Sea to Sea Rides through Toronto

A big thank you to those who came out to the Humber Bay Arch Bridge in Toronto to cheer on the Sea to Sea cyclists, riding to address poverty, cheering them on with ICS, the Lighthouse, and Classis Toronto. This leg of their ride began in Ancaster and finished in Ajax Ontario, making Toronto a likely place to offer the cyclists snacks and water as well as encouragement.

We also wish the cyclists safe travels in their remaining two weeks before reaching the coast of New York.

To learn more about Sea to Sea, visit www.seatosea.org.

Attention St. Catharines: Travelling Preacher (aka ICS President Tom Wolthuis) to Preach in a CRC Church near you

On Sunday, August 25, Tom will be preaching at Maranatha CRC, 301 Scott Street, St. Catharines.

Lambert Zuidervaart is Visiting Scholar at Calvin College

Senior Member Lambert Zuidervaart recently began a five-year term as Visiting Scholar at Calvin College in Grand Rapids, Michigan. Lambert and his household moved to Grand Rapids last summer, and he recently switched to a half-time position at ICS, where he will teach classes one semester per year until he retires in 2016. As a visiting scholar affiliated with Calvin’s Philosophy Department, Lambert has many faculty privileges, including full library access and IT and office support. The appointment gives him an institutional “home” in West Michigan. Lambert says he looks forward to interacting with colleagues at Calvin and beyond, especially during the months when he is in Grand Rapids.

Being Prayed-For . . . It Rocks!

I am one of those Christians who lives far too much in his head. I think complex and wonderful thoughts about many things, even about the parts of me that seem other and outside of my complex and wonderful headspace: body and emotion, intuition and even the unconscious (if I am treated to a conversation about psychic states of affairs with Jim Olthuis). But I don’t always go on to live as if those complex and wonderful thoughts have much to say about concrete body, emotional, intuitive or subconscious living. There is a tension I am ashamed to say, a lived dualism that is at times not very healthy.

An implication of living so much in my head is the need to figure things out, to be able to place everything within a mental map or picture, each thing in its rightful place. Prayer has long been one of those things, a riddle needing to be thought into its proper place. Armed with a proper appreciation of the absolute sovereignty of God and a sense of human effort as comparatively speaking of little account, how was prayer to be fitted into the pattern of the whole. In prayer I may talk to God but I sure wasn’t telling him anything he didn’t already know. I wasn’t going to be able to change his mind, was I? Surely that wouldn’t be appropriate to insist that a puny creature could affect the absolute Sovereign of the Universe? So what was I doing in and through prayer? Such was the way I approached prayer for just as long as I approached it as an intellectual puzzle to be pored over and mapped onto what I thought implicit within the contrast between a sovereign God and his subject creatures, particularly that subject creature I think of as “me,” for I know my own limits, my stubborn complexity, my habitual double-heartedness and so forth. What am I doing when I address my Maker and speak to him of the world as I see it, as I identify its need, when I intercede on behalf of those whom I love or acknowledge myself connected to in such a way as to include prayerful intercession? What indeed? And here’s the thing. Trying to answer such questions can be a replacement for the living reality such answers are an attempt to understand. Anyway that is what I have observed within myself.

But over the last five years of struggle and toil at work and with my health, actual living in the presence of prayer has changed the way I think about it. I had always thought about prayer as something I do in my attempt to respond to my Maker. It was not a helpful perspective, not for me; self-doubt and God-doubt masquerading as a proper reverence for divine sovereignty constantly muddied the waters. What changed is that I have had as never before the palpable experience of being prayed over and for, of being held up in prayer. And I have to say, experience of the prayers of others . . . it rocks! In the light of this experience the need to figure it all out, to put prayer in its place, pacify it so that it stays put within that great closet organizer I call a mind, seems beside the point. Prayer no longer seems like something that can be nailed down like that. It seems more like the Spirit, a principle of motion, flowing, blowing, surrounding, vivifying, a source of life. I respond to it differently when I think of it as sourced in the love and concern of others, blessed by the God to whom it is addressed. It will never stay put; that just isn’t its nature. The sort of curiosity that would pin it down and add it to the collection of things I have pinned once and for all on a high quality theological matte seems less and less appropriate. My inner cataloguer has been replaced, grid-lust giving way to wonder and gratitude.

It is a wonder and a source of great thankfulness, this experience of being prayed for. And of course with wonder comes a particular sort of desire. Imitatio was its name among medieval religious (monks, nuns, canons, friars, beguines) and theologians: the grateful desire to participate in the source of one’s wonder, giving to others the gift of being prayed for that one has received from others. In the process, one is reconnected to one’s own prayer life and receives it too as gift, beyond the corrosive reach of self-doubt or any other impediment to the approach of God. That too is a wonder and a joy, world without end.

Bob Sweetman

Justice is Not Just Us - Presidential Musing by Dawn

[Note: I thought I had such a clever title, when, come to find out, this is very close to the title of a book written by Gerald Vandezande. He wrote Justice: Not Just Us. That sounds like a good one to read.]

We have such good news that we want to be sure to pass it along: The Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council of Canada (SSHRC) has awarded ICS, through our Research Centre (CPRSE), a Partnership Development Grant to do a research project related to Justice and Faith. The CRCNA posted a news story on this development, which came out right before I posted my last musing.

We are SO excited!

Our Research Centre has been awarded $200,000 for a two-year project. Dr. Ronald A. Kuipers and Dr. Allyson Carr put considerable effort into developing this proposal, and we congratulate them on the success of that effort. Most of the funds will flow to our partner organizations on this project, the CRCNA and the Centre for Community Based Research in Kitchener, Ontario, to allow their staff to work with us on the project. The bulk of the remaining monies will fund two new Research Assistantships for ICS students over the next two years, allowing them to participate in the project and also to offset the costs of their ICS education. As is typical of SSHRC grants, the funds must be used directly on the research project itself, rather than for any operating costs.

The report from the pilot project, launched prior to the outside funding, is now online. We would love to see comments about it on Facebook (if you are on Facebook, please “Like” our Institute for Christian Studies page).

Justice can be an unnecessarily devisive topic in Christian circles. I wrote more about this topic, and we decided to turn that into a Ground Motive blog entry. The report from the pilot project (pre-SSHRC-funding) is a terrific start at bridging some of the gaps among Christians regarding justice. Thanks to all who participated in this initial effort. I look forward to the final report from this project.

Attention Oakville and St. Catharines: Travelling Preacher (aka ICS President Tom Wolthuis) to Preach in a CRC Church near you

On Sunday, August 4, ICS President Tom Wolthuis will be preaching at ClearView CRC, 2300 Sheridan Garden Drive, Oakville.

On Sunday, August 25, Tom will be preaching at Maranatha CRC, 301 Scott Street, St. Catharines.