Kalman Doka, pictured bottom right with his bride Molly, pictured centre in white

I have a large envelope filled with old sermons that were written and delivered by my grandfather, Kalman Doka, throughout his ministry as a pastor of some 50 years.  They were given to me by my grandmother a few years ago.  I started to ask her questions about her life as a young girl, how she fell in love, what it was like to survive the Great Depression and live the War years.  And after that, she started to send me his sermons, and her letters, and then more.

I was grateful for the time I could spend with my grandmother Molly over the years, alone, asking questions.  Grateful her mind was always so sharp. It’s time I wish I had been able to spend with my other grandparents.  By the time I was conscious of my need to know about the past, had the presence of mind to ask questions so vital whose answers could more nimbly weave the threads of my present steps into the rich tapestry of my heritage, they were gone.

Certain stories, of course, have been passed down and I had the privilege to know each of my grandparents.  Of the four I knew my grandmothers the most.  And as a man looking forward, living now, in these times, I certainly can use all the wisdom I can get hold of.  Recently, I’ve wondered about my grandfathers.

Imagine being granted the fortune of visiting your ancestors for a day – say a week! – when you’re ready.  When they were the same age as you are now.   Spending time with them.  Observing their lives.  Slip back through time like in a Hanna-Barbera production to be handed the kernel of wisdom you need (you’d only need half an hour), then vault back to the present, changed.

Not one to waste, my grandmother Molly preserved every kernel she could, especially things written down.  I told her I wanted to read grandpa’s sermons and that perhaps one day I’d organize them, or from them somehow tell a story of their lives.

I started (in 2007) to enthusiastically transcribe the sermons I had in my possession, spending hours at a time typing at the keys.  This was back when I used a PC.  I lost all that work in a fateful crash and have left the sermons in their envelope since.  Partly because the discouragement of the lost time, partly because other projects took root.

Only recently the urgency to go back to the keyboard was re-awakened.  A major spur has been the recent arrival of a suitcase full of sermons – the rest in grandma’s personal archive – that arrived in Alberta.

I’ve decided to undertake the task of transcribing the sermons again, one by one, in order to preserve them.  We’ll see how it goes.  My intent is to tackle the small mountain of papers devotionally.  Spending time I would in morning (or evening, or – let’s face it – midday) devotion to process the words.  I mean to chip away at them and publish what I transcribe as a regularly as I get the words down on this site as the Kalman C. Doka Sermons.

It’s an overwhelming thought, this exercise of delving into the past.  There’s an amazing body of work that comes with it: not only sermons but letters to so many, articles, and other documents, like the ones regarding the family’s interaction with refugees fleeing the Hungarian Revolution in 1956.

It means diving into a wholly unique view of Canadian history too.  The story of homesteaders on the prairies; the story of essential faith; the history of a family that made it’s way across this great country, further and further west.

So, though I did not have the fortune to relate to my grandfather as a friend, as a peer, or as a man while he lived, I hope to do so now, picking up some of the bounty he planted through the words he wrote down.

Heritage is “something reserved for one”, something that comes to one or belongs to one by reason of birth. We have no choice in what we are handed down.  But I guess we have some choice in what we do with what we are given.  I tell you the truth, unless a kernel of wheat falls to the ground and dies, it remains only a single seed.  But if it dies, it produces many seeds.

What blessed heritage to be handed such a harvest.

I recently slipped this note behind the teacher’s back while subversively typing of facebook.  If you’re not my FB friend (what!?) I thought I’d include you here too.  As we gear up for the tour of She Has A Name, I wanted to ground myself in some context and perspective, and to bring you into that space too, since it’s no solitary endeavour.

On climbing mountains and flowing streams.

We have a big mountain to climb, and that’s a good thing.  It sort of feels, to me (at this point) like I’m entering the realm of the impossible.  This is another good thing.  Because it makes me dependent.  On God.  On people.  Decidedly not on self.

The mountain, in this metaphor, is the proposed 2012 tour of She Has A Name.  You  may have heard me mention the show before (ironic laughter).  You will hear me mention it again (a promise).  If the play name-dropping annoys, deters, or overwhelms you I A) relate B) understand if you drop my facebook friendship like a bowl of steaming mashed potatoes and C) actually don’t apologize.

Because I believe in this story.

Writing that line is a bit of self-talk.  But it’s true-talk.

But if the play name-dropping doesn’t annoy you but excites you, I’m thankful.

Having spent time writing, reading, researching, and sharing about the realities of human trafficking and a gamut of other horrors (however limited and imperfect my knowledge of the issues are) I was aware that my heart and conscience can become hardened by the facts:  It’s too ugly, it’s too dark, I’d rather be on a beach or in a coffee shop, or maybe even hit by a bus than to have to look at the ugliness and darkness….  So the internal monologue can go.

The whole She Has A Name thing started the way many stories I’ve had the privilege of imagining and telling begin: with an impression so strong I can’t ignore. This one being of a river that was breaking forth, moving with power, getting deeper, even deep enough to swim in.  A river that symbolizes justice that breaks emphatically, even violently, to change what needs to be changed.  But from where?  The image is so biblical and loaded.  Where is this river from?  The throne of Heaven? The threshold of Earth?  Or is it from the throne abdicated of self; the threshold of tears.  Both, I think, simultaneously.

If you’re still reading (and I haven’t lost you) you amaze me.  It’s easier, believe it or not, to say such things in a story. It’s much of the why of writing such a play.

It’s difficult (practically speaking) to get a story like this on its feet, on a stage, to make it alive in actors and audiences.  Like all worthwhile things it should be.  But not impossible.

I’m still a little stunned by the premiere.  For me as a newbie playwright it was an enormous success.  Every show sold out?  People turned away at the door?  Work for a team of actors and creatives?  Everyone paid for their contribution?  A production that had no debt and a little left over to invest into the tour and invest into an organization doing work to address trafficking?  Pinch me is right.

And beyond that, responses from people who saw it (even you!) who were impacted, rattled, angered, shocked, moved, informed, perplexed.  What more could a playwright ask for?

More of the same, I guess.  Multiplication.  A tour. Is it too much to ask?  Do I overstep my bounds?

Bring your empty vessels, not a few, is how the prophet of old said it.  What emptiness I have and can bring!  For is that not what we are?  Vessels shaped and vacated to be filled, poured out and filled again, even with living water?

We’re heading off on an adventure, taking some risks to bring the play on a six month tour across North America because we want that river to flow. A fluid and powerful story that compels people to engage the real story of injustice. We need help and faith and favour to do it.

Theatre is personal. So is addressing issues of injustice.  Both evoke very individual and human responses.

So as I look to the mountain my focus will be on that.  Beyond all the hubub of what needs to be done (the money, the planning, the belief, the risk) it’s to engage the imagined and real worlds, to capture the imagination of the heart.  All the while believing that the captured heart can be compelled to set real prisoners free.

By Vlad Gerasimov

There’s been a lot on the go, much of it underneath and unseen as we gear up for the world premiere of SHN.

Two things have clearly crystalized through the process of bringing this story to life: we want produce great theatre and we want to lead people in a response. The play is the dramatic telling of an imagined story placed in a plausible setting of a fictional trafficking case.  It is meant to shine light on the real world of trafficking, to ask big questions, and dare I say, make some suggestions.

Given the subject matter, though, it’s not enough to ask questions.  Art reflects life, but in this case it must effect it as well.

As you may well know (if you’ve followed the play’s journey over the last year) the series of public readings we hosted has made it very clear to us (by us I mean burnt thicket theatre and raise their voice) that beyond telling a powerful story, we have a responsibility to help people address the reality of trafficking locally and abroad.  We want to do this effectively and in a strategic way.

In that regard, I’m busy at work to help organize an event in April in Red Deer, which is national trafficking awareness month, as a way to educate and equip audience members about trafficking at the local, national, and international level.

We are pulling together an exciting line up of people.  To borrow a phrase from a good friend, things are coming together so fast “my head is spinning.” I can’t wait to share the what and who as I can, so it can be on your radar too.

The process is requiring the team at rasie their voice to plan for the future in a much more comprehensive way and to understand afresh that our mandate really is all about creating: stories, possibilities, spaces for hearts to be engaged, truth to be affirmed, and transformation to be activated.

I guess life and circumstance prepare you for such things, but that doesn’t mean it feels that way.  If I step back and look at my (young and still developing) creative life, I’m interested at the pattern that seems to emerge.  Each project that I have a hand in shaping also has its hand in shaping me.  It’s astonishing in a way, but probably shouldn’t surprise, that there’s so much beyond the scenes framed in the lens or scribbled onto the page, that we can’t control or influence. We act on what we know, believe, what we hope for – what we can and cannot sense – in the context of all we don’t know and can’t see.

This post is me licking my finger to raise it to the wind, identifying it does breeze.

Calgary world premiere of She Has A Name by Alberta playwright Andrew Kooman at EPCOR CENTRE’s Motel Feb. 23- March 5 ‘11

Calgary, Alberta (December 20, 2010) — Haunted by anguished voices, a Canadian lawyer (Jason) poses as a “john” to build a legal case against a ring of brothels trafficking girls into Bangkok. Can Jason win the trust of a young prostitute known only as number 18 and convince her to risk her life to testify for the sake of justice? burnt thicket theatre in partnership with raise their voice presents the World Premiere of She Has A Name by Alberta playwright Andrew Kooman. She Has A Name opens in Calgary February 23 – March 5, 2011 and Red Deer March 9 – 12, 2011.

The statistics around human trafficking are staggering: nearly 1 million women and children trafficked every year into some facet of illegal sex trade, an estimated 27 million people trapped in slavery today. Yet each victim of human trafficking has a story, a story that will likely never be told. Inspired by an event in April of 2008 in which an abandoned storage container was found in Thailand containing 121 workers from Burma, 54 of them dead, Andrew Kooman crafted She Has A Name to tell their story in a dramatic, personal manner that will grab your heart and touch  your soul.

“She Has A Name is a story that haunts me,” says director Stephen Waldschmidt. “Even during my very first read, the plays emotional journey really gripped my heart. I still can’t put it down. Our audience’s live experience of Jason and number 18’s struggle will inspire and stir lasting action. It’s my belief that She Has A Name will be an inspirational force that educates and informs Canadians and hopefully motivates them to take action on the issue of human trafficking.”

Andrew Kooman is an award-winning writer whose stories have been published around the world and translated into ten languages. His justice-related work has been described as “A siren call that will forever take us from our complacency to the plight of so many lost, lonely and hurting.” She Has A Name won the 2009 Scripts At Work / Alberta Playwright’s Network award.

CAST: Aaron Krogman (Jason), Denise Wong (number 18), Sienna Howell-Holden (Mama), Glenda Warkentin (Marta)

and Cari Russell (Ali).

Production Team: Stephen Waldschmidt (Director / Set Design), Luke Ertman (Composer/ Sound Design), Jaylene Wiebe (Costume Design), Anton deGroot (Light Design), Alida Lowe (Production Management)

About raise their voice

With a heart for the oppressed and a mind committed to action, raise their voice, uses story, song, film and practical acts of mercy to address the plight of the oppressed and relieve suffering. raise their voice is incorporated under the Alberta Societies Act.  www.raisetheirvoice.com

About burnt thicket theatre

burnt thicket theatre is an emerging Alberta company committed to enliven [restore life to] audiences through original performance, via an ensemble of artists seeking to integrate spiritual and artistic practices in the creation of new theatre works. burnt thicket theatre just completed a successful Western Canadian tour of Hockey Dad: A Play In 3 Periods that included during the 2010 Vancouver Winter Olympics. www.burntthicket.com

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For more information, interviews or hi-rez photos, please contact Neil Bousquet, APR directly.

Mr. Neil Bousquet, APR, PR burnt thicket theatre, (403) 256-8834 prwizard@prwizard.ca

Mr. James Popoff, Artistic Director, burnt thicket theatre, (403).274-8847 james@burntthicket.com

I’m pleased to have two articles featured in YWAM’s 2011 Personal Prayer Diary Daily Planner. The book, in its 31st year of publication is used by more than 30,000 people around the world as a tool to organize their schedules and devotional life and to forge a path of prayer throughout the year for different nations.

I wrote an article about the Rohingya people in Burma (featured in April) and about migrants in Malaysia  (December).  The books include calendars for playing days, weeks, and year, personal notes and contacts, a Bible reading program, maps, and reference helps.  They also feature beautiful illustrations by Julie Bosacker and articles by great minds like Danny Lehmann, Vishal Mangalwadi, Darrow L. Miller and other writers.

You can get your copies here.  Proceeds go to helping children and adults around the world through vital missions programs.

What’s your non-exhaustive list? Here’s mine.  Permit me to add to it later:

G.K. Chesterton |Inspired by his unapologetic apologetics; touched by his romantic and sweeping faith, thrilled by his unadulterated humor and the skill with which he turns an argument on a dime.

Marilynne Robinson | If I could reach into someone’s guts with a story like she did me through Gilead, to churn and hurtle the inner man with such emotional resonance, I could die a happy writer.

William Gibson (the playwright, although what I’ve read of the cyberpunk novelist of the same name I admire) | The moments of revelation he earns, through surprise, in a single line in those plays of his I’ve seen or read depress and school me as a writer.

Annie Dillard | I wish she wrote more, which is both a stupid thing to say and a compliment.  Perhaps she takes to heart the advice of another writer I admire and wish wrote more,

Harper Lee | who said, “I’d rather be silent than be a fool.”  Perhaps the literary world is just better for what they have and have not written.

Anne Carson | Have you read what she does with words?  Over my head with delight.

Charles Dickens | Have you noticed that thus far all the writing men I’ve mentioned are no longer living?  Foreboding.  I’m amazed that he wrote such staggering plots, masterpieces like A Tale of Two Cities, episodically.  That means he wrote the story as it was being serialized!  Don’t act like you’re not impressed.

G. Campbell Morgan | If you read one of his sermons, especially during his time at the Westminster Pulpit, you will know why.  He knew how to till the earth and plant a pregnant seed.

Hey.  Here are two writing men that are alive:

Bill Watterson | Yes. The man of Calvin and Hobbes fame.  Because he is intelligent and hilarious and because he said this: “It’s always better to leave the party early.”

Paul Haggis | Bringing story, actual story, to cinematic audiences.

Oh, here’s a third:

Michael Ondaatje | Gee, Andrew, who doesn’t want to write like a Booker Prize-winning author’s whose work is translated into Academy Award winning films?  Look past the accolades, and read his poetic, visceral work so grounded in the senses.

Okay, I actually have to curb this list and go and write for awhile myself.  But a quick more few:

Paul L. Maier | What I’ve read of his historical fiction captivated and intrigued.

John Donne | (I told you this was in no particular order). Oh to write such surprising and perplexing metaphysical conceits!

Peggy Noonan and Ann Coulter | Because paradox means, certainly, that things –lists included– don’t go feeble at the end.  I admire the thoughtfulness and brazen conviction; the awe and the shock; the tenderness and the sharp edge. Punches that aren’t pulled though they both do not pull punches differently.  Herbal tea and the gin.

There are more, and there are lesser writers too.  But away I go to write, inspired.

Thought this was a kung-pow way to start the month:

The first thing God does is get us grounded on strong reality and truth. He does this until our cares for ourselves individually have been brought into submission to His way for the purpose of His redemption. Why shouldn’t we experience heartbreak? Through those doorways God is opening up ways of fellowship with His Son. Most of us collapse at the first grip of pain. We sit down at the door of God’s purpose and enter a slow death through self-pity. And all the so-called Christian sympathy of others helps us to our deathbed. But God will not. He comes with the grip of the pierced hand of His Son, as if to say, “Enter into fellowship with Me; arise and shine.” If God can accomplish His purposes in this world through a broken heart, then why not thank Him for breaking yours?

From My Utmost for His Highest, “You Are Not Your Own” (Nov. 1)

Read the whole article here.

Lani Ledingham did a nice write up featuring my writing in the latest edition of the Red Deer College Alumni Magazine the Notebook.

You can read the article here.

I was pleased to get word today that my short story “Nazar,” winner of the 2004 Hobson Prize for Fiction, has appeared in the Romanian literary journal EgoPhobia.

The story appears in the online journal in English and Romanian.

The translation was done by Laura Badea of MTTLC, a partner of EgoPhobia.  MTTLC is the publishing house of the MA Programme for the Translation of the Contemporary Literary Text, created and directed by Prof. Dr. Lidia Vianu at Bucharest University.

Invitations to self-sacrifice and selflessness are seldom extended today. We’re a Get-Anything-You-Want-For-Cheap kind of culture whose convenience and blessedness comes at the expense of others we don’t see and, gosh-darnit, we want to keep in that way. We’re insured or have access to insurance to protect the kingdoms we build for ourselves. We’re padded, protected, and, even in a time of economic downturn, so many in the West have most everything they need and can get almost anything they want.

There’s a very human desire, not a wrong one either, for comfort, perfection, ease, and blessedness. When the perks of our hard work and the fruit that comes through our own strength or shrewd shenanigans come at an unjust cost to others, or at no cost to ourselves, something is wrong with the picture.

As global movers and shakers continue to talk recovery, shell out money, talk debt and extend it, perhaps more than ever in recent history, average North Americans are very conscious of cost, spending, and the bottom line. And perhaps, more than ever, even as more people are infuriated at big government shaping and deciding where the money goes, at the same time, people are desperate. Like baited fish pulling on the line, the strings of people’s hearts are caught up with the personal desire for bailout. Just let us off the hook!

G. Campbell Morgan was a dynamic preacher who had the Westminster Pulpit during the First World War. His preaching and Bible studies were attended by thousands during a dark time in world history when a useless war was being fought by men in power who wanted to shape the world according to their own making. The reason people listened to what he said is because Morgan gave people solid food and did not ration the truth; he gave the spiritually hungry sustenance they could chew and digest, even if it was, at times, difficult to swallow. Morgan didn’t let people off the hook, but he did show them how to sink or swim.

One such sermon, given during his time at Westminster Chapel, was about the cost of belief in Christ, and the call to the individual disciple to carry the cross and follow after God. I’m no economist, but I am titillated by the words from Christ that suggest we are to “Give it all away” even (or perhaps especially) in the tough times, when it feels there’s so little resource to give.

Morgan highlights a passage in Luke when Christ tells a crowd of eager disciples, men and women who wanted regime change and a bailout under the heavy hand of Rome, about the high stakes of following after him. It was, what some would say, a turning point in Christ’s ministry, when he culled the ranks by urging people to count the cost of discipleship:

Whoever does not carry the cross and follow me cannot be my disciple. For which of you, intending to build a tower, does not first sit down and estimate the cost, to see whether he has enough to complete it?…. Or what king, going out to wage war against another king, will not sit down first and consider whether he is able with ten thousand to oppose the one who comes against him with twenty thousand? If he cannot, then, while the other is still far away, he sends a delegation and asks for the terms of peace. So therefore, none of you can become my disciple if you do not give up all your possessions (Luke 14:27-33 NRSV).

Morgan highlights that the important word in the above passage is the “therefore”, paraphrasing the above passage as such: “Because my work is the work of building and of battle, I am bound to be careful about the men that I choose to follow me; because I am not merely asking men to come after me in order to save them, but in order to help me and help God and humanity” (from “The Terms of Discipleship,” The Westminster Pulpit).

It’s a revolutionary concept, one that violently attacks our personal notions of self-preservation and comfort. And it is by no means attractive. A cross? Christ obviously didn’t watch infomercials, like the ones if you sign up now, you get double what you pay for and a bit more swag for free. He does the opposite: it will cost you everything you got, even your life. For, the cross is a picture of death and suffering.

And yet it is also a symbol of transformation, redemption, and obedience. The truth of the matter is that Christ died, once for all. As I’ve reflected on this verse I’m aware at my tendency to not go very deep with the metaphor, imagining myself in Christ’s place, shouldering a cross on the road to Golgotha. I need to venture deeper, for it is clear that neither you nor I have to literally die on a cross for the whole world.

We don’t have what it takes to be the all-sufficient sacrifice that takes away the sin of the world. Sorry to burst the bubble. It’s not a literal cross we’re called to carry. Certainly disciples of Christ may literally die and do – it is a historical and theological possibility. But it is not what I think the call to shoulder the cross is about. Carrying your cross is about a life-commitment to follow God and his son. A commitment to follow God into what he desires the individual to do.

Peter objected to the cross of obedience – the literal cross Christ declared he would die on – because he didn’t want to see his leader and friend crucified. Peter also, at the time, didn’t understand that this path for Christ was the will of God or that it would achieve the ultimate vindication and eternal victory of God and man.

What the call suggests is that we are needed to build a structure that will last, and to fight out the remainder of a necessary war whose decisive battle is already in the bag. Disciples of Christ have specific roles to play and strengths to give to achieve the mandate of heaven. To be successful, successful candidates will have complete buy in. What kind of builder or king would Christ be if he didn’t require it?

Christ understood his purpose on earth and that the call to specific action had Divine intent. His complete and unadulterated obedience would fulfill God’s purpose. This obedience wasn’t an arbitrary, self-punishing, masochistic call to death or to pain. It was the only tactic, costly and horrible as it was, that could achieve the ultimate will of God.

Understanding who we are and what we can give is important to our obedience to the above command. As Paul the great first century apologist wrote, “We are what he made us” created for good works. Understanding what those good works are and doing them to build the tower and fight the battle is the very act of carrying the cross.

Nothing, actually, comes for free. Free gifts always cost someone something. The tough financial times might increase our tendency to want things on the cheap. We must be careful that this tendency doesn’t bleed over into our theology, for there’s nothing more dangerous or damaging than cheap grace and cheap discipleship.

In a housing crisis, no one will be served by giving away free homes that are built poorly and won’t last. In a time of war, no one will be served by pulling out of the battle in the short term to find a reprieve. The structures will collapse. The enemy will win.

Thank God Jesus carried his cross. It is the great hinge on which everything – history and our future – turns, empowering those who would follow after him to not only measure up, but to want to give their all. And thank God Christ also does his due diligence by asking us if we have what it takes. Obedience might be costly, but the only thing more terrible would be to be found outside the building when its finished or on the losing side of the war.