Happy Canada Day!

There are many who say, “O that we might see some good!" -Psalm 4

There are but a few ways forward. Perhaps in the end, only two. To love reality or forever be disquieted.

There is, of course, the central fact of our own mortality (which I too often evade but should embrace in line with life).

But intrinsic to, and beyond this, is the brute fact of here-and-now reality. This, I’m called to love.

As a citizen of this earth — to love to the core this groaning creation, in imitation of its Creator.

As a citizen of the world, and a citizen of this northern country, Canada, that neighbours a diseased yet influential world power — to love it still, and still love it.

Indeed, to live in and for my own troubled province, Alberta, with its compassion-limiting government, and yet love it.

All of it, earth, world, countries, seemingly caught in some vice, caught in the grip of conscious and unconscious malevolence, and still to love it all, down to the bone.

For love is not the same as approval. It is trust that truth, here, even in our oscillating, metamodern era, will, will out. And with it, justice.

And if not, to love it still.

Never, as an argument to win, but like some arbutus on a cliffside, whose limbs have grown fluent, whose roots have grown eloquent in torment, to endure the storms and losses to come, for the sake of Love, the sake of Reality.

To accept and start each morning with a prayer, each encounter with hope, and inject our own circles with what is deeply right, and so confront this present bleakness without a shade of violence.

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