Homily: Jesus, money and inner freedom

Homily from September 18, 2016. Money is supposed to serve us, but often we wind up serving it.

The story of Temperance (Thanksgiving update)

My niece Temperance was born on September 5, 2016 (Labour Day), but at only 24 weeks (and weighing only 680 grams). Given her extreme prematurity she has been in the neonatal intensive care unit (NICU) ever since. Still, I got a chance to visit with her last October 10 (Canadian Thanksgiving), on her 5th week birthday. I thought I'd offer an update.

First of all, let me say THANK YOU to the legions of people who offered prayers for Temperance. We all felt we were being lifted up to the Lord.

I would also like to say thank you to the great many people who helped with the meal train and GoFundMe campaigns that helped my sister Miriam and her husband Michael be available to care for Temperance and her older sister Brigid (4 years old) and older brother Paxton (2 years old this week). To give you a sense of how wide-reaching that support was, some of the neighbourhood kids actually put up a lemonade stand to make a few dollars to help out. It's things like that which make you realise that it really is the thought that counts.

As for the baby, Temperance is doing very well. This doesn't mean there haven't been a few moments of concern along the way. By definition very premature babies are underdeveloped in significant ways. Her immune system is weaker, for example, meaning that any infection can be very dangerous. At one point Temperance had to be started on antibiotics because the nurses found she had a pimple. It might not sound like much to us as adults, but for a baby weighing less than 2 pounds it's a big deal.

Happily Temperance's blood work came back OK (i.e. no infection), but there have been other concerns. Again, premature babies like her are not really supposed to be breathing air yet. Sometimes her little diaphragm gets tired, and so she takes a break. Apparently premature babies often have this kind of "spell". Of course, taking a break from breathing is a real problem, and that's where all the monitoring in the NICU comes in handy. Happily it doesn't take much to get her breathing again -- believe it or not, she just needs to be touched. As you can see from the photo, she also gets the help from a CPAP, although lately she's been able to go for a few hours just with oxygen prongs.

One piece of really good news is that Temper's digestive system is working well. She has been gaining weight: 995 grams when I saw her last, and by now probably a kilogram. My brother-in-law wrote a Facebook post recently sharing how happy we was to change his daughter's diaper. Normally this is not the most pleasant of parenting duties, but with Temperance every poop is a blessing.

Oh, and about that nickname. Normally someone named Temperance is called "Tempie" for short, but this little one is apparently quite feisty. She kicks and punches and makes sure to let the nurses know when she is unhappy, so they told my sister that "Temper" was a good name. Again, good news! We want her to be ready to take on the world.

Brigid and Paxton have drawn pictures for their little sister, and recently Paxton kept saying his sister's name so Michael brought him to the hospital to visit. His words? "Temperance mine!" One thing's for sure, she's got a family ready to welcome her and love her.

Again, thank you to all of you for your prayers and support. It's like you've been an extended part of our family for us, and it is deeply appreciated. Assuming things continue to go well Temperance should be out of hospital in time for Christmas, and it will be the best present we've ever received.

God bless all of you!

Homily: What bishops are all about

Homily from September 11, 2016. The day after my anniversary of ordination as a bishop, so I thought I'd preach about...bishops!

The story of Temperance

Not long after my father died in April, my sister Miriam announced to the family that she was with child once again. The baby was to be due, believe it or not, on Christmas Day. Based on the dates, Miriam would have only very recently become pregnant. Although my father did not know it before he died, he was already a grandfather once again, and personally I found it to be a consolation to know that he, from heaven, would have been the first of our family to see his new grandchild growing secretly in the womb.

Although the pregnancy seemed to be proceeding normally, things changed on Friday, September 2. While preparing for a special mass at the diocesan seminary, I got an urgent text message from my sister. I phoned immediately, and discovered the terrible truth: she was in labour, at only 23.5 weeks. My poor sister was sobbing on the phone, sobbing through a contraction, as her words poured out her love and her fears for her baby. She just asked for prayers, and then had to hang up. I got to the seminary somewhat discombobulated. I even forgot my homily at home and had to preach it from memory. The good news was that I had been working on it for weeks, and I knew my subject. My topic was HOPE, and on that evening, I discovered in a very personal way a whole new layer to the meaning of the word.

Did I pray? Oh yes, yes I did. In particular, I turned to my dad. "Papa," I prayed, "your daughter and your grandchild are in trouble. Get on it." Not the most elegant prayer, I know, but none of us were in an elegant mood, for sure.

My mother was in Germany attending my cousin Daniel's wedding. I had the job of reaching her to give her the news. I rustled up my best German to leave a voice message on my aunt's answering machine (it was 3 am there by that point), and the next morning I gave my mother more detailed news when she called back. While she was originally scheduled to only come back of September 12 she booked a new flight within hours. We would expect her on September 5 (Labour Day).

It is, of course, impossible to say what prayers from whom made the difference, but the next news I got from my sister was that her contractions were in abeyance! No one knew how long this situation might last -- hours, days, weeks -- but in the meantime my sister had been transferred by ambulance to a hospital better equipped to  deal with a premature birth. The doctors had also given her medication to spur the development of the baby's lungs and nervous system. We were told those meds would require 72 hours to work, so from Friday evening we needed at least until Monday evening.

Because my sister's water had broken part of the risk to the baby was also the danger of infection. My sister was taking a "ton" of antibiotics as a preventive measure, and at first we tended to keep away so as to not unwittingly bring in some bug. Despite not going to Ottawa immediately, however, I cancelled every appointment I had the weekend, so that I could leave at a moment's notice should it become necessary.

While it is difficult to say, I also had to warn my Archbishop and colleagues at the diocese that I might be gone for a bit longer. The doctors had warned us that the baby's chances of survival at this stage were only 50-50. I don't like to think about it, but a funeral was a real possibility. I got on my dad's case even more, and also brought Mother Teresa into the picture. My sister had met her years ago in India, and had brought back small medals that Mother Teresa had kissed and offered for the members of our family. Her canonization that weekend made me think of asking for her intercession as well. The prayer went something like this: "Mother Teresa, you once met my sister years ago in the chapel in your house in Calcutta. You prayed side by side. Please help her and the baby."

Monday finally came. I headed to the airport in Ottawa to pick up my mother, and after she had a chance to freshen up we went on to the hospital, getting there at about 4:30 pm Sunday afternoon. My sister's husband and other two children were there, as well as her midwife. Shortly after our arrival she started feeling off, and pretty soon the contractions were coming again. There was no stopping them this time. The kids went off to visit their aunt (my brother-in-law's sister), and Miriam was moved to the birthing unit. There wasn't even any time for painkillers: Temperance Miriam Browning was born at 6:33 pm, weighing a mere 680 grams (about 1.5 pounds).

Temperance was, of course, rushed to the neonatal intensive care unit (aka NICU). She was intubated and attached with sensors and placed in an incubator. The nurse told us that she was showing many signs of vitality, like kicking and punching the air. She even had her first bowel movement not long after birth, as babies are meant to do. I'll confess, I don't normally get excited about other people's poo, but in this case you bet I did.

Our family knows that we have been lifted up on a cloud of prayers, especially Miriam and Temperance, and for this we are grateful. Many messages of support have come in by email, Facebook, and text message, and I treasure them all. I'm glad to report that Temperance has been doing well. She is fragile, of course, and there may be rocky days ahead. Still, she is now able to breathe normal air with the help of a CPAP, and the staff at the NICU are doing everything they can on the level of medicine to support her. We know she is in expert and caring hands.

Still, there are ongoing needs, and not just of a medical nature. Miriam and Michael will understandably need to be at the hospital quite a bit, but this will put a strain on their family life, especially as they have two other small children (Brigid and Paxton) to care for. There will also be a financial strain: because Michael is self-employed as a therapist, he cannot simply take paternity leave. To put it simply, if he doesn't work, the family does not eat, does not pay for gas, and does not cover the mortgage.

The goods news is that people are rallying to help. People are babysitting the older siblings when necessary. A meal train was also started to help cover that part of domestic life. Finally, a GoFundMe fundraising campaign was started by friends of Miriam and Michael to take some of the financial stress off them and allow both parents to see their baby as much as they can. If you'd like to help, here are two important links you can use:

Meal train organization (for those in Ottawa)

Financial contribution on GoFundMe (for anyone)

Finally, please keep praying! We've already seen miracles. We just need a few more. Thank you for lifting us up. Stay tuned to this website for more news as it (and baby Temperance) develops!

Homily: Distinguishing good ambition from bad ambition

Homily from August 28, 2016.

Visit to the Laurentians

I had a chance to head up north today. Stop #1 was Camp Kinkora, where my awesome niece Alex is participating in Visions camp for the week. Stop #2 was supper with my dad's cousin John and his wife Gail, who have a home in Sainte-Agathe. His daughter Katie (my second cousin) was about to head back to her home in Toronto, so I had the chance to join a small group for her goodbye supper. Turns out she is quite the artist, feel free to check out her website: katiefgorman.com

The Swedish connection

By the time I got to college and university, the Commodore line of computers was hitting its limits. A new form of computing was emerging, using something called a GUI (Graphic User Interface). For Commodore machines, it was called GEOS. It was so different from the simple text based interfaces I knew, it was slooooowwwww, and I had no clue how to program in that environment. I felt like a fish out of water.

When I got to university I discovered a brand of computer -- the Apple Macintosh SE. It had a similar sort of GUI, and was great for writing papers and doing graphic design. Programming, however, was completely out of the question...it just wasn't designed for that. My parents eventually bought a 286 PC clone, but the only programming options were GW-BASIC (yech) and MS-DOS batch files (double-yech). Compilers could be had, but for a price, and I was faced with a steep learning curve. My studies and extra-curricular activities in college and university didn't really allow for me to start all over again from scratch, so programming took a back seat for several years.

I graduated from Concordia University in 1992 with a bachelor's degree in commerce (major: international business), and got a job at a company I had never heard of: Ericsson Research Canada, a local branch of what I would learn was a huge Swedish multinational. There was an awful recession happening at that time, so I took the first job I could to pay the rent. It was a very low-paying administrative job, but it turned out to be a time of providence in my life. In all honesty, I owe Ericsson a lot for who I am today, and I'm proud to say I'm still connected with friends I made way back when.

Now as it happened, the local branch of Ericsson I was working for was developing software for help run the cellular phone networks that were just starting to be constructed. At that time they were hiring engineers hand over fist, but not business types -- despite a degree in commerce, I was just a clerk. Still, this was one sector of the economy that was actually doing well, offering some job security, and Ericsson was big into training their people, offering some opportunity. I took one computer-based training course after another in my off-hours, learning about the principles behind cellular technology. As it turned out, cell phones were just fancy radios, and all that time I had spent with my dad learning about amateur radio made the learning curve that much easier. That's how providence works sometimes: I was a programming geek with a degree in international business and a background in radio, working for a global company writing software to run cellphone networks. It was perfect.

I can't say that everyone noticed this synchronicity at first, not even me. The real breakthrough came when I discovered something new, at least for me: the UNIX operating system. We were shifting to the use of SPARC workstations, and so the company sent me on a brief training course to become familiar with Unix. I wanted to learn more, so I downloaded an early version of a Unix "clone" called Linux and installed it on a computer at home (one of the first Slackware distributions). No one could imagine at the time that Linux would change the world, including mine.

At the time our branch of the company was preparing for our first ISO 9000 certification audit. By now I was working as a technical writer in one of our departments, and I was given the task of getting all the documentation for our department ready for the audit. Document control was a big part of the ISO 9000 standard, but we didn't have any reliable way to track our documents, their revisions, and whether or not they had been approved. To solve the problem, I wrote a database program called "TROLL" (from "document conTROL tool"). It was basically just a giant shell script that could be run from the command line of a Unix workstation, but the darned thing worked and got the job done. Everyone was surprised -- no one had thought that the administrative clerk / technical writer was also secretly a programmer. The software engineers were actually quite delighted, and my "geek cred" rose.

When the certification auditors eventually came around, our department (which was *way* behind just six months before) passed with flying colours. The effect on my career was dramatic: I became the Quality Coordinator for the department, and eventually I was promoted to manager of a unit called the Global Integration and Verification Organization. Our goal was to coordinate the process of software testing between several units throughout the world. I knew about software, I knew our processes, and I had training in cross-cultural management. At 24, it was a dream opportunity.

I did not remain in that job, of course. To many people's surprise (including my own in some ways) I handed in my resignation in June 1995 in order to enter the seminary and start my studies to become a priest. Being manager of the GIVO did allow me to leave with one other technological legacy, however. The task of coordinating between the business units involved in the GIVO required me to learn about something called the "Internet" (you may have heard of it), and particularly a new technology called the "World Wide Web" (you may have heard of that, too). Our web browser was called Mosaic, and there were very few web pages out there. Still, a whole new field was emerging. I learned how to code web pages in HTML, and in the few months prior to leaving Ericsson I actually became the first webmaster for the Canadian Conference of Catholic Bishops, which itself became the first episcopal conference in the world to have a presence on the web. The CCCB gave me an ongoing contract, so I was able to buy a decent computer for use during my studies -- and of course, to keep learning to program. Only now, my focus was the World Wide Web.

Homily: The meaning of faith

Homily from August 7, 2016.

Homily: Persevering in faith

Homily from August 14, 2016. A continuation of the one preached on August 7. Warning: while there is a lot of teaching here, it makes this a long one!

My emergence as a computer geek

My father's interest in amateur radio opened me up to a fascination with electronics, as well as to the marvel of using that technology to be able to communicate with the wider world over great distances. My father also was the instigator of my interest in computers.

My dad started working for the Department of the environment of the federal government in 1965, doing computer programming. You read that right, 1965. Computers in those days were BIG. The idea of a "portable computer" was ludicrous, and something with far less computing power than a typical calculator today would fill up a large room. I know, because when I would visit my dad at the office I'd see them for myself. It was all so...esoteric. The computer rooms were temperature controlled, filled with spinning tape drives and computer cabinets with flashing lights, and hum and whoosh of spinning fans...a kid could even (playfully) try and hide in there. I had the feeling I was entering into a different world, one that I knew not a lot of people ever saw. It was my entering the wardrobe moment.

Programming computers in those days was a bit of a pain. Programmers would have to load their programs using punched cards. During one of my visits (I must have been less than 10 years old) I distinctly remember having a chance to sit at the machine that produced those cards. It was a bit like a manual typewriter, except that instead of feeding in a sheet of paper a punch card was used. The keys would click and you could hear the hole being punched in the card. Of course, what was written on the card made no sense to me, and it was explained that this was a special language that the computer could read to make it run. From my point of view it was like magic, only intead of saying "Abracadabra" you'd say it in assembly language.

To my wonder, I discovered that it was also possible to have a computer at home, or at least to have access to one. The computers would sometimes have to be monitored throughout the night, and one evening my father brought home a strange-looking suitcase. Upon opening it, we saw a keyboard similar to those on the card-punching machines, as well as a couple of rubber cups into which he could fit our telephone headset. (I don't remember what model it was, but it looked almost identitical to this old beauty, a TI Silent 700 terminal.) He explained that this terminal would let him "talk" to the (huge) machines back in his office using the computer language -- over the telephone! Good grief, that meant computers could even use the phone to talk to each other! Would wonders never cease...

A few years later, another visit to the office introduced me to new ways to interact with the computer. Assembly language was out, and dad was now programming in Fortran (as he explained, just like people had different languages different computers might use different languages). As well, no more punched cards -- terminals with green monochrome monitors were the latest thing. In the old days he would have sat me in front of a card-punch machine to keep me entertained, but now he had something even better: my very first experience with a computer game. After a bit of research I now know that the game in question was called Colossal Cave Adventure. It didn't have any of the bells and whistles of today's games (it was purely text based, with no graphics at all) but nonetheless it was quite extraordinary. Colossal Cave Adventure allowed a player to enter commands using regular (albeit simplified) English, i.e. the user didn't also have to be a programmer. Prior to discovering that game, I saw computers as giant calculators: you entered the data, and got a result. Suddenly, it was all about interaction, and even with the machine itself.

We eventually got a video game console called the Atari 2600. The games were generally fun, but you were limited to just plugging in cartridges someone else had made -- there was no possibility for creative input by the user. Then, in my first weeks of high school, I attended a book fair in the school library where I discovered a book for programming computer games. Let me be clear, this book did not teach programming: it gave actual listings of computer program code that a user could enter manually to then run the game. (This would be completely unthinkable today, but back there there were whole magazines like Compute! that would publish monthly program listings.) Even though I didn't own a computer myself I bought the book immediately and tried to figure out how this particular computer language (called BASIC) worked. Eventually I decided to try and write a program of my own, and the result was a simple text-based golf game. Without a computer to actually test it on, though, I did the next best thing to check if it would actually work: I showed it to my dad. I remember how surprised he was when he started reviewing the code, and how delighted he was when he was able to tell me that he couldn't find a single programming error.

I don't know if that simple program is what prompted it or not, but shortly after that we got the computer that would prove to be the instrument of my full immersion into geekdom: the Commodore 64. Yes, you could play games, but you could also program in BASIC (the language I had learned for my golf game). I hacked the heck out of that thing. I entered code, I wrote my own programs, and while I couldn't make that thing dance I could literally make it sing (or at least make pretty sounds -- it had a really good sound chip). It didn't have a lot of resources (only 64K of memory, of which only about 38K was really accessible), but thanks to all kinds of code optimization tricks people were able to make it do amazing things. For myself, when I found that the BASIC language interpreter was too slow for some applications I learned hexadecimal and started to code in machine language (the C-64 Programmers Reference Guide was my geek bible). Honestly, it was a major creative outlet for me, and years later, when I saw the slogan "Code is Art" written on a T-shirt, I felt a moment not just of agreement but of recognition.

Those old Commodore programs live on thanks to C-64 emulation software that can be downloaded for free, and my old Commodore 64 is still sitting in my parent's basement. Just the sight of it still brings up fond memories, like a painter looking at one of his old palettes that just felt right in his hand.

POSTSCRIPT: A traffic camera caught a picture of a snowy owl in flight, and the image went viral in January 2016. While I think snowy owls are lovely birds, I have to say that the photo made me smile for a different reason. If you look at the picture, you'll see a building in the top middle with satellite dishes on the roof. That was my dad's old office!

RIP Uncle Bruce

I got word that my uncle Bruce Turner has died (b. 1927, d. August 1, 2016). Prayers for his wife, 2 sons, and grandchildren + great-grandchildren, please.

Visit to Martyr's shrine

Was in Midland today and saw where the Jesuit martyrs were killed and buried. Simple but very moving.

My dad the ham

For those of us who are so entranced with the modern means of communication, we should acknowledge that there are those who went before us with the same desire to reach out over great distances. While the hobby has been in decline in recent years, for decades amateur radio (a.k.a. "ham radio") was the Internet of its day. My dad was a ham operator, and so I guess I got the bug from him.

Our first family home was a small house in Pierrefonds, Quebec. My dad had a workroom with all kinds of electronic equipment and tools, with pride of place given to the amateur radio receiver and transmitter. I can still see him sitting in front of it saying "CQ, CQ", the code informing the world that there was a ham ready to talk. His call sign at the time was VE2CS (a.k.a. "Victor-Echo-Two-Charlie-Sierra"), and he would introduce himself as "Oscar-Whiskey-Echo-November" to anyone he contacted. Part of the amateur radio tradition is that operators would send each other QSL cards, and I remember stacks of these from all over the world filed in different nooks and crannies of his radio shack. Perhaps some ham operators out there will find one of his QSL cards in their archives...

My father would also tune in to radio stations all over the world on shortwave, and I distinctly remember listening to Voice of America, Radio Moscow, and even Radio Vaticana while sitting in his radio shack. So much for being stuck listening to a few local stations! I remember our listening sessions sparking all kinds of interesting discussions between us about how to exercise critical thinking in the face of "new media", and that was in the 1970's!

I later learned that my father had been a ham for a long, long time. Even to this day, an amateur radio operator needs to get a license to operate, and he was so proud of the fact that he had managed to pass his license exam when he was only 15, i.e. back in 1936! I remember thinking "Wow, even kids can do this."

One day, my father got out some components and, following a mysterious-looking diagram, built a small crystal radio. I didn't see how it could work, given it had no battery or external power, but wouldn't you know that when I put that earpiece in my ear I could hear the radio signal coming in from a station nearby. It was the radio waves themselves that were being converted to electricity to produce the sound. Amazing! So I was hooked. We started building electronics projects using the old Radio Shack electronic project kits, and later he taught me how to use a soldering iron and follow circuit diagrams (I remember being proud of knowing how to read the coloured bands on a resistor). Dad always had plenty of resistors, capacitors, diodes and whatnot in that workroom, so I never had to go far to find what I needed. I even remember hooking up light emitting diodes (LEDs) and wondering if they'd ever have enough power one day to serve as some sort of flashlight...who knew!

I remember one component in particular that caught my attention: the relay. This was a fascinating item, because (as my dad taught me) it could be used to create simple logic gates and implement Boolean algebra in a real system. (Sorry, did I geek out there?) Anyway, trust me, this is more interesting and important than you might think because these principles are still at the very root of modern digital electronics. Modern chips use transistors, not relays, but I remember reading a short story as a kid, in which Isaac Asimov described a massive supercomputer called Multivac working to the "clicking of relays".

This discovery of the principles of computing eventually led to my own interests diverging from those of my dad. Remember how I was building those electronic kits? Well, a new one caught my eye: the ZX81, which could be purchased in kit form and assembled at home. The only problem was that I didn't have the money to get one. So I started saving my pennies, which in the end I wound up using for something even better.

More to come!

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