Bob Ripley

Truly there is nothing new under the sun!

Franklin Graham may play to his base. It pays the bills. Everyone else just rolls their eyes. Or worse, reject the message because of the messenger.

Noah is news. Again.

No new fragments of wood from an ancient ark have been spotted on Mount Ararat. But if you’re traveling on U.S. I-75 between Cincinnati and Lexington you might spot a full-scale replica of the big boat itself. The Ark Encounter not only includes the 510-feet long, 85-feet wide and 51-feet high ark replica, but a theme park replete with zoo and museum.The $92 million project is scheduled to open on July 7. It’s the work of creationist Ken Ham. Ham says the attraction and park are meant to serve as a Creationism educational tool.

Pope Francis’ speech to the U.S. Congress this morning felt like a State of the Union address with the incessant punctuation of standing ovations.

Coming today to a parish hall near you. Pancakes. Fat Tuesday or Shrove Tuesday precedes Ash Wednesday and the infamous forty days of Lent. Forty, a popular biblical number right up there with seven and three, is associated with Jesus’ alleged forty day wilderness sojourn to figure out what it meant to be Jesus and to do some big time wrestling with the devil.

Over the weekend I finally watched The Birth of a Nation. Set against the plantations of the southern United States before their Civil War, the movie follows Nat Turner, a literate slave and preacher, whose financially strained owner, Samuel Turner, accepts an offer to use Nat’s preaching to subdue unruly slaves. As he witnesses countless atrocities–against himself and his fellow slaves, including his wife–Nat sees himself in the guise of an Old Testament prophet and orchestrates an uprising in the hope of leading his people to freedom.

Lent snuck up on me this year. No wonder. I wasn’t planning an Ash Wednesday imposition of ashes, a Thursday noon-hour Lenten series of short meditations or a six-part Sunday sermon series. I wasn’t thinking much of Christian practices at all having given up the ghost, so to speak, a few years ago. But I’ve always honoured the tradition of Lenten abnegation and given something up for Lent. Martinis. Cheese. Coffee during Canada’s holy season of Roll Up the Rim. That sort of thing.

I asked my Facebook friends a question today. If you got to write a new commandment what would it be? “Thou shalt ……”.

The one that first came to my mind was “Thou shalt …. be kind.” Covers a lot of moral ground. But there’s another commandment left out of the original Big Ten. It could have been number eleven.

Thou shalt not own another person.

It’s a sad irony for those clergy who lost their vocation when they left their faith in a god they once imagined. The irony is that fellow clergy continue their vocation proclaiming a god former clergy could never have imagined or proclaimed.

It’s no fun being closeted. Whatever keeps you behind a closed door, whether it’s your sexuality or your secret, it is generally considered a good thing to come out. Be who you are. Be open. Be honest. Be authentic. Celebrate who you are or, if it’s your secret that is hidden, deal with it in the open.

That said, coming out is not always a good idea.

What a difference a day makes. Or a week.

Whether it is my deep Anglican roots or former Methodist vocation, I warmed up quickly to the controversial Life of Brian, released in 1979 . Life of Brian in case you don’t know, is the tale of an accidental messiah Brian Cohen (the late Graham Chapman) who is born in the next manger over from Jesus’. When the Magi mistakenly bring him their famous gifts fit for a king, Brian seems destined to a life of mistaken identity.

Anti-intellectual populism has run amok lately. Expertise matters.

Against the assault of laughter, nothing can stand. (Mark Twain)

Mothers are known by their maxims. Call me when you get there. Put something on your feet. Bring me the change. Look me in the eye. Be careful with that thing or you’ll poke an eye out. If that’s what you want to wear. Do it to make me happy. The clichés never end.

I never talked to her but I never forgot her.

Pauline Odiambo was a member of the Luo tribe. I didn’t speak their language. Pauline couldn’t read or write. But everyone in her village of Lwala, Kenya knew her. And that was the key to her success.

Last night I saw French playwright Yasmina Reza’s Art at the Grand Theatre here in London. Art is a short (90 minute) comedy about friendship more than art.

While it’s nice to see social media plastered with pictures from the sunny south during March break, my mind goes back almost 25 years to the week we went to Florida for a day.

I’m in mourning. And it’s not the recent loss of ladies such as Jenny and Mary Ann.

I’m mourning the loss of the funeral. Scan local obituaries and you’ll see more and more notices ending with the news that, often in keeping with the wishes of the deceased, cremation has taken place and there will be no funeral.

Why the trend? Cost, for starters. Yes a traditional funeral can be pricey especially if there is a casket, a venue for the ceremony, a plot, incidentals and a lunch afterwards. It adds up.

Also, our tribes have scattered. Families and friends move far away and would have a hard time criss crossing the globe to attend a funeral.

Some don’t want a fuss made over them.

And religion is losing it’s impact. There was a time when cremation was frowned upon. Today, practicing Catholics are allowed to choose cremation; however, the church still wants a ceremony and for ashes to be buried, not scattered. And there was a time when it was just accepted that death would be followed by a church service of some description whether or not the deceased ever warmed a pew.

So formal rituals and burials are on the way out. But after more than three decades officiating at funerals, I wonder if in our attempt to be frugal and convenient, we are giving up a ritual which is as old as our species. Burying and mourning our dead.

Rituals at the time of a death are not fun and not everyone is able to attend but that shouldn't be an excuse to skip them. Cremation is cheaper than burying a body, but if we scatter the ashes to the elements, we have given up a physical location to return to in order to focus our grief.

Church funerals can be costly and somewhat hypocritical for those who are not religious. But with the help of an officiant, a secular ceremony can be just as rich and rewarding. There are deep wells of poetry, proverbs and wisdom which can aid and console us. An officiant, someone who stands outside the circle of family and friends, can guide and orchestrate our gatherings with readings and eulogies whether at the venue or graveside or both.

Funerals and other ceremonies at a time of death help us process our most profound thoughts and feelings. They make a difference in helping us channel our grief toward healing.

When everyday words and actions are inadequate, the ritual of ceremony provides a needed structure of what to say and do. Funerals also help us acknowledge the reality of the death, remember the life that was lived, support one another in our grief, express our grief outside of ourselves, and begin the long, hard process of coming to transcend our grief toward a wholeness.

Social gatherings and rites of passage ceremonies are vital to our social nature and if we let them die, a bit of our connection as laughing, mourning humans dies too.

Back in 2007, four ladies were killed on their way home from a church roast beef supper.

Wladyslaw Bilski’s minivan crossed the centre of the road and slammed into the Ford Focus carrying Marion Dawson, Bernice Phillips, Verna Neaves and Jean Ripley, otherwise affectionately known in the community of Holy Trinity Anglican Church in Chatham, as the “pie ladies.”

Jean Ripley was my mom.

Can we talk about swear words? For starters, I’m no saint. I confess to cussing, though thankfully few have heard me.

It may have started with minor hockey. When I messed the play or missed the puck, I’d swear to myself. (Mom aways threatened to wash my mouth out with soap if I ever swore out loud.) Then I got my drivers license. The late George Carlin, who once revealed the seven dirty words you can never say on television, said “You never really learn to curse until you learn to drive.”

Last week, while hiking in the rainforests of Vancouver Island, I turned to my wife and spontaneously opined,

There was a time in this fair land when the railroad did not run.
When the wild majestic mountains stood alone against the sun.
Long before the white man and long before the wheel
when the green dark forest was too silent to be real.

Years ago, moviegoers experienced the Hollywood premiere of the film classic The Wizard of Oz; the story of a young girl named Dorothy who lands in a magical place called Oz, where she embarks on a journey to track down a wizard who might help her get home.

Baby Boomer nostalgia freaks like I have been reveling in the 50th anniversary of Woodstock, the event itself but also the entire music of that epic era.

I’m always curious to know what kept Woodstock from descending into disaster, what with the lack of food and torrential rain. Even stronger is my insatiable thirst for behind the scene details.

Let this be a warning! To paraphrase an old adage, be careful what you want to know, because you might know it.

I have three words for Americans.

I offer them as a humble foreigner. I didn’t make them up. I’ve known them for years. The first time I heard them might have been when the Wizard of Oz promised to personally take Dorothy Gale from Oz back to the other side of the rainbow, where they would both be home.

They aren’t English but they are easy to translate.

Two years ago two cavers discovered bones in an almost inaccessible chamber deep within the Rising Star cave system, about 25 miles from Johannesburg in South Africa. Last week an international team of collaborators reported that the 1,500 human fossils represent at least 15 individuals from infants to seniors. They were named as a new human species, Homo naledi (naledi means “star” in the in the Sotho language).

Last night to celebrate the alleged birthday of the Bard of Avon, Canada’s Stratford Festival streamed their production of King Lear. As described on the their website, “A kingdom divided, a family destroyed, the faithful banished and the hateful left to wreak inhuman havoc in the realm.” Sounds depressing but as Northrup Frye once said, nothing excellent is ever depressing and this production is excellent.

Tell me, what is it you plan to do with your one wild and precious life?