Saturday, April 4, 2026

Sermon - TLIS - 1.1.5 - "Footprints" and key performance indicators/metrics

Sermon - TLIS - 1.1.5 - "Footprints" and key performance indicators/metrics

Revelation 21:4
He will wipe every tear from their eyes.  There will be no more death or mourning or crying or pain, for the old order of things has passed away.

Job 14:22
They feel but the pain of their own bodies and mourn only for themselves.

Job 16:6
Yet if I speak, my pain is not relieved; and if I refrain, it does not go away.

Ecclesiastes 2:23
All their days their work is grief and pain; even at night their minds do not rest. This too is meaningless.

Jeremiah 15:18
Why is my pain unending and my wound grievous and incurable? You are to me like a deceptive brook, like a spring that fails.

Isaiah 61:1
The Spirit of the Sovereign Lord is on me, because the Lord has anointed me to proclaim good news to the poor. He has sent me to bind up the brokenhearted, to proclaim freedom for the captives and release from darkness for the prisoners

Psalm 77:2
When I was in distress, I sought the Lord; at night I stretched out untiring hands, and I would not be comforted.


I know that an awful lot of people really like it but I've never liked "Footprints."  For starters, what is it?  Is it a poem?  Is it a poster?  Is it meme?  I don't even know what to call it.  A little inspirational piece.

Except opportunistic.  For one thing, I know that the author has been grasping and demanding in asserting her intellectual property rights to the item in question.  This is definitely a case where Mammon is winning out over God.  So that's one knock against the poem.  (If it is a poem.)

But quite apart from that, I don't particularly admire the concept.  So, at the most difficult times of our life, when we feel completely isolated and alone, we are to take comfort from the fact that, in fact, we are not alone.  It's just that God isn't talking to us.

At the same time that I am working on this, I am working on a series of articles hoping to educate those involved in the managing of volunteers.  Some of the time those who are managing volunteers do have management training, and simply have never had the opportunity to try to motivate workers whom they cannot threaten because they cannot threaten to withhold a paycheck.  (What part of "volunteer" do you not understand?)

But many who are managing volunteers do arise from the ranks of the volunteers, and do understand how to motivate the volunteer workforce, but have never had any training, or even possibly experience, with regard to management.  So, therefore, I am covering basic management concepts, part of which involve metrics and key performance indicators.

A metric is a measurement.  A key performance indicator, or KPI, is a metric which you use and collect, and even report on, because it is crucially important in terms of understanding how well your team, and by extension you, as their manager, are doing.  It is about the performance of your team, and it is key.  It is vital.  It is as close as possible to the heart of the objective of your organization.

So let us return to the "Footprints" on the beach.  And there are missing footprints at certain points, and we are trying to address the question of why they are missing, and we are told that they are missing because God has been carrying us through this stretch.  Therefore, this time in our lives that was distressing, and bitterly painful, wasn't actually distressing or painful because God was with us.

Except that this is arrant nonsense.  Yes, in faith we may accept that God was, in fact, with us, since God is with us at all times.  But at these points, we actually *were* distressed, and in painful anxiety, and there was no comfort forthcoming.

So the key performance indicator here is not whether God was present or absent, but whether or not we have had comfort and relief during this difficult and trying time.

Okay, let us take God out of the picture for a moment and attempt another illustration, to try and observe the point that I am making.  So you are in the hospital.  You have a very painful condition.  You have been in great pain, all night, and the nurses have not answered your call buzzer, and you are understandably miffed about all of this.  And the next time you see the doctor, you task the doctor with the fact that he was not there.  And the doctor will, quite reasonably in his own mind, answer that yes he *was* there.  He was right next door in the next room.  He was in fact observing you on a television monitor, watching a video feed from your room.  So the doctor was there, and was watching you, and you were, in fact, in no medical danger at any time, and the doctor instructed the nurses not to respond to your calls because it was more important that you rest then that you complain to the nurses about your pain.

Your opinion about this whole situation might be slightly different from the doctor's.  Yes, okay, he was present, or at least reasonably nearby, and he was observing you, all through the night, making sure that you were not in actual medical distress.  The fact that you were in psychological distress from the pain has no significant negative impact on your prognosis or potential for recovery.

But you would probably be perturbed by all of this. You would point out that the pain, even if it doesn't actually prevent your body from healing and recovery, is extremely unpleasant, and there are means to relieve the pain.

I would say that the same thing is happening in "Footprints."  Yes, God is here.  We can accept that, on the face of it if nothing else.  God is present with us.

But God is not comforting us.  As a matter of fact nobody is comforting us.  We feel alone.  We feel in distress.  We feel in psychological pain.  It's not nice.

And the fact that God is supposed to be there doesn't help, if God is not going to comfort us.  Why is God not going to comfort us in this painful situation?  Is God present with us, but simply unconcerned about our pain?  Does God not care about our distress? Am I somehow unworthy of God's comfort?  The key performance indicator here is not presence or absence.  The key performance indicator here is the pain, and the capability, or failure, to control the pain and provide pain relief.

"Footprints" seems to consider itself an answer to the problem of pain: why do bad things happen to good people?  And, quite frankly, "God is with you" is not always a terribly comforting answer.  (And for anyone who has read a number of my other sermons, at this point you may be expecting me to say that this provides us, human beings here on earth, God's hands in a fallen world, an opportunity to help someone else out.  Hey, if the responsibility to help fits ...)

But I suppose that my objections to "Footprints" might be considered subjective.  After all, I am a grieving widower and a depressive.  It's painful, distressing, and difficult right now, so I may have a somewhat negative view of life overall.

Metrics are supposed to be objective, but very often they can seem surprisingly subjective.  For example, while I enjoy the game of curling, I am bemused by commentators' claims that a player has statistics of 63% on hits or 97% on draws.  It seems to me that these statistics are based on the assumption that the commentator knows, as well as, or if not better than, the actual player, what the player's intentions were.  For example, if the commentator assumes that the hit rock was supposed to move 100 cm and instead it moves 50 cm, is that a hit rate of 50%?  If the commentator assumed that the hit rock was supposed to move at an angle of 45° and instead it moves at an angle of 30°, is that a bit rate of 66%?  What is the percentage of the combination of those two results?

Once again, the pandemic provided a number of examples of metrics.  Vaccines were said to have efficacy rates that ranged widely.  One particular vaccine was said to have an efficacy of 88%, others 92%, and yet others 97%.  Supposedly, this was all based on precisely the same data.  Obviously, there was some subjectivity in the interpretation here.

In addition, during the pandemic, BC's film industry struggled very hard to keep going during the crisis.  They had strict regimes in terms of protection and isolation, as well as highly detailed reporting requirements.  At the time that they were working on this, the media fastened on one particular metric, known as the positivity rate, and constantly reported on the positivity rate for various activities and situations.  Reports from the film industry, only days apart, would give positivity rates of 12 to 87 to 133 for different variants of the COVID virus.  So I suppose that possibly I shouldn't be as hard on "Footprints" for being somewhat subjective.

I suppose that I see "Footprints" as about as useful as the "let me know if there is anything I can do for you" response.  The person who is in distress is in distress.  The person in distress is damaged in some way.  The responsibility for deciding not only what they need, but also your capabilities, your willingness, and your resources, and then doing the calculation of whether their need matches your capability, should not fall on them.

"God is with you" is about equivalently helpful.

I suppose that my real objection is to the thoughtlessness of it all.  Someone else is in distress.  They are in pain.  One way or another.  We are distressed to see their distress!  We want to help!  We have never been in this situation and we don't know what to do!  So we take the quickest, cheapest, and easiest way out, regardless of whether it actually helps the person in distress or not.

Not helpful, guys.

Hoping is not always good enough.  We all know where good intentions lead.  You may have to give it a few extra seconds of thought.  You may have to consider how painful this would be for you.  You may have to consider what the other person's life is like and what your resources actually are, and what you can actually do for them that might actually comfort them in this situation.

Then do that.


Theological Lessons from Information Security

Sermon - TLIS - 0.1.1 - Security is a hindrance with no benefit

Sermon - TLIS - 0.2 / 47 - Integrity/Robert Slade is a world renowned speaker

Sermon - TLIS - 0.7.3 - Four right answers on CISSP questions

Sermon - TLIS - 1.1.2 - Management Planning: Operational, Tactical, Strategic



Sermon - TLIS - 1.2.6 - Security awareness, training, education


Sermon - TLIS - 1.7.1 - Organizational Roles and Body Parts



Sermon - TLIS - 9.8.5 / 73 - Muster station, safe and secure


Sermon - TLIS - 10.5.1 - Privacy

Sermon TLIS - 10.6.1 / 54 - Liability and Negligence


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Sermon 60 - Ella, I'm going to get you!

Sermon 60 - Ella, I'm going to get you!

1 Timothy 1:5
The goal of this command is love, which comes from a pure heart and a good conscience and a sincere faith.

1 Corinthians 12:18,19
But in fact God has placed the parts in the body, every one of them, just as he wanted them to be.  If they were all one part, where would the body be?


So there are two little girls, waiting around, sometimes running around, before the church service.  The older girl is possibly six years old.  The younger girl is possibly three years old.  And, at one point, the older girl turns and calls to the younger girl, "Ella, I'm going to get you!"

And the game is on.  The game is chase.  It may seem that there aren't any particular rules to this game.  You probably think that I'm kidding.  You probably think that there isn't any such game and that I may simply be referring to Tag or Blind Man's Bluff or that there aren't any rules at all to this.  If so you haven't been spending enough time observing children and you probably should. There is an objective to this game.

One person chases the other person.  The intent of the game just seems to be to run around.  The intent doesn't seem to be to actually catch the other person, since, if you did, what would you do?  The game would be over.

So the older girl, the one who has instigated the game, makes some interesting choices.  Even though the older girl is the chaser, and the younger girl is the chased.  The younger girl, at about three years old, does not understand the strategy, or even the tactics, of the game.  Possibly simply to indicate her willingness to participate in the game, initially she runs toward, rather than away from, the older girl.

The older girl, more familiar with the strategy and the tactics of the game, but also understanding more of the dynamics of the game, understands that, if she takes advantage of this mistake, and catches the younger girl, the game is, effectively, over.  So the older girl, rather neatly, and without apparently seeming to avoid the younger girl, sidesteps, and allows the younger girl to run past.  Which the younger girl does.  The chase is then on.  The game is on.  And the older girl chases the younger girl, and they both have a wonderful time.

I am certain that Gloria would have been able to provide some insights into what is going on.  I am certain that, had I pointed this out to her, she would have been able to make a profound observation about the dynamics of what is going on.  Gloria had a wonderfully intuitive grasp and understanding of the behavior of young children.  It's too bad that I can't access that insight.  It probably would have made this sermon much more interesting, and likely much more valuable.

My thought is much simpler.  At what point is it that we lose this ability to enjoy the game, and, instead, we decide that it is important to win?  At what point do we, in the person of the older girl, as we age, decide to take advantage of the error of, and lack of understanding of, the younger girl, and simply catch her.  This means that we win, but it also means that the game is over.  Once again, at what point, in our supposed development and maturation, do we lose the ability to enjoy the game as a game, and, instead, decide that it is more important to win, than to enjoy?

Part of this question is general.  For decades, psychologists have tried to figure out whether humans are cooperative or competitive.  It is also part of the nature/nurture debate: are we naturally cooperative, and society teaches us to compete and fight with each other, or are we naturally combative, and society acts as a restraining force to keep us from killing each other?  And the question is older than that, as well.  Philosophers have been arguing about the ultimate nature of man for millennia.

A week or so ago, I wrote a sermon about corn.  One of the points that I made in the corn sermon, was about the importance of intercropping.  And discussing this with a friend, the friend immediately went to the importance, in the church, of cooperating with each other.  This follows the idea that Paul expresses to us, in discussing the gifts of the spirit, that we have different gifts, but they are given by the same spirit.  They need to be used together, in the same way that different types of cells, and tissue, in the human body, need to work together, and that it is, in fact, the differences in the different types of tissue, that contributes to the strength, and the functionality, of the human body.  If the entire body were an eye, for example, how would the eye walk around?

Of course, the answer is that the eye would not walk around.  The eye would be dead, because it didn't have any blood supplied from the heart, and the blood would not be oxygenated because there were no lungs, and the blood would not carry any nutrients because there was no stomach and intestine.

But that's probably another sermon, prepared by somebody who knows more about spiritual gifts than I do.  However, the point that my friend was making is well taken.  Why is it that we, in the church, knowing, and having being told that we need to cooperate with each other, fail to do so?  Why is it that we seem to think that we need to compete, particularly in the "holier than thou" competition?  Why is it that we all need to be spiritual leaders?  That we need to be the ones who have more spiritual wisdom than our fellow Christians?

And, of course, why is it that we need to be so holy, and so spiritual, and so knowledgeable about arcane and mystical spiritual issues about how many angels can dance on the head of a pin, when none of that seems to require that we actually do things that God has asked us to do?

God has asked that we love Him.  Why is that so hard for us to do?  Why is it that our days, and weeks, and years, are taken up with getting a better job, getting a better house, getting a bigger boat, and not getting to know God?  God has asked us to help our neighbors.  To love our neighbors.  Why is it that our time in church is taken up with exploring arcane interpretations of minor passages in Revelations, rather than going to the poor, and widowed, and orphaned, and making sure that their needs (not desires, but needs) are being fulfilled?  God told us to take the good news to all peoples.  Why is it that our time is spent planning, and budgeting, and hiring, and formulating programs for the church, rather than actually going and telling people the good news?  (Is it possibly because we don't actually have any good news to tell them?)

When do we stop seeing other people as relationships to be explored and enjoyed, which is a kind of play in itself?  When do we see others, everyone else, as competition?

I miss being able to explore these questions with Gloria.  I miss being able to ask Gloria for her insights into these types of questions.  Possibly she wouldn't have had any final answer for these questions but she would have had an insight, I'm quite sure of it.

I never had children so I deferred to Gloria in regard to how we related to our grandchildren.  Gloria modelled a pretty much unconditional love for the grandchildren.  We told the grandchildren that we loved them.  At every possible opportunity.  We hugged the grandchildren at every possible opportunity, every time they would hold still for it.

I remember that one grandchild (too early from our perspective), started to understand, from the socializations that he was receiving, that big boys didn't hug.  He stopped hugging us, or at least was resistant to the idea.  Another, noting that Gloria was upset by this, made her a promise, at an equally early age, that he would never stop hugging his Grama.  He kept that promise to the end of Gloria's life.

As I say, when is it that children learn, from their elders or from society, that others are not relationships to be played with but competition where they need to win, and therefore the other needs to lose?

The why of it is really fairly easy.

As Paul points out in Romans, the wisdom of God is foolishness to man.  Man, society, and people in general find unconditional love with others; others who are to be played with; foolishness.

Our society sees that the world is a dangerous place.  One always needs to strive in the world.  Therefore it is important to be as good as possible at winning in any kind of situation since so many situations are dangerous and require you to come out on top: to win if you are to survive.  Winning is, to the world, the only measure of success because if you don't win you die.  This extends to everything and everyone.  Yes it is obvious that the world sees everything other than ourselves as competition and a competition which must be won at every encounter.

Which is really interesting when we get back to the idea of the body and all the different parts of the body needing each other in order to survive.  The individual parts of the body cannot survive apart from each other.  And, in fact, if you start taking away the individual parts of the body, probably the body itself does not survive.  As a whole.

But God, of course, sees every other as a relationship.  Every relationship is an opportunity to love.  Every relationship is an opportunity to play and to extend that play as long as possible in order to explore the relationship as fully as possible.

That is our model for relationship.  How is it that we lose it so early?


(See also: Sermon 80 - Babies


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Friday, April 3, 2026

Artemis II

Fifty-five years ago, and change, I watched the first time that human beings set foot on the moon.  Via black and white TV, I might add.  I wasn't actually there at the site to greet them.  But I suppose that I am one of relatively few people who remember that momentous event, and now *this* momentous event when we return to the moon.

I must admit, it's a bit disappointing that it's taken us this long.  And I'm also a little bit surprised at how much interest this trip has generated, given that it's a return trip anyway.  Congratulations to all involved, and particularly Jeremy Hansen.  I hope that all goes well on the trip.  I hope that the follow-up trips happen quickly and regularly, and that we get the colony up and running soon.  Hopefully we will do less damage to that celestial body than we have done to our home.

I suppose I shouldn't be surprised at the interest in Artemis II.  The rest of the news seems to be about how angry some people can be at other people, and the fights that result, and making really bad decisions about promising technologies.  Having somebody actually accomplish what they set out to do makes a nice change.
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Sermon 78 - Quantum Community

Sermon 78 - Quantum Community

Job 9:33
If only there were someone to mediate between us, someone to bring us together

Ephesians 4:16
From him the whole body, joined and held together by every supporting ligament, grows and builds itself up in love, as each part does its work.

1 John 4:18
There is no fear in love. But perfect love drives out fear, because fear has to do with punishment. The one who fears is not made perfect in love.


Usually my sermons are inspired by somebody else's boring sermon.  Not today.  Today it was actually the prayer time, before the service began, that occasioned thoughts.

First of all, someone thanks God that the church was doing a great job of outreach to the community.  I was immediately reminded of the Pharisee and the tax collector in the temple.  We all see the Pharisee as the bad guy in this parable.  It's clear, from the way the parable ends that the Pharisee as the bad guy.  But it wouldn't have been seen that way by the Jews, in the first century, who heard the parable.  The Pharisees weren't the bad guys.  The Pharisees were the religious elite.  No, they might not have been actual priests, since you had to be a Levite, and even a subset within the family of Levi, in order to be a priest.  They would be the teachers. They would be the *teachers* of teachers.  Not exactly pastors, they would have been more like the faculty at theological colleges.  They would have been Bishops.  They would have been area ministers.  They'd definitely be wardens, and deacons, and elders.  Some of them would have been the equivalent of televangelists!  They were the good guys.

And then there's the prayer that the Pharisee prayed.  There actually isn't anything wrong with that prayer.  The prayer thanks God that God has provided you with teaching, and support, and revelation, and the will to obey God.  The prayer isn't really boasting about how good you are.  It is thanking God for *making* you good.  It is attributing to God any of your goodness.  This is, in fact, a prescribed prayer.  You can look it up in Psalms.  It's right there.  Chapter and verse.

So, there isn't anything wrong with thanking God for the fact that your church is doing outreach to the community in which your church is situated.  It is good to thank God for his strength for giving you the opportunity to do outreach, and to fulfill the great commandment, and for giving your church the strength to follow through on it.

If, indeed, your church does, in fact, follow through on it.

And there's the rub.  There's the problem.  In the parable, was the Pharisee, in fact, so much better, so much holier, then the person he was comparing himself with?  And, in prayer time today, was this church doing a particularly good job of outreach?

Now, I'm not really giving away any personally, or institutionally, identifying information by saying that, in the case of this church, I think not.  An awful lot of churches in town say that they are doing outreach.  And, a number of churches in town do make steps towards outreach.  They give handouts to the poor.  They help organizations that are helping the poor.  They take up collections for organizations that are helping the poor.  They even go into the streets, some of them, and actually talk to the poor, when they're handing out backpacks, or bags, or sandwiches.  But do they actually follow through?

I am reminded of the old Jewish joke from the movie "Fiddler on the Roof": God bless and keep the homeless; far away from us!

I have, elsewhere, noted that doing security (which is my field) is like shoveling snow. You have to do the whole job, or, very often, it's worse than never even starting.

Do we do the whole job in regard to community outreach?  Now, community outreach is a huge task.  None of us, individually, can do that whole job.  Having visited every Church in town, I can confidently state that the Christian population is only about four percent of the town.  So for the four percent to reach out to the 96%, well, it's a huge task.  So, no, nobody is expecting any one Christian, or even one church, to take on that whole task.

The thing is, there isn't much going on in regard to even part of the outreach task.  As I say, I go around to a lot of the churches in town.  On a fairly regular basis.  And I'm not seeing much change in the populations of the churches.  So if all of this outreach is going on, where are all the new congregants?  If the outreach is, in fact, being effective, why aren't the churches growing?

Okay, I will agree that the philosophy of the church growth movement is not the only measure of success in spreading the kingdom of God.  So, it isn't fair just to look at church membership numbers, and say that outreach is not going on.  But I also see what is happening to individuals who are going into the churches in town.  I see people coming to town, already part of the Christian church, and starting church shopping.  And I also see them going from church to church, and being disappointed by the lack of outreach from the churches, when, after all, the individuals reached out first in coming to the churches.  And, in all too many cases, I see the attempts to find a church falter, and then often die, since there is no return on the investment.

Yes, there are always people who come to our churches with an ulterior motive, and want something from us that we can't give or can't afford to give.  But I'm seeing this failure to welcome newcomers in far too many cases.  It's not just the leeches who are being turned away.

So, those were my initial thoughts, following that initial prayer to thank God for how good we are being at fulfilling the great commission.  The thing is, prayer time went on.  And, later in the prayer time, the prayers started to turn to the problems in the immediate vicinity of the church.  And the problems are real.  I know this.  Probably better than the members of this particular church.  After all, I am a volunteer with community policing.  And, in community policing, we have recently been made aware of some concerns in the vicinity of this church.  So, yes, the problems are real.

The thing is, the problems come from precisely the same demographic that, a few minutes earlier, the church had been congratulating itself on doing successful outreach to.  And nobody seemed to notice that this was the case.  Nobody seemed to be aware that, a few minutes earlier, they have been congratulating themselves, and thanking God for their success, in reaching out to this particular demographic.   Supposedly they were making connections.  Supposedly they were making changes in the lives of the individuals within this demographic.  Supposedly they were improving the situation, and bringing the particular members of this outside community, into the church community.  And then, a few minutes later, they were calling down God's protection on the church, to keep the members of the outside community away from the church, and the church community.

We are pleased with outreach *to* the community, just not keen on danger *from* the community.

And, seemingly, nobody saw any particular problem with this.  Nobody saw any contradiction in these two prayers.  Nobody seemed to be aware that they were congratulating themselves with reaching outsiders for Christ, and then asking Christ to keep the outsiders away from their Church.


Being a physicist my mind immediately went to quantum mechanics.  In the normal world an object can't be in two states at once.  In quantum physics a quantum entity can.  Here we have a church which wants to be in community and doesn't want to be in community at the same time.  In quantum physics this is known as superposition.

The thing is that superposition is an unstable state.  There is something called the observer effect.  As soon as anybody observes the superposition entity, the wave state collapses and the entity assumes one state or the other.

Which means that as soon as anybody takes a closer look at this prayer that wants to be reaching out to the community, but also wants to be protected *from* the community, these claims collapse.

You can't love your neighbour if you won't do anything for your neighbour.  You can't say that you love God and that you have faith in God if you won't do what God requests in terms of loving your neighbour and actively assisting your neighbour when they need it.

In the same way that you can't love God and love and serve mammon or money at the same time, you can't ask God to help you reach out to the community if you refuse to, in fact, reach out to the community!  You can't reach out to the community and ask God to protect you from that same community and make sure that they never interact with you!

I strongly suspect that, originally, the children of Israel were supposed to do what God had said that they were supposed to do.  That is, they were supposed to be a blessing to the nations of the earth.  Israel had God's law.  I really suspect that, originally, they were supposed to follow God's law and then they were supposed to go to the other nations and show them, tell them, and demonstrate to them that following God's law meant you had a better life.

But they didn't do that.  They didn't follow the law and they didn't bless the other nations.  Even though they were not following the law, they hoarded the law all to themselves and did not reveal it to the other nations as I suspect they were supposed to do.

And so the law, the blessing, and the primacy in demonstrating the benefits of following God's law was taken away from them and given to the followers of the Way.  That is, us.

And the thing is, do we have a responsibility that we are not following?  Is there something that we are supposed to be doing?  Is there a blessing that we are supposed to be passing on to others?

And if we don't, will the blessings, which in our case are possibly material blessings, be taken away from us?  Have we been given material blessings in order that we may pass those blessings along to others, others in our community who are not as fortunate as we are, who have not been materially blessed?  If we don't pass those material blessings, or even the blessings of our time, our attention, and our education, along to those in our community who do not have them, will those blessings be taken away from us and passed along to someone else who might, hopefully, be more responsible in their stewardship?


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Thursday, April 2, 2026

Old age is not for wimps ...

After Gloria died, I kept her key chain, car keys, and key fob as a kind of backup set of keys.

About a week or so ago, the car key fob that I have been using broke and came off my keychain.  The Toyota dealership in town, which can do most repairs for a Honda, can't do anything about the key fobs.  I have to go and see the Honda dealership in Nanaimo.  So I took Gloria's key fob off Gloria's key chain and put it on my key chain.

Today I was out doing cell watch with Community Policing.  As we were walking back from an hour of cell watch, crossing the crosswalk, I noticed that some poor sap had lost his keys in the crosswalk and that they had been run over several times.  Then I realized that the keys looked very familiar.  And then, as I bent down to pick them up, I fell over, and of course the light then changed against me.  Some very kind young man, and my partner in Community Policing, came over and helped me get back up and off the street.  I do not appear to have damaged anything in "The Fall" except my pride.

The car key fob, which was on my key chain, no longer attaches to a key chain and doesn't work in any case.
My car key does work.
The car key fob, which was *formerly* on my key chain, no longer attaches to a key chain and *does* work.
The key to my mailbox does work.
(The other two keys on my keychain probably work, but are emergency backup keys.)
I have a small bag which will sort of contain the keys and will keep them from poking holes in my pocket.

So, sooner than I wanted to, I will have to go down to the Honda dealership in Nanaimo and order another couple of key fobs for my car.

Gonna go soak in a hot bathtub ...
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Sermon 77 - BBC and Comedivergent

Sermon 77 - BBC and Comedivergent

Genesis 21:6
Sarah said, "God has brought me laughter, and everyone who hears about this will laugh with me."

Ecclesiastes 3:4
a time to weep and a time to laugh, a time to mourn and a time to dance


Today we are going to talk about grief and death and pain and other fun stuff like that.  [Okay there's a little nervous humour over there in the corner; we can work with that.]

I figured that Port Alberni, of all places, would appreciate Black Bitter Comedy.  After all when I got here I found out that the way you guys like your coffee is black and bitter.  People elsewhere talk about coffee being paint stripper or battery acid.  In Port Alberni it isn't acceptable as coffee unless it'll take off the paint and then start eating into the fibreglass underneath.  In Port Alberni it isn't coffee unless the stainless steel table top starts getting etched from the spills or drops of coffee from the cups.  If you like black bitter coffee maybe you'll like Black Bitter Comedy!

Okay it isn't going to be completely black and bitter in the sermon today.  Recently I wrote another sermon on Bibliodivergence, pointing out that God does actually want us to look at the world differently.  Paul definitely says that in Romans, that what we think is wisdom is actually not.  We have to look at the world differently than we are used to looking at the world.

And the impetus to do this sermon, as it very often happens, was from a conversation about (now for?) something completely different.  I was talking to somebody about the Reconciliaction Meetings.  I was inviting him to attend and I told him that he could attend as long as he didn't tell any of his jokes.  He tells really terrible Dad jokes.  And if you know what Dad jokes are, you know that they are bad puns and packaged stale humour.  And if you have had discussions with First Nations people for any length of time, you know that their humour is not like that.  Their humour is more like stand-up comedy.  It is taking situations, any situation, and finding the humour in it.  Sometimes you have to look at it upside down, or inside out, or back to front, to find the humour in it.

First Nations are really good at taking their pain, and even the pain of the world, and transmuting that pain into comedic gold, and laughter.  They see the world upside down.  And the world is better for it.

As I said I see the world differently from other people.  A shrink thinks that I have some form of autism.  Sometimes this difference is useful and sometimes it can be a little bit difficult.  It definitely gives me a different sense of humour than most people.

We tend to be afraid of these differences but we shouldn't.  The differences can definitely help us.  As I say, I am quicker to find unusual solutions to complicated problems than other people.  So we should be looking at the world differently whenever we can.

Jesus said that we had to come to Him as a little child does.  Often people think that that means that we have to have a simplistic faith. Well maybe we should have a simplistic faith, but I think that there's pretty good evidence that Jesus is also telling us that we need to see the world differently.

And even though we over-spiritualize things, it must have been funny the first time that Jesus did it.  They are arguing about who is the first in the Kingdom of God, and Jesus takes a toddler and plunks him down in the middle and says, "Here!  This is what you have to be like to be first in the Kingdom of God."

Gloria had this really intuitive and unique sense of how children, and particularly infants, viewed the world.  She always said that you should try, as often and as much as you possibly could, to see the world the way children saw the world.  Seeing the world the way children saw the world was your only opportunity to see the world in a new way.  (She was right.)

Talking to kids is funny anyway.  Of course sometimes they don't realise that it's funny, which makes it even funnier.  But you have to be careful not to hurt their feelings if you start laughing at something that they don't consider to be funny.

All of my grandchildren got used to the fact that Grandpa had a weird sense of humour.  Ask any of them; they'll tell you that Grandpa's default response to any tragedy or emergency is inappropriate humour.

Like I say, they got used to it.  I have video of my oldest grandson wearing a jester's hat with bells on it.  (He was very young, at the time.)  On the video, I ask him to jingle the hat for me, and he shakes his head to do it.  Of course, shaking your head that way is the same way that we say no, so on the video you can hear Grandpa saying, "No, you're not going to do it?" and then there is this amazing sequence of expressions on his face as he first is disappointed that I didn't realise that he was trying to comply with my request, and then realises that he did, and that the shaking of the head indicates no, and that it was yet another of Grandpa's very weird jokes.  (Resulting in a very big smile  :-)

I have mentioned elsewhere about the men's retreat that really took offense at the assertion that you can't serve God and capitalism at the same time.  The Bible does have very good business advice.  It's actually surprising to see how great it is at giving business advice.  Those directives on how to run your business keep being rediscovered by business management types about every twenty years or so.  (I keep finding that hilarious.)  But the Bible does seem to indicate that God really doesn't have any desire for efficiency. This would seem to say that we need to see business differently as well.

Hey, it's easier for a camel to get through the eye of a needle than it is for a rich person to get into heaven?  You don't really mean that, right?  I mean it's just an image, just an illustration, just a metaphor, right?  Well Jesus didn't back down when they asked!

Take the story of Deborah, Barak, Sisera, and Jael.  Deborah goes to Barak and says that God said you are the person to drive out Israel's enemies.  Barak is a little nervous about doing this.  Deborah says that because he hasn't been wholehearted about it, he has lost the glory that he would have gotten from capturing the enemy general.  Anyway they start fighting and Barak is winning the battle and Sisera runs away.  He goes to the tent of Jael, who is supposed to be the wife of an ally.  Jael says that she'll hide him and gives him some kefir to drink.  We all know that milk products tend to make you sleepy.  When he's asleep she takes a tent peg and drives it right through his head, really nailing him to the ground.

(Okay the fact that I find *that* funny is possibly proof that I *am* a sick, twisted, bitter person.)

And then there's the valley of the dry bones.  Not only is that an unexpected twist ending but it's a rather cartoonish image.  I mean that deliberately and literally.  An awful lot of cartoons have used that same image of the bones coming together, forming a body and then standing up and doing living things.

Job does have a really nice turn in sarcasm.  But it's not just him, and it's not just Jesus who makes jokes.  In the book of Job at the end it's God who is speaking when he talks about trying to put Leviathan on a leash.  He finishes up by saying, "Try it once.  You will *never* do it again!"

Sarcasm isn't confined to Job.  Paul, who is constantly troubled by the circumcision party, suggests that its members should go all the way and castrate themselves.

And it isn't confined to the Bible, either.  There's the ironies of everyday life.  Shortly after Gloria died I started adding scriptural passages to the beginning of my sigblock, the piece of text attached at the bottom of every email message that I send.  This is a series of passages of scripture, quite lengthy now, which basically makes up a kind of a biography of the latter part of my life.  It shows that my wife is dead, that I feel alone, without friends, and unsupported.  Everyone who has received an email message from me in about the last four years has received this at the bottom of every message.  Almost nobody has commented on it, and those few who have basically just said, "What are these words and numbers at the bottom of your email message?"

I have a friend.  I've had this friend for over 40 years.  He is a friend and colleague in the technical realm.  He's a big name both in terms of technology, the Internet, and information security.  He is much, much more important than I am, but we're still friends.  We have only ever met once and, because of the fairly extreme difference in our situations, our conversations, when we do discuss things, tend only  to have to do with our career in information security.  In all the time that I have known him I have never seen any single piece of evidence that he believes in God.  He is an atheist.

He is the first person in four years not only to understand what the string of scripture passages refers to but to have replied with a scripture passage of his own. Philippians 1:3-4: I thank my God every time I remember you.  In all my prayers for all of you, I always pray with joy.

Now *that's* funny. 

Then there's the story of Jesus being asked by the disciples to tell them when the end times will come. This same story is in all three synoptic gospels. It's in Matthew (24), it's in Mark (13), and it's in Luke (21).  And you can just picture it. The disciples hanging on Jesus' every word as Jesus says, "There will be wars and rumors of wars but the end is not yet!"  And the disciples are going, "Yeah yeah, tell us when the end comes!" And Jesus says, "There will be earthquakes in diverse places!"  And the disciples are asking, "The end!  Tell us when the end comes!"  Jesus warns, "Make sure that no one deceives you!"  And the disciples are calling: "Yeah! Yeah! But the end!"  And Jesus says, "And I'm not going to tell you!  No man knows the hour or the day."

I mean, it must have been a bit of a letdown, but it's a good punch line.


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Wednesday, April 1, 2026

Volunteer management - VM - G - 2.25 - governance - PRAGMATIC metrics

Volunteer management - VM - G - 2.25 - governance - PRAGMATIC metrics

I want to recommend, to all of you, the book "PRAGMATIC Security Metrics" written by Brotby and Hinson.  Yes, this does talk about security metrics but more importantly, "PRAGMATIC" is not just a description of the type of metrics that you want but is, in fact, an acronym describing, in detail, characteristics of the metrics that will, in fact, be useful to you.  This is an excellent book and should be on every manager's shelf regardless of what they manage.

Predictive

PRAGMATIC is, as I say, an acronym.  The P stands for predictive.  This is important in choosing different types of metrics for any management situation.  You don't just want numbers; you want numbers that will help you to predict what actions and functions will look like in the future.  How much will be performed?  How many different activities will be performed in the future, based on the data that you are collecting now?

Relevant

Relevant is probably somewhat self-evident and it also does go along with meaningful, accurate, and genuine but it is important to note and to concentrate on making sure that your metrics are relevant to management issues, to the operations, and sometimes even to the motivation for your volunteers. 

Actionable

Actionable means that you need to collect data upon which you can take action.  For example it doesn't do any good to collect your volunteers' opinions on foreign economic policy.  There is absolutely nothing you can do about foreign economic policy.  You don't have the authority and, let's face it, you probably don't have an awful lot of expertise in that particular area.  Stick to what you know you can effect in some way.

Genuine
Meaningful
Accurate

As I say, genuine, meaningful, and accurate are probably fairly similar and are in fact similar to relevant; however do look at the subtle differences.  Make sure that you are collecting genuine information.

For example in one particular volunteer situation one of the volunteers was noting that, because of policy requirements, he consistently had to take longer to complete a shift than other workers.  The manager in that case rather airily dismissed his concerns and told him to just put down an extra half an hour on his shift.  That, of course, wasn't the point.  Saying that he worked an extra half an hour wasn't really accurate in that situation and so it wasn't genuine either.  Nor did it address his concerns and so it wasn't meaningful.

Timely

Timely statistics means that you collect them, record them, and process them on a timely basis so that your reports indicate what is happening relatively currently rather than last year.  Now, of course, when you are just looking at Total Volunteer Hours for the purposes of writing up a funding request, yes, last year's hours are timely for that purpose.  Know what it is you are collecting this data for and why.  If you are collecting safety information, for example, the information should be processed and examined fairly quickly after it's recorded.  Otherwise certain operational procedures may change over time and you may be looking at safety reports that say everything is fine when in fact the work is now being conducted in an unsafe manner.

Independent

The independence of the data that you are collecting is an interesting concept.  Sometimes we are collecting data, and statistics about seemingly disparate events, and not realising that they actually relate to the same basic cause.  For example if you note in one place that a certain piece of equipment is not available and so shifts do not go out and the volunteers' hours are not increasing, this may relate to the fact that another report, somewhere else, is noting that there is a problem with the process of charging the batteries for that particular piece of equipment.

Cheap

The cost of collecting the data should be considered.  How much volunteer time is dedicated simply to collecting data and statistics as opposed to the ongoing objectives of the organisation?  Make sure that you know the cost of the data that you are collecting.  Make sure also that you know the cost of taking action on whatever indication that data gives you.


Volunteer management - VM - 0.00 - introduction and table of contents
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