We had a mighty wind one night. It sounded like a freight train rumbling by outside – loud enough that I assumed the snowplow must be coming down our street, dragging its blade along the pavement. 

            But it wasn’t. 

            When I woke, I looked outside. No snow. 

            The house was eerily quiet. And chilly.

            No power. No light. No heat. 

            And no phone. Not even the hard-wired landline had a dial tone. 

            Plus, the battery on my cell phone was down; I couldn’t recharge it.

            No internet, no email – the cable modem needs plug-in power. 

            I thought I could at least have a shower. No water.

            Later in the morning I discovered that the wind had tipped a big old pine tree, higher up the hill. The tree’s roots had snapped the water main. 

            What happened to the electrical power lines, I still don’t know.

            My world had shrunk. 

Rugged self-sufficiency

            When I was younger, I dreamed about finding a lake, somewhere in the mountains, where “the hand of man had never set foot,” as my friend Ralph Milton sometimes puns. 

            In those days, I considered myself relatively proficient with a crosscut saw and a sharp axe. I imagined building a cabin on the shores. Finding everything I needed in the lake or the forest. Being totally self-sufficient. 

            Ralph Edwards lived my fantasy, at a remote lake deep in the Chilcotin mountains. Leland Stowe wrote his story: The Crusoe of Lonesome Lake.

            Edwards built a cabin. A garden for vegetables. And a water system. And his own electrical generating plant; as I recall the story, he made a Pelton wheel out of condensed milk cans, split in half. He even learned to fly his own plane in and out of the lake. 

            But not even Edwards could live there forever. Eventually, he moved to a small community on the B.C. coast, where essential services were provided for him. 

            That day, I had none of those essential services. Certainly nothing that could be fixed with a crosscut saw and an axe.

Both of us

            I realized how pathetically inadequate our ideals of rugged independence are. And how much we are dependent on community services that we don’t think about, most of the time. 

            We give them the bland and abstract name, “infrastructure.” Which means, most of the time, nothing. 

            Until you have to do without heat and light, power and water, sewers and garbage collection, schools and policing, buses and ambulances… These are all services that we cannot provide for ourselves, by our own efforts. 

            They’re possible only because we have learned to work together. To set aside our personal gain so that we can all benefit.

            Life is not about getting more than someone else. It’s about helping both of us get what we need. At the most basic level, what we need for survival. At higher levels, what we need for learning, for growth, for reaching our potential. 

            My neighbour came over to check on me. Her cell phone was still working. She called my daughter, to assure her I was all right. 

            She didn’t have to do that, but she believes the teaching, “to love your neighbour as yourself.”

            It’s the key concept of civilization.

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Copyright © 2021 by Jim Taylor. Non-profit use in congregations and study groups, and links from other blogs, welcomed; all other rights reserved.

                  To comment on this column, write jimt@quixotic.ca

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YOUR TURN

Last week, I gave my impressions of the mob that stormed the Capitol in Washington DC on Jan 6. I was not, I should point out, offering a rationale for WHY they stormed Congress. Rather, I was pointing out a defence that they COULD make. Apparently that wasn’t clear.

For example, Steve Roney wrote, “I think it is unwarranted to assume that the mob that stormed the Capitol in Washington on January 6 was motivated by some Christian vision of leadership or of the apocalypse. Occam’s razor is against you: the obvious reason for storming the Capitol is that they believed the election was stolen, and the Congress was about to certify it without hearing their concerns.

            “Trump’s base may be heavily evangelical Christian. It does not follow that the people storming the Capitol were.”

Judyth Mermelstein took a different view: “Your assessment of why evangelicals became Trumpists and joined the January 6th invasion of the Capitol was spot-on, but omitted the fact that their televangelists have been telling them for five years that Trump was sent by God—a political quid pro quo whereby they supported him (financially and otherwise) and he inflicted their anti-LGBT, anti-abortion and financially predatory agenda on the U.S. for years to come via the judiciary.

            “Where I think you went wrong is in thinking they [the evangelical views] were the point, rather than the ‘window-dressing’ -- along with hundreds of QAnon followers who were brainwashed by another cult: the one whose core beliefs include that the Democrats and Jews belong to a pedophile network that, amongst other things, murders children in order to drink their ‘adrenochrome’ to increase their own power…”

Tom Watson drew attention to the views of Senator Josh Hawley, as reported in the New York Times. The NYT article implies that Hawley – a representative of the extreme evangelical wing in the U.S. – would see the mob as deliberately fulfilling a biblical mandate:

            “In multiple speeches, an interview and a widely shared article for Christianity Today, Mr. Hawley has explained that the blame for society's ills traces all the way back to Pelagius -- a British-born monk who lived 17 centuries ago.

            “In a 2019 commencement address at The King's College, a small conservative Christian college devoted to ‘a biblical worldview,’ Mr. Hawley denounced Pelagius for teaching that human beings have the freedom to choose how they live their lives and that grace comes to those who do good things, as opposed to those who believe the right doctrines.”

I mistakenly posted Linda Reed’s response in Sharp Edges last week. It should have been in Soft Edges, so here it is again: “You assert that they were not organized, but then how did so many from so many different places all arrive for the ‘big event’ that the president announced would take place on Jan. 6? How did folks who claim to be so poor as to not have money to put food on their tables afford airline flights from far away?  Was it not organization that enabled people who would not otherwise have any knowledge of the interior of the Capitol Complex to find their way through a myriad of hallways? A coup d'etat is defined as the ‘removal of an existing government from power, usually through violent means.’ This definition does not demand that there be a plan in place for the new government. What those folks who were breaking down the doors and windows wanted -- according to their own voices on the videos -- was the removal of the Democrats from the Congress.”

Bob Rollwagen sent me five responses. Here’s the core of them: “There always seems to be someone taking advantage of protest gatherings to hold up a sign saying ‘Jesus Saves.’ They must keep it in the trunk of their car. They seek out the media cameras and illustrate an ability to get in the coverage. 

            “The group that gathered in Washington appeared to be the ones most dedicated to Trump’s continuous stream of lies about the election.”

            They missed a key point, Bob concluded: “Jesus entered the temple to protest a miss use of the space as a lesson for his followers; Trump was not at the Capital building. Trump was not illustrating a truth.”

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Psalm paraphrase

Psalm 62: 5-12 shows up only once every three years in the Revised Common Lectionary. When I read it, it sounds like one of those days when nothing goes right, when you just want to tell everyone to go away and leave you alone.

5          I don't want to see anyone.
I want to stay in bed and pull the blankets up over my head. 

6          People are unfaithful two-faced phonies.
I don't want them.
I just want God with me. 

7          I can't trust anyone else, any more.
No one has any honor, any loyalty. 

8          The only one I can trust is God. 

9          People today have no standards, no enduring values.
They flit from fad to fad like butterflies.
The upper crust are all sham and show;
the highly educated are windbags, inflating their own egos.
A breeze could blow them all away. 

10        Don't try to beat them at their own game.
Don't stoop to their methods. It's not worth it.
You'll only drag yourself down to their level. 

11        Do things God's way, instead.

12        God doesn't compete, and God doesn't seek revenge.
God simply loves.
That's all that God expects of you and me, too. 

Ah… I can get up now and start the day.

You can find paraphrases of most of the psalms in the Revised Common Lectionary in my book Everyday Psalmsavailable from Wood Lake Publishing, info@woodlake.com.

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TECHNICAL STUFF

If you want to comment on something, send a message directly to me, jimt@quixotic.ca.

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                  I write a second column each Sunday called Sharp Edges, which tends to be somewhat more cutting about social and justice issues. To sign up for Sharp Edges, write to me directly, jimt@quixotic.ca, or send a note to sharpedges-subscribe@lists.quixotic.ca

                  And for those of you who like poetry, please check my webpage .https://quixotic.ca/My-Poetry I posted several new poetic works there a few weeks ago. If you’d like to receive notifications about new poems, write me at jimt@quixotic.ca, or subscribe yourself to the list by sending a blank email (no message) to poetry-subscribe@lists.quixotic.ca (If it doesn’t work, please let me know.)

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PROMOTION STUFF

To use the links in this section, you’ll have to insert the necessary symbols. Some spam filters have blocked my posts because they’re suspicious of some of the web links.

                  Wayne Irwin's “Churchweb Canada,” an inexpensive service for any congregation wanting to develop a web presence, with free consultation. http://wwwDOTchurchwebcanadaDOTca He’s also relatively inexpensive!

                  I recommend Isabel Gibson’s thoughtful and well-written blog, wwwDOTtraditionaliconoclastDOTcom. She also has lots of beautiful photos. Especially of birds.

                  Tom Watson writes a weekly blog called “The View from Grandpa Tom’s Balcony” -- ruminations on various subjects, and feedback from Tom’s readers. Write him at tomwatsoATgmailDOTcom (NB that’s “watso” not “watson”)

ALVA WOOD’S ARCHIVE

                  I have acquired (don’t ask how) the complete archive of the late Alva Wood’s collection of satiric and sometimes wildly funny columns about a mythical village’s misadventures. I’ve put them on my website: http://quixotic.ca/Alva-Wood-Archive. You’re welcome to browse. No charge. (Although maybe if I charged a fee, more people would find the archive worth visiting.)