Happy 1/1/11!

Earlier today I noticed the significance of the date. I'm afraid I didn't notice this in time to mark the significance of 1:11 or of 11:11. In this past year, I think I noticed 10/10/10, but didn't pay attention at 10:10 on 10/10/10. This year, we have 11/11/11 to look forward to, but since that's Remembrance Day, it might not seem entirely appropriate to be jovial at 11:11.



Yesterday I saw out 2010 with Toronto friends. First we spent a few hours at a Korean BBQ place, where you have a flaming grill in the middle of the table and are supplied with boxes of raw meat to place on the grill. We went for the all you can eat option, apart from the one vegetarian in our number, in front of whom the stack of meat was put.



After some circular meanderings in search of coffee which ended in a McDonalds, we joined a few thousand other people in Nathan Phillips Square outside City Hall, where City TV was hosting a new year bash. We found our way to a spot where we had a diagonal view of some of what was happening on stage, though everything was visible on video screens. They had a number of singers and bands performing, who were presumably famous, along with some competitions, celebrity greetings and chit-chat. I noted that in the UK we don't have dedicated TV channels like City TV for each major city, but then in the UK this kind of event wouldn't be interrupted for commercial breaks.



We were packed in fairly tightly, especially in the last half hour or so before midnight, when some rather excitable young ladies behind us tried to move forward and then were trying to dance to the music whilst jammed against the people around them. I spent the last 15-20 minutes before midnight trying to resist being pushed forward or losing my balance, as this could have sent several other people flying as well. Nevertheless, this contributed to the festive atmosphere alongside a sense of ritual endurance of making it through to the new year and the accompanying fireworks.



Making it out of the crowd afterwards was also something of a rite of passage. Whilst leaving the square, we managed to lose each other a couple of times, despite being within what usually would be a few seconds walk of each other. A number of the major downtown streets, notably Yonge Street, Toronto's historic central high street, were closed to traffic to accommodate the swarms of humanity.





We found our way to Fran's diner to eat dessert (or poutine in my case) whilst the crowds thinned out, and eventually we took the subway - free and running until 4 am for the occasion - to our respective homes.



Last night I heard about the tradition of the levée, a custom originating in Europe but survivingly largely only in Canada, where public officials host receptions on New Year's Day for those they serve. The Wikipedia article is instructive and entertaining in places:

In colonial times, when the formalities of the levée had been completed, guests were treated to wine and cheeses from the homeland. Wines did not travel well during the long ocean voyage to Canada. To make the cloudy and somewhat sour wine more palatable it was heated with alcohol and spices. The concoction came to be known as le sang du caribou ("reindeer blood").

Under British colonial rule the wine in le sang du caribou was replaced with whisky (which travelled better). This was then mixed with goat's milk and flavoured with nutmeg and cinnamon to produce an Anglicized version called "moose milk". Today's versions of moose milk, in addition to whisky (or rum) and spices may use a combination of eggnog and ice cream, as well as other alcoholic supplements.

However, the article notes, "Today the levée has evolved from the earlier, more boisterous party into a more sedate and informal one."

Today the Lieutenant Govenor of Ontario was hosting a levée at Fort York which I wasn't up in time for, whilst the mayor was hosting one at City Hall a little later. Toronto's recently elected mayor, Rob Ford, is a rather polarising figure, and I'm pretty sure I wouldn't have voted for him if I'd been eligible to do so, but I thought that, given that he was offering hospitality, I would take him up on the offer.

I got to City Hall and found my way to the back of a long queue, which I wasn't expecting. A lot of the people around me in the queue seemed to have supported him in the election. One was talking about how he was put off putting gravy on his Thanksgiving turkey because Rob Ford was campaigning against the "gravy train" at City Hall: "I had the gravy right there on the table, but then Rob's face appeared on the side of the turkey and I just couldn't do it. It didn't stop me carving the turkey though." I'm not sure whether or not his tongue was in his cheek.


(ice rink outside City Hall)

Passing the time while waiting, my neighbour, an Asian lady who had been a volunteer in Rob Ford's campaign, starting doing what looked like Tai Chi exercises or somesuch, including wielding an unfurled umbrella in a slightly alarming manner. She was fairly friendly and chatty though when not twirling her hands in circles and holding her leg out in front of her.

It was getting on for an hour before I got to the front of the line, relinquished my bags to security, and wished the mayor a happy new year. He said something in reply and then I was free to get my refreshments in the rotunda. I was expecting food, especially as I hadn't had breakfast, but none appeared to be forthcoming. What was on offer was coffee and fruit juice. I'm not sure if this is standard for the more sedate levées of today or if this was a sign of this mayor's cost-cutting frugality. It was an interesting cultural experience, which I'm glad I participated in, but I suspect the lieutenant governor might have thrown more of a party, so if I'm here on New Year's Day next year, I might pay him a visit instead.

Happy new year!

I froze my toes waiting for Santa Claus ...

Now doesn’t that sound like a song? This was on the occasion of Toronto’s annual Santa Claus Parade, held this year on 21st November, which, being a week before Advent, felt a little early to me. I took up a vantage point outside the Royal Ontario Museum, though after a while I moved about a bit to keep warm. It takes stamina to stick it out for the whole thing, I suspect especially if needing to keep children entertained until the appearance of a red suited man with an amplified voice being pulled by a lorry. The official website responds to the question “Is he here yet?” with “Santa works on North Pole time. Waiting for the parade to start can be tough on little ones. Come prepared with colouring books and toys. Try out the Santa Parade iPhone App - kids love it.” However, there are regular patrols of clowns who throw out candy/sweets to pacify the waiting crowd. (I’m not sure whether to use Canadian/American words or British ones here – especially as Canadian English is a mixture of British and American English so I’m not always sure which is Canadian usage.)

This was an interesting cultural experience, with schools and community groups (e.g. the Ukrainian Canadian association) being joined by various governmental and corporate entities including the police, Air Canada, and McDonalds, all making themselves cuddly and friendly with the aid of aeroplanes with smiley faces, magical creatures and plenty of marching bands. Discussing this afterwards, I wasn’t quite sure if ‘parading’ is something we do in the UK. I think there are festive processions from time to time, but it isn’t so much a part of the culture and perhaps these go by names other than ‘parade’. We certainly don’t have as much of a marching band tradition – I think a lot of high schools over here have marching bands. The University of Toronto engineering department had a band who played saucepans as percussion alongside more conventional brass instruments and were accompanied by energetic cheerleaders chanting “U of T” whilst forming themselves into the appropriate letter shapes.

The various marching bands seemed often to be offering variations on a set repertoire. In particular, I noted multiple versions of Santa Claus is Coming to Town and Joy to the World. I am open to correction, but my impression is that whilst Joy to the World is known and sung in the UK, at least by many churchgoers, it’s not quite in the premier league of carols that everybody knows (O Come All Ye Faithful, O Little Town of Bethlehem, Away in a Manger etc), whereas it seems that it is a premier league carol in Canada and the USA.



Speaking of Christmas carols, I was recently part of an ad hoc choir singing Silent Night in twelve languages. This group was made up of attendees of Knox Presbyterian Church from different countries and we sang it as part of the church Christmas party. We sang each line in a different language.



After a Christmas dinner for all ages in the church’s packed gym, the 20s-30sish crowd danced the night away at a college down the street. One of the more impressive features of this celebration was a homemade gingerbread house version of Knox Church, complete with roof tiles and stained glass windows made of different kinds of confectionery. It seemed a little sacrilegious to break it up and eat it at the end of the night, though I guess you could read this as the community of the faithful partaking of the life of the church. Or something like that.





I froze my hair recently too. Long term readers might remember that I did this a year ago in Cambridge, though on that occasion it took quite a while fighting through a blizzard to attain frozen hair, and on this occasion it happened in about a minute without the aid of snow. On Monday, 13th December, I left my house in a hurry, having just had a shower. I hadn’t counted on Toronto having a “flash freeze” that day after a weekend of fairly mild (above freezing) temperatures. I catch the streetcar/tram at the end of the road, about two minutes walk away. Halfway down the road, I realised that my hair was frozen. Apparently it was -13°C that day, with wind chill making it feel like -23°C.

Since arriving in Canada, I’ve been telling people that it doesn’t get as cold in the UK and that it doesn’t get much snow compared to Canada. That was before the past few weeks when there’s been crazy amounts of snow in the UK, which got members of my family stranded in Berwick on Tweed overnight en route to a wedding in Edinburgh. There has been snow on the ground for the last couple of weeks in Toronto, but it isn’t especially deep. For Canada, Toronto tends not to get that much snow – it’s by Lake Ontario, which helps to create a micro-climate. Apparently only about half an hour north of the city it gets much snowier. A few years ago when there was an unusual amount of snow, the mayor of Toronto called out the army to clear it, an incident which has elicited mockery from the rest of Canada ever since, though Torontonians can explain why it was a sensible move given the much higher population density of Toronto and other factors (there are over 5 million people in the Greater Toronto Area, out of a total Canadian population of about 35 million).


(UK covered in snow, courtesy of Dundee University via the BBC)

I was supposed to be returning to the UK over the Christmas holiday period, not only to see family and friends, but also for my viva, where I was due to defend my PhD on December 20th. I didn’t make it back, and though it would be convenient to blame the snow, I can’t truthfully put the whole blame there. Rather, due to multiple sillinesses on my part, I managed to miss my flight and also, in the aftermath of this, to lose my passport, which was the more serious problem. Whilst it would in principle be possible to obtain an emergency travel document through the British consulate in Toronto, I didn’t manage to get the right paperwork together before they closed for the weekend, and so there was no way I could get to Cambridge before the scheduled time for my viva.

It might just about have been possible to get back before Christmas day. However, Heathrow was then closed for a few days due to the weather, presumably creating a backlog of people who would be shifted onto later flights in the last few days before Christmas, and I would still need to obtain an emergency travel document. Consequently I concluded, on advice from my family, that it would be less stressful to stay in Toronto over Christmas. Whilst of course it was sad to be away from family at Christmastime, I know that I will be returning to the UK at some point in the relatively near future once my viva/defence is rescheduled.


(My house is the middle one)

Also, I’m not lonely in Toronto, since I’m connected to enough networks that I’m getting fairly regular invitations to meals and social gatherings of one kind or another. Through a church hospitality programme for internationals away from home, I was invited to a dinner with a couple, the husband descended from English settlers in Connecticut in 1640, and the wife born in Japan before moving to Canada with her family as a child.

On Christmas Eve I went with some church friends to a Christmas pageant (which I think translates as nativity play) which had live animals, including a camel. Afterwards we went back to someone’s mum’s house where we ate beef stew and played a board game which involved moving "robots" around the board by "programming" them with cards.



On Christmas Day my landlord took pity on me and got me invited to Christmas dinner at his sister’s house. There were 17 people there, most of them somehow related to each other plus one or two assorted boyfriends. I lost track a bit of who was connected to whom and how, but there were Italian and Portuguese roots represented, and so the food was good. We had appetisers including baked brie with cranberry and herbs (I think), spicy olives, and shrimp with spicy sauce (though I think “shrimp” in North American usage actually means what Brits call prawns rather than shrimp), followed by a turkey Christmas dinner which also included a risotto dish, and a choice of about five desserts including Christmas cake, tiramisu and something with walnuts.



On Christmas Eve, my landlord made me a breakfast of bagels with scrambled egg and jam (not both on the same bagel) and German sausages. On Boxing Day he made me a breakfast of waffles with bacon and maple syrup. When I arrived in late September, he picked me up from the airport and didn’t charge me rent until the beginning of October to simplify matters. A friend commented to me, “You have the nicest landlord ever”.

As anyone reading this who didn’t already know may have guessed, I am currently living in Toronto in Canada. I moved here at the end of September to take up a postdoctoral research fellowship for a year at the University of Toronto. I had been intending to blog my impressions of my new country of residence, but though I have plenty of observations to blog about, over the past term I failed to find a regular time slot in the week for doing so Though I don’t promise, as there are other things which will take a higher priority in my scheduling, I hope to be able to resume posting here regularly enough to warrant checking back. Retroblogging some of my observations of the past few months will give me enough to post for a while.

Cambridge cows chilling

Cambridge is the only city I know which grazes cattle in the city centre. Here are some that greeted me recently.

On Midsummer Common:













In King's College, on the backs by the river:





In other news, my mobile phone returned to me after being missing for 10 days. This is about the fourth time I've lost and retrieved my phone - my sister says my phone is like a cat with nine lives.

As my mum commented, it's good that I bought a phone with a homing device. Or, as a Mormon missionary from California said to me on a previous occasion when this happened, "Wow, it sounds like someone is looking out for you."

(To which I replied, "Yes, I believe He is.")

frozen milk carton

There’s a carton of frozen milk
in the fridge
in the kitchen
by the graduate study room
in the English faculty
which shouldn’t be frozen
(I don’t think).

It’s the kind of thing that
William Carlos Williams
might have written a poem about.

Easter Sunday - What's the point?

As the centuries-old Easter greeting proclaims:

Christ is risen! He is risen indeed!

But even Christians can skip over the Resurrection somewhat in our theology, as this article from Christianity Today, which I would recommend reading, discusses:

J. R. Daniel Kirk, ‘A Resurrection That Matters’
The subheading is “If we are completely saved from our sins through the Cross, what's the point of the empty tomb?”

I think Adrian Warnock’s new book Raised with Christ is also an attempt to answer this question.

The Christianity Today article is difficult to summarise briefly, since it's seeking to show how the Resurrection fits into the whole biblical narrative. This seems like a good summary statement: “the only way to take hold of God's promises for the future is to take hold of the resurrected Jesus in the present.”

Near the end of the article the author cites Flannery O'Connor, a writer who depicted the idiosyncrasies of the US South with an affectionate irony, and whose unsentimental Catholic faith perceived the grace of God breaking through in the midst of the weird and the grotesque (including the apparent weirdness of some Bible Belt religion):

In Flannery O'Connor's short story "A Good Man Is Hard to Find," the Misfit explains the world-shattering significance of Jesus' resurrection: “He thrown everything off balance. If he did what he said then it's nothing for you to do but throw away everything and follow him, and if he didn't, then it's nothing for you to do but enjoy the few minutes you got left the best way you can.”

“Thy righteousness is in Heaven”

I am currently partway through writing my thesis chapter on John Bunyan (1628-88), the Bedford tinker and preacher best known for writing The Pilgrim’s Progress.

In honour of Good Friday in 2007, I posted the famous passage from The Pilgrim’s Progress in which Christian comes to the cross.

Today I’d like to share an episode from Bunyan’s spiritual autobiography, Grace Abounding to the Chief of Sinners. This is a somewhat disorienting book to read because it traces lots of ups and downs through which Bunyan struggles to believe that he is accepted by God. He reads verses which seem to offer hope, but then verses which plunge him into despair: this pattern goes on for dozens of pages.

At one point he thinks that if he was a true believer he would be able to “say to the puddles that were in the horse pads, Be dry; and to the dry places, Be you the puddles”. At another point he worries that perhaps the quota of those that that God would save in his area was already full:

After this, that other doubt did come with strength upon me, But how if the day of grace should be past and gone? how if you have over-stood the time of mercy? Now I remember that one day as I was walking into the Country, I was much in the thoughts of this, But how if the day of grace be past? and to aggravate my trouble, the Tempter presented to my mind those good people of Bedford, and suggested thus unto me, That these being converted already, they were all that God would save in those parts, & that I came too late, for these had got the blessing before I came.

One day, walking through the fields near Bedford, he has a realisation that is worth remembering on Good Friday. The wording may sound a bit archaic in places, but I hope the message comes through:

But one day, as I was passing in the field, and that too with some dashes on my Conscience, fearing lest yet all was not right, suddenly this sentence fell upon my Soul, Thy righteousness is in Heaven; and methought withall, I saw with the eyes of my Soul Jesus Christ at Gods right hand, there, I say, as my Righteousness; so that wherever I was, or whatever I was a doing, God could not say of me, He wants my Righteousness, for that was just before him. I also saw moreover, that it was not my good frame of Heart that made my Righteousness better, nor yet my bad frame that made my Righteousness worse: for my Righteousness was Jesus Christ himself, the same yesterday, and to-day, and for ever, Heb. 13.8.

Now did my chains fall off my Legs indeed, I was loosed from my affliction and irons, my temptations also fled away: so that from that time those dreadful Scriptures of God left off to trouble me; now went I also home rejoycing, for the grace and love of God: So when I came home, I looked to see if I could find that Sentence, Thy Righteousness is in Heaven, but could not find such a Saying, wherefore my Heart began to sink again, onely that was brought to my remembrance, He of God is made unto us Wisdom, Righteousness, Sanctification, and Redemption; by this word I saw the other Sentence true, 1 Cor. 1.30.

For by this Scripture, I saw that the Man Christ Jesus, as he is distinct from us, as touching his bodily presence, so he is our Righteousness and Sanctification before God: here therefore I lived, for some time, very sweetly at peace with God thorow Christ; O methought Christ! Christ! there was nothing but Christ that was before my eyes: I was not now onely for looking upon this and the other benefit of Christ apart, as of his Blood, Burial, or Resurrection, but considered him as whole Christ; as he in whom all these, and all his other Vertues, Relations, Offices, and Operations met together, and that on the right hand of God in Heaven.

'Twas glorious to me to see his exaltation, and the worth and prevalencie of all his benefits, and that because of this; Now I could look from my self to him, and should reckon that all those Graces of God that now were green in me, were yet but like those crack'd-Groats and Four-pence-half-pennies that rich men carry in their Purses, when their Gold is in their Trunks at home: O I saw my Gold was in my Trunk at home! in Christ my Lord and Saviour! Now Christ was all; all my Wisdom, all my Righteousness, all my Sanctification, and all my Redemption.

pork pie with personality

I'm currently eating a Pork Farms Original pork pie, which was wrapped in a wrapper to which was affixed a sticky label which contains these words:

"Remove from fridge; wait 15 agonisingly long minutes; eat. Not suitable for home freezing."

I like it when the small print conveys a sense of personality.

As I always say, it's somebody's job to write the words that appear on food packaging. I feel an obligation to make their job worthwhile by reading what they have written.

this diagram explains everything

I'm currently trying to translate bits of this diagram, which explains how all knowledge fits together. (You need to click on it to get a full size image which is big enough to read - it might take a while to load, depending on your connection speed.)



Handy, isn't it?

(from Richard Baxter's Methodus Theologiae Christianae (1681))

frozen hair

On Thursday 17th December, I stayed in the college library a little bit longer than planned. I came out to find, to my surprise, that “Snow had fallen, snow on snow, snow on snow”. The circular lawn was blanketed and glistening. There was a touch of exhilaration as I left the college and began the journey home. So much snow had fallen that, as I walked, I made footprints in the snow, with inches of snow remaining beneath the footprint.

It was hard to see where the kerb turned into the road, as the edge was buried in a white flurry. As I turned and continued onwards, I was now walking into a blizzard, wind lashing my face with stinging snow. My glasses became steamed up and I didn’t have windscreen wipers to clear them. It was painful to keep going, so I staggered forward ten steps at a time, before turning my back to the snow for a while to regain my energy.



Turning into the park, I couldn’t see the path, but could see a blob of light marking the bridge which on most days is not far away. I journeyed towards the light, thinking of Scott of the Antarctic.

My walk home having taken at least twice as long as usual, my appearance on my arrival alarmed my housemate’s friend. It was time to change my clothes, get a warm drink and pick the lumps of ice out of my hair.



John Ruskin would have looked on the bright side. He said, “Sunshine is delicious, rain is refreshing, wind braces us up, snow is exhilarating; there is really no such thing as bad weather, only different kinds of good weather.”

I also went for a walk in the snow with my family on Christmas day, but this was more friendly snow. Thankfully I was given some gloves, a scarf and an umbrella for Christmas.

Happy birthday, Charles Simeon!

Today is the 250th birthday of Charles Simeon, who was a major figure in the Evangelical Revival of the 18th/19th centuries and for 54 years was vicar of Holy Trinity Church, the church I attend in Cambridge. (The pictures are from a series of silhouettes of Simeon preaching cut by the French silhouette artist Augustin Edouart.)



On Justin Taylor's blog, there is a guest post marking the day with a short biography by David Helm, pastor of Holy Trinity Church in Chicago. More extended reflections on Simeon and lessons we (particularly church leaders) can learn from his life include Vaughan Roberts' article ‘What we can learn from Charles Simeon’ and John Piper's biographical address ‘Brothers, We Must Not Mind a Little Suffering’. These three admirers of Charles Simeon are Anglican, Baptist and Presbyterian pastors, suggesting the breadth of Simeon's legacy.



Charles Simeon had a bit of a rough start to his Christian life and ministry, since for two years after his conversion he knew no-one with the same living faith as he had. On his appointment to Holy Trinity, he had his services boycotted by his parishioners (who locked their pews) for twelve years, things were thrown at him in the street and fellow academics refused to speak to him. By the end of his life all the shops of Cambridge closed in honour of his funeral.



Simeon played an enormous role in promoting the cause of the gospel in the Cambridge, the national Church of England and overseas. Besides his passionate preaching, his initiatives included holding tea parties where he answered students' questions and taught them to preach, sending out many of his curates to mission work in India, and playing a leading role in the formation of the Bible Society and the Church Mission Society. He also had quite a sense of fashion and was one of the first people in Cambridge to carry an umbrella.



Simeon's teapot and umbrella are in the possession of Holy Trinity - apparently John Stott has commented that this is the only evangelical church he knows of with relics.



Notwithstanding all his achievements, how Charles Simeon wanted to be remembered is encapsulated by the inscription on the memorial tablet in the chancel of Holy Trinity:

In Memory of
THE REV. CHARLES SIMEON, M.A.,
SENIOR FELLOW OF KING'S COLLEGE,
AND FIFTY-FOUR YEARS VICAR OF THIS PARISH, WHO,
WHETHER AS THE GROUND OF HIS OWN HOPES,
OR AS
THE SUBJECT OF ALL HIS MINISTRATIONS,
DETERMINED
TO KNOW NOTHING BUT
JESUS CHRIST AND HIM CRUCIFIED
1 Cor. 2.2