Derek profile picture

Derek

I am here for Friends

About Me


"...what mattered to me was the rescue. I could probably afford a new chair. That I prefer to live among the scavenged and reborn is my own choice." - Jonathan Franzen
"We are not on earth to guard a museum, but to cultivate a flourishing garden of life."
-Pope John XXIII
"'It's a poor sort of memory that only works backwards,' the Queen remarked." - Through the Looking Glass
"The everlasting house the soul discovers
is always another's ; we must lose our own ends ;
we live in the habitation of our lovers,
my friend's shelter for me, mine for him...
for the wealth of the self is the health of the self exchanged."
-Charles Williams, "Taliessin Through Logres"
Mars Hill Online
Clarion Journal of Spirituality and Social Justice:
I write here occasionally
Check out: International Justice Mission
The Memory Hole: Rescuing Knowledge, Freeing Information
My church:

My Interests

compassion ; looking tough but being friendly ; talking with God ; good beer (in beautiful moderation) ; my school (Regent College) ; my church ; Dresden ; walking around my hood after dark ; The Globe and Mail ; DAISO: the store where they sell all sorts of fun Japanese stuff, and everything is TWO DOLLARS; Harajuku ; really epic badass sounding poetry ; Haiku ; my mom's baking ; Japanese food

I'd like to meet:

An honest mechanic - not because they don't exist, but because I really like honest mechanics.

Music:

Sufjan ; Iron and Wine ; Blind Willy Johnson ; Atmosphere ; Hazel Dickens ; Arvo Part ; Joy Division ; Waking Judes ; As I Lay Dying ; Xerarch ; Bauhaus ; Five Blind Boys of Alabama ;

Movies:

..

Lord of the Rings ; The Seventh Seal ; M ; Dark City ; The Big Lebowski ; I rent UFC DVDs sometimes, because I like watching good, technical groundwork

Television:

I once knew this girl who got sick whenever she watched the Simpsons because of the bright colours and yellows and what not. That's too bad.

The Daily Show with J. Stewart is pretty amazing. Before I got my current job (which requires that I get up early-ish every morning), I watched Stewart and Colbert every night. There was this really creepy interesting series a few years back called American Gothic that I liked too. Old twilight zone episodes are often pretty good.

Why watch TV when you can watch real people right in front of you?

Books:

Charles Williams ; Jean-Luc Marion ; Dante ; Tolkien ; Milton ; Flannery O'Connor ; Walter Malory ; Margery Kemp ; Mary Doria Russell ; Jurgen Moltmann ; Clive Staples ; Phillip K. Dick ; Hans Urs Von Balthasar ; Margaret Visser ; new Anne Rice ; The Little Flowers of St. Francis

Heroes:

Jesus, my Dad, my Mom, St. Francis, St. Bonaventure, Brother Juniper and lots of early Franciscans, Margaret Yang (of Rushmore).

My Blog

My nation is better than your nation!

"Your nation is a mess! Mine is a mess - but Canada is worse!" - Mark Driscoll, Pastor of Mars' Hill Church, Seattle. Thanks Mark. I'll be visiting Utah in a week, and it is comforting to know that ...
Posted by Derek on Mon, 30 Apr 2007 03:48:00 PST

Could you not stay up with me for one hour?

This is a response I gave on a friend's blog after she complained about not staying up all night for Easter Vigil:I hear you.  I had ambitious plans to stay up all night Thursday, but ended up fa...
Posted by Derek on Wed, 11 Apr 2007 07:49:00 PST

Bastard Son of an Adulterous Church?

This was a comment I left on my friend Andrea's Blog...On the topic of not feeling afraid at Church, I was listening to a Brian Walsh lecture a few weeks ago when he visited TWU, and he was talking ab...
Posted by Derek on Sun, 04 Mar 2007 10:54:00 PST

The USA is no.1!

...in military spending.  In fact, the US military budget is larger than all other national military budgets combined.  That's right, over half of the military spending on earth comes from o...
Posted by Derek on Sat, 10 Feb 2007 12:54:00 PST

Poetry

Living in Vancouver, where I have fewer friends and no ea, is lonely.  Ergo, lots of good poetry.  I wrote this one after a reading of Iron John by Robert Bly:What Waits BelowIf I concentrat...
Posted by Derek on Thu, 01 Feb 2007 04:56:00 PST

The war on Christmas

"The war on Christmas" may be loosely defined as the removal of the word "Christmas" from the lips and advertisements and sale-names of retailers and other people in the public sphere.  Thus, if ...
Posted by Derek on Tue, 26 Dec 2006 11:43:00 PST

We're not so different

As I was strolling through the Trinity Western University Bookstore the other day, I noticed Bibles...lots of Bibles.  Six or seven translations; leather-bound; GENUINE leather bound; bonded leat...
Posted by Derek on Mon, 25 Dec 2006 12:33:00 PST

Come to my birthday party!


Posted by Derek on Fri, 08 Dec 2006 06:22:00 PST

Song

This is the only song I've ever written that I remember.  It doesn't have a name, or a chorus. For forty days I rode across the desert like our Lord but the Devil didn't tempt me 'cause he'd don...
Posted by Derek on Sat, 04 Nov 2006 12:09:00 PST

Haiku

     A political? Jesus of Guantanamo - My dear convict Lord ...
Posted by Derek on Thu, 05 Oct 2006 06:49:00 PST