Remembering Dad

This weekend marks the third anniversary of my father’s death–a shock to us all as he died of a massive heart attack out of the clear blue sky at 71 years old.

Here is what I wrote as a memorial the next year, and what follows now is a more recent remembrance:

Remembering Dad

Missing him
like the mountain gone from the front window
or the maple tree gone from the backyard

Life goes on just the same
but less sure
and less shady

I’m John Stackhouse–and so Is He

[Warning: The following post will likely be of interest only to Canadians, and even then . . .]

Prompting a media frenzy–frenzy, I tell you–John Stackhouse was recently named editor-in-chief of the Toronto Globe and Mail newspaper, one of Canada’s two “national” newspapers (along with the National Post). My life thereby just got slightly more complicated.

For I’m John Stackhouse, and so is he. And we’re hard for some people to distinguish, at least on first encounter. I mean, what are the odds that a country as small as this one would generate two people with the same first name and this odd surname whose lives and careers actually overlap as much as ours do? So let’s get this thing straight once and for all.

Kruse on Stackhouse

Michael Kruse, a blogger whom I have not met but who has kindly defended my work on at least a couple of other people’s blogs (notably Scot McKnight’s), is discussing my book Making the Best of It: Following Christ in the Real World on his blog. I’ll likely stay out of it to let Michael do his thing with his blogfriends, but I am honoured by Michael’s careful attention to what I’m trying to do in that book. Not every reader has been so careful, alas!

Special Events This Week in Vancouver–and Abbotsford

I’m to speak at the following three special events this week. If you come and you heard about it/them here, let me know!

Study Skills Seminar Friday, 23 January, 1-4 p.m., Regent College  This course will help you listen better in class, take better notes in class, read anything more quickly and more efficiently, mark up a book so that you understand its architecture and can come back to it for reference, take notes from sources you don’t own (as in a library), make the most of every study session, and more. Indeed, one of the skills you’ll learn is how to read a book in 15 minutes. And another skill you’ll learn is when you can safely stop studying for a test. It’ll cost you about thirty bucks. Sign up in advance with the Academic Secretary for a discount.

Writing Seminar Saturday, 24 January, 9 a.m. – 12:30 p.m., Regent College  This course is not a remedial course. My colleague Polly Long teaches a fine course next weekend for students needing help writing at the graduate level. My seminar is at a professional level for very good writers who want to consider writing as part of their occupation. It’s about how to conduct a writing life—a Christian writing life—and how to make the most of one’s skills especially in scholarly or theological writing, but also in mainstream and Christian journalism as well.  Same deal: thirty bucks or sign up in advance with the Academic Secretary for a discount.

Public Lecture Sunday, 25 January, 7 p.m.: “Are Christians Un-Canadian?” at Calvin Presbyterian Church, Abbotsford, BC. This will be a discussion of obstacles Canadians face in both evangelism and public policy, and how we can respond positively and creatively (that is, not all in the same way!). All welcome.

As Time Goes By…

…one’s sight is not as good as it used to be.

I had LASIK surgery a couple of years ago and, for the first time since I was eight years old, saw the world without glasses or contact lenses. Fantastic!

Alas, ageing proceeds apace, and I’ll soon need reading glasses for my presbyopia. That means, “having the squinty, blurry eyesight of a typical Presbyterian,” I think. Oh, I’m just kidding! Settle down, you brittle Reformed types. ; )

So I’ve forked over some bucks to WordPress, the fine people who let me run this blog, so I can increase the font size as many of you have asked me to do. In light of all the kind things people have written to me in response to the entry of a few days ago about blogging, it was the least I could do.

Year-End Blog Statistics: Who’s Out There

It’s nearly the end of the year, and I’m still wondering about carrying on this weblog. I don’t really “blog,” of course. Real bloggers write several times a day, in short bits, about lots of different things. This blog is more like a column that I self-publish once or twice a week. So who cares?

I’ve published 152 entries since I started a couple of years ago. Over this past year, the trend of visits has been upward, to an average of 5000-5500 visits per month. Is that a lot? It isn’t much compared to very popular Christian scholarly bloggers such as Scot McKnight or Ben Witherington, I’m sure. But I’m gratified by the quality of readers evident in some of the comments and by the e-mails acquaintances old and new sometimes send me. Thanks for each one, friends!

The ratio of comments to posts is about 10:1, but commenting varies wildly in quality and quantity depending on the post. I like to think that most of my readers mostly agree with me most of the time, and thus merely nod their heads sagely at the end of a column and move on without commenting. I realize there are other ways of construing the statistics on this matter, but hey, that’s what I like to think, okay?

I look forward to this new year and to blogging some more. I’ve got a few hot topics in the bin yet that I hope will interest you, too. Subscribe (directions can be found via the Pages on the top right of the main page) if that will convenience your reading. Send along a link to friends who might enjoy this sort of writing. (Most readers apparently are North American, not surprisingly. But it’s been great to see readers popping up consistently in the U.K., Australia, New Zealand, Hong Kong and Korea–and sometimes also in farflung places in Europe, Asia, Africa, and Latin America. I’d be glad for more comments from those countries to help me understand issues from these other points of view.)

If you would like to see particular subjects addressed here, please let me know. And please do comment: A great deal of the reward of this non-lucrative venture is interaction, so interact, you lurkers!

CBC “Hockey Night in Canada” Theme Contest

Thanks to the many of you who visited my son Joshua’s entry in the contest to write a new theme song for CBC’s broadcast of “Hockey Night in Canada.” Josh’s entry was not selected as one of five semi-finalists. You can hear the ones that were selected here. Family modesty forbids me from saying more than than this: de gustibus non disputandum (which, carefully translated, means “I have no idea what prescription medication the CBC judges were on when they decided as they did”).

Vancouver House for Sale

As indicated in the previous post, we’re moving, and just a little north of where we live now–across a bridge and up a ravine–to North Vancouver.

Should you, or someone you know, be looking for a family home in Vancouver, please check out our house here and set up a visit with our realtor.

(Yes, this is just the time one wants to be trying to sell a house…. So we’ve priced it as attractively as we can and we hope prospective buyers want to get in before interest rates do whatever they might do in the months ahead…)

Hockey Night in Canada Theme Contest: A Shameless Plug

Canadians know (and thanks to Stephen Colbert, so do many others) that the CBC surrendered its longtime musical theme for its premiere broadcast, “Hockey Night in Canada.” In a brilliant public relations move, it is now holding a national contest to replace that theme.

Our son Joshua is a composer (currently studying at the Conservatory at Wheaton College, Illinois) and has submitted an entry.

It is The Best Entry. You should register, log on, and vote for it. Yes, you should. It is, as I say, The Best Entry.

Strangely, all of the entries I’ve looked at have startlingly low scores–few above “2″ out of “5.” My guess? Composers and their friends are sabotaging rivals. I mean, can they all be that bad?

In fact, the website is poorly designed. Once you have registered, every time you log in, you can listen again, vote again, and have it count again.

So for now, have a listen and vote online for fun—and then in October for real.

You know it’s the right thing to do.

Signed,

Josh’s Dad

P.S. We’re heading out on late summer vacation, so I’ll suspend posting until September. Shalom to you all!

I’ve Gotta Be Me

Here are some people I admire: the apostle Paul, Thomas Aquinas, Francis Xavier, John Calvin, J. S. Bach, Jonathan Edwards, John and Charles Wesley, Abraham Kuyper, Mary Slessor, Winston Churchill, C. S. Lewis, Billy Graham, Mother Teresa, Wayne Gretzky, and Wynton Marsalis. It’s always pleasant to stand back and gaze upon their awesome excellence of talent, or spirit, or goodness, or whatever.

Here are some people, however, I envy: Martin Marty, Mark Noll, Nicholas Wolterstorff, David Martin, Miroslav Volf, Lauren Winner.

The difference in the two lists?

Well, there are two differences. First, the people in the second list are all contemporaries who do something similar to what I do for a living, namely, academic work in the humanities. (That’s why you may not recognize all, or even any, of the names. Philosophers, historians, sociologists, and theologians are rarely household words!) The second point is that they all have enjoyed much greater success at some aspect or another of our common profession.

Ouch. It hurts to admit it, but it hurts more to live under it. How can I possibly publish as much as Marty? Or read as much as Noll? Or think as deeply as Wolterstorff? Or think as widely as Martin? And so on, and so on.

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Why Some Things Are Better: The Awful Possibility Ignored by Wehner and Levin

An article in this month’s Commentary, by Peter Wehner and Yuval Levin, speaks of “Crimes, Drugs, and Welfare–and Other Good News.” Apparently not everything in our culture is going to hell (as I suggested in my blog entry of September 24, 2007). Indeed, Wehner and Levin point to decreasing numbers of teenage pregnances, increasing test scores in schools, lower numbers of abortions and divorces, and a drop in violent crime.

The authors suggest that a combination of opinion-shaping and policy-making are responsible for the changes. Well, maybe. But not perhaps the opinions and policies they have in mind.

I don’t mean to be ungrateful for their tidings. It certainly is good news that there is some good news.

Some of us historical types have been warning for quite a while, to be sure, that history does not proceed in single, straight lines–or circles. Just as some “leading cultural indicators” have shown that some aspects of contemporary North American culture are worse–from unthinking boorishness in parks and cinemas to a widespread acceptance of fornication–other indicators have shown for a generation that some aspects of culture are better, such as how our society treats handicapped people, or people of other races, or people without property, or people who aren’t men.

Still, the question is why–why some things are improving. And I’d like to know why Wehner and Levin do not even mention the provocative thesis of economist Steven Levitt et al., popularized in his book Freakonomics (2005).