I am currently reading John Philip Newell’s “A New Harmony: The Spirit, The Earth, and The Human Soul. It is a wonderful excursion into the depths of a modern Celtic soul which I find difficult to put down. Newell provides a new vision of what he sees as the “new Pentecost” and I’ve already discovered several sermons waiting to be written. Happily Newell will be speaking in Guelph next week and I will have the opportunity to journey further along the way with this gentle soul. I suspect that his vision of Pentecost will spark some flames of the Spirit as I prepare for the celebration of Pentecost!
Newell is a poet, author, and peacemaker. He is the co-founder of Salva Terra: A Vision Towards Earth’s Healing. Formerly Warden of Iona Abbey in the Western Isles of Scotland, he is currently Companion Theologian for the American Spirituality Center of Casa del Sol at Ghost Ranch in the high desert of NewMexico.
Enjoy this video “Prayer for Creativity Chant: You Shall Be Like a Garden”. Music composed by Linda Larkin.
Until we can fully recover images and names for God that include the feminine, it will continue to be difficult for many to see the face of God in women and girls. Mothers’ Day is an opportunity for preachers to uncover, explore and proclaim the feminine names, attributes, images and activities of the Divine. This Sunday we will begin our liturgy by singing “Bring Many Names” (Voices United Hymnal), we will sing an invocation to Sophia “Come, Sophia” (Miriam Therese Winter), “Sing Lo! Sing, O Sophia” (Miriam Therese Winter), acclaim women of faith in song with “Come Celebrate the Women” (Shirley Erna Murray), praise the Breasted One with our Hymn of the Day, “Womb of Life” (Ruth Duck), after communion we will “Rock-a My soul in the Bosom of She Who Is” (Miriam Theresa Winter) and send folks off rejoicing to “Faith of Our Mothers”. (copyright laws prevent me from posting the music, so message me and I’ll hook you up)
I offer this repost to inspire the bold women and lovers of women to proclaim the love of She Who Dwells Among Us this Mothers’ Day!
GOD’s Radical Mastectomy
Recently, I found myself in conversation with a young woman who insisted that inclusive language for God is nothing more than political correctness that has been imposed upon the church by feminists. She insisted that because women have now achieved equality with men, the need for inclusive language for God has served its purpose and need no longer be of concern to worship leaders. I am grateful that my age afforded me the maturity not to explode on this young woman who can well afford her opinion as a direct result of some of the language battles that I and my contemporaries struggled to overcome while she was but knee high to a grasshopper. Our conversation has stuck with me and caused me to review some things that I wrote long ago about the impact our language has not only on our images of the Divine but on the way we live together in community. What follows is a portion of a piece I wrote about the disappearance of the Breasted One as a name for God.
“We believe in one God, the Father the Almighty… We believe in one Lord, Jesus Christ, the only Son of God, eternally begotten of the Father… We believe in the Holy Spirit, the Lord, the giver of life, who proceeds from the Father and the Son. With the Father and the Son he is worshipped and glorified. He has spoken through the prophets. In this God: “We believe” and “His kingdom will have no end!” God in three persons: Father, Son and Holy Spirit, our blessed Trinity. As we proclaim our faith in the words of the Nicene, Apostles’, or (heaven forbid) the Athanasian creeds we proclaim a particular image of the Triune God. For generations, a majority of Christians have assumed all three persons in this Trinity are male. Until recently this assumption has resulted in the exclusive use of male images, symbols and pronouns to represent the Triune God which Christians worship. God has been declared to be male. This is not an easy declaration to make. In order to make such a declaration, many of God’s attributes which are revealed in the biblical accounts have been eradicated from the Christian tradition.
Long before the Christian church began to formulate its exclusively male image of the triune God, the Hebrew people used several words to refer to God. The earliest of these words is “El” which is the generic Semitic word for a god.
Peter Rollins recently spent a weekend lecturing at Holy Cross. His refreshing perspective and keen insights were a gift to our community. We learn a great deal from Pete and our conversation continues. Here are several new videos that will give you a taste of Pete’s work.
Preachers have several choices when it comes to proclaiming the Gospel on Mothers’ Day. We can of course ignore the fact that it is Mothers’ Day. After all Mothers’ Day does not appear on the Church calendar of feasts and commemorations. However, Mothers’ Day is reported to be the third highest attendance day; out numbered only by Easter and Christmas! I suspect that a great many offspring choose the day to placate their mothers. So ignoring the event seems like adding insult to injury to those guilt-ridden offspring who hope that their efforts won’t go unnoticed. Sadly, the presence of the Christmas and Easter crowd, all too often tempts the preacher to resort to sentimentality in order to entertain the infrequent worshippers. The history of the creation of Mothers’ Day ought to compel preachers to resist temptation and find the courage not to compromise.
Most of us think of Mothers’ Day as a kind of conventional holiday that celebrates traditional family values; the kind of traditional values that encourage women who are mothers to keep on keeping on. But celebrating the traditional motherhood is definitely not what Mothers’ Day was originally intended for. The very first Mothers’ Day was intended to be a celebration not just of mothers, but rather it was designed to be a call to action by all women.
One of the first founders of Mother’s Day was Anna Jarvis back in 1858. Anna Jarvis gathered women of the Appalachian mountains together in what she called mother’s day work clubs. Where women worked together to eliminate poverty. When the Civil War came about, the mother’s day work clubs created medical camps. They were places of nonviolence for men from both sides who were wounded in the war.
At the end of the Civil War, Anna Jarvis organized the Mother’s Day Friendship Day, which was a call for radical peace. Anna Jarvis brought together the leaders from the north and the south for a time of reconciliation. Mother’s Day was originally about reconciliation and peace.
Then along came a woman named, Julia Ward Howe who wrote “The Battle Hymn of the Republic”. Julia Ward Howe called for women to protest the cruelties of war everywhere and to gather together to call for peace. She called for a national day of peace for all women. She issued women’s’ declaration, and from the streets women shouted :
“Arise then women of this day, arise all women who have hearts, say firmly our husbands shall not come to us reeking with the carnage for caresses and applause. Arise women of peace.”
Anna Jarvis’ daughter also named Anna Jarvis approached President Wilson and petitioned for a national Mother’s Day. It was Woodrow Wilson who called for the second Sunday of May to be the national Mother’s Day. Shortly thereafter, n anti-suffragette movement spoke out against the women who were calling for peace. So instead of being a day for women who were active and present in the world, it became a day to celebrate mothers who stayed at home with the children.
Anna Jarvis the founder of Mother’s Day was so angry with Woodrow Wilson that she filed a law suit, that petitioned the courts to put a stop to Mother’s Day because as the court papers insisted, instead of it being run by women, suddenly Mother’s Day was being run by men in an effort to keep them in the house barefoot and pregnant.
Sadly, the world was not ready for such strong willed women to shout out loud. And so, Anna Jarvis was arrested at a Mother’s Day celebration and she spent the rest of her life in a sanatorium?
On mothers’ day we would all do well to remember Julia Ward Howe’s Mothers’ Day Proclamation. Dated 1870 but sadly it is still so very relevant today:
“Arise, then, women of this day! Arise, all women who have hearts, whether your baptism be that of water or tears!
Say firmly: “We will not have great questions decided by irrelevant agencies. Our husbands shall not come to us, reeking with carnage, for caresses and applause. Our sons shall not be taken from us to unlearn all that we have taught them of charity, mercy and patience. We women of one country will be too tender of those of another to allow our sons to be trained to injure theirs.”
From the bosom of the devastated earth, a voice goes up with our own. It says, “Disarm, Disarm!” The sword of murder is not the balance of justice. Blood not wipe out dishonor, nor violence indicate possession. As men have often forsaken the plow and the anvil at the summons of war, let women now leave all that may be left of home for a great and earnest day of counsel. Let them meet first, as women, to bewail & commemorate the dead. Let them solemnly take counsel with each other as to the means whereby the great human family can live in peace, each bearing after his own time the sacred impress, not of Caesars but of God.
In the name of womanhood and of humanity, I earnestly ask that a general congress of women without limit of nationality may be appointed and held at some place deemed most convenient and at the earliest period consistent with its objects, to promote the alliance of the different nationalities, the amicable settlement of international questions, the great and general interests of peace.”
Today the church commemorates the life and witness of Julian of Norwich.
Click here for an Evening Prayer liturgy with texts from Julian of Norwich
Julian of Norwich lived as a contemplative; that is to say she spent a good deal of time pondering the big picture. One day Julian had a vision. It was a vision of Jesus and in that vision Jesus was holding a ball; that ball was all of creation and instantly Julian understood that contained in the vision was the gift of knowledge and that knowledge is that all of creation was created by God, held by God and loved by God. Suddenly, there was in Julian’s hand a hazel nut. A tiny little hazel nut and staring down and that hazel nut, Julian knew that that beautiful, wondrous little nut was created by God, held by God and loved by God. The gift of that knowledge led to an even greater gift of knowledge because suddenly Julian knew beyond the shadow of a doubt that she Julian was created by God, held by God, and loved by God and that very knowledge led her to have the faith she needed to believe that “all will be well; all things will be exceedingly well.”
I see Julian’s insight as a beautiful definition of what faith is: knowing beyond belief that you are created by God, you are held by God, you are loved by God. There’s no need to sweat the details, because “All will be well; all things will be exceedingly well.” That’s the gift of faith, the knowledge that we are created held and loved by God and that all will be well; all things will be exceedingly well. That gift of faith, the knowing beyond belief that you are created, loved and held, gives you the freedom to live and the freedom to die: to die secure in the knowledge that all will be well; all things will be exceedingly well. As for the details, the gift of faith means you don’t need to worry about the details. It’s enough to know that when a seed falls into the earth and dies, it remains a single grain; but if it dies, it bears much fruit. We don’t have the details. I can’t give you a list of details and say, “hey here you go just believe these answers and all will be well.” All I can tell you is the same thing that I declare loudly and clearly at every graveside I’ve ever presided over: in the words of the Apostle Paul I declare: “Lo! I tell you a mystery. We shall not all sleep, but we shall all be changed, in a moment, in the twinkling of an eye, at the last trumpet. For the trumpet will sound, and the dead will be raised imperishable, and we shall all be changed. For this perishable nature must put on the imperishable, and this mortal nature must put on immortality. When the perishable puts on the imperishable, and the mortal puts on immortality, then shall come to pass the saying that is written: ‘Death is swallowed up in victory. O death, where is they victory? O death, where is thy sting?’”
Trusting that we need not fear death is a powerful freedom that liberates us to live fully here and now, knowing beyond belief that all will be well!
Before I could go to seminary I had to obtain an undergraduate degree. So I enrolled at the University of British Columbia in their religious studies program. In order to obtain a degree in religious studies, we were required to study the religions of the world. My professors and classmates were Islamic, Hindu, Jewish, Christian, Buddhist, atheist, agnostic, and together we explored all sorts of religions, both ancient and modern. I remember registering in a course on ecumenism where I expected that we would study the various movements to restore unity to Christianity. We did that, but we also did so much more. We learned that ecumenism is not just about Christian unity. Ecumenism includes inter-faith dialogue.
During the course I was required to write papers on Hindu-Christian dialogue, as well as a paper concerning what was written about Jesus in the Islamic Qur’an. This course introduced me to the reality that unity does not mean uniformity. In his book entitled “Who Needs God”, Rabbi Harold Kushner writes: “Religion is not primarily a set of beliefs, a collection of prayers, or a series of rituals. Religion is first and foremost a way of seeing. It can’t change the facts about the world we live in, but it can change the way we see those facts, and that in itself can often make a real difference.”
Sadly, over the centuries the religions of the world have shaped the way we see people whose religious practices are different than our own in ways that have made it possible for us to pre-judge our neighbours. Studying the religions of the world broadened my horizons and I actually began to believe that at long last I had escaped the prejudices that were bred into me. Continue reading →
From the spirit-filled world of animism, through the tribalism of the patriarchs, the warnings of the prophets Jack Spong’s sermon examines our visions of God and demonstrates the journey from God as tribal god who orders genocide to the loving god who calls us to love our enemies. This sermon was preached at Countryside Community Church in Omaha, Nebraska on April 14, 2013.
In the twenty-first century, all too many of the conversations about God are simply beyond the Church. By that I mean, talking about God to people who are outside of the Church is simply beyond the Church’s demonstrated abilities. The faithful remnant who scurry about within Christianity may talk about talking to people who have left the church, or people who have rejected the church, or even to people who have never darkened the door of a church. But when push comes to shove, very few of us are capable of engaging in serious conversation with those who live their lives beyond the Church. Rob Bell’s newly released book: “What We Talk About When We Talk About God” may not be a deep theological endeavour. It may not offer much that is new or insightful. But it does have a place in the conversations that don’t seem to be happening between church-goers and those who live beyond the Church. Indeed, Bell’s book might enable those of us who talk about talking to those outside the walls of the Church to actually begin a conversation with someone who does not share our beliefs.
In my experience of speaking to those who have rejected Christianity and the Church, I have discovered that the God and the religion that so many people have walked away from the Church over, is not the God or the religion that Christianity, at its best, actually proclaims. Bell’s book articulates a Christianity that is closer to the faith most church-goers actually embrace.
Following the success and controversy surrounding his book “Love Wins”, Bell has the notoriety to generate the kind of interest that leaves the average church professional drooling in an “if only I could generate that much interest” kind of way. So there will be plenty of “tut, tuts” coming from those who will insist that it’s not a serious academic work. But don’t let their jealousy of Bell’s appeal fool you. Bell has matured some. He’s been talking to scientists and he’s been influenced by academics and he has made an attempt to talk about God in ways that the unchurched as well as the churched will find engaging. Bell’s also been talking to Peter Rollins (Irish philosopher and theologian) whose work appears to have had a refreshing influence on Bell. Indeed, Bell has chosen a title that could be considered a positive restatement of Rollins’ first book title “How (not) to Speak of God”.
Whether your a fan of Bell’s work or not, it’s difficult not to concede that Bell has mastered the art of communicating in this social media world in which we live. “What We Talk About When We Talk About God” provides an effective tool that will enable many of us to engage in conversations beyond Church. I’ve already purchased several copies and can’t wait to engage in a conversation or two with folks who are ready to engage in talk about God. Bell has given us the gift of a place from which to begin to engage in some serious God-talk.
Below you will find a promotional video created to promote the book, that will wet your appetite for the second video in which Bell lecture at Vanderbilt addresses some of what you will find in the book. Enjoy and after you read the book, use it to begin a conversation beyond Church.
Promotional Video for “What We Talk About When We Talk About God”
Padraig O’Tuama describes himself as a “gay catholic theologian” he is also a poet and a troubadour. I was introduced to his work by Peter Rollins and I have spent much of this week enjoying his book of poetry: “Readings from the Book of Exile”. O’Tuama is quite the performer. I suspect that his ability to tell a good story has much to do with his life in Belfast. Like all good storytellers, O’Tuama’s stories have the ability to transfix his listeners and he uses his beguiling powers to challenge theological doctrines and move people to places that a mere lecturer or preacher would be heard pressed to lead them. On the power of story told to him by his mother, O’Tuama opines: “Does it matter if that actually happened? It did happen that she told it to me. Does it matter where it came from? There is an examination of truth that is vulgar. Truth as empirical fact or truth as something that creates a life? I suppose that what I’d like to say that part of the value of story is to create a way to live a life. It is only the most vulgar analysis that depends purely and solely on whether or not the empirical analysis works. There are other measures of success for story.”
A line from one of O’Tuama’s poems insists that, “God is the crack where the story begins. We are the crack where the story gets interesting.” A beautiful Belfast word is “crack”! It can mean anything from “news” to “debauchery”. Some folk use it to mean gossip, music, drinking, fun, party or good times. I remember relatives using it to mean “word”. So what is the crack? In Padraig’s case the WORD dances through the crack! The notion that God is the “good times” where the story begins, that we are the “party” where the story gets interesting is “good news” indeed!
Padraig O’Tuama is one storyteller whose crack I look forward to hearing more of! Enjoy!
This Sunday, in churches all over the world the story of Judas Iscariot will be read. So, this video of John Shelby Spong’s lecture on Judas Iscariot is a timely one. Both preachers and listeners of sermons will find Jack’s take on Judas’ story thought-provoking. Enjoy!
A sermon based on the readings for the fifth Sunday after Easter
Revelation 21:1-6 and John 13:31-35
Think very carefully about a couple of questions. The questions are simple ones. They are designed to help you form images in your mind; images that will help to shed light on a particular kind of wound. But before I ask the questions, let me give you a definition of the verb that drives both of the questions that I’m going to ask. The verb comes from the Latin verb “tradere” which means to hand over. In English we say: betray. The word betray literally means to hand over to an enemy by treachery or fraud. The word betray can also mean to be unfaithful; to violate trust or to deceive. So, here’s my first question: Have you ever been betrayed? Think about it very carefully. Has someone ever turned you over to the enemy by treachery or fraud? Has someone ever disappointed you; been unfaithful to you, violated your trust, or deceived you? Have you ever been betrayed?
The second question is this: Have you ever betrayed someone? Think about it carefully. Have you ever handed someone over to the enemy? Have you ever let someone down, been unfaithful, violated a trust or deceived someone? Have you ever betrayed someone?
Now take those two questions further: Have you ever been betrayed by someone you love? Have you ever betrayed someone you love? Continue reading →
So much of what passes for prayer these days leaves me cold. I have it on good authority that there are people in various places praying for me. Sadly, most of the things they are praying for on my behalf sound like hell on earth; this despite the fact that these folk insist that the things they are praying for will keep me out of hell. The sung prayer in this video has been a favourite of mine for a few years now. Padraig O’ Tuama is an Irish poet, song writer, theologian and troubadour whose earthy prayer is at the very least a conversation worthy of the Divine’s attention: “I fucked it up. I fucked it up. Maranatha.”
On this glorious morning the splendour of the Earth is intensified by the Sun’s light and I am reminded that for the inhabitants of this planet each and every day is Earth Day. Let us not forget the beauty that awaits us in the ordinary! It is this beauty that we hold in common which reveals the extra-ordinary splendour of the Earth. Breathe deep! Breathe deep the breath of God!
On the heels of Peter Rollins visit to our congregation last weekend, this Earth Sunday sermon flows out of Peter’s work. You can listen to Peter’s sermon which is the jumping off point for this Earth Day sermon here
“Can the ways in which we tell the stories of resurrection transform us into followers of Jesus who embody a way of being in the world that can nourish, ground, and sustain the kind of peace that the world yearns for?” I preached this sermon on the raising of Tabitha years ago, as an attempt to convey the academic essay of New Testament scholar Rick Strelan into the form of a sermon. I believe that it is vital for preachers to convey the wealth of insights that are bandied about in the halls of academia, so that congregations can let go of so many interpretations of scripture that insult their intelligence, so that we can begin to explore the “more-than-literal meaning” (Marcus Borg) of biblical texts. Rick Strelan’s essay appeared in “Biblical Theology Bulletin, May 1, 2009, under the title “Tabitha: the gazelle of Joppa”.
Yesterday, I went for a walk. As I was walking along, minding my own business, a bright light appeared in the sky. The light nearly blinded me and so it took a while for me to figure out what was happening. Suddenly, it was so clear that the light was actually coming from a very large spaceship. I could scarcely believe by eyes. I stood frozen to the spot as the space ship landed in the middle of the road. You’ll never believe what happened after it landed. A couple of little green creatures with giant eyes gout out, took my picture, and then got back in the spaceship and flew off into the farthest reaches of space.
You don’t believe me, do you? You think that I’m making a joke of some sort, or maybe I’ve been working too hard and I’ve finally lost the plot. I know there’s probably nothing that I can say that would convince you that little green men have photographed me. Quite frankly that’s a relief because if you’ll believe that, you’d probably believe anything.
I do find it interesting that you won’t allow yourself to believe that I encountered aliens from another planet, and yet, you’ll suspend your disbelief when I tell you a story from the Bible. Or will you? Take our first lesson from the book of Acts. The miraculous story of how the Apostle Peter raised a disciple named Tabitha from the dead. You all know that when someone is dead, that’s it they are dead. You can pray over them all you want, but they’re never going to sit up, let alone stand up like Tabitha. There’s about as much chance of a person standing up after they’ve actually been dead as there is little green men from outer space landing on the street outside this church.The story of the raising of Tabitha is one of those stories that we wouldn’t believe for a second if it weren’t in the Bible. I suspect that when it comes to stories from the Bible, most of us don’t really believe that they happened exactly the way the Bible says they happened. Or do we?Now maybe you’re the generous type and so you say, “Don’t be too hasty, it could happen if the person wasn’t really dead.” I mean, maybe Tabitha’s friends got it wrong and she just appeared to be dead. The story says that Tabitha died, then her friends washed her body and laid her out in an upper room. Then, since Lydda was near Joppa, the disciples sent two couriers to Peter, who was in Lydda and they asked Peter to head back to Lydda, which was about 10 miles away. That’s a 20 mile round trip on foot with a walking speed of about 3 miles per hour it would take at least 7 hours. She was definitely dead. According to the story Peter sends everyone out of the room, knelt down and prayed and then said, “Tabitha, stand up!” and she did just that.
The story of the raising of Tabitha is one of those stories that we wouldn’t believe for a second if it weren’t in the Bible. I suspect that when it comes to stories from the Bible, most of us don’t really believe that they happened exactly the way the Bible says they happened. Or do we?Continue reading →
Peter Rollins was our guest preacher this Sunday and took us beyond the surface of the story of Paul’s revelation toward the darkness from which we all too often hide.
The scripture readings can be found here – The Worship Bulletin here
Desmond Tutu, Peacemaker: A conversation with Desmond Tutu and John Allen. Recorded March 21, 2013 by Pepperdine University School of Law. This brilliant video provides an opportunity for Desmond Tutu and his Press Secretary John Allen to reflect upon the work of South Africa’s Truth and Reconciliation Commission. It is a marvellous testament to the potential for goodness that exists in humanity. Tutu’s use of the African word “ubuntu” to express his conviction that we cannot be fully human without other humans is wisdom born of human evolution witnessed up close and personal.
Reposted today as the Church commemorates the life and witness of Dietrich Bonhoeffer.
When I was just a teenager, I was introduced to the writings of Dietrich Bonhoeffer by a wise Lutheran Pastor. I remember devouring Bonhoeffer’s “Life Together” and “Letters and Papers from Prison”. To this day, I credit Bonhoeffer for making me a Lutheran. While a great deal of water has flowed under a good many bridges since I was first enamoured of Lutheran theology, to this day I am grateful to that wise old Lutheran pastor who gave me my first taste of Bonhoeffer. Of late, there has been much ado about a little phrase that has been extracted from Bonhoeffer’s work: “religionless Christianity”.
(click here for full quotations from Letter and Papers from Prison)
“It is not for us to prophecy the day when men will once more ask God that the world be changed and renewed. But when that day arrives there will be a new language, perhaps quite non-religious. But liberating and redeeming as was Jesus language. It’ll shock people. It’ll shock them by its power. It’ll be the language of a new truth proclaiming God’s peace with men.” Bonhoeffer: Agent of Grace
Tragically, Bonhoeffer was executed before he had the opportunity to expand on his idea of Christianity beyond religion. The phrase “religionless Christianity” has intrigued agnostics, atheists, humanists, liberal christians and progressive christians. Eric Metaxas, author of “Bonhoeffer” dismisses the idea that Bonhoeffer was anything but a serious, orthodox Lutheran pastor right up to the end.
Despite the historical evidence of Bonhoeffer’s religious orthodoxy, the notion of religionless Christianity will not die. Bishop John Shelby Spong is among those who have tried to build on Bonhoeffer’s phrase and his book “Jesus for the Non Religious” has certainly moved the conversation along among progressive christians.
The dream of religionless christianity has moved well beyond Bonhoeffer as twenty-first century christians wrestle with archaic images of God and move beyond the religious trappings of traditional christianity. The notion of moving beyond religion has always intrigued me. Years ago, while studying Hinduism my professor offered a definition of God from one of the Vedas: “God is beyond the beyond, and beyond that also”. As I continue to explore the life and teachings of the man none as Jesus of Nazareth it becomes more and more evident that such a definition is compatible with his portrait of God. Jesus of Nazareth attempted to move his co-religionists beyond their religious images of God. What might our images of God become if we move beyond the idols offered to us by the religion of Christianity? Might we move toward images of God that more closely resemble the teachings of Jesus by moving toward a religionless christianity?
Sometimes we can better reflect upon our own tradition from the perspective of another tradition. In the video below, twentieth century philosopher and theologian Alan Watts explores the concept of the Religion of No Religion.
“Beyond the Beyond and Beyond that also.” Letting go of our images is the gift of faith that moves us beyond religion. I can hear Jesus call us to let go!
I am currently reading John Philip Newell’s “A New Harmony: The Spirit, The Earth, and The Human Soul. It is a wonderful excursion into the depths of a modern Celtic soul which I find difficult to put down. Newell provides a new vision of what he sees as the “new Pentecost” and I’ve already discovered several sermons waiting to be written. Happily Newell will be speaking in Guelph next week and I will have the opportunity to journey further along the way with this gentle soul. I suspect that his vision of Pentecost will spark some flames of the Spirit as I prepare for the celebration of Pentecost! 
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