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A year ago, it almost seemed inevitable that the Detroit Red Wings and Pittsburgh Penguins would meet again in another Stanley Cup final.

But the Penguins lost some key pieces of their puzzle over the off-season, including local favourite Ryan Malone, and more importantly, superstar Marian Hossa, who signed with… Detroit, as a free agent. And halfway through the season, neither club looked likely to make it: Detroit was having all sorts of defensive and goaltending woes, while Pittsburgh didn’t so much as have hold of a playoff spot.

But here we are, and they’ve both made it, and done so in pretty impressive fashion.

There are a host of reasons why this particular matchup is highly intriguing:

1. It’s the first back-to-back Stanley Cup finals rematch since 1983-1984, when the New York Islanders and Edmonton Oilers faced off in successive years.
2. It’s the first opportunity for a team to win back-to-back Cups since New Jersey made the finals in 2001 after winning in 2000. The bid was unsuccessful – the last team actually to win two in a row was… Detroit, in 1997-1998.
3. It pits Hossa against the team he left because he felt he could win the Cup in Detroit (even signing for much less money than he could have received elsewhere). Naturally, there are folks who say that karma will get him, and Pittsburgh will win….
4. It pits probably the two most skilled teams in the NHL. It is so nice to see the cream rise to the top.
5. It offers a chance for redemption to Evgeni Malkin, who virtually disappeared halfway through the 2008 playoffs, apparently when he was taking a physical pounding early in the Philadelphia series. This year, he has only seemed to get stronger as the postseason has progressed.

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Regretfully, I have just learned that Canon Press will not be publishing These Are Two Covenants. We signed the contract about 13 months ago, and contract signing to release date is usually about a year, so I thought I’d contact them and see what the story was. My understanding is that Canon is cutting back for financial reasons.

Unfortunately, I have no idea regarding an alternative publisher at this time. Disappointing, but five years after first writing and two failed contracts later, I’m still without a publisher, and don’t have the resources on hand myself to print it through my own company.

If the fourth century were the twenty-first century….

This would be highly amusing were it not so sad. A fossil is discovered which has certain shared characteristics with humans, and this proves “direct connection between humans and the rest of the animal kingdom.” Why we must imagine that we are descendants of a creature simply because it has nails rather than claws, and opposeable big toes, will perhaps be lost on some of us.

Just for the record: It is impossible for a fossil to demonstrate that humans descend from another form of animal life. Just because it would be impossible for evolution to be true unless there were transitional moments does not at all imply the roughly converse – viz, that an animal appearing to be somewhere between humans and other animals is a transitional creature proving the evolution of humans.

But evolution is every bit as much a faith as Christianity is. In this case, apparently quite a lot less logical.

The Rainbow Health Coalition knows that the homosexual lifestyle is self-destructive. We know that it knows because it keys upon the evidence.

But the solution to the problem is to demand more funding to deal with health issues which “disproportionately affect” the homosexual community. It is due to homophobia that Canada is not spending untold additional dollars to defuse the effects, not of heredity or environment, but of a lifestyle.

The path of destruction is clear, including homosexual men with a life expectancy 20 years less than heterosexual men. Suicide, drugs, alcoholism, depression, and cancer (oddly enough, including anal cancer)… these are the fault of others, sez the Coalition.

I grieve for homosexuals, but trying to deal with the symptoms rather than the root issue never works.

I just learned this morning that one of my closest friends from my young adulthood has been absent from the body and present with the Lord for many years. I had tried tracking him down many times over the years. Last I saw him, he was preparing to move to South Africa (he had been born in Malawi, I believe, and was of half African and half Caucasian descent). Apparently he died in a car accident not too long after his arrival there.

Al John Losacco was probably mid-40s when I met him. Not even sure how we found each other when I started going to Falconridge Full Gospel in Calgary back in 1986. Perhaps someone introduced us. At any rate, we connected from the beginning, perhaps in part because we were both something of “outsiders” in different ways.

I was a newcomer to an established church (as well to Calgary). My dad was an independent itinerant Pentecostal preacher with a strong anti-institutional bias, so while growing up I was largely in house church and revivalist settings. Yet somehow when I moved to Calgary, I decided I should be in a local church. To be a light to all the poor hypocrites, I’m sure. God works in mysterious ways, because that was a significant turning point in my life.

Al John was simply different. He was the guy traversing the neighbourhood, going door to door with the gospel. Not just randomly (though that was likely the case when he began); he seemed particularly adept at establishing relationships among people of other religions. He would then go into their homes repeatedly with the gospel. I went around with him on one occasion and remember talking with some Hindus he had developed friendship with.

Al John was a gentle, thoughtful man who loved people and wanted nothing more than to serve the Lord faithfully. He sought his counsel from Scripture and didn’t keep it to himself.

Well done, good and faithful servant. We miss you here.

I’ve been wanting to do a video for this pro-life song for some time, and now I’ve got something up on YouTube…

Lookin’ Away on YouTube

Unfortunately, I don’t really have any real video resources, so it’s just a series of still images patched together in Windows MovieMaker, but hopefully it’s worth a look and (mostly) listen. If anyone out there has a bit of cinematographer (sp?) in them and wouldn’t mind a freebie project, I’d be happy to toss the audio your way….