One of the problems with being a preacher is that you are always in evaluation mode. This is particularly true when you visit other churches while on holiday!

What is the worship like? Are there songs to take back home? What was the greeting like? Are they friendly enough? Are they welcoming enough? How comfortable am I in this particularly church culture? How weird do I feel? That last question isn’t my everyday general open-ended question that always seems appropriate to me. This is more of a ‘How weird does being here make me feel?’ question.

Then there is the preaching. Just as doctors make the worst patients, preachers make the worst preachees. We often get wrapped up more in critiquing than in listening to God’s speaking. Though, I have to say that I think I am better than many of my preacher friends in this regard—at least that’s my critique.

Still, to be honest with you, I generally wrestle between the worlds of critique and speak. Sometimes an illustration or the freshness of a preacher’s approach has me admiring their preaching chops. Either that or I start to think of how I would have handled that passage differently. When that happens I mentally shake myself and try to turn that part of my brain off and I pray, “Lord, don’t let me stand outside looking in on this sermon. I want to experience it. I want to be challenged, convicted, and encouraged by you through it. I don’t want to be a ‘professional’—help me be a pilgrim!”

Well, a few weeks ago, while we were in Cleveland, we had a hard time finding a church. I couldn’t find any of the churches we were looking for online, so I just decided to let God guild us through the divine hand of Jeeves, our trusty GPS with a British accent.

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For the past month or so, I can’t count how many times I have either said or thought, “What’s the big deal?” when it came to the Royal Wedding that just graced the world’s stage this morning. To be honest, I felt like a Royal Grinch of sorts, which is strange since I am one of those Canadians that like the fact that we are part of the commonwealth and I enjoy all things British and I admire the Queen immensely. I even bought a copy of “The King’s Speech” last week!

Still, I don’t understand how obsessed everyone got and I doubly don’t get why it seems like the US was more interested than Canada in the Royals. What’s up with that? I basically put it down to the desire for a real fairy tale. What’s better than a real Cinderella story? So my take is that the relevance of the Royal nuptials has been fuelled by females worldwide as two billion people tuned in to see the happy couple tie the knot.

Now I am OK with the desire for real-life fairy tales. I understand that life has been a bit grim lately and we are all in need of a moral boost. Let’s face it, 2011 has been about bad news. We are all in need of a fairy tale of the real life variety, so even though the appeal of the Royal Wedding continues to be lost on me, I congratulate the happy couple and all those who have been swept up in pomp and circumstance.

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How spiritual can a spiritual guide be if a spiritual guide doesn’t guide you to God? I realize it sounds very much like I am spiritualizing that insightful question which has confounded intellectuals for millennia, “How much wood can a woodchuck chuck, if a woodchuck could chuck wood?”, but I am not. My question has nowhere near the profundity of said woodchuck conundrum. To me the answer is pretty obvious. How spiritual can a spiritual guide be if the spiritual guide doesn’t guild you to God? The answer is: “not very”.

Still, that didn’t stop the Russian Orthodox Church from publishing a new spiritual guide, in association with Russia’s ruling party, that doesn’t mention God.

According to a recent Reuters article (say “recent Reuters” ten times and then continue), instead of God making it into the church’s new guide, justice, patriotism, and solidarity top the list of ‘Eternal Values.’ Gee, it sounds more like a ‘conduct guide’ published by a labour union than a ‘spiritual guide’ published by a church!

According to the daily newspaper Nezavisimaya Gazeta, the spiritual guide lists, in order of importance, in the eyes of the church and ruling party: 1. justice, 2. freedom, 3. solidarity, 4. unity, 5. self-restraint and sacrifice, 6. patriotism, 7. welfare and 8. Love. Can you believe that? It looks like they stopped at eight! If they extended the list to the ever popular ‘Top Ten’ format, God may have squeaked into the list, or, er, ah, maybe not.

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