotten away" from his tiny backyard turf during his earthly life...how did he then find himself?  He didn't explore or experience enough of life to know enough, feel enough, live enough, didn't he?  How can such a provincial existence say or mean anything to anyone but his own petty, parochial self?  He didn't even have a place he could truly call "home"; he was in exile with his Jewish kinfolk, lorded over by a fo...

Dear Eugene, I have done quite a bit of walking in the last two days and seen many beautiful things. Every beauty I see points me to something else, tells me that I don't belong here but must stay squarely at this place, where I am not ultimately made for yet am called to sojourn, to work out a vocation once forsaken yet never fully forgotten. Am I going home, or have I not even begun? Am I growing up or waiting to be born again? Am I striving to live or am I learning to die? I saw a house just now and I said how peaceful, warm and secure it must be to stay close to its heart of hearth in the winter months, Christmas time, how lucky one must be, how lucky I would be. And then I realized anyone who longs for what God longs for would want to see everyone be that lucky one. How far and away I am from the heart of God. Today in the park I heard someone singing in French. I didn't even know what he was singing but it drove me to tears. Yours, Alex

Dear Eugene, Today is a very special day.  I took the skytrain to meet up with a friend with whom I had a kind of fallout since last September. The "fallout," which I doubt either of us had given it such official label, was all the more regrettable because only a month before that we had a sort of breakthrough in our relationship, that after years of being "friends" we were able to probably for the first time speak heart to heart. A "kind of" fallout.  A "sort of" breakthrough.  Everything is so tentative and tenuous when it comes to breaking out of the self to relate to the other .  Like an under-rehearsed dance recital with angels looking on.  Somehow it feels like we are meant to fail and the angels are bound to sigh. The "fallout" was unexpected, by either of us, I suppose.  My friend was growing increasingly bitter towards pretty much everything and everyone, and I gave him a few words harsher than even the usual, perplexed...

Dear Eugene, Today is Canada Day, a very special one.  When the next very special Canada Day comes I shall be no more. Today every Canadian wants to find his/her own little story in the big story of Canada, claiming that our own little piece can only find its true meaning within the big picture that goes way before us and shall hopefully continue to unveil after us. There is talk of injustice and reconciliation, steps we must trace back to find today's footing, to find a way forward--to find a way out. But are we just chanting idealistic slogans? We are told that we need to find ourselves, and that's the meaning of life, the grand narrative to make sense of it all.  I love literature and so do you.  We know how the idea of how there really is only one story to tell and that is a person's search for himself seems so naturally valid that we don't even know we have picked our assumption but there could be more than one. What other assumption could there be? ...