Global Day of Prayer to End Famine
Rev. Yme Woensdregt

This Sunday, churches and parachurch organizations like WorldVision around the world will be marking a Global Day of Prayer to End Famine.
Famine has been declared in areas of South Sudan, with Somalia, Nigeria, and Yemen on the brink of famine. More than 20 million people are at risk of starvation in these four countries alone. Almost 1.4 million children are already severely malnourished. Globally, millions more are suffering from drought and food shortages—up to 108 million men, women and children require lifesaving food assistance.
The famine in these parts of the world is much more than a simple lack of food. There are many factors, including political instability, conflict, rising food prices, drought, and climate change. Somalia is experiencing the third year of crop failures.
The most vulnerable, of course, are the children. Even if they survive, they will endure lifelong consequences, including stunted growth, poor brain development and a compromised immune system—all of which lead to longterm problems with the population.
The United Nations is calling it the “largest humanitarian crisis since 1945.” The global community needs to act. Humanitarian organizations and faith communities are on the frontlines of the crisis, providing food, aid and shelter as they are able.
The WCC is a fellowship of 348 member churches in more than 110 countries, together representing over 560 million Christians. This Global Day of Prayer brings together a wide range of church networks and traditions, ecumenical partners and faith–based organizations to join in prayer to overcome hunger and famine.
Why now?
Six years ago, conflict created widespread food shortages in Somalia. More than 260,000 people lost their lives—and half died before a famine was declared. The full scale of that tragedy was not known for years.
We cannot wait for famines to be officially declared. Action must be taken now if we are to avoid a similar tragedy.
This is also a critical date, because five days later, global leaders will meet at the G7 Summit in Italy on May 26–27. This Summit will provide governments and world leaders to do their part in allocating resources to help the poorest of the poor.
As Christians and people of other faiths pray for an end to famine, they can also let their leaders know that we are all expected to act.
For Christians, we do this because it is part of the mandate and mission of the church. Matthew 25 contains a parable of Jesus in which he addresses the people at the end of time. He says to the faithful, “I was naked and you clothed me. I was hungry and you fed me. I was thirsty and you gave me a drink of water. I was lonely and you visited me.” When the faithful respond in surprise and ask, “When did we do this for you?”, Jesus responds, “As you have done it for the least of my brothers and sisters, you have done it for me.”
In the faces of these men and women and children, we see the face of Jesus. In their suffering, we are touched by the heart of God.
But even if we don’t follow Jesus, even if we don’t have a faith in God, there is still a moral mandate to help alleviate this kind of suffering. Gandhi has been quoted as saying that “a nation’s greatness is measured by how it treats its weakest members.” In 18th century England, Samuel Johnson remarked that “a decent provision for the poor is the true test of civilization.”
Martin Luther King Jr. reminded us that “Our lives begin to end the day we become silent about things that matter.” This humanitarian crisis deserves the best efforts of all people, and especially those like us who live among the richest people in the world.
Former UN Secretary General Kofi Annan said that “In an era of global abundance, our world has the resources to reduce dramatically the massive divides that persist between rich and poor, if only those resources can be unleashed in the service of all peoples.”
The resources are there. The question is whether the will is present.
In the Christian tradition, prayer is only the beginning. Our prayers are meant to become actions of compassion and love as we live out our faith.

Old Cosmology, New World
Rev. Yme Woensdregt

Old maps used to have the words “Here Be Dragons” at their edges. Long before Columbus and modern cartography, mapmakers drew what they knew of the world. They were unsure of what was to be found at the edge of the known world.
It’s an amusing relic of a pre–scientific age. We know better today. There aren’t any dragons at the edge. In fact, there aren’t any edges. We’ve been to space, and we know now that there are other universes out there. Our world is a tiny fragile globe spinning in space.
Our knowledge has grown exponentially in such things. We’ve seen photographs of other planets, and tasted parts of outer space. When we look at ancient maps, we smile and move on. Pre–scientific concepts don’t bother us.
But all of that changes when it comes to matters of faith. Many scientific people today still cling to outdated, outmoded, pre–scientific ways of thinking. Christian faith originated in a culture entirely different from ours, and much of it is couched in language and images which we know to be wrong.
I bring this up because on May 25, the Church will celebrate the Ascension of Jesus. The way the Bible tells the story, Jesus ascends to the Father in the presence of his disciples. I have often thought that it might be an early version of “Beam me up, Scotty”.
Now we have to be clear that this story is told using pre–scientific images. Ancient people saw the world as a three–storey universe.
The top storey was where the gods lived. That’s not so hard to understand. Humans tend to think that up is good and down is bad. The level above us is described as the dome of the sky, or the area above the sky. In the Old Testament, this is known as heaven, or the heavens. God dwells in the heavens, above all else in creation.
The middle level is the earth. This is where humans live. It was often described as a flat disk, with mountains at the perimeter. It’s not so hard to understand why. If you’ve ever lived on the prairies, it becomes immediately apparent why the ancients would think of the earth as a flat disk, and the sky as a dome over the earth. Often in such a cosmology, the capital city was placed at the centre of the world.
The lowest layer was the underworld. This was usually the place where the dead went. The Old Testament calls it Sheol, the abode of the dead. Later, the place of the dead became identified as a place of eternal punishment. Hades became hell. I’ll have more to say about that in a future column.
This three–level cosmology was very common in the ancient world. Even today, our language continues to reflect it. We talk about “going up” to heaven, or pointing downwards when we mean hell.
So what does this have to do with Ascension? The Festival of the Ascension of the Lord celebrates Jesus’ return to the Father after the resurrection. The story is that Jesus goes up to be with God. The disciples remain on the earth, looking up into the sky, watching Jesus disappear.
Now, I don’t really believe that heaven is up there. In 1961, the first man in space, Yuri Gagarin, looked around and said, famously, “I don’t see any god up here”. Of course not. The three–storey universe is an image. The language of the ancients was not intended to be scientific or geographic description. It was symbolic, metaphorical language.
The challenge facing the church is to celebrate the central truths of our faith without being trapped by ancient cosmology and other ancient ways of viewing the world.
That’s not a new thought. Early church fathers treated this as metaphorical language. Let me give two examples. In the 5th century, Pope Leo taught that Christ ascended into the Eucharist, the feast of communion for the faithful. Martin Luther taught that Christ ascended, not to some distant place, but into the cosmos. There is a broad strand of teaching that as Christ went to God, he became available to all the church.
The truth which the Ascension affirms is that Jesus did not end his life in the grave. That was not his destiny. Rather, Jesus rose (note again the metaphor of “up”) from the grave, and rose (same image) to be with God. We don’t need to live in a three–storey universe to affirm this truth. In fact, what we need to do is reframe the ancient cosmology and restate this metaphor in ways that makes sense to 21st century people.
The heart of resurrection and ascension faith, it seems to me, is that just as death could not hold Christ, neither is death able to hold us. Paul says that we have already been raised with Christ. What is left for us is to accept that resurrection life now. It means to hunger for ways to fill that void that se feel at the centre of our lives. It means to work, and sometimes to work hard, to desire something beyond the day–to–day “ho–hum” of life.
We need only two things for that. The first is the desire that is unmet in our lives. The second is the willingness to risk going to God to fulfill that desire. Ascension, like resurrection, calls us to take a journey home to God. And, in the words of T.S. Eliot, “the end of our exploring / will be to arrive where we started / and know the place for the first time” (Little Gidding).

The Contribution of the Church to Society
Rev. Yme Woensdregt

More and more people these days believe that the day of religion and the church is past. In the last census, 35% of the people in British Columbia identified “none” as their religion. It marks a sea change in our society.
One of the questions raised by this kind of data is, “If fewer people identify with a religion, what kind of contribution does the church make to society?”
When I first entered ministry, people still asked the church for its viewpoint on public social issues. The church would make statements, and political leaders would listen. That’s no longer true. In fact, the church can’t even offer prayers at City Council meetings these days.
So does the church even contribute to society any longer? If so, how?
I think the church does still make a worthwhile contribution. Let me list three here.
Firstly, the church challenges people to be their very best selves.
As a preacher, I have the extraordinary privilege of preaching to a community gathered expectantly to listen for a word from God. We seek words which challenge us, direct us, and exhort us to seek to leaven the life of society with goodness and grace.
We gather together in the church to hear words which hold up for us an alternative vision of what life could be in our lives and in our world. In the church, we call this good news. Every week, we are challenged to go out and love the world in the name of God—which means engaging in actions which show God’s love at work, and which seek to make life better for all.
It strikes me, especially in these days in 2017, that any place where people gather purposely to be challenged to be more kind, more just, more self–controlled, more merciful, more compassionate, more forgiving, more peaceable, more loving, less self–centred, and so on, is doing something important. The church helps people seek higher ground in their lives. That’s not a small thing.
Secondly, the church counsels and comforts people in times of crisis.
As a priest, I have the high privilege of being invited into people’s lives when they are at the end of their rope. I work with people, seeking to find comfort and meaning when a loved one dies. I make hospital visits. I speak with parents about the challenges they face with their children. I work with people whose marriages are falling apart, or with life after divorce, or dealing with kids with drug problems.
I find that there are still people who sometimes turn to the church for counsel and comfort in times of crisis. The church is available to help people deal with serious pain, grief and loss.
At the same time, the church is there for lonely people. People join with us because they have few friends, or they are aging and their families have moved away, or because they need to find people with whom they can share some time, or a meal. I could name many people for whom our church is their primary community and their emotional lifeline.
If the church is helping people weather crises in their lives, keep their emotions together, take good care of their kids, avoid making destructive decisions, and grieve their most painful losses, we are doing something important. It is important not just for the individuals involved, but also because every person who is able to be sustained by the church doesn’t have to be rescued (or imprisoned or treated) by some other institution in society. That’s not a small thing.
Thirdly, the church provides a space for a community that transcends political and ideological loyalties.
North America has become increasingly tribalized in the last few years. We divide along political lines, economic lines, ideological lines, educational, moral and religious lines. We stay in our own little tribal groups, and mostly avoid crossing those boundaries to encounter the stranger.
Now, there are some churches which maintain those tribal identities. They are associatrions of like–minded people.
But a lot of churches transcend them. Some people in my church have signs on their front lawns for Tom Shypitka, and others for Randall McNair. Some watch Fox news, others watch CNN, still others watch MSNBC or CBC or CTV. Some of us like country music, while others much prefer classical music. We have poor folk, and those who are well off. We talk together across these tribal boundaries, and we work at living together.
What we have discovered is that in the midst of all our diversity, we are bound together as a community in Jesus who unites us.
As churches help to break down these kinds of boundaries, we are doing something important. We are making a major contribution to the life of our city, our province, our country. That’s not a small thing.
So here’s to the humble local congregation. We still make a surprising contribution to public life through our everyday work. It’s not “news”. But it is important.

A Conversation about Spirituality
Rev. Yme Woensdregt

I attended a recent workshop on Spiritual Care offered by the East Kootenay Regional Hospital Spiritual Care Department. I was grateful for the opportunity to sit with other caregivers in Cranbrook and learn, think, talk and reflect about how we offer spiritual care for people in our hospitals, care homes, churches and other groups.
I was particularly struck by a conversation about spirituality. Spirituality is one of those words we often have difficulty defining. Sometimes we use it to talk about what we’re not—you know, I’m spiritual but not religious. It’s a negative way of locating where we belong. Other times, spirituality is a way of talking about people’s religious commitments and practices. At still other times, we use this word to talk about the human spirit or soul as opposed to material of physical things.
A website from the University of Minnesota suggests that spirituality is “a broad concept with room for many perspectives. In general, it includes a sense of connection to something bigger than ourselves, and it typically involves a search for meaning in life. As such, it is a universal human experience.”
That helps make spirituality less nebulous, less vague and hazy. It also points to the importance of spirituality for living in a whole–hearted kind of way.
I work hard to talk with people who don’t share my Christian commitments about their spiritual lives. I am convinced we all have a spiritual life, no matter how we define it, and I am convinced that it’s an important part of who we are.
So I was delighted at this workshop on Spiritual Care to see a series of slides which tried to illustrate some of the dimensions of spirituality. Each slide began “Spirituality is about …”
… sources of inner strength. We have inner resources which help us maintain our equilibrium when everything around us is falling apart. Where do you find your strength? What helps you keep your head when all around you is falling apart?
… sources of peace and calm. Related to the first, this has to do with maintaining a calm centre in the midst of all the noise that badgers us from the outside. What keeps you grounded? Where do you find a calm centre? For me, I find my calm centre when I take time to reflect, often with music playing. For others, it’s running, or going for a walk in the forest, or being out in nature, or helping another person.
… sources of meaning and significance. What fills your life with meaning? Where do you find significance in your life? Douglas Hall, a theologian who taught at McGill for many years before retiring a few years ago, made the point that this is the great existential question of our age. In a time of meaninglessness, where do we find meaning in our lives? What do our lives mean? Related to this is the next slide.
… a sense of purpose or vocation. The word “vocation” comes from a Latin root meaning “to be called”. Often, we find the source of meaning in our lives as we live out that calling. It’s an internal sense that when I do something, I am doing what I was meant to do. Again, this is as individual as the people experiencing it. Nurses experience this kind of calling. So do teachers, or counsellors, or people who reach out to help other people. I maintain that shop keepers and plumbers and mechanics and janitors can also find their work to be a vocation.
… the stories we tell about ourselves and our world. How do you tell the story of your life? Is the world you live in empty or full? Is it warm and loving or cold and uncaring? Is there a purpose to the universe, or is it largely meaningless. The way we tell our stories reveal the kind of spirituality which we live out. How do you tell your story?
… the values according to which one decides what to do. Spirituality often include the deepest values we hold, which are the basis on which we make major life decisions. What are the basic values by which you live? How do those values help you determine what you are to do in major life choices?
… religious commitments, connections and practices. This final slide has to do with the importance of embodying our spirituality in some way. For me, my Christian commitment means I try to live with others in a community which gathers regularly and frequently to worship, to be strengthened, to be nurtured in the spirituality which we hold in common.
That’s why Christians or Buddhists or followers of Wicca gather. I recently heard that atheists are gathering together on Sunday mornings to sing songs from their childhoods (often the so–called protest songs of the 1960’s), to read from selected poetry or other works of literature, and to take time together to talk, eat, and share the moment.
In these gatherings, we embody our spirituality. We live it out in community with other people.
My sense is that these words about spirituality help us understand this concept in helpful ways. These words may even help us to talk together across spiritual divides about our lives and the world in which we live.

Let’s Be Perfect Together
Rev. Yme Woensdregt

One of the hardest sayings of Jesus comes at the end of Matthew 5, in the middle of the so–called Sermon on the Mount—“Be perfect as your heavenly Father is perfect.”
What do we do with something like this?
Atheists point to a saying like this as another piece of evidence that Christianity is nothing more than a fable and a recipe for failure. After all, who can be perfect?
Good point!
And when Christians read this saying and others like it, they generally have one of two kinds of reactions.
The first reaction is to assume that Jesus didn’t really expect us to do this and similar kinds of things. Jesus was just reminding us of our inability to satisfy God’s commands, so that we might turn to Jesus for forgiveness and grace.
The second reaction is just the opposite—to try really, really hard to live by Jesus’ words and, inevitably, fail. In this case, we assume that Jesus really did mean it, and so we urge people to rid themselves (the conservative version) or to rid society (the liberal version) of sin. The problem with this is that we assume that we are sufficient to do it ourselves, and we end up not really needing God’s grace. All we need is God’s instruction and encouragement.
I think both of these reactions are misinterpretations of what Jesus actually said. The problem arises that we run into one of the perennial difficulties with translation. The New Testament was written in ancient Greek (and not very high quality Greek, at that). The word we translate as “perfect” is the Greek word “teleios” which comes from the root “telos”.
Normally, when we think about what it means for human beings to be perfect, we think in moral categories. That is, Jesus is urging us to be the best person you can be, to be moral and holy. That kind of thing.
But that’s not what the word “teleios” means. In Greek, it means to reach one’s intended outcome.
Let me give an example. Thomas Merton, the 20th century mystic and contemplative, wrote some reflections about creation. “A tree gives glory to God by being a tree. For in being what God means it to be it is obeying God. It ‘consents’, so to speak, to God’s creative love. It is expressing an idea which is in God and which is not distinct from the essence of God, and therefore a tree imitates God by being a tree.”
In this reflection, Merton essentially says that the tree is being perfect.
Some other examples: the “telos” of an arrow shot by an archer is to reach its target; the telos of a peach tree is to yield peaches; the telos of a car (despite all the advertisers’ claims to the contrary) is get me from point A to point B.
So when Jesus tells us, “Be teleois …”, we might translate this passage more loosely to read, “Be the person and community God created you to be.” Eugene Peterson comes very close to this sense when he translates this verse as follows in The Message: “Live out your God–created identity. Live generously and graciously toward others, the way God lives toward you.”
When we read it this way, Jesus’ words are not so much a command. They are a promise. God sees more in you than you do. God is inviting you to join God to create a different kind of world.
Jesus calls this world the “kingdom of God”—where violence doesn’t always breed more violence and where hate doesn’t always kindle more hate. Martin Luther King Jr captured the logic of Jesus’ words well when he said, “Darkness cannot drive out darkness: only light can do that. Hate cannot drive out hate: only love can do that.”
I want to go even further and say that even if you are an atheist, you can get behind this kind of thinking. Gandhi was not a Christian, but he advocated non–violent resistance because “nonviolence is infinitely superior to violence and forgiveness is more manly than punishment.”
So, in the spirit of being and doing what we were made to be and do, let me suggest that, in fact, we can all be “teleios”, perfect, together. There is much in us that can reach out in love and compassion to heal a broken world.
This word of Jesus, even if you are not a follower of Jesus, still calls the best out of us. It beckons us to a pilgrimage in which we walk together in peace and grace.

Finishing the Story of Easter
Rev. Yme Woensdregt

For many people, Easter is a time of chocolates and bunnies, a time to welcome the returning warmth of spring, especially after the winter we’ve had. We feel the warmth of the sun on our skin and our thoughts turn naturally to spring projects. We put away most—but not quite all—of our winter clothing, and we watch with pleasure as the green buds on the trees turn to leaves and flowers begin to spring once again from the earth after its long winter nap.
For the church, Easter is a time to celebrate the resurrection of Jesus. We sing our alleluias and rejoice that “Christ the Lord is risen today.” Easter is a day for joy and celebration and thanksgiving for the renewal of life.
But it was not always so.
It strikes me this year in a new way that the first Easter was marked more by fear and confusion and pain than by joy and celebration. All four gospels in the Bible tell stories about a group of disciples who can’t make sense of what is happening.
There are some common threads in the stories: some of the women who had followed Jesus come to the tomb early Sunday morning after the Sabbath had ended. They discover that the stone sealing the entrance of the tomb has been rolled away and the tomb is empty. They don’t find the body of their friend and teacher. In each story, an angel announces that Jesus has risen.
Beyond those common threads, the stories differ in marked ways.
The last gospel to be written was John. It comes from around 95–105, about 65 years after Jesus’ crucifixion and resurrection. John tells a touching story about Mary’s pain. She weeps outside the tomb, wandering in a daze of confusion. When the risen Jesus stands near her, she doesn’t recognize him—until he calls her by name. Then she runs back to tell the others, “I have seen the Lord.”
Luke and Matthew were written about a decade earlier. In Luke’s story, the angel reminds the women that Jesus had told them he would rise again. “They remembered his words,” ran back and “told all this to the eleven and to all the rest.” The apostles didn’t believe them; “these words seemed to them an idle tale.” You can’t believe the women, after all.
Luke continues with a story of a couple of disciples (probably a husband and wife) who travel home to Emmaus the same day, only to encounter the risen Jesus when he breaks bread with them after they’ve reached home.
Matthew tells a story about an earthquake, which explains how the stone had rolled away from the mouth of the tomb. He mentions that Pilate had posted a guard—a story which was likely told to counter later rumours that the disciples had stolen the body and spread a lie that Jesus had been raised.
I want to focus on Mark’s story. Mark was almost certainly the earliest gospel, written sometime around the year 70.
Mark’s gospel ends very strangely. The women come to the tomb and find it empty. They see “young man dressed in a white robe” who tells them that Jesus has risen. “Hh is going before you to Galilee; there you will see him, as he told you.”
You would think the story would end with the women returning to the disciples to tell this this news. But it doesn’t. The story ends this way: “And they went out and fled from the tomb; for trembling and astonishment had come upon them; and they said nothing to any one, for they were afraid.”
Full stop.
Later copyists thought this was a very strange way to end the story. They might have thought that the ending was lost, or damaged in some way. At least a couple of scribes added their own endings, in which Jesus appeared to the disciples. Modern Bibles include these as a “shorter ending” and a “longer ending.” These endings, however, only appear in very late manuscripts. The earliest manuscripts end with the women being silent and fearful.
I suspect that Mark knew exactly what he was doing, and that he ends the gospel this way deliberately. At the very beginning of his gospel, Mark tells us that his story is “The beginning of the gospel of Jesus Christ.” This whole story is the beginning of the good news. Mark’s open–ended conclusion invites us into the story.
The resurrection of Jesus isn’t a conclusion. It’s an invitation. We are invited to continue the story of what God is doing in the world. The story which Mark begins continues in us, in all the generations who have come after him, in all those people who have been inspired to continue the story of God’s healing love.
The story of Easter life continues in us as we reach out in love and compassion to the world. I wish for you a happy Easter, and many opportunities to be loving and compassionate people.

CrossWalking: Showing our Love for the City
Rev. Yme Woensdregt

On Good Friday again this year, Christians from different churches in Cranbrook will join together for our thirteenth Good Friday CrossWalk. We make a spiritual pilgrimage through the streets of downtown Cranbrook. This is worship in the streets! We pray for our city, its leaders and all who live here. We pray for our nation and for the world.
The CrossWalk begins at 10 am on Good Friday at the Clock Tower. From there, we will carry a cross through the downtown core of the city and stop at several locations. At each stop, we read a passage from Scripture and we pray together.
Our prayers will embrace the city and its people, leaders and governments around the world, our legal system, our health care system, caregivers of all sorts and those who need to be surrounded with prayer and compassion and grace. We pray for the victims and perpetrators of war and hatred. We pray for all whose lives need to be held up in the light of God’s love. We end with prayers for the churches and other faith groups, all who seek to live with peace and compassion in the world. We pray that we might learn to live and work together with compassion for the good of all people.
Why do we do this?
We do it as a faithful witness to the grace and compassion of God. We hold up our city in prayer so that God’s love might surround and embrace us all with healing grace. We journey together, bearing witness to Jesus who comes to our world with a different vision of what a whole and healthy life looks like. God’s vision for the world is of a community of compassion and companionship. It’s a world where power resides in service and self–giving love, not in might and coercion. It’s a vision of healing and restoration so that all people may live together in peace with justice.
For faithful Christians, the cross is about an alternative vision of what life could be like. Jesus didn’t die on the cross primarily so that we could get to heaven. Rather, he was executed by the state because his vision of life was so radically different that he was seen as a threat. In the cross, we see the depth of Jesus’ passion for a world based on a radical equality among all people. We see the power of God’s love, which holds us up even in the midst of the most painful suffering.
In our CrossWalk, in our prayers, we give voice to that vision. We don’t ask God to come crashing into our world to set everything right. Rather, as we pray, we make a fresh commitment to live by the gospel values of compassion, peace, justice and wholeness. We make a public act of witness that we walk with Jesus, that we share that same vision of a life made whole and new.
Canadian theologian Douglas John Hall talks about prayer as “learning to see the world through God’s eyes.” As we pray, we learn to view the world with compassion and grace. We learn to seek justice for all people. We seek to live on this earth as responsible and faithful people who care for one another and who care for the earth as well.
CrossWalking is one way in which we renew our commitment to walk in the way of Jesus. It is a way that leads to a cross, since walking this path faithfully will bring us into conflict with the world and its values.
God invites us to be partners in what John Dominic Crossan calls “God’s great cleanup of the world”. We work in partnership with God, so that the gospel values of love and compassion and justice might triumph in our own lives and in the world.
God has a deep, abiding and profound love for the world. Our prayers for the city and all its people, for peace and justice, for hope and healing, reflects our longing to participate in God’s passionate love affair with the world.
As we journey through the city, we feel the burden of the cross we carry. At the same time, we experience the reality of its liberating power. We renew our commitment to the crucified and risen Christ as we commit ourselves to serve Cranbrook in love.
Join us on Good Friday, April 14. We begin at the Clock Tower at 10 am, and end with fellowship and refreshments at Christ Church. I invite you to journey with us. Come pray with us. Come show your love for Cranbrook. Come carry the cross with us. Come and give witness to an alternative vision of what life could be like.

April Fool’s Day
Yme Woensdregt

What will you do tomorrow? Planning any jokes or pranks?
It has become a tradition on April 1st to pull jokes and harmless pranks on unsuspecting friends. We plot and scheme—and often the jokes and yuks are funnier in our imagination than they are in reality. But that doesn’t stop us. Even the most staid among us have been known to indulge in a practical joke of one kind or another from time to time.
Public entities like radio and tv stations have indulged in some classic pranks. In 1957, the BBC broadcast a spoof documentary which convinced viewers that the Swiss were growing spaghetti in trees. In 2000, Taco Bell bought a full–page ad in the New York Times to publicize the news that Taco Bell had bought the Liberty Bell to help reduce the national debt. They renamed it “The Taco Bell Liberty Bell”.
National Public Radio has also pulled some classic pranks. In 1992, they announced that Richard Nixon would run for President again with the slogan, “I didn’t do anything wrong, and I won’t do it again.” Other pranks include a report about farm–raised whales in 2009 and a report that Twitter was reducing its character count to 133 in 2012.
So how did this all get started? Let me tell you. No one really knows!
There is lots of speculation about the origin of April Fool’s Day. Much of it focusses around the change from the Julian calendar to the Gregorian calendar (which is what we use today) in 1582.
The Julian calendar was established by Julius Caesar (hence the name) in 45 BCE. It was based on the lunar cycle and quite complicated to use. It also had a small built–in error which meant that this calendar went out by a day every 128 years. Nevertheless, it lasted over 1600 years.
In 1582, Pope Gregory XIII ordered the change to a new calendar, which was called the Gregorian calendar, named after the Pope. This calendar was aligned with the sun and was more accurate.
One of the other changes in the new calendar concerned the date of new year. In many ancient cultures, New Year’s Day was celebrate on or around April 1—soon after the vernal equinox, which falls on March 20 or 21. It makes a certain amount of sense. The new year begins in the spring, the season of renewal and the awakening of the earth in the northern hemisphere.
The Gregorian calendar, however, decreed that the New Year was to be celebrated on January 1. After that change, if you could fool someone into believing that the new year still began on April 1, you could call that person an “April fool”.
Well … maybe.
There are other explanations. One is that many cultures celebrate the arrival of spring with days of happiness and foolishness. Ancient Romans had a day called “Hilaria” on March 25, celebrating Attis, the god of vegetation. The Hindu religion celebrates “Holi” in early March, commemorating the wheat harvest in spring. Jews celebrate Purim, a festival of celebration marking the time Queen Esther saved the Jews from the Persians.
Each of these festivals was marked by a carnival–like atmosphere, with noisemakers and costumes and general revelry and lots of good food and drink.
Wherever and whenever the custom began, it has developed its own lore and set of unofficial rules. If you are superstitious, you know that the pranks must end at noon, or else you will suffer bad luck. Additionally, if you fail to respond to a prank with good humour, you will also find some bad luck plaguing you.
Whatever you end up doing, a day of merriment like this can be a wonderful gift after a long winter such as we have had. It’s a brief moment to let our hair down (provided you still have some!) and giggle or chortle or guffaw or snicker or roll in the aisle or split your sides or even to cacchinate.
Enjoy!

Effective Altruism: Doing the Most Good You Can
There is an exciting new movement developing. It’s called “effective altruism”.
Effective altruism is based on the very simple idea that we should do the most good we can. It is not enough to obey the usual rules about not stealing, or cheating, or hurting, or killing. This is no longer enough for those of us who have the good fortune to live in material comfort, who can feed, house, and clothe ourselves and our families and still have money or time to spare.
According to the ideals of effective altruism, to live a minimally acceptable ethical life involves using a substantial part of our spare resources to make the world a better place.
To live a fully ethical life involves doing the most good we can.
Organizations are forming at universities around the world. People are engaging in lively discussions on social media and websites, and their ideas are being examined in serious newspapers such as the New York Times, the Washington Post and the Wall Street Journal.
The development of effective altruism has been shaped to a large extent by philosophers of practical ethics. Their goal is to challenge our ideas about what it means to live an ethical life.
The wonderful thing about it is that philosophy is once more demonstrating its ability to radically transform the lives of those who study it, and in transforming their lives, it is also transforming the world.
This movement is taking hold especially among millennials—that generation which has come of age in the new millennium. Millennials are not saints; they are pragmatic realists who know they have to work to make a difference in a world which seems increasingly to be broken.
As pragmatic realists, they don’t spend a lot of time feeling guilty if they aren’t morally perfect. Some of them are content to know that they are doing something significant to make the world a better place. Many of them like to challenge themselves to do a little better this year than last year. In doing so, they are trying to change a culture.
As I perused some websites and read some literature, I noted the following elements.
First and foremost, it is making a difference in our world. Philanthropy is a huge industry. In the USA alone, there are almost a million charities, receiving a total of about $200 billion each year. Effective altruism provides incentives for charities to demonstrate how effective they are. Those charities which are most effective in reducing the suffering and death caused by extreme poverty, for example, are already seeing a large increase in donations.
Secondly, effective altruism is way to give meaning to our own lives and find fulfillment in what we do as we work with others to alleviate the suffering in our world. Many effective altruists say that in doing good, they feel good. In other words, they not only benefit others, but also themselves.
Thirdly, effective altruism sheds new light on the age–old question of whether we are driven by our emotional needs or whether reason can play a crucial role in determining how we live. Many people give to causes because they have an emotional response. We instinctively want to help another person, or a pet, or a cause dear to our hearts. Effective altruists, on the other hand, research which charities uses their donations most effectively. They seek thereby to do the most good they can.
Finally, there is a great deal of energy and enthusiasm among effective altruists. Their intelligence and capacity to make a difference in the world offers grounds for hope in our world.
How do they do it?
Effective altruists do simple things like this: they live more modestly and donate a large part of their income—often much more than the traditional 10%—to the most effective charities. They research and discuss with others which charities are most effective. They choose a career in which they can earn more not so that they can live with greater affluence, but rather so that they can do more good in the world. They talk with others about giving, so that the idea of effective altruism will spread.
What counts as the “most good”? Not all effective altruists would answer the question in the same way, but they do share some values. They agree that a world with less suffering and more happiness in it is better than a world with more suffering and less happiness. Most would say that a world in which people live longer and in better health is better than a world where life expectancy is shorter.
There has been a lot of skepticism lately about whether people can really be motivated to be more altruistic. These millennials give hope that we can indeed reach out to enrich the lives of others. Effective altruism provides evidence that we can expand our moral horizons to care about strangers, to be moved by suffering, no matter where it happens in the world.
Effective altruists know that living in this way requires some sacrifice; they also know that by living this way means that everyone flourishes, and that is the best outcome for everyone.
If you’re interested in following up on this, check out http://www.givewell.org/, There is also an excellent TED talk by Princeton philosopher Peter Singer, as well as his book, The Most Good You Can Do.
This is exciting stuff. It’s worth checking out.

Living with Inevitable Doubt
Rev. Yme Woensdregt

We all get to points in our lives where we just don’t “know what we believe anymore.” Call it what you will—doubt, lack of certainty, skepticism— the experience is inevitable in Christian faith.
When we feel that way, one of our first impulses is to try and get out of it. Get rid of that nagging doubt. Get back to knowing what we believe. Get back to certainty. After all, doubt is often not a comfortable place to be. It’s much easier and much more comfortable to be certain about our beliefs.
Let me suggest however that when we enter a period of doubt, our first priority ought not to be to get out of it, or fix it, or try to bring it all back to the way it was. In fact, once doubt hits, it’s no longer possible to go back to the way things were.
When it happens, we are faced with a choice as to how we live as we move into the future. And as I see it, for people of faith, there are three choices:
1. Make believe nothing happened and everything is OK. Stay in the game, bury your thoughts, and keep on as usual.
2. Think of the doubt as a temporary bump in the road, and if you handle it properly, you will safely wind up back where you were, perhaps with even greater resolve.
3. Accept that period as an opportunity for spiritual growth, an invitation to move into the future with no predetermined results.
In many church circles, choices 1 and 2 reign: “Stop making waves and get with the program” or “My period of doubt was simply a momentary lack of faith on my part, but now I have clearer reasons for why my faith is just fine as it is.”
For me, the 3rd choice is far more intellectually appealing and spiritually satisfying: “I’m not sure what has happened and I’d give anything to go back to the way things were. But I know that can’t be. Instead I choose to try and trust God even in this process, to see where the Spirit will lead, even if I don’t know where that is. I need to let go of thoughts and positions that gave me (false) confidence and begin the journey toward learning to rely on God rather than ‘my faith.’”
Part of what is triggering this column is an interview with evangelical pastor and best–selling author Tim Keller which appeared in the New York Times around Christmas. Nicholas Kristof asks Keller about the challenges to being a Christian in the 21st century. Keller insists throughout the interview that one must accept every statement in the Bible as being literally true in order to be a Christian. There is no room for doubting things like the virgin birth or miracles or the physical resurrection of Jesus. For Keller, there is no room for any skepticism or doubt about any part of Christian faith.
I recognize that there is something artificial about an interview with a newspaper reporter. But it strikes me that if I were being asked about what it means to be a Christian in the 21st century, I would want to be a little more open about the possibility that ancient writers wrote from a different sense of how God is present in life. If we were writing these words today, we’d tell the story quite differently.
There are some issues of modern life that the Bible simply does not address: neuroscience; genetic engineering; social media; space travel; and so on.
Even in those matters which the Bible does address, the ancient authors don’t agree with one another. Take the virgin birth. Only Luke and Matthew mention it, and their accounts differ considerably from one another. Mark and John, on the other hand, don’t mention it, and neither does Paul.
Even with an event as central to Christian faith as the resurrection of Jesus, the accounts in the gospels and Paul’s letters differ considerably from one another. They cannot be merged; they were never meant to be merged.
Despite Keller’s protests, these matters and others in the Bible invite genuine intellectual skepticism, not simply because of the nature of these events, but precisely because of the Bible’s varied and even confusing reports of them. Simply reading the Bible raises the concerns and, intellectually speaking, they are not easily solved.
All believers need to decide how to handle these things. I would want to begin by saying, “Yes, I understand and respect the honest searching that has brought you to this point and I acknowledge that the Bible is ambiguous about some things.”
I would want people to hear empathy and respect before anyone starts drawing any lines about who is in and who is out. I want people to know that they are valued as people first and that the Christian community is precisely the place where such things can and should be worked through.