A fitting end to this blog

I have decided that today is a fitting time for me to end this blog.

As I have explained in my previous posts, I have not done anything religious, let alone go to church, for close to a year now.  The reason is simple: I want to live life.

Christians talk about how Christ sets us free all the time, but, looking back, my life as a Christian was nothing but a depressing experience. I have not gone to a Christmas service for the previous 3 consecutive years, because Christmas time had always been the most depressing time of my life.

Not one so called Christian brother (or sister) knows me.  Not a single soul I wanted to spend time with.  And so I would stay at home, which of course just makes you more depressed.

In all these years all I did was judge other people – people who didn’t know their Bible, people who didn’t go to church, people who were gay, people who weren’t theologically aligned with Mark Driscoll, people who were atheists……I can go on and on.  I guess I thought if I was like Mark Driscoll then the nice Christian girls would like me.

I was filled with a limitless sense of insecurity, feeling tremendous guilt with every conversation because I didn’t take the chance to convert the person.

******

Tonight was the first Christian event I have been to since I made the decision to leave my church. I went to my friends’ concert, friends with whom I once played music with at churches.  Tremendously talented folks.  Professional stuff.  And I brought along a friend from Campus for Christ.

And I can honestly say I have never felt more free.

Tonight I am back at a old venue, a Christian venue, but now I see people as people.  I don’t have to hold back.  I can let them know who I am.  I am not just a Christian, but a person.

You might say, “hey, don’t paint all of us Christians with one brush, it is just YOU who have weird ideas about what Christianity is.  My faith DOES free me!”

Well then, maybe I missed something.

In the past year I took the time to replace my religion with the Vancouver Whitecaps and I can honestly say I have never had as much fun before.  We’d be singing out lungs out at every game, going down to Portland for the away games……the comradery of us group of fans was simply phenomenal.

******

At this point in time, I can only call myself at best a deist.

I think the “Does God Exist” debate at UBC in 2008 was probably the lowest point of all.  We invited this supposedly renown professor on Christian apologetics – Dr. William Lane Craig – and he basically gave the same arguments that students of Philosophy 101 have already beaten to death.

That was so defeating.  Here was our champion, and even he brought nothing new to the table.

******

So, this is it.

Nothing too coherent about this post.  But I just wanted some closure.

Off to a foreign country (although you could technically call it my home country) I go.

Good bye Hongkouver.

Awkwardness is when I see churchpeople

For me to run into church people and/or Christian friends is like being caught with my pants down.

Well, the feeling is the same anyways.

I need to be more careful where I go on a Sunday afternoon.

I got the chance to have a little dinner + bubbletea thing with some C4C friends the other night, but at least with C4C people (some of them anyways) they actually know me a bit more and know I am pretty much just a big fat perv anyway.  With church people it’s like seeing those incompetent financial planners who will claim they are not selling you anything.  In all honesty though, they aren’t really giving you any helpful information you can’t easily find on the internet anyway.  You know all they really wanna do is get you to go back to church or convert you since you’re now a “lost sheep”.

Photoless Support Letters

It bugs me when people in full-time Christian ministry work send out support letters that don’t include photos of themselves.

Maybe I signed up to be on your support list because I think you look cute?

Maybe I signed up because I once thought you could be my wife and so I wanna see what you look like now?

Frustrating.

I can’t stand Christians

It’s been about 7 months since I last did anything “Christian”, and coincidentally today I bumped into my pastor and his family at the Volkswagen dealership.

The first thing he said to me was that some speaker from England is coming to our service to preach and that apparently there is now a youth band leading worship at the service.

For crying out loud, this is exactly why I have distanced myself from Christians.

Now I understand why people I tried inviting to church before never came.

Made me sick from the stomach.

I am a twentysomething, and I’m not about to waste more of my precious time being close-minded inside those 4 walls they call church.

I miss blogging

I miss blogging regularly.

But I’m tired of girls, tired of The Church, and tired of most things generally.

So I don’t really have anything to blog about.

As of now I’m married to work.  I love being able to work hard at something and get recognized for it.

It’s been a while

It’s been ages since I last blogged.

There are several reasons.

One: because of the Twitter craze.  Why blog when everything is written about by someone else already?

Two: because no one else blogs anymore.

Three: there isn’t really a girl that I like right now.

Four: in the middle of big changes in my life.

So on and so forth.

But it’s still fun to blog from time to time.  Leave me a comment if you read this, just so I know that there are still people out there.

Soccer, Not Football

So it’s finally hit me this week: I am not English.

It all began last week, the week of March 16th, 2009 – one of the most memorable weeks for soccer in the Cascadia.

• Vancouver, a city with 30 years of history in soccer, officially wins one of the two 2011 MLS expansion spots
• Seattle Sounders hosts their inaugural MLS home opener in front of a 32,000-strong crowd
• Portland announced as the other winner for the 2011 expansion

I was fortunate enough to have taken part in two of these historic events, namely the celebration party in Vancouver on Wednesday night, followed by the Seattle Sounders’ opener on Thursday.

To make a long story short, the Sounders’ opener, while goosebump-inducing in countless ways (can you really ask for more than a 3-0 win on your first night out in the MLS?), remained a largely “North American affair”, much to my disappointment.

What do I mean by that?

Think organic vs. engineered.

You see, the main reason behind why I love the beautiful game, soccer -  or football, as the rest of the world calls it – is because of its tribal nature. It’s all about the club you support.  The more adversity the club faces, the more it means to the true supporters to stand behind her against the rest of the world.  The true supporters know that only the club stands the test of time: players and coaches and trophies come and go, but the club you support will remain timeless.

You don’t cease to be a Vancouver Whitecap after the whistle is blown in 90 minutes.  It runs in your blood.

It’s for these reasons that you see this sort of thing around the world:

*Note the ladies taking their tops off around the 50 second mark.  Those Brazilians……Anyways.

Yet, as North Americans, most of us are accustomed to having to be entertained, having to be fed.  We are used to sitting on our fat asses at home in front of our HDTVs.  In fact, we are so used to sitting in front of the TV that for most “fans”, going to the game and watching it on TV are actually interchangeable.  And even when we do actually attend professional sporting events, most of what we get is merely artificial, engineered support. You often see the big LCD screens in the stadiums displaying messages like “CLAP YOUR HANDS”, or “STAND UP”, or “SCARVES UP”.  You often hear loud rock music played over the PA every time play stops, as if to distract you from the silence that fills the stadium.  You see mascots telling you how to chant and how to react, and if you can string 3 words together (eg. “GO CANUCKS GO!”, “LET’S GO CANUCKS, LET’S GO!”), you are considered a hardcore fan.  And then you see cheerleaders jumping around even though they have absolutely no place on the field whatsoever.

This was the case in Seattle.  And so, a debate in my head arose.  “Was that really a good night out?  Or was it just the same old North American crap masked by all the fireworks and brass band and a bunch of bandwagoners?”  Afterall, some claim the Sounders managed to fill the stadium only because their city has just lost their NBA franchise, the Seattle Sonics.

And sadly, as a natural reaction – I think overreaction is a better description – to the disaster that North American sports have become, soccer fans in North America have decided to try to emulate their counterparts over in Europe, especially in England.  We start calling soccer “football”, start yelling around English phrases like “Shut up you twat”, or “Aye you’re a right bloody wanker like”, while raising up our scarves and singing English chants.  And guess what?  A little while later, you can’t help but notice that we’ve just gone one full circle and ended up exactly where we started – engineered support that is not true of who we really are.

So it is at this point that I stand.  Right here, right now.  This very moment.

Who are we, really?

Can I feel comfortable in my own skin as a Vancouverite and not end up as either i) a boring fickle fan like the Canucks lot, or ii) an Englishman wannabe?

Can I come to accept that while Seattle got it wrong on their big night out, at least Toronto FC got it spot on 2 years ago and that hopefully the Whitecaps will get it spot on as well come 2011?

Can we relive the day of the 100,000+ parade in downtown Vancouver in 1979, when we won the NASL Soccer Bowl?

Yes, I think I can.  In fact, I am very hopeful.

Those of you from the east coast might have read about this, but TFC just got an away support of about 2,000 fans in their game against Columbus Crew down in Columbus today.  That’s a 7 hour trip, and I’m not even counting the return trip.  They got a section all to themselves at Columbus’s ground.  Isn’t that amazing?

You have probably met people who moved from coast to coast because of the person they love, or their family, or their career.

For me, I think I have just found my reason to stay in Vancouver.

This is my home.

Always one album behind

I am realizing that I am always one album (or more) behind, even if it’s some of my favourite bands.

Death Cab: still stuck on Plans, have given Narrow Stairs maybe 3-4 times run through only.

Radiohead: stuck on every album before In Rainbows, basically.

Coldplay: have pretty much never gone through that seemingly crap new album.

The Killers: same story, just listened to some of the singles on that new album.

Franz Ferdinand: still stuck on their debut album, actually.

U2: have yet to get my hands on their latest album, for the fear that it sucks (it probably does?).

Bright Eyes: still stuck on I’m Wide Awake It’s Morning, because I still think it has some of the best written songs in the past decade!

Manic Street Preachers: stuck in the 90′s when it comes to their music.

The Verve: can any new album live up to Urban Hymns?  Seriously?

And I could probably go on and on……

What a day it is for Vancouver

I think this article by one of the Southsiders sums it up:

From Friends of Soccer:

http://friendsofsoccer.blogspot.com/

In 1979, a simple soccer team and a famous sportscaster’s slip of the tongue, brought Vancouver together like never before. In the buildup to ABC’s coverage of the ’79 NASL Soccer Bowl, the legendary Jim McKay innocently referred to Vancouver as a “deserted village”. When the Whitecaps returned home as Champions of the North American Soccer League, over a hundred thousand Vancouverites took to the streets in joy and made the word “Villager” a badge of honour. Vancouver had never celebrated anything with such unity and passion before. Nor has it since.

March 18, 2009 is a great day in history for both soccer and our city. Today’s announcement that the Vancouver Whitecaps will become a member of Major League Soccer in 2011 is the fantastic result of almost seven years of hard work and vision by Greg Kerfoot, Bob Lenarduzzi, Rachel Lewis and the entire Whitecaps organization. The B.C. soccer community and the citizens of Vancouver owe them a great debt of gratitude and heartfelt congratulations for their achievement.

More than ever before, soccer has become the international language of the world, and Vancouver can now reclaim its top tier place in the game’s global community. Famous soccer clubs from the great cities of the world will once again make their way to Vancouver on a regular basis, and the Whitecaps name will become synonomous with our city throughout the globe. The soccer culture that has always existed in Vancouver & B.C. will flourish like never before, and our children will be able to grow up knowing that the soccer they play is much more than a “foreign” game.

The news that Vancouver is once again back at the top level of North American soccer will also bring tremendous benefits to our city for generations to come. The culture of traveling support that exists in MLS will fill thousands of hotel rooms, and bring new jobs and millions of dollars into our local economy at a time when we need it most. The tens of thousands of new patrons that will descend into the City Centre will help relieve some of the pressures felt by small businesses in Downtown, Chinatown, and Gastown. Vancouver can expect to reap the economic benefits of MLS for decades to come.

But more important is soccer’s ability to unite people from all different walks of life. Today, the Whitecaps are giving Vancouver one of its first truly multicultural institutions that’s inclusive, accessible and comfortable for people of all cultures, races and backgrounds. It’s a fine legacy for an organization that has given so much of its time, effort and resources to communities throughout B.C. & Western Canada.

Soccer in Vancouver, B.C. and all of Canada is stronger today than it was yesterday. But it is still a work in progress. For Canada to continue its progress, we need more solid clubs. We need fewer petty territorial squabbles. We need to accept a soccer culture that builds professional excellence. And we need real soccer infrastructure in our country, such as stadiums.

But today is for celebrating the deserved achievements of the Vancouver Whitecaps. It’s a chance to look back on all of the good a simple soccer club has done for this city over almost 35 years. And it’s a dare to dream about what might be possible in the years ahead.

Today, Vancouver is a “Village” once again.

Yours in Sport,
Bill Currie
Friends of Soccer

Olympics and Following the will of God

Tonight, the good o’ Irishman at my church preached on what it means to follow the will of God.  It was a very honest sermon, where he went as far as telling us that, in fact, he did not want to be at our church.  But because he knows clearly that it was by the will of God that he came here, he absolutely loves every moment of it.

A few moments afterwards, our senior pastor got up to do the announcements and mentioned that a good number of churches in Richmond, including the white churches, are going on a prayer walk at the Richmond Olympics Oval this Saturday to intercede for our city and for the upcoming sporting event.

At first I was quite “meh” about it.  I mean, I don’t give a toss about the Olympics, in fact I want to piss all over it, and going to a prayer walk on an early Saturday morning is about the last thing I want to do these days.

But my friend, who is filled with the Spirit, brought to me the conviction that I have been consciously avoiding for far too long.

“I just want to go see if there are any pretty girls there”, he said.

You know the feeling you get when you know clearly that God is calling you to do something worthy?  Something that glorifies His name?  Something that brings a wee little tear to your eye?

I don’t give a toss about the Olympics, I don’t feel like going to a prayer walk, but I do care so very much about following the will of God, and seizing every opportunity to meet some nice, devout Christian girls is a big part of that.

Oh, I am SO going to this prayer meeting!