Rediscovering Male Friendship
September 11, 2010
By Rev Ed Hird
While completing my book Battle for the Soul of Canada, I reconnected with an old friend, David Bentall, who has also become an author. David and I met back on a dark, rainy evening in February 1972. I had been invited to a youth meeting by another friend of David s, John Edmondson. But my ride failed to turn up. Being a fairly determined individual, I jumped on my 10-speed Pugeot and sought to find the meeting. Unfortunately I wrote down the wrong address. By the time I found the house, I was half an hour late and totally drenched.
When I rang on the doorbell, a youth leader named Len Sawatsky welcomed me with a big smile. That evening changed my life. I remember seeing David Bentall and John Edmondson, beaming with a joy of which I knew nothing. I said to Dave and John later that evening: ‘Whatever you have, I want it’. Len Sawatsky then took me to the kitchen and patiently explained to me what it meant to know God personally. I said yes, and my life has never been the same since.
Thirty-four years later, David Bentall s book The Company You Keep (Augsburg, 2004) allowed me to catch up with his life journey. David discovered that though he was successful like his father and grandfather in running Dominion Construction, his heart was not really in construction. So David wisely chose to change course and become a family business consultant with Next Step Advisers who regularly teaches courses at the Business Families Centre at the University of British Columbia. David tells in the book how isolated most men are from each other. Our radical independence as men is the problem, not the cure.
David comments in the book that Most dating couples spend sixteen hours a week together. Once married, they are too busy to give each other one hour a week.
David shows chapter by chapter how having close male friendship helps us have stronger marriages, healthier children, more effective businesses, and better spiritual lives. David is in an accountability group with Bob Kuhn, 
founding partner of the law firm Kuhn and Co., and with Carson Pue, President of Arrow Leadership Ministries. This male accountability group help each other stay focused on the priorities of marriage and spirituality. David comments: Marriage is a delight, a comfort, an inspiration, and an adventure. It’s a wonderful gift from God, and at times it s exhilarating. It s all of these things and much more, but one thing it often is not easy. In fact, if you want to build a marriage that will last, you are likely in for a battle.
With unusual transparency and vibrancy, David shows how challenging it is to keep one’s head and marriage in today’s fast-paced business world. Solid male friendships have been David’s lifesaver. I strongly commend David’s book for anyone who wants to retool their life and marriage.
May David’s book inspire us as men to refocus on our wives and families in the midst of life s frantic pace.
The Reverend Ed Hird, Rector
St. Simon’s Church North Vancouver
Anglican Mission in the Americas (Canada)
- previously published in the North Shore News
http://stsimonschurch.ca
-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
As Sick as our Secrets
September 5, 2010
By Rev Ed Hird
There’s an oft-heard saying in the recovery community: “We’re as sick as our secrets.” Over the years, I have met many people in abusive situations who have paid a great price to eventually extricate themselves from the vicious cycle of manipulation and recrimination. Sexual and physical abuse, in particular, scars the victim deeply. Often the victims falsely blame themselves. Recovery from abuse involves breaking the conspiracy of silence and deception perpetrated by abusers. Only the truth, however painful, can really set us free. Secrecy keeps us chained to our abusers.
At the heart of the ‘twelve steps’, in Step Four and Five, is the willingness to break the power of secrecy by admitting to God, yourself, and another person the exact nature of how you have wronged other people. I have done many ‘Fifth Steps’ for others over the past twenty-eight years. It is always such a privilege. I feel like I grow so much through this opportunity. I notice, however, that ‘Fifth Steps’ are very difficult in our secretive, victim-based culture. Many people want to come to me and admit the exact nature of how they have been wronged, but not how they have wronged other people. Until we can open up and get such things off our chest, we are still stuck with guilt, recrimination, and self-doubt. We really are as sick as our secrets.
The Good Book tells us to cast our cares upon the Lord, for He cares for us. I have found that sharing deeply my heart with another caring, listening person can be profoundly liberating. That is why we are encouraged by James, Jesus’ brother, to ‘confess our sins to each other and pray for each other that we may be healed.’ I have a number of friends who have had the courage to go see Bonnie Chatwin, a North Shore Pastoral & Clinical Counselor. It was not at all easy for them to do this, but I was amazed by the breakthroughs that they have achieved. How much do we want to be well? Often the price of being well is giving up our obsessive need for independence and secrecy, and beginning to trust another person with our life story.
We as Canadians live in a culture that has become more secretive and private. The vast majority of Canadians still believe in God, prayer, and Jesus’ resurrection, but such faith concerns have largely gone into the closet. There is a widespread perception that faith is so personal and private that it cannot be mentioned publicly.
The fast-rising and falling Da Vinci Code fad fit totally into that way of thinking. It implicitly taught that true spirituality is about dark hidden secrets that only the elite may know about: secrets allegedly hidden in Da Vinci’s paintings, secrets covered by an alleged secret society named the Priory of Sion, secrets about Mary Magdalene and Mother Eve in the Garden of Eden. Over one hundred million North Americans have either read the Da Vinci Code book or seen the movie. There is something in us that is drawn to secret knowledge and secret passageways. But is secrecy really the way to health and life? Is secrecy really the key to genuine spirituality?
The most famous person in the world once said: “I have spoken openly to the world…I said nothing in secret.” (John 18:20) Jesus also said that “whatever is hidden is meant to be disclosed, and whatever is concealed or secret is meant to be brought out into the open.” (Matthew 4:22) Rabbi Saul/Paul, who was Jesus’ most famous disciple, commented: “we have renounced secret and shameful ways; we do not use deception, nor do we distort the word of God. On the contrary, we set forth the truth plainly…” (2 Corinthians 4:2)
Contrary to the claims of the Da Vinci Code, Christianity has no secret codes, no secret initiation rites, no secret vows. Jesus said nothing in secret. Jesus brought everything out in the open. We really are as sick as our secrets.
The Rev. Ed Hird, Rector
St. Simon’s Church North Vancouver
Anglican Mission in the Americas (Canada)
-previously published in the North Shore News
http://stsimonschurch.ca
-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
The Unforgettable Benjamin Franklin
August 21, 2009
By Rev Ed Hird+ 
I remember as a young child being taught Benjamin Franklin’s proverb: ‘Early to bed, early to rise, makes a person healthy, wealthy and wise.’ As my father and I were both early to bed, early to rise, I have a lot of happy memories of time spent together around the breakfast table together at 6am.
Benjamin Franklin had the common touch. As a brilliant philosopher, he shared wisdom through short pithy sayings like ‘He that lies down with dogs shall rise up with fleas.’ Many of Franklin’s sayings are so well known that people confuse them as coming from the Bible. ‘God helps those who help themselves’ is from Franklin, not from Jesus.
Many of his sayings were published in Poor Richard’s Almanack, a book series that has had a profound impact on North American culture and identity. Some would say that the middle class dreams and ideals can be traced back directly to Benjamin Franklin’s homespun philosophy. Many of us unknowingly quote Benjamin Franklin on a regular basis: haste makes waste; no pain, no gain; and nothing is certain but death and taxes. Most of Franklin’s sayings were about encouraging diligence, honesty, industry and 
temperance. Franklin saw the Judeo-Christian ethic as “the best the world ever saw or is likely to see.”
Not everyone liked Benjamin Franklin. DH Lawrence said: “I do not like him….that barbed wire moral enclosure that Poor Richard rigged up….Benjamin Franklin tried to take away my wholeness and my dark forest, my freedom.”
Benjamin Franklin’s father had intended that his son Benjamin train to be a clergyman, but lacked the resources to do so. Instead Benjamin became a printer and an inventor. Benjamin Franklin is world-famous for his kite experiments with lightning, proving that lightning was made up of electricity. Some see him as the world’s first electrician. While visiting England, he attached his latest invention, the lightning rod, to St Paul’s Cathedral. He also created hot-water pipes to warm up the chilly British House of Commons. Other significant Franklin inventions were bifocals and the Franklin stove.
Benjamin Franklin was far ahead of his time in terms of understanding workplace toxicity. As a printer, he discovered that newspaper workers were being poisoned through handling hot lead type, causing stiffness and paralysis. Franklin found out 
that this lead poisoning was also affecting glazers, type-founders, plumbers, potters, white-lead makers and painters.
Benjamin Franklin was so successful in business that he retired at age 42 and devoted the rest of his life to public service. He moved to England twice in order to help the relationship between England and its American colonies. While in England, Franklin wrote most of his autobiography at the home of the Bishop of St. Asaph, Jonathan Shipley. His book became the world’s most popular autobiography, and has been translated into most major languages. Franklin’s autobiography was the one book which Davy Crockett had when slaughtered at the Alamo.
Despite his being a strong Royalist, Benjamin Franklin ended up being resented by the British House of Lords who publicly humiliated him for his efforts to bring reconciliation between England and its American colonies. This was Franklin’s tipping point where he became a strong advocate for Independence. As America’s first postmaster general, Franklin was also put in charge of establishing the first US currency. In the aftermath of the Boston Tea Party, Franklin recommended that Americans give up tea drinking as a way to fund their new government. The constitution’s phrase ‘We hold these truths to be self-evident’ was the direct result of Franklin’s editing. Franklin was the only one to sign all four of the USA’s founding papers: the Declaration of Independence, the treaty with France, the 
peace accord with Britain, and the Constitution. His unsuccessful proposal for the American Great Seal was to have Pharaoh being swallowed by the Red Sea, along with the words ‘Rebellion to Tyrants is Obedience to God.’
Franklin’s greatest popularity was among the French who lined the streets when he entered Paris as the USA’s first foreign diplomat. The French saw him as a simple frontier sage, and promptly put his likeness everywhere, causing the French King to become very jealous. Without Franklin’s winning the moral and financial support of the French, it is doubtful that the United States would have survived.
Franklin was a very complicated, even tragic individual with strong approach/avoidance tendencies. He loved the United States but spent most of his last years in England and then France. His relations with the opposite sex were muddled and confused. He loved his wife and family but was away more than at home and suffered a painful split with his son William over politics.
Despite Franklin’s reputation as a religious skeptic, he went out of his way in his newspaper to promote the Rev George Whitfield who led North America’s first Great Awakening in 1739-1741. As a scientist, he was amazed that Whitfield’s voice could be 
heard without amplification by over 30,000 people at one time. Franklin published all of Whitfield’s books and posted his sermons on the front page of his Philadelphia Gazette. Whitfield wrote to Franklin, saying: “As you have made a pretty considerable progress in the mysteries of electricity, I would now humbly recommend to your diligent unprejudiced pursuit and study the mystery of the new-birth. It is a most important, interesting study, and when mastered, will richly answer and repay you for all your pains.”
After jealous clergy closed their pulpits to Whitfield, Franklin and other trustees built a large hall where Whitfield could preach. Franklin commented: “It was wonderful to see the change soon made in the manners of our inhabitants.” After the revival ended, Franklin converted the hall into the Academy of Philadelphia which later became the University of Pennsylvania.
As Governor of Pennsylvania, Franklin in 1748 proposed a day of fasting and prayer. In 1778, Franklin wrote to the French Government, saying: “Whoever shall introduce into public affairs the principals of primitive Christianity will change the face of the world.”, recommending that every French home have a Bible and newspaper, and a good school in every district.
At the 1787 American Constitutional Convention, Franklin commented: “the longer I live, the more convincing proofs I see of this truth — that God governs in the affairs of men. And if a sparrow cannot fall to the ground without His notice, is it probable that an empire can rise without His aid?” On that basis, Franklin arranged that prayers led by local clergy would be held each morning before Assembly business. Franklin said: “If I had ever before been an atheist, I should now have been convinced of the Being and government of a Deity!”
Franklin memorably commented: “Think of three things: Whence you came, where you are going, and to whom you must give account.” May each of us, like Benjamin Franklin, be willing to be accountable to God in the midst of life’s challenges.
The Reverend Ed Hird
Rector, St. Simon’s North Vancouver
Anglican Mission in the Americas (Canada)
http://stsimonschurch.ca
-author of the award-winning ‘Battle for the Soul of Canada’
edhird
