The Eastgate Project

06/12/2024

If you know...
Participating in symbols associated with your particular sub-culture reinforces the feeling of belonging.

04/19/2024

This is a book for sipping, not guzzling.
I feel sometimes as though everyone else has it right: that moving at breakneck speed through life is the only way to do it. That if you are not constantly busy, you are somehow a loser, or at least misinformed about how life is supposed to go.
And then I read this. And I felt better about being slow and out of time.

03/19/2024

Writing in Dust, Day 34:
Last summer, I hiked down from where we were staying at a beautiful lodge to a nearby black pebbled beach with my older son. Although he's never been the most fleet of foot nor the least prone to injury, he has a doggedly adventurous spirit to him that I find inspiring.
The hike was a longer one for him: about an hour. When we reached the beach, we went into the frigid water up to our waists before quickly deciding that we'd had enough, then sat on the shore to let the strong summer sun warm and dry us as much as possible.
I tried to talk to him.about girls. His eyes bulged a little when I asked him about someone he's become friends with, and he admitted she was "ok." No, it wasn't a s*x talk. We'd had that months prior to the hike, and he reacted better than I would have if my dad had tried the same with me..
No, this time I tried to ask him about what he thought about romantic relationships. Not much, it turns out --but our eldest is also known around our house as Captain Oblivious. But I think that works in his favor, as he doesn't think a lot about how to talk to a girl. He just does it without thinking, without shame. He is very much like me in many ways, but this is not one of them.
I fear for his spoiling. Maybe not a loss of innocence, but a loss of the curiosity and courage that has pleasantly become iconic of his burgeoning personality. But for now, he is the kind of child I wish I had been. God willing, he will become the kind of man I hope to become.

03/18/2024

Writing in Dust, Day 33:
I preached at another church this morning, and in that sermon, I spoke of an event from my childhood that's stuck there now as one of my core memories. It was not a pleasant memory-- one of being bullied by a racist kid-- but as I worked on the sermon I became aware of how this event and others like it have shaped the man I've become. When I shared it, the congregation became eerily silent and paid rapt attention, or else they looked thoughtful as they were thinking of their own core memories, and linking them from the past to their present.
Now, in safety and relative predictableness (which many say are the same things), I have the luxury of sifting through those core memories and examining them, knowing that even if they occasionally still sting, they are not the mortal wounds they once were. I have survived them, and become perhaps not stronger, but more myself for having lived them.
I like those sessions with clients where they feel enough at ease to share these memories with me. It has the feel of bringing out a special wine you've been saving for just the right occasion, and I feel more like an old friend stopping by for a glass than a therapist in those moments. There may be tears, there may be smiles, there may even be some anger-- but when they show up, they're not as raw as you might think. And that ability to tell a sacred and maybe painful part of your story with appropriate emotion and detail but not feeling like it will crush you is, I think, a good sign that you're metabolizing your hardship well.
My first therapist once told me that I had "stewarded my pain well." I think that remains one of the kindest and most thoughtful things anyone has ever said to me.

01/23/2024

Where I reflect on discouraging goings-on at one of my alma maters, with an extension of this to church and parachurch as a whole

A couple of months ago, a story broke on CBC news that a former professor of mine at Regent College had been fired from his position at Crandall University in New Brunswick. The reason? Independently confirmed allegations of “inappropriate behaviour” towards female students. I wish...

01/01/2024

At the ends of the last several years, I have taken multi-week breaks away from seeing clients because as much as I want to help, I always find during these breaks that my edge has become much more dull than I thought.
So, a pause to think. And gather.
This is my new favourite hoodie I got for Christmas from my wife. I admit, I don't know much about praying with icons, but this image continues to bear much fruit with me as I turn it over in my mind and wear it on my chest.
I so often feel like the bald-headed therapist with a pair of pruning shears looking at the immense complexity of the person before me. And the person isn't asking for more than maybe a little order to their inner garden, of which you sort of have an idea what they might mean, but you can't just charge in there with your shears. Your sense of order and beauty may not be their sense of order and beauty, which is why you have to sit patiently as they start pruning themselves.
Maybe you chip in here and there, or put new tools in their hands that do better work. But mostly, you have to trust that they're going to start doing what they should've been doing for years. Weeding, pruning, caring for the soil, bringing out the glory while keeping the system intact.
Yet as much as I adore this image, I can't help but notice that the one thing that's lacking is that in a relational psychotherapeutic system, it's not the clean-headed therapist who sits with objective aplomb. The more I do this, the more I realize that the client also trims the therapist's garden, which itself is no small part of the dynamic in the room.
A better image might be a similar but smaller garden in place of the therapist's head. One where there has been some tending, but as any gardener-therapist knows, no garden is ever "finished." Beauty and fruitfulness must constantly be encouraged, nurtured, and coaxed into being.
But I suppose it would be a bit of a mess of an image to have two gardens there. Or maybe the artist just hopes that therapists are healthy enough human beings that their heads are shiny and new compared to their overgrown mess. But of course, that can't be true. Phantasy is fantasy, even if it is a guiding star.