Canada has two seasons: winter, and road construction. In some parts of Canada, the road construction season is short, the period between when the frost comes out of the ground, and when it goes back in.
Frost, you see, creates havoc with roads. When moisture in the soil freezes, it expands. That heaves the surface upwards, cracking the impervious blacktop. Cracking lets more moisture through. Which also freezes. Which causes more frost heaves…
When the frost melts, the process reverses. The frozen ground underneath turns into mud. The heave becomes a hollow. Under the weight of traffic, the road collapses. Not quite into a sinkhole, as sometimes happens in Florida, for example. But deep enough to destroy automotive suspensions. And cause impact fractures in dentures.
Here in the balmy Okanagan valley, winters are relatively short. Unfortunately, that lets the road construction season last longer. Crews don’t have to work around the clock to complete repairs before frost returns. So closures and detours can last for months.
There’s a self-perpetuating feedback loop to these detours. Traffic gets diverted off a main road onto side roads through residential neighbourhoods. The residential roads weren’t built for heavily loaded semi-trailers. They’re barely wide enough for two cars, let alone two trucks.
Under the extra traffic, the residential road disintegrates. Thus it provides employment for the next year’s road construction season.
Build it or bury it
Over some 60 years of driving all kinds of roads, I’m fascinated by the process of building a new road. Or re-building an old one.
Sometimes construction starts from zero. Everything gets cleared – trees, rocks, old paving. The foundation starts well below the surface, levelling the earth, compacting it. Then layers of crushed rock and gravel are added, to absorb impact and provide drainage. Finally, several layers of blacktop go on.
Other projects simply pave over the old road. They bury its deficiencies under a fresh layer of blacktop. Like sweeping the dust under the carpet. Except it reverses the process – it’s more like laying a new carpet on top of the dust.
Road re-construction seems to me to bear distinct parallels to the way churches, political parties, and community organizations operate.
Most social reconstruction follows the “pave it over” model. The old road – the old beliefs, the old ways of doing things, the tried-and-true constitutions and policies of the past – continue to exist under the fresh new face. Or policy.
In churches, the kind of organizations I know best, this means that a 2000-year-old pre-scientific-age text continues to underlie all major decisions. Creeds almost as old remain untouchable.
Similarly, political parties elect new leaders, lay out new platforms. But old prejudices and ideologies still lurk just below the surface.
Occasionally, though, some groups try to start from zero, like building a new highway. But they first have to clear away any broken components of the former road. They have to dig deep to establish root principles. They have to expand that foundation with layers of interpretation.
Starting from zero is a tough road to take. Because there is always – always – opposition to losing something familiar. The old road may have been bumpy, twisty, slow. But it was “our road.” Even if it was no longer going anywhere.
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Copyright © 2017 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’s column about prayer was, of course, satiric. Or ironic. Or facetious – whatever. I don’t believe God – whatever that is – intervenes, with or without prayers and petitions. But some of the letter writers didn’t catch that, and thought I was actually asking God to clear the garbage out of the oceans.
My point came at the end – the real need is not to have God fix things for us, but to get rid of the conviction that God can or will.
Jean Skillman got that point: “This topic, on prayer and divine intervention, is one of the major reasons I left my United Church congregation for another congregation, a Unitarian one. Interventionalist prayer deserves commentary and dialogue, because, as you point out, it is about the intersection of victim attitudes and accountability. A victim attitude is one where a person or community hands over responsibility and action to others, human or divine. When a person is accountable, then action and change can occur. When a person or community takes a victim stance, very little change can occur.
“I enjoyed resonating with today’s column. The only person I need to change is myself. I did that, to leave a destructive marriage, and one of the impetuses to that change was someone saying to me : Are you not tired of being a victim? I had to admit I was tired of it. Admittedly, many changes require collective effort, and some changes are indeed pretty large and feel like the universe should take over. Even then, the change for me is to understand that the outcome I wish for is only my wish. If I wish indeed for larger change, I have to be responsible for undertaking the awesome task of collective effort.”
Tom Watson wrote, “To determine whether or not God answered your one-and-only intervention prayer, I'll wait a bit and check with a woman I know to see whether or not God still makes sure she has a decent parking spot when she goes downtown. She, in contrast to Dan Rather, gave up on the big things and restricts her prayers to personal needs.”
Cliff Boldt cautioned, “We should be careful what we pray for.”
Linda Wilton: “Jim, all I can say is AMEN!”
Ted Spencer picked up on the theme of responsibility: “On the way to work this morning, I listened to those fulminating about Ontario’s recent announcement of an (eventual) $15/hour minimum wage. Political opportunism, they say. If political opportunists result in a half decent wage, the problem is fixed. Leave us not quibble about who did the fixing.”
James Russell put his views this way: “To which God replied not, being perhaps neither noticing nor interested in the opinions of his smallest parasites ...”
Valentina Gal offered the most substantive comments: “Obviously, you’re being the devil’s advocate with this week’s column. While I do agree that we should stop asking for God to fix things we should be fixing ourselves, I find your tone irritating.
“I am a Christian and do believe in prayer. I did pray in the way you refer to above and, like you and many others, I was frustrated and angry when things stayed the same, until, I read the biography of Corrie ten Boom.
“I identified with this Christian woman because she had many experiences that were similar to those of my mother who survived both famine and war. For today’s discussion, I’ll stick to what I learned from her about prayer. I learned to use the model of The Lord’s Prayer. Nowhere does it tell us that God will fix everything. [Rather], we acknowledge our own powerlessness and inadequacy and that there is a power greater than ourselves. We ask for sustenance, both spiritual and literal through the powerful symbol of the ‘daily bread’. We ask for forgiveness and the Grace to forgive others. We ask for protection from evil and we finish by praising God in the end, mindful of our own gratitude.
“If we keep these tenets in mind regardless to whom or what we pray, prayer becomes a time of introspection and growth. We take time to be humble, to examine our own actions and to think of others. We find out what we have the strength to do and what is out of our control. I don’t think there’s anything wrong with holding up a situation, a place or a person in intercessory prayer once we realize where our own responsibility ends. People like Corrie Ten Boom and my mother would not have survived had they not had God to pray to. My mother always believed that God answered her prayers in the cold and hungry winter in the Ukraine in 1932-33 and again in Dachau in 1945.
“I think that you come across rather flippant in this week’s column because you do not acknowledge that in asking for God to fix things we feel helpless. What can I do about the decisions made in a big corporation – or the government I did or did not vote for? How can I do anything about a flood or a cancer? Prayer helps us find equilibrium in a world that worships free will and greed. Humbly asking God to fix whatever is not in my power to fix gives one hope.
“So, would it be all right with you if I asked God to encourage you to write about prayer in a more empathetic way the next time?”
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PSALM PARAPHRASES
When I was young and rebellious, if I didn’t want to go to church on Sunday morning, my parents made me memorize a psalm instead. Psalm 8 was one of those I memorized. The words moved me then; they still move me, and I’ve tried to get some of that across in this paraphrase.
My God, my God! How amazing you are.
I would describe you in terms of the stars or the skies,
the forest or the farthest reaches of the universe,
But they are your creation, and you are their creator.
You are all creation.
Our weapons, our bombs, our power to destroy, dwindle into insignificance
compared to the cry of a newborn baby.
On a starry night, with your glory sprinkled across the skies,
I stare into the infinite ends of your universe, and I wonder,
Who am I?
Why do I matter?
Why do you care about me?
We humans are less than specks of dust in your universe,
our timeframe shorter than a second in the great clock of creation;
Yet you have adopted us.
You have given us a special place in the your family;
you have trusted us to manage your earth, on your behalf --
to look after not just the sheep and the oxen, but also the wolves that prey on them;
To tend the birds, the fish, and even creatures we have never seen at the bottom of the sea.
My God, my God! How amazing you are!
For paraphrases of most of the psalms used by the Revised Common Lectionary, you can order my book Everyday Psalms from Wood Lake Publishing, info@woodlake.com.
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YOU SCRATCH MY BACK…
• Ralph Milton most recent project, Sing Hallelujah -- the world’s first video hymnal -- consists of 100 popular hymns, both new and old, on five DVDs that can be played using a standard DVD player and TV screen, for use in congregations who lack skilled musicians to play piano or organ. More details at www.singhallelujah.ca
• Isabel Gibson's thoughtful and well-written blog, www.traditionaliconoclast.com
• Wayne Irwin's "Churchweb Canada," an inexpensive service for any congregation wanting to develop a web presence, with free consultation. <http://www.churchwebcanada.ca>
• Alva Wood's satiric stories about incompetent bureaucrats and prejudiced attitudes in a small town are not particularly religious, but they are fun; write alvawood@gmail.com to get onto her mailing list.
• 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 twatson@sentex.net
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TECHNICAL STUFF
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