Where's Bobo?

Since starting school six years ago I have had my comfort blanket. My wine coloured sweatjacket. Its my thing. Even when the zipper broke I continued wearing it.

But where is it? It went missing last week - I thought maybe I left it at school but I don't see it in the lost and found. That in itself is an adventure. How do people lose winter coats? How do you go home not realizing that you don't have it on? There's tons of stuff just waiting to be picked up. Like a decorative cushion - maybe someone used it for class for their back. Tons of mugs, a few scarfs and quite frankly I didn't want to dig and deeper.

Bobo where are you?!

Poor people are non-Christians

I'm getting tired of the poverty angle the church keeps promoting. Had a sermon "The Rich Young Ruler". C liked it - I really wasn't into it. The pastor presented North Americans as all Rich Young Rulers. Our response to Christ is to give choices to those around us. She brought what she called "heroes" to church as they decided to live in a poorer part of town in order to serve them.

I have heard this before - we are called to serve the poor - lets find poor people and help them out.

This church is in a wealthy part of town. The poorest are those who are students. The majority of the community is not living in poverty. The solution seems to be that we are to find poor people. What I want to know is why aren't there any Christians living in Regent Park? Do all the Christians live in the rich parts of town? If so why don't I see a lot of people on the streets around the church in church? Or are they all busy on Sundays slumming it?

I am not poor. I have never been poor. I did not come to Christ out of my physical poverty - no soup kitchen, food drive or mental health outreach service was ever going to reach me. I was too rich to need these things. Why am I to be taken out of my community that I understand and thrust upon the poor as though I am the answer to the questions I don't even know?

Let's stop treating the poor as an way - an easy way I might add - of sharing Christ. These are people - not projects. Let's assist the Christians and churches in those areas with funds - that is what is needed - churches cannot exist in poor areas because the Christians cannot give enough to pay the rent and salaries of the church workers. I say to all churches - direct a portion of your tithes to a poor church - who can use the money to help the Christians address systemic needs. Ask people for what they need - and respond.

Let's stop assuming that poverty is a non-Christian problem!

how we can be more visible outside our building

This is the question I am asked to grapple with in my job. Our building is huge. Picture a huge stone church with 3 sets of double front doors. Picture a huge rectangle. How can we be more visible? The picture above is Lincoln Church - ours is bigger!

I think the question is how can what we do in the church be more obvious to those outside. But even this doesn't make sense - we would make one hell of an ugly hotel and a rather monolithic funeral home. Perhaps a restaurant - with stained glass windows. I have mistaken some small town funeral homes for restaurants - never to the point of walking in I hasten to add.

I'm not trying to be bitchy but its frustrating to be asked to "advertise" for a building. It's like asking the White House to let people know its there. People know its there - they may or may not care and they may or may not know what goes on inside - and they may or may not want to come in once or ever.

Romantic Meeting

Why is someone with pink eye cluttering up the ER! Victoria, surely you can do better then pink eye - work your way up to mangled hand in machinery or overcome with noxious fumes!

Scarborough General - m4w - 24 (emergency waiting room)

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Date: 2010-01-22, 4:56PM EST

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HI, your names Victoria. We met in the waiting room at Scarborough General. We joked for 20 minutes til the nurse pulled you away. You just found out you were pregnant and you're here all alone from Turkey. Maybe you'd like some company since you have no one here. Im the guy with the red eye lol, you said most girls would run away. Well I can tell you defintaley arent like most girls :) Hopefully somehow you get this!

• Location: emergency waiting room
• it's NOT ok to contact this poster with services or other commercial interests

PostingID: 1565677738

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Craigslist Gold - Gun and Skeleton Costume

I appreciate that creating a film takes a lot of props - but its hard to imagine how "good" this film is going to be considering they are looking for a skeleton costume - and fake tombstones. This ain't Avatar....

*INDIE FILM NEEDS PROPS!* (Toronto)

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Date: 2010-01-19, 11:07PM EST
Reply to: comm-ut7f5-1561251541@craigslist.org ^{[Errors when replying to ads?]}

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We are starting our production on our independent film in the upcoming month but are lacking some essential props.
If you have any of the following and wouldn't mind lending or offering them for rental at a cheap price (as our budget is very limited) we would very much appreciate it.
We are currently needing:

Revolver (classic style)
Skeleton Costume
Anything that would be suitable for a cemetery scene (faux tombstones)

We are also looking for a studio space for some shooting as one of our characters (a painter) is going to be shot painting a canvas in this space. If you have an available space or know someone that may please send us an email.
This is a great film and we would very much appreciate all the support we can get!

Riden

• Location: Toronto
• it's NOT ok to contact this poster with services or other commercial interests

PostingID: 1561251541

"Why do people want tinted car stereos?"

In response to a sign advertising - Tinting Car Stereos, my mother pondered who would have a use for this. I waited hoping that it was a joke along the lines that C likes to tell. Sadly, it wasn't. We had to explain that the tinting was for car windows and the installation of car stereos is a whole other offer...aging is a frightful thing.

Jealousy of the witty...

I love to make people laugh. So I am very jealous of Badbanana who twitters more clever things in a week then I will likely think up in a year. Here are some of badbanana's thoughts:

January 11 - Just finished up an interesting water cooler conversation. That guy sure knew a lot about water coolers.

January 14 - Scientists today set the Doomsday Clock back one minute. They also introduced the new iPod dock feature, which is nice.

and sadly this one from yesterday which I didn't "get" at first....


Talking dogs today have no manners. Just "kill that guy," or "kill those people," without a single please or thank you.

Have you ever noticed....?

Have you ever noticed that there are times when you throw something away that you have hung onto that you end up having a good use for it later.


First day of class in advanced preaching is notice that we will discuss how to evaluate sermons and to be gracious in doing so. Its a new prof that I know fairly well so I know he would have appreciated an example. I had an email that turned down a written sermon that sounded like it came from an irritated, overworked editor rather than a gracious, mentoring elder. But alas it is "gone" where ever deleted emails go.

When I worked for a living I had an email folder called CMB. "Cover My Butt". Through moves and title changes I kept certain emails that I feared I might need one day to explain bizarre decisions that you hope will never come to light. I still felt a slight twinge of anxiety when I deleted all those emails during my last days!!

Computers have not lightened the load, mentally I'm weighed down by words tossed at me. At least in a conversation there is the hint that things are about to get rough - there is nothing like opening a harsh email late at night - all you can do is stew about it.

What if I got the courage to delete emails as soon as they were read - put the info down on my day timer and let everything else disappear?! That sounds like a level of grace and trust I just don't have!!

Skype - Cripes I'm Old....

A friend asked me if I skype. Not only do I not Skype I know extremely little about it. I can barely function in today's technological world. We are busy looking it up on the Internet to see how it works - see how old I am, I still spell Internet with a capital "I".

However, as old as I feel I am younger than my mother who told me how she used a phone book and looked up a few places and called to see where she could get her licence renewed. She has Internet. My brother and I figured it took her longer to look up the number in the book then to get all the info she needed on line...I can't imagine relying on someone to pick up a phone somewhere to answer a question. I don't think I even trust the people who pick up the phone to know the answer!

Jesus isn't a great table tennis parnter...

I had this dream that Jesus was my partner for table tennis. But he hadn't shown up. So in my head I'm being kind of bitchy about it - I mean after all the Son of God should be more reliable! But to get another perspective I mentioned aloud: "Gee, Jesus is late, I wonder where he is...". Right away people are making excuses - you know he probably ran into some people that needed to be healed.

Here is the scary part - I felt that that is not a good enough excuse - its a boundaries issue. Jesus knew he had an appointment with me and also knew that regardless of where he is someone needs to be healed. He made that choice when he said he would show up. Its all about balance.

When I think about it I realise that if Jesus was physically here we would not be happy if he tried to take a break for table tennis. He must of gotten a lot of flack when he took breaks from healing. He didn't have the Benny Hinn method down where you cluster them into a stadium for a one night only performance.....