Celebrating the Gift of Family - HIRD

By the Rev. Dr. Ed and Janice Hird

We fell in love forty years ago, and have never looked back.  With three adult sons and two grandchildren, we are so grateful for the gift of family.  This past summer has been a time of family reunions for many of us.   We deeply appreciated the opportunities to hang out with our family members, particularly those who live far away. 

Most families are complicated and messy.  Reconnecting with our family members during the summer can be challenging for many people.  Setting boundaries with people that we love is never easy.  Saying no to our family members, even when necessary, can sometimes be really hard. Even Jesus, who was never unloving, had problems at times with his family.  He said that sometimes there would be painful division even within our families.  Jesus said that family cannot be the ultimate, but rather a penultimate very high priority.  He said that if we sought first God’s kingdom, then everything would go better, including our relationships with our family.  

One time Jesus was so involved with helping people that he did not have time to eat.  This so upset his family and friends that they decided that he must be out of his mind.  In some cultures, skipping a family meal is almost unforgivable.  Eating three square meals a day is on the same level for some families as following the Ten Commandments or the Golden Rule.  Because there was such a large crowd, his mother and brothers could not even reach Jesus.  You can imagine how their anxiety level would have been spiking.

In the midst of family anxiety, Jesus had a very clear idea of who he was and what he was called to do.  This gave him the courage to say no to his family, when they were trying to stop his important work.  He said the shocking phrase: “Who is my mother?  And who are my brothers?”  If we said that with our families, they would not likely be pleased.   They might say back to us, “What are you talking about, Ed and Janice?  We are your family.  We were there at your wedding thirty-eight years ago.”  Jesus went on to memorably say “ My family, my mother , brothers and sisters are those who do the Father’s will”.  Family for Jesus is bigger than just the physical nuclear family.  Jesus dearly loved his nuclear family, but he had to remind them that even our family cannot come first in our lives.   This is not an easy lesson to learn, because we love our families so dearly.   Our prayer for those reading this article is that we may learn to celebrate the gift of family in a way that still allows us the freedom to say no, to set healthy boundaries.

The Rev. Dr. Ed and Janice Hird

St. Simon’s Church North Vancouver

Anglican Mission in Canada

-author of Restoring Health: body, mind and spirit 

Say No to the Herd

"...There are four possible attitudes, said Jones, to the herd urge.  We can 1) withdraw from the herd 2) defy the herd 3) succumb to the herd or 4) surrender the herd to God and then live within it..."

By the Rev. Dr. Ed Hird

Every summer the Hird family goes away on an Ashram retreat to Sumas Mountain.  The Christian Ashram movement was founded in 1930 by Dr. E. Stanley Jones in India.  As a close friend of Mahatma Gandhi, Jones wrote twenty-eight books that sold millions, including Christ of the Indian Road and Abundant Living.

As the most widely read spiritual author during his lifetime, Jones left a remarkable impact that is rapidly increasing in our social media world.  Jones’ short aphorisms are very quotable, being often reposted on Facebook, Twitter, Google+, LinkedIn, and Pinterest.

 

For the last year, I have been rereading Jones’ book The Way to Power and Poise. Jones memorably warns us against the herd: “If we are herd-centered people, then we are insecure, for the herd is fickle and may quickly change.”  Teenagers, when facing peer pressure, are often tempted to be herd-centered.  When we give up self to the herd, we lose identity, focus and creativity.  The desire to be popular and to fit in can be very deadly.  It takes courage to be ourselves.  Jones taught that if we are dominated by the herd, we are doomed by the herd – doomed to a life of up and downness. 

The problem with the first attitude of withdrawal is that we are left in isolation and eccentricity.  All forms of separation, segregation or apartheid backfire upon themselves.  Emotional cut-off solves nothing.  We are called to be in the herd but not of the herd.

The second attitude of defying the herd leaves us on the defensive.  As Jones put it, you cannot live constantly objecting without becoming objectionable.  Defensiveness is negative and self-defeating.  Healthy people do not define themselves by what they are opposed to.

The third attitude of succumbing to the herd, said Jones, robs you of your voice: “you are an echo; you don’t act; you only react; you are not a person but a thing.”  Mindless conforming is ultimately deforming.  Giving up self to the herd leaves us flat and empty.  Mob mentality, as with the 2011 Vancouver Canuck riot, is rooted in the herd mentality. Many young people going to that Canuck game had no idea how destructive they would become. 

Only when we let go and let God can the herd become healthy.  The herd will drain you of life and energy, if you let it.  The herd is never satisfied.  You can never do enough to please the herd.  Jesus gives you the ability to transform the herd into a thing of beauty.  Say no to the herd, and yes to life.

The Rev. Dr. Ed Hird, Rector  

BSW, MDiv, DMin

St. Simon’s Church North Vancouver

Anglican Mission in Canada

-author of the upcoming book Restoring Health: body, mind and spirit 

-an article for the September 2014 Deep Cove Crier

p.s. In order to obtain a copy of the book ‘Battle for the Soul of Canada’, please send a $18.50 cheque to ‘ED HIRD’, #1008-555 West 28th Street, North Vancouver, BC V7N 2J7. For mailing the book to the USA, please send $20.00 USD. This can also be done by PAYPALusing the e-mailed_hird@telus.net . Be sure to list your mailing address. The Battle for the Soul of Canada e-book can be obtained for $9.99 CDN/USD.

-Click to download a complimentary PDF copy of the Battle for the Soul study guide : Seeking God’s Solution for a Spirit-Filled Canada

Share this:

Lessons that I have Learned from Steve Jobs - HIRD

by Rev. Dr. Ed Hird

Like Steve Jobs, I grew up at a time when huge mainframe computers would fill entire rooms.  The concept of having one’s own personal computer was unthinkable.   In Palo Alto the future Silicon Valley where Jobs grew up, virtually everyone was an engineer or worked in electronics.[i]  My dream from Grade 3 to Grade 10 was to be an electrical engineer like my father.  I will never forget when my dad gave me my first microprocessor, replacing the old vacuum tubes.   While completing my Masters in 1980, I submitted two papers written on the University of British Columbia mainframe.  My professor commented that this was the first computer paper that he had ever read, but not likely his last.

In reading Walter Isaacson’s recent Steve Jobsbiography, I was inspired to think about lessons that we might learn from Jobs’ life.  Jobs was a world-changer, a revolutionary, and an artist.  One of his maxims was “It’s better to be a pirate than to join the navy.”  Jobs once even hoisted a Jolly Roger flag with the eye patch being the Apple logo.   He commented: “we were the renegades and we wanted people to know it.”[ii]

Jobs had a genius for creativity, innovation and excellence.  ‘Good enough’ for Jobs was not good enough.  He wanted people to stretch, to dream and to risk everything on the next technological breakthrough.  Jobs said: “There’s an old Wayne Gretzsky quote that I love.  I skate to where the puck is going to be, not where it has been.”[iii]  Curiosity and the joy of discovery propelled Jobs to imagine the unimaginable.  Through Pixar, iPod, and iPhone, Jobs radically reshaped movies, music and phones.  I remember the buzz of waiting in line at Park Royal Shopping Centre in West Vancouver for the iPhone 4.  I was given the eighth of the eight phones delivered that day.  A lady from the jewelry store rushed over and told me that this would change my life. It felt somewhat over the top but she proved to be right. Using my iPhone probably shaved about one to two years off my doctorate.

Jobs had a remarkable gift at integrating technology and beauty, science and art.  Robert Palladino, a former monk teaching calligraphy at Reed College, radically shaped Jobs’ passion for design.  Bill Gates once said: “I would give a lot to have Steve’s taste.”[iv]

Like his Microsoft rival Bill Gates, Jobs was a technological rock star.  Eight times, he was on the cover of Time, over twelve times on the cover ofFortune, as well as the covers of Rolling Stone andNewsweek.  Bono called Jobs the hardware/software Elvis.[v]  Bill Gates once said: “Don’t 

you understand that Steve [Jobs] doesn’t know anything about technology?  He’s just a super salesman… He doesn’t know anything about engineering and 99% of what he says and thinks is wrong….”[vi]

In the movie Pirates of Silicon Valley, Jobs accused Gates of stealing ideas from Apple.  Gates memorably responded: “Well, Steve, I think there’s more than one way of looking at it. I think it’s more like we both had this rich neighbor named Xerox and I broke into his house to steal the TV set and found out that you had already stolen it.”[vii]

Ejected from his own company Apple, Jobs picked himself up and dusted himself off, going on to a stunning financial success with Pixar’s Toy Story movie.  When Jobs returned to Apple, the company was very demoralized, just ninety days from bankruptcy.  Jobs rallied the troops, insightfully saying: “Apple didn’t have to beat Microsoft. Apple had to remember who Apple was.”[viii]

Our greatest weaknesses are often hidden in our greatest strengths.  Jobs’ passion for excellence often made him very painful to work with.  Many of his personal and business relationships were unable to survive his aggressive zeal for innovation.  Jobs’ ability to silently stare and then blow up at people allowed him to weed out unsuitable colleagues.  Karen Blumenthal commented that “he could be both charming and gratingly abrasive, sensitive and stunningly mean-spirited.”[ix]  Gates jokingly once said: “Steve is so known for his restraint.”[x]   In some ways, he was a Samson figure, talented and tortured.  At age 23, he abandoned his own child Lisa, denying his paternity, the same age that his birth parents gave him away.  Only fourteen years later, after naming a computer after her, did Jobs bring Lisa back into his life.[xi]

Raised in church, Jobs described his becoming disenchanted when the pastor seemed callous about the suffering of African children.  How sad that the pastor did not challenge Jobs to join him in making a practical difference in Africa.  The malnutrition of African children doesn’t have to be that way.  We can be Jesus’ hands and feet.  Steve and his good friend Bill Fernandez spent many hours walking and discussing spiritual matters: “We were both interested in the spiritual side of things, the big questions: who are we? What is it all about? What does it mean?”[xii]

Perhaps one of the best influences in Jobs’ life was Apple co-founder Steve Wozniak.  Jobs and Wozniak’s partnership integrated the hippie and the nerd, bringing together vision and know-how.   Without Wozniak, there would have been no Apple.  Woz remarkably said that Jobs had been respectful to him on almost every occasion.  Ronald Wayne, another Apple co-founder commented: “Wozniak was a fascinating guy, fun to be with and the most gracious guy I ever met.”[xiii] Steve Wozniak observed: “Although I never went to church, I was influenced occasionally by stories about Christian things; values like the idea of turning the other cheek. If somebody does something bad to you, you don’t fight back. You’re still good to them and treat them with love from your heart. Values of caring about the communities I grew up in, the schools that I went to, the cities I lived in; putting proper value on that. Values of respecting other people; not being a criminal or stealing.”[xiv]  Woz embodied Jesus’ Golden rule to do unto others as we would have them do to us.

My ultimate lesson from the Apple co-founders is to be like Jobs in innovation while being like Woz in respecting people.

The Rev. Dr. Ed Hird, Rector

BSW, MDiv, DMin

St. Simon’s Church North Vancouver

Anglican Mission in the Americas (Canada)

-an article for the April 2014 Deep Cove Crier

-award-winning author of the book ‘Battle for the Soul of Canada’

p.s. In order to obtain a copy of the book ‘Battle for the Soul of Canada’, please send a $18.50 cheque to ‘Ed Hird’, #1008-555 West 28th Street, North Vancouver, BC V7N 2J7. For mailing the book to the USA, please send $20.00 USD. This can also be done by PAYPAL using the e-mail ed_hird@telus.net . Be sure to list your mailing address. The Battle for the Soul of Canada e-book can be obtained for $9.99 CDN/USD.

-Click to download a complimentary PDF copy of the Battle for the Soul study guide : Seeking God’s Solution for a Spirit-Filled Canada

You can also download the complimentary Leader’s Guide PDF: Battle for the Soul Leaders Guide

---

[i] Steve Jobs: the last thing PBS movie, 1999.

[ii] Walter Isaacson, Steve Jobs (Simon & Schuster, New York , NY, 2011) P. 144-145.

[iii] Anthony Imbimbo, Steve Jobs: the Brilliant Mind Behind Apple (Gareth Stevens Publishing, Pleasantville, NY, 2009) Steve Jobs: the last thing PBS movie, 1999, p. 97.

[iv] Steve Jobs: the last thing PBS movie, 1999

[v] Karen Blumenthal, Steve Jobs: the Man who thought different (Fiewel and Friends, New York, NY, 2012), p. 263, p. 278.

[vi] Isaacson, p. 302.

[vii] Andy Hertzfeld,  A Rich Neighbor Named Xerox,  November 1983http://www.folklore.org/StoryView.py?story=A_Rich_Neighbor_Named_Xerox.txt (accessed Feb 10^th 2014)

[viii] Steve Jobs: the last thing PBS movie, 1999.

[ix] Blumenthal, p. 2.

[x] Steve Jobs: the last thing PBS movie, 1999

[xi] Laura Collins, Daily Mail, UK, “Steve Job’s ex-lover’s book reveals Apple founder”, October 29^th 2013, http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-2478339/Steve-Jobs-ex-lovers-book-reveals-Apple-founder.html (accessed Feb 10th 2014)

[xii] Blumenthal, p. 13.

[xiii] Steve Jobs: the last thing PBS movie, 1999

[xiv] “An Interview with Steve Wozniak”,http://www.thetech.org/exhibits/online/revolution/wozniak/i_b.html(accessed Feb 10th 2014)

William Carey: Educational Pioneer - HIRD

By the Rev.  Dr. Ed Hird

Who was William Carey, and why has he had such a major impact on our global culture?  On May 26^th , I graduated with my Doctorate from Carey Theological College on the UBC Campus.  While at Carey College, I often walked past a painting of Carey, showing his humble beginning as a village shoemaker in Paulersbury, England.  Carey was fascinated with reading books about science, history and travel journals of explorers like Captain Cook.  His village playmates nicknamed him Christopher Columbus.  Carey said that he was addicted as a young person to swearing, lying, and alcohol.  A major turning point happened when he was caught by his employer embezzling a shilling.  Fortunately his employer did not press charges.  For such petty larceny, Carey could have easily paid the price of imprisonment, forfeiture of goods and chattel, whipping or transportation for seven years to the plantations of the West Indies or America.  Facing his own selfishness, Carey had a spiritual breakthrough by personally meeting Christ that had a lasting impact on his values and lifestyle.

Carey had a quick mind and a natural love of learning. He would have normally become a farm labourer, but suffered from a skin disease that made it painful for him to go out in the full sun. If Carey’s face and hands were exposed to the sun for any lengthy period, he would suffer agony throughout the night.  So instead he became a cobbler, making shoes.  While making shoes, he was able to read and pray.  Through this, Carey developed a conviction that he was to go to India.  His unimaginative friends and colleagues tried to talk him out of this fantasy.  His five-month pregnant wife Dorothy was also dead-set against it.  His own father Edmund wondered if his son had lost his mind.  Carey said to his dad: “I am not my own nor would I choose for myself. Let God employ me where he thinks fit.”

With unshakable determination, Carey went to India in 1793 which was under the control of the East India Company.  He later ended up becoming a Professor of Bengali and Sanskrit in Calcutta, India.  Through teaching at Fort Williams College in Calcutta, he was investing in young civil servants from England, helping them to have a good start in India.  Carey believed that the future was as bright as the promises of God.  He had an exceptional natural gift for languages.  Carey called himself a plodder; whatever he started, he always finished.   Unlike a number of his family members and closest friends, Carey survived malaria and numerous other tropical diseases.  His first wife Dorothy however had a nervous breakdown before later dying.  Carey was heartbroken.

Some bureaucrats from the East India Company did their best to expel Carey and his team from India.  Anything that might affect financial profit was seen as a threat.  William Wilberforce however, having finally abolished the slave trade, presented 837 petitions to the British Parliament representing over half a million signatures, requesting that ‘these good and great men’ be allowed to stay in India.  Carey’s enemies attacked him in Parliament for being a lowly shoemaker.  Wilberforce won the day in the Charter Renewal Bill of 1813.

Carey’s motto was “Expect great things from God; attempt great things for God.”

            Entirely self-taught, Carey impacted the emerging generation of Indian leaders that birthed the burgeoning modern democracy of India.  Serampore College was founded by Carey and his colleagues in 1818.  He produced six grammars of Bengali, Sanskrit, Marathi, Panjabi, Telugi, and Kanarese, and with John Clark Marshman, one of Bhutia.  He also translated the whole Bible into Bengali, Oriya, Marathi, Hindi, Assamese, and Sanskrit, and parts of it into twenty-nine other languages or dialects.  Scholars say that Carey significantly contributed to the renaissance of Indian Literature in the nineteenth century.

While an ordained preacher and a church planter, Carey was fascinated with all aspects of daily living.  In 1818 Carey founded two magazines and a newspaper, the Samachar Darpan, the first newspaper printed in any Asian language. He was the father of Indian printing technology, building what was then their largest printing press.  Carey was the first to make indigenous paper for the Indian publishing industry.  He brought the steam engine to India, and pioneered the idea of lending libraries in India.  Carey introduced the concept of a ‘Savings Bank’ to India, in order to fight the all-pervasive social evil of usury at interest rates of 36% to 72%.

Carey introduced the study of astronomy as a science, teaching that the stars and planets are God’s creation set by him in an observable order, rather than astrological deities fatalistically controlling one’s life.  He was the founder of the Agri-Horticultural Society in the 1820s, thirty years before the Royal Agricultural Society was established in England.  Carey was the first person in India to write about forest conservation. In 1823, he was elected as a Fellow of the Linnean Society of London, one of the world’s most distinguished botanical societies even today.  As Carey’s favorite flowers were lilies, he had the honour of having one (Careyanum) named after him.

Having a strong social conscience, Carey was the first man to oppose the Sati widow-burning and female infanticide.  Sati was finally banned by the Government of India in 1829.  He also campaigned for humane treatment of lepers who were being burned or buried alive because of their bad karma.  The view at the point was that leprosy was a deserved punishment in the fifth cycle of reincarnation.

            Carey loved India and never returned home to England, dying in 1834 at the age of 73.  Near the end, he said: ““You have been speaking about William Carey. When I am gone, say nothing about William Carey-speak only about William Carey’s Saviour.”  My prayer for those reading this article is that we too would have the passion for learning and making a difference that William Carey once had.

Video: William Carey – A Candle in the Dark (click to view)

The Rev.  Dr. Ed Hird,

BSW, MDiv, DMin

Rector, St. Simon’s Church North Vancouver

Anglican Mission in the Americas (Canada)

http://stsimonschurch.ca

-an article for the June 2013 Deep Cove Crier

-award-winning author of the book ‘Battle for the Soul of Canada’

http://www.battleforthesoulofcanada.blogspot.com

p.s. In order to obtain a copy of the book ‘Battle for the Soul of Canada’, please send a $18.50 cheque to ‘Ed Hird’, #1008-555 West 28th Street, North Vancouver, BC V7N 2J7. For mailing the book to the USA, please send $20.00 USD. This can also be done by PAYPAL using the e-mail ed_hird@telus.net . Be sure to list your mailing address. The Battle for the Soul of Canada e-book can be obtained for $9.99 CDN/USD.

-Click to download a complimentary PDF copy of the Battle for the Soul study guide : Seeking God’s Solution for a Spirit-Filled Canada

You can also download the complimentary Leader’s Guide PDF: Battle for the Soul Leaders Guide