Dan Alcantara

Category: Meditations

  • i got stopped by mormon missionaries today

    Greenock has both an LDS and JW presence in it but we’ve had no interactions with them until today. I had just finished a pastoral visit and was checking my phone to put some music on while walking to get lunch and do some work when a pair of Mormon missionaries stopped me. One was from Australia but the other didn’t say a word.

    They could tell that I’m American and then knew that I would have some familiarity with their beliefs. The chatty one asked me if folks from our church engage in any outreach work. I shared about our mall outreach events and the work that various people do in prisons and with Good News For Everyone.

    The missionary then asked why we do this work and that was easy to answer. Because we love Jesus. He explained that they do their own missionary duty to obey the command. While I can understand that we have a mission to obey, it felt telling that there was no affection in his voice as he explained why they do what they are doing.

    One of the big things that I am enjoying as I keep reading and rereading 1 Peter is that everything Peter speaks about is in relation to the Christian’s identity as a part of a chosen and precious people. It’s such a blessing to know that that is to be our starting place, not an empty sense of duty.

    I gave the two missionaries my card. I didn’t have enough time to chat with them but I really do hope they get in touch.

  • two mindset changes that have helped my writing recently

    two mindset changes that have helped my writing recently

    I just finished up Day 10 of the note-taking challenge and I’ve already noticed a couple of things change in my writing since the start.

    letting things be messy

    Bianca Pereira, the creator of the challenge, addressed what she calls a ”completionist mindset”. It’s the sort of mindset that wants a notes system to be perfectly organised and for each note to be “complete”. Her point with this is that over time, our knowledge will change and we will necessarily have to edit, amend, or even completely overhaul our notes on a particular topic. So rather than trying to make perfect, little atomic notes, it makes a lot more sense to just embrace a bit of messiness to the whole endeavour.

    For my own practice, this has meant that the majority of my notes from the challenge are living in a notebook I had set aside as a place for “complete notes”. Now, it’s a much more accessible notebook and it means I’m much more likely to browse through it because I don’t have to be so precious about everything.

    I’ve even had to embrace this in ministry. There is a certain amount of mess that comes with it because the work of ministry is a work with a diverse group of people. While it is good to strive for excellence in the things that we do, it’s also very good to strive for just seeing the work getting done. If we keep pushing for perfection in everything then everyone becomes afraid of messing up and there’s no room for risk or taking a chance on things.

    free-writing is actually good?

    As a teenager, I would fill notebooks with scrawling diatribes about nothing in particular. Before we left America for the first time back in 2010, I burned all of my old journals. The world is a better place without them. You’re welcome.

    Those notebooks were full of free-writing. Just page after page of stream-of-consciousness gibberish that wasn’t going to do anyone any good.

    But over the last 10 days, I have been forced to do free-writing. Many of the prompts have included free-writing. What has been helpful during these writing sessions is that there are some guard-rails up to guide the free-writing. It isn’t just, “write!” but, “Look at this list of things you wrote the other day. Pick one of those things and answer this question in relation to that.”

    Doing that has led to more writing and to more thinking about other things that I have been writing. It has helped me to effectively use the page in front of me as a means of processing rather than just a blank canvas upon which to splatter paint.

  • all our gods have failed

    When a society worships success, technology, power or wealth, and then finds moral decay in its midst, to whom can we turn? Will our careers save us? Will our wealth save us? Can technology bring moral order out of moral decay? All those gods have failed and will always fail.1

    I would very much like to write like Christopher Ash when I grow up.

    1. Christopher Ash, Remaking A Broken World pg. 82 (The Good Book Company, 2019) ↩
  • wonder on a bench by the Clyde

    wonder on a bench by the Clyde

    One of the unexpected blessings of being a Christian is that any moment has the potential to be filled with awe and wonder. The sort of awe and wonder that is simply impossible for someone who doesn’t have faith to experience.

    As I write this, it’s my day off and what I did was walk down to the Esplanade. It’s one of those rare times with no hint of rain to be found. While there, I put my headphones in and listened to a guided meditation of Genesis 1:26-31, verses which describe the creation and setting apart of humanity. With my headphones on, considering that the God who made the hills across the Clyde also made me, I meditated on all that we are given in those verses.

    Let us make man…

    We are given life, which is to say we are given existence. Because we don’t know any other way, we take the fact of existence for granted. We assume that it is a given, of course I exist. But in the word itself is a clue about its significance. I need something outside myself (ex) to have being. The Uncreated One grants me existence.

    Be fruitful and multiply and fill the earth and subdue it, and have dominion…

    We are also given a job, given a purpose for existing in creation. Life is inherently meaningful because it comes with a task. To be human, according to Genesis, is to rule in creation.

    So God created man in his own image…

    That ruling work comes from another gift: that of identity. We are creatures, yes, but not like all the creatures, for we are in God’s likeness. In creation, in some mysterious way, we look like God. Surely, there can be no greater dignity for us if this is true. We are already elevated in status by the simple fact that we are human.

    Behold, I have given you every plant yielding seed that is on the face of all the earth, and every tree with seed in its fruit. You shall have them for food…

    The life that we are given is also a life that is sustained. God gives food so that life can continue. He also gives life a rhythm; evening and morning, work on six days and rest on the seventh. A life meant to be balanced and built around doing what we were blessed to do: being fruitful, multiplying, having dominion, subduing the earth…

    And to go even further, this was a life meant to be lived in communion with its Maker. A life of communion and joy in a growing garden while drawing life from life itself.

    Which all leads to another thought. The garden ideal was never God’s ultimate vision for his creation, but only a shadow of what would come in the very end. If this is what we look back on in shadow, consider the wonder that awaits us when all things are reconciled, renewed, and united under one God and King. We have so much to look forward to if we belong to Jesus.

    That was a very fruitful 20 minutes on a public bench while looking at some hills.

  • there is beauty to be found

    there is beauty to be found

    Part of my non-sermon writing practice has been to observe more and to remember why I love living where I live. This isn’t always easy. Our town is in one of Scotland’s top regions for drug-related deaths. The local newspaper has daily reports of the awful things done by people that have been proven in court.

    Photo credit: Dan Alcantara
    Photo credit: Dan Alcantara

    And yet, this is one of the most beautiful places we could ever have hoped to live. It is a matter of looking at the right things or even zooming in enough to see properly.

    Photo credit: Dan Alcantara
    Photo credit: Dan Alcantara

    One of the things that has happened as a result of my trying to write more consistently (although that doesn’t always happen in public) is that I have looked for more things to read. That led me to Britta’s Blog. Britta is originally from Germany but has found her home in North Lanarkshire, just the other side of Glasgow. One of her recent posts (and she posts almost daily) was mainly a photo of a flower in a wasteland. She writes:

    Whenever I’m in an area that really doesn’t look like I’d want to hang around, I remind myself to ‘look small’, and if this doesn’t reap any rewards, I try ‘look smaller, still’.

    It was a great reminder to look for beauty in all places.

    Photo credit: Dan Alcantara
    Photo credit: Dan Alcantara