ghost stories

This is a post I originally began about a month ago, then under the working title "rennies", referring to Ericka and Andrew pictured above, respectively. Rennie-Hunter History 101: I first met Andrew at an awkward Hallowe'en "dance" at Tyndale (imagine a grade eight dance in a grade school gym...then take out the prepubescent kids and replace them with seminary students) and we e-corresponded while he traveled to India and I to Korea. He later met and wed the lovely Ericka who has become not only my downtown fortnightly lunch date but an excellent source of godly wisdom, smart-ass commentary and easy girly-camaraderie. I didn't have much to say about them after I ranted about how cool they were, but now I do.

You see, the Rennies have given birth to their second. Event, that is. They two are founding members of an uber-relevant project called Empire Remixed. Click on the link to hear what they're about in their own words (much more concise than I am apt to write), which include:

One might claim that we need to tear the walls down. Another might claim that we have no business acting on such a grand scale. And yet, in the midst of this all, in the midst of our culture, we hear a new song. A new sound.

The group was behind another tremendous event, this one self-titled, that I was privileged to attend last year where N.T. Wright (or "The Bish" as he was referred to all evening) spoke to a packed out club (one-time Baptist church, named, of all things, Revival) in Little Italy. The subject matter, or "conversation" as you'll hear it commonly called, was, and still is, Christian relevancy and integrity in a world system overwrought with capitalism, consumerism and individualism. I was hooked.

Last night, the Empire struck again with a brilliant event called "Ghost Stories :: Local Pain, Local Hope" hosted in the heart of Parkdale in a pretty presby church auditorium. Among the throng were Phyllis Novak (founder and director of Sketch!), musician Sam Sunder Singh and author of The Irresistible Revolution, Shane Claiborne of The Simple Way community in Philadelphia.

I'm left with images and words that I can not shake from the corners of my mind... What am I doing to help the poor in my community? Am I being Jesus where I can? How comfortable have I become in my 9-to-5 job, my cosy apartment, my familiar church family? Am I still dancing upon injustice?

“Seek the welfare of the city where I have sent you,” Jeremiah relates, “for in its welfare, you will have your welfare.”
(Jer 29.7)

mars and venus

Ooh, I found some fun articles.

For women, including:

• Necessities
  Men and women have different ideas about necessities.
• Superman Syndrome
  How to let your man feel like a hero.
• The Man Behind the Curtain
  In the companion article to How to Read a Woman, Fred describes in detail the eight categories of men.

And for men, including:

• How to Read a Woman
  The answers all men have been waiting for.
• What Women Want
  Fred has discovered the seven things women want!
• If
  Rudyard Kipling teaches us how to be men.
  

tuesdays

Tout doux, tout doux, tout doucement
Toujours, tout doux, tout doucement
Comme ça
La vie c'est épatant

Tout doux, tout doux, tout doucement
Toujours, tout doux, tout doucement
Comme ça
La vie je la comprends

N'allez jamais trop vite
Vous avez tout le temps
Attention à la dynamite
Prenez garde aux volcans
A ces jeunes énervés
Qui ne savent pas aller

Tout doux, tout doux, tout doucement
Toujours, tout doux, tout doucement
Comme ça
En flânant gentiment

N'allez jamais trop vite
En aimant simplement
Pour avoir de la réussite
Soyez très très prudent
L'amour alors viendra
Se blottir dans vos bras

Tout doux, tout doux, tout doucement
Toujours, tout doux, tout doucement
Comme ça
En flânant gentiment
En souriant gentiment
En flânant gentiment
Tout doucement

Feist, Tout Doucement
(for you unilinguals)

madness in the spring

Spring reminds me of paintings by Max Liebermann, one of my favourite artists.

Spring fever officially hit yesterday with an afternoon dedicated to shenanigans, tomfoolery and monkeyshines. We strolled around the BWV for a spell, watched Shrek 3, ate Chinese downtown and wound up shooting each other with roman candles in a park until the cops broke up the festivities.

Not bad for turning 27 in eleven days.

A little Madness in the Spring
Is wholesome even for the King.
- Emily Dickinson

get out of my facebook

The Boss and I were attempting to track down the Canadian managing director of a rather large company, which will remain nameless. For two days we used the tools of canada411.com, yellowpages.ca, toronto.com, and Google, to no avail. After countless attempts (including automated telephone service, outsourced help desks and American headquarters who didn't know where Canada was) we decided that this particular company prefers being nebulous and de-centralized.

Then, The Boss: "I just found him. On Facebook."

Indeed, the acclaimed managing director has a Facebook page complete with a profile picture of him being hugged by a life-sized character of Cookie Monster.

Under orders from The Boss, I sent sent the managing director a message requesting his mailing address.
He wrote a note back with a mailing address.
I thanked him and wished him a happy long weekend.
Now we're Facebook friends.

in my own little corner, in my own little chair

The Princeton Review Career Quiz
People with blue interests like job responsibilities and occupations that involve creative, humanistic, thoughtful, and quiet types of activities. Blue interests include abstracting, theorizing, designing, writing, reflecting, and originating, which often lead to work in editing, teaching, composing, inventing, mediating, clergy, and writing.

People with yellow styles perform their job responsibilities in a manner that is orderly and planned to meet a known schedule. They prefer to work where things get done with a minimum of interpretation and unexpected change. People with a yellow style tend to be orderly, cautious, structured, loyal, systematic, solitary, methodical, and organized, and usually thrive in a research-oriented, predictable, established, controlled, measurable, orderly environment. You will want to choose a work environment or career path in which your style is welcomed and produces results.

Australian Job Search Career Quiz

Creative
Intuitive, artistic or expressive work, using new ideas and imaginative creativity.

Military Service Work Interest Quiz

Based on your responses to the activities listed, here are the work styles that may be appropriate for you:

Social Work
Activities that allow you to use your talents and skills to interact effectively with others and that have an impact on other people's lives by helping them through activities such as teaching or counseling. You may like activities that:
* Involve working with and helping others
* Let you teach others new skills

Investigative Work
Mathematical and scientific activities and developing creative methods for solving problems. You may like activities that:
* Involve learning about a new subject area
* Allow you to use your knowledge to solve problems or create things or ideas

Artistic Work
Activities that allow you to create works of beauty such as art, literature, music and dance. You may like activities that:
* Allow you to be creative
* Allow you to use your imagination to do original work
* Let you work according to your own rules

Dream Career Quiz

Creative
A creative job is most likely to be your dream career, so you probably shouldn't bother with formulas and bar graphs. You usually like the challenge of creative something out of nothing – it's a skill not everyone has. Maybe you'll design the world's fastest production car. Maybe you'll be a staff writer for a stereo manufacturer or create the first full-body airbag. Either way, your creativity will be the key. Making things, big ideas, new ways to do stuff – it's what you’re best at. We'd tell you exactly what you should do, but something tells us you've invented some pretty good ideas already.

osgoode for you

Half-asleep at my desk (it's Friday...at the tail end of a week when every day has felt like it should be Friday...anyone else feel this?) I made the executive decision to go outside for my lunch break.

I was looking desperate for grass. I love my city but there are days like Fridays, and seasons like spring, when ass-phalt (heh) and concrete just don't cut it for me. I traipsed over to Osgoode Hall and found, much to my relaxation, that its gardens are in full bloom with flowers, the trees are pink, and the grass is delightfully springy.

So delightfully springy, in fact, that I lay down in the sun and fell asleep for three-quarters of an hour (freckle population spurt) and read Harry for the remaining fifteen minutes.

"What a splendid day!... I pity people who aren't born yet for missing it. They may have good days, of course, but they can never have this one."
- Anne