An Invitation

Within the dual pressures of the despair of crumbling job satisfaction and the spiritual valley through which I'm trudging these days, I am sensing an invitation from God.

It spurns, as is not unusual for me, out of a Christian rock song from the '80s. Also not surprising to my regular readers is that this is a Rick Cua rock song. Its title is "Line of Fire."

The lyrics - in their cheesy '80s glory - go something like this:

He's been watching you all through the night
He's been keeping your soul in his sights
With every second feel the hunger grow
Where or when love strikes, you'll never know

He takes careful aim
He sees you in the distance
You are the target, he can't miss

Step into his line of fire
He's lookin' for you, his heart's desire
Step into his line of fire
He's comin' at you with rapid fire

Scripturally, this is basically, "Behold, I stand at the door and knock" from John's Apocalypse. I am sensing an invitation from the Lord to make myself vulnerable to him. This is immeasurably difficult for me. I ask for your prayers as I struggle to accept this invitation.

A Funk

It gives me much comfort to know that even a person like Mother Theresa had her own dark night of the soul - that is to say, a time of supreme trial of heart, mind, and spirit as to the goodness and love of God:

Throughout 1946 and 1947, Mother Teresa experienced a profound union with Christ. But soon after she left the convent and began her work among the destitute and dying on the street, the visions and locutions ceased, and she experienced a spiritual darkness that would remain with her until her death. It is hard to know what is more to be marveled at: that this twentieth-century commander of a worldwide apostolate and army of charity should have been a visionary contemplative at heart; or that she should have persisted in radiating invincible faith and love while suffering inwardly from the loss of spiritual consolation. In letters written during the 1950s and 1960s to Fr. Van Exem, Archbishop Périer, and to later spiritual directors, Fr. L. T. Picachy, S.J., and Fr. J. Neuner, S.J., she disclosed feelings of doubt, loneliness, and abandonment. God seemed absent, heaven empty, and bitterest of all, her own suffering seemed to count for nothing, “. . . just that terrible pain of loss, of God not wanting me, of God not being God, of God not really existing.”

Often we are force-fed the falsehood that true holiness means always feeling peaceful, joyful, and radiating God's love in a genuine manner. But more often we don't feel like that; or to make my point, I don't feel like that all the time. I feel weak, sad, lonely... so lonely... and it's hard for me to accept the love of God. It's hard for me to open myself up to him and to hear his words.

Yet when I take the risk and open my spirit up to him in prayer, that is the one resounding message I hear from Jesus: "I love you! You don't have to prove anything to me, you don't have to be a saint, you don't have to be the image of human perfection, for my love is stronger than your weakness."

Can such a love exist that renders my failings irrelevant? I know my wife loves me with all her heart, but even she can't see past some of my faults. And ditto I for her. We expect each other to change, but God doesn't expect us to change. He merely calls us to his side, to true intimacy, to vulnerability - and invites us to receive him. He doesn't expect change in us, but he does effect change in us, for when we are close to him we cannot help but assume his holiness.

So let the funk come... I know that my redeemer lives, and that he died for me.

Corporate Efficiency

Hear my sad tale of corporate woe...

I worked five shifts in the week of Christmas, which under Canadian labour practices means that two of those shifts are overtime, since both Christmas and Boxing Day are statutory holidays here. I also worked the closing shift on New Year's Eve (yippee!) and since I worked until 2:00 AM, I was entitled to 2 hours of overtime on the feast of Mary Mother of God (or as my company calls it, New Year's Day).

As a manager, however, overtime doesn't automatically appear on my paycheck like it would if I were an hourly employee. No... I have to fill out a form.

So I print off the form. This itself is a significant task. I have to log in to our intranet, find the right form, and send it to the printer. It used to be that we had printers interspersed throughout the building, so you never had to go more than 20 paces to the nearest one. Now, because it's more efficient, we have one huge super-printer in a "secure" room (with no door) way across the building. Imagine walking across a football field to get a piece of paper. That's what I need to do, but no problem. I could use the exercise - I guess the company knows I'm out of shape. I should thank them, really.

This form is a full sheet of paper, but for some inane reason the nutbar who created it only gives me tiny blanks in which to fill my name, employee number, and the shift I worked, plus an even tinier blank to fill in why I deserve to paid overtime for those days. So already the experience is an unpleasant one; the form itself makes me feel like I'm a burden to the company.

In the section for "Overtime Actually Worked,"I fill in the blanks beside Wednesday and Saturday with 8 hours each; Wednesday because I actually worked on Boxing Day, and Saturday because it was the fifth shift I worked in a week when I should only work three shifts (yeah, I know it's complicated, but that's why I get paid the big bucks). Then I write in my two hours for January 1 in the Tuesday blank, and go in search of my boss to get her signature approving it. Now, understand that my boss is my new boss effective January 1 (the project bosses like to rotate amongst themselves on a yearly basis), and my old boss had pre-approved me working all this crazy overtime when I told him that if I merely took the time off that I wouldn't get my work done. So I have to explain all this again, and she goes off to find him to confirm my suspicious tale. Then she comes back to me and says I need to fill out two forms because the shifts for which I'm claiming overtime fall into two different weeks.

Log in, print two new forms... walk across the football field... fill in the tiny spaces with the same information... find my new boss again, who takes the forms back to my old boss. He signs them and brings them back to me, and tells me that I need to fill in the same information on both forms in the "Pre-approved Overtime" section as well. More tiny spaces to fill in... finally done.

Then I have to fax it to our payroll department. Before my employer introduced all these efficiency measures, I used to be able to actually walk up to my payroll rep and give her the paperwork. Now I have to fax it to her.

Is the fax number on the form? I think you can deduce the answer. Is it on our company's intranet site? Not there either. That would be a logical place. So I have to call a toll-free number to get it.

I've called these guys before, so I know enough to put on a headset because I know it'll be a while and I don't want to strain my neck by shouldering the phone.

The hold music is actually somewhat enjoyable - a rare ray of sunshine into this bleak process - but they keep interrupting it to tell me that they still haven't answered my call. After about five minutes, Kyle answers the phone. I identify myself and tell him I need the phone number to fax in my overtime form. I rightly guessed that this task is simple enough for him to fulfill it, and also know that if I ask him when the deadline is to catch the next pay cycle that he'll be stumped and need to "open a case" to get me the answer. So I steer clear of that question.

The number Kyle provides is naturally a local one - very local, it turns out. It's in my building. I head over to the fax machine (which is actually the super-printer across the football field) and dial the 5-digit internal extension for the other fax machine in the building and send over my completed forms. I swear I can almost hear it ringing through the wall separating me from the Secret Chamber of Payroll.

The fax machine asks me to wait while it produces a confirmation page so I know that the fax went through. It gives me two of them for good measure.

I shouldn't complain, though. The overtime will probably add $300 to my paycheque, and it only took me two hours to ensure that I'll get it.

If I submitted it in time for the payroll cutoff.

Oops

I've got a novelty Christmas tie which features Santa lounging on a beach in shorts and sunglasses, enjoying the warm sun.

Today while leaning over the oven door to remove a casserole, I accidentally let my tie make brief contact with the hot metal of the door's inside, and instantly the cheap fabric returned to its primal state and became one with the door, leaving a gaping hole on the bottom of the tie. Here's me being sad:

So I've learned two lessons: First, tuck in your tie when you lean over a hot oven door, and second, don't buy cheap neckties.

By the way... with the demise of this tie I am now without a novelty Christmas tie (o woe is me!), in case anybody's scrambling for a last-minute gift idea. If you read this too late for Christmas, don't worry - my birthday's in January. :)

How NOT to Pull a Car Out of the Snow

Heh... they must be from Toronto.

Lazy Season

Some of my readers may be familiar with the ancient, obscure tradition of Advent and Christmas. This is the celebration of the incarnation of the living God into human form, come to save us from our sins.

Faithful adherence to this religious holiday season has long faded into the past, and I suppose many of you are completely unfamiliar with the holiday, as its active celebration is practiced only by a tiny minority of those populating the Western world.

I am one of them. Shocked?

With the business of the season, all the parties, the Christmas pageants, the shoveling snow, the Masses, the gift giving, and the year-end duties to which I must attend at work, I hereby grant myself a reprieve from my unwritten self-expectation to blog every 2-3 days for the next few weeks. I also hereby grant my readers a dispensation from reading my blog regularly during this season.

Not to say that I won't publish at all - if something worthy comes my way, you'll be the first to know. Or at least the first person to read the post will become the first to know. But I digress.

Once things are back to normal and our priests are wearing green again, I expect you all to return and resume your faithful reading of my mindless rantings.

Merry Christmas, and Happy Festivus.

Ballistics From the Bullet in Your Foot Match the Gun in Your Hand

Barry Walters, an associate professor of obstetric medicine at the University of Western Australia, expressed his wish recently that his country would stop paying a baby bonus to women who have children, and would instead levy a carbon tax against families when they have more than 2 kids.

Mr. Walters wants to follow reproductive role model nations like China, because "every newborn baby in Australia represents a potent source of greenhouse gas emissions for an average of 80 years, not simply by breathing but by the profligate consumption of resources typical of our society." What, do Australian kids fart a lot?

I wonder if he's familiar with TFR - Total Fertility Rate. This is a measure of how successfully a nation is replacing its population. If the average woman has 2.1 children (2 to replace her and her husband, and 0.1 to replace the fraction of infertile or celibate women and women who die before having the opportunity to have babies) then the country's population will grow; if any less, it will shrink.

So one must assume that comments from such a learned individual imply that Australia is well over the 2.1 mark. Not so. As of 2005, they were hovering around 1.70, and aren't projected to climb back to 2.1 for the foreseeable future. Were it not for immigration, their population would be shrinking (look about halfway down that page and imagine what the graph would look like if the immigration number was 0 for each series). Much like Canada - we're less than 1.50. Britain? 1.60. France? 1.89. Italy, Germany, Spain? 1.23, 1.35, 1.15 respectively. What about the US of A? They're at a solid 2.11, the best rate in the Western world. This is one of the prime reasons why America continues to dominate on the world stage.

I get so tired of these talking heads who see children only as an expense on society. If, as Mr. Walters claims, a child does nothing but consume oxygen and resources, producing nothing but CO2 for the duration of his life, then I could see where he was coming from. But the child is solely a consumer for only the first 20 years or so, at which point he becomes a productive contributor to society. So when we have more kids, sure we have some short-term pain in regards to forking over the dough for the investments in the future they represent, but in the long run it pays off big-time.

If I felt like it, I could continue to crunch numbers for you (because I know how much my readers like math!) and prove economically that it's a better idea to have more children than fewer, but the argument should not hinge on economics. We must realize as a species that the mystery of new life is too amazing to pass up; we participate in God's creative design for the universe when we bring a new baby into the world, and to de-mystify the glory of this with mere money would be shameful.

This is what Mr. Walters has done. Fortunately, others have already put him in his place:

Australian Family Association spokeswoman Angela Conway said it was ridiculous to blame babies for global warming.

"I think self-important professors with silly ideas should have to pay carbon tax for all the hot air they create," she said. "There's masses of evidence to say that child-rich families have much lower resource consumption per head than other styles of households.

Hockey Lives Here

Tonight gives me two good reasons to continue to cheer for the Ottawa Senators: First - they finally snapped their historic losing streak by defeating the - ahem - "mighty" Florida Panthers 5-4.

But second, their wives & girlfriends - known officially as "Sens Better Halves" - will be donating proceeds from their Christmas fund raiser to the Ottawa based First Place Pregnancy Centre, a pro-life counseling centre which leaves the hideous option of abortion off the table.

Heather Mallick, a CBC columnist, takes issue with the donation. Her opinion is really no big surprise, I mean, it's not like the CBC is teeming with pro-lifers. She is full of petty spout-offs like how the FPPC and its ilk have websites "designed to appeal to teenage girls, lots of advice about boys — giggle — and sites on MySpace. They take great care to look like kindly counselling centres. In fact, they exist solely to prevent abortion." Oh, the horror of it all! A group of people who work together to prevent the murder of innocents! We share your outrage, Heather. And your patronizing attitude. Puh-tooey.

It wouldn't take a lot of changes to make that exact phrase refer to what a Planned Parenthood website does - just change "prevent" to "encourage" and WHAMMO you're done.

But the real kicker of her piece is this: "Revenue Canada tells me that First Place is not a registered charity."

Read to the end of her tirade, and you'll see that her editor has added this: "Editor's note: Ms. Mallick clearly states that Revenue Canada told her First Place is not a registered charity. Links on the website's donation section show that it operates under a different name as a registered charity: Crisis Pregnancy Centre of Ottawa, registered as number 890251382RR0001."

That's real sloppy, Ms. Mallick. You're caught in that questionable void between a real journalist and a dedicated blogger: Both check their facts, and try to avoid tainting their writings with a closed mind. You did neither. Shame.

I strongly encourage all my readers to let the Sens and their Better Halves know how positively you view their choice of this charity. Follow this link for their Contact Form.

[UPDATE 12/7/07 09:33 - it seems the Better Halves have removed the FPPC from their list of recipients of the money... investigating...]

[UPDATE #2 - 12/7/23:34 - According to FPPC, they voluntarily withdrew their name from the list of recipients. A tough call, to be sure. If you want to support them in their mission, please donate.]

Advent-ageous

Sunday Mass this week was a rather dry and gloomy affair; winter had dumped its first criticism of global warming on us, music had been mostly cut out of the liturgy, and the decorations were the sparse inside joke of Advent purple.

In reading David Warren's recent column on Advent, I was struck by a saddening reality: we are a wretched people, obsessed with the latest electronic means of communication. The TV ads this time of year are all about the latest cellular phone (does anybody even call them that anymore?) or MP3 player.

They are also encouraging us, the lowly consumer, to be less concerned about receiving gifts, and more concerned about creating an excited reaction in those to whom we give our gifts. The Best Buy ads are a classic example - a husband is shopping for his wife, and asks the store employee where he can find an "I can't believe it! I can't believe it! How did you know? This is perfect!" There are a handful of other companies taking the same approach to advertising this Advent.

But looking for that reaction in itself creates an unhealthy dependency on the person to whom you're giving. It makes the giving a primarily selfish act.

This was not how God gave us his son. The Incarnation of Jesus was an event of mercy and love, not of a vainglorious praise-seeking exercise from the Father. Yes, our response is one of love, gratitude, and worship, but it's not our reaction he seeks - rather, it is our relationship.

That is the advantage of Advent: we are called to live austerely, and to prepare for the Lord's coming. We must not get caught up in the hype of our consumerist culture, buying and buying and buying. A great feast approaches us, and we must be ready to dine.

Preparations For War

Regarding building a missile defense radar in the Czech Republic, which is part of American plans for a European missile defense shield, American artist Kevin Kihn asks the compelling question, "Why not build a Peace Dome in its place?"

Uhh... gee, Kev, I dunno, uh... maybe because it won't shoot down missiles?

I invite my readers to come up with a punch line for what could soon become an old joke: What do you call a guy who thinks he can win peace by building a geodesic dome (aka Nature's Healing Secret!) under the flight paths of enemy WMDs?

To get you started, here's a few:

• a liberal
• high
• the first person in line to welcome our new insect overlords
  

Put yours in the comments.