Category Archives: Theology

LOVE: Out of the Mouths of Babes

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Once upon a time, when two of my nieces, Ashley and her sister Sheri Lynn, were pregnant at the same time. Ashley was expecting her first child, Sheri Lynn her second. My niece Sheri Lynn’s little girl is my great-niece, Isabella and Isabella was just 3 years old when she and her pregnant mother, Sheri Lynn, travelled from Vancouver to Toronto, so that Isabella could be the flower-girl at my wedding. Before they arrived, the story was already being told of Isabella’s response to the news that her Aunt Ashley was going to have a baby and that that baby was going to be a little boy. Isabella proudly announced that her Aunt Ashley’s little boy was going to be her new little brother. Well-meaning adults tried to correct Isabella by gently telling her that her Aunt Ashley’s little boy would in fact be her cousin and not her brother. But Isabella insisted that he would be her brother.

Various family members tried to convince Isabella that the baby her Mommy was expecting would be her little brother or her little sister, but the little boy which her Aunt Ashley was expecting would be her cousin. But no matter how hard or how often they tried to explain it, Isabella went on insisting that her Aunt Ashley’s new baby would be her new, baby brother. One day, while they were visiting, I snapped up the opportunity to look after Isabella while her mother did some sightseeing. I had some errands to run and it was marvellous to have a little 3-year-old along to help me. It gave me the opportunity to do some great-auntie stuff. And that’s how Isabella and I ended up in the local Christian bookstore trying to find a lightweight nativity set which she would be able to carry home with her on the airplane. I wanted Isabella to learn to tell the greatest story ever told in her own unique way.

After a lot of negotiating, we settled on a rather large cloth nativity set which folded up into a stable which doubled as a carrier-bag for all the various characters and animals. Once we’d purchased the Nativity set and one or two items which only a 3-year-old could convince me were necessary, we headed out to the car so that Isabella could make fun of my feeble attempts to figure out just how her car-seat worked. Isabella insisted that we open up the nativity set right away, so that she could play with it on the way home. So, as she got herself up into her car seat, I struggled to remove Mary, Joseph, a shepherd, some wise guys, a sheep, a donkey, a cow and a little swaddled baby, from the confines of some pretty horrendous 21st century packaging. I don’t know who comes up with such impossible packages. I can never open them without problems. Mary and Joseph almost didn’t make it and Isabella had to remind her dear old auntie Dawn that there are just some words that good girls are not supposed to say, or her Mommy would get really mad.

Suitably chastened, I rescued Mary and Joseph and suggested that we put all the characters into the cloth stable until we got home. Isabella reluctantly agreed to put all the characters away, except for the small swaddled baby. Compromise is everything when you are dealing with a 3-year-old. So, I warned Isabella not to lose the baby Jesus, and I got into the front seat and we headed for home.

On the way, Isabella told me her version of the greatest story ever told, which involved Santa Claus following a star, checking his list twice, and giving Jesus lots of gold because he was poor and needed some new clothes because his Mom didn’t pack enough in his suitcase when they went to the airport. So, Joseph was going to go to the store and buy new pyjamas for Jesus. So, everyone better be good, and watch out or else they won’t get any new pyjamas for Christmas.

Now, clearly, I had some work to do, but just as I was about to teach Isabella the greatest story ever told, she asked me if Auntie Ashley would have her new baby in time for Christmas. I told her that she would indeed have her new baby for Christmas. Isabella then told me that she was going to buy some new pyjamas for her new baby brother. I was about to remind her that her Auntie Ashley’s new little baby would be her new baby cousin and not her new baby brother, when Isabella announced that she has two little brothers. Auntie Ashley’s little boy and baby Jesus are her brothers. Who in their right mind would dare argue with that logic?

The truth is that Jesus is indeed Isabella’s brother and so of course her Auntie Ashley’s little boy is also her little brother as well. As I was ruminating over this gospel truth, Isabella announced that “all little boys are my  brothers, and all little girls are my sisters.” Out of the mouths of babes.

This year, may we all remember that all baby boys are our brothers and all baby girls are our sisters. They all need pyjamas, they all need to be nurtured and to be loved. They need to be taught and to be treasured, to be freed and to be empowered and they are all looking to us, their big sisters and their big brothers, to help make LOVE happen over and over and over again. May the HOLY ONE who IS LOVE continue to live and move in, with, through, and beyond you and yours during these challenging times. Shalom, dear ones. Shalom.

Make Room for LOVE To BE Born Right Here and NOW!

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What a strange Advent this has been. In the midst of this pandemic, so many of our rituals and customs have been set aside as we struggle to do our part to slow the numbers down and bend that curve. I don’t know about you, but I don’t have much of an appetite for John the Baptist’s ranting and raving this Advent Season. Public health leaders, politicians, and pundits of every kind, who are endlessly pleading with us to wear our masks, wash our hands, stay home unless it is essential to go out and worst of all don’t gather with friends and family for Christmas period. I don’t need some ancient prophet’s words echoing down through the generations crying to us from the wilderness, pleading with us to, “Prepare the way for our God!” 

This is a strange Advent Season in my home. We put up our Christmas tree this year. Normally, we wait, choosing to stay in the dark blue hues of Advent. But this year, knowing that it will just be the two of us, we have made an extra effort to decorate our home with all the trappings of Christmas. We’ve even violated our custom of trying not to play Christmas carols until Christmas. So, I’ve been hearing “O Holy Night” over and over again. It seems a little premature, but that line is stuck in my head, “A thrill of hope the weary world rejoices” “A thrill of hope the weary world rejoices” Lord knows our world is weary. So how shall we rejoice this year?

I wonder as I wander around the empty sanctuary here, what will it be like not to see many of you on Christmas Eve. I’ve been wondering what it will be like not to hear the familiar sounds of your voices singing with such reverence. I’ve been anticipating my own sadness at not seeing many of you raise your candles in the darkness, as we sing Silent Night with such hope and gladness. Considering all that we have been through this year, and all the challenges which lie ahead in the coming months, is it any wonder that the sentimental aspects of our beloved Christmas traditions are haunting our Christmas preparations in the midst of the countless restrictions we are trying to cope with? Oh, how we long, not for the darkness of reality, but for the darkness of our visions of some “Silent Night, holy night, all is calm, all is bright.” Our imaginings of the way things were, just might get in the way of our ability to experience any peace, or any joy, at all this Christmas.

Within the contours of our imagined sentimental Christmas scenes, the mess of life is all too often swept under the carpet of straw in that stable, upon which a gorgeous holy family stare placidly at adoring shepherds and angels, under the perfect glow of a celestial star. Even when we shift our gaze from the delightful stable, to our own remembered Christmas gatherings, the mess of life is all too often swept under imaginary rugs, so as to ensure that the reality of life in community can’t threaten to undo our visions of perfection. COVID may be an unwelcome visitor this Christmas, but every Christmas has its unwelcome visitors. I think that’s why the anonymous-gospel-storytellers allow John the Baptist to strut his stuff way out by the Jordan river somewhere, in the wilderness, so as not to have him intrude on our treasured tales of Jesus’ arrival. There’s nothing silent nightish about John the Baptist as he rants and raves about the need for people to, “Repent!” and warns anyone within shouting distance that it is time to prepare a way for the arrival of someone who will turn everything they have ever known around. For to “repent” literally means, “to turn around.” Repent! Stop going in the direction you’ve been going all your lives and turn around, prepare a new way of being.  Prepare the Way for our God!

Christmas, no matter how you understand Christmas, Christmas isn’t much like Silent Night. The “way” which John the Baptist is screaming at us to prepare, is not a way which will accommodate sweeping the messiness of life under the straw, or indeed, even under the rugs of our imaginations. Christmas is so much more than the Silent Night of our longings. Christmas, if it is any kind of Christmas at all, includes all the messiness we bring to it. Think about it. The story of new birth isn’t pretty. It is not tidy. Nor is it silent. Life is chaotic. Life is messy. Life is far too full of contradictions to ever be adequately captured by our sentimentality.

If your visions of Jesus’ arrival resemble the scene depicted in Silent Night, you really haven’t understood the chaos which new birth brings. Christmas is not about heavenly peace. About as close to Silent Night that Christmas ever gets is “shepherds quaking at the sight!” We ought to be quake to at the very idea of LOVE being born in us. Christmas is a radical subversive parable which was written to challenge whatever peace we have made with the chaos in our lives, a parable carefully crafted to reject our impulse to pull the covers over our head and pretend that life isn’t happening the way it is happening.

Christmas is chaotic precisely because it is in the midst of chaos that we encounter the ONE who IS…that’s IS, with a IS with a capital I and a capital S. IS the third-person singular, of the verb “to be” the ONE who IS – the one our ancestors knew as YAHWEH, the great I AM – that’s AM in capital letters, the first-person singular of the verb “to be”, YAHWEH the I AM, is not off in the heavens looking down at some angelic nativity scene. The ONE who IS, is as Jesus taught us with his very being, the ONE who IS, is LOVE, and as LOVE the ONE who IS, is to be found in all the muck and the mire, right smack dab in the midst of our chaos. For not only do we live, and move, and have our being, in the ONE who IS LOVE, this very ONE, this DIVINITY, this GOD if you will, works in, with, through, and beyond us, in all of our chaotic mess, constantly creating hope in the midst of despair, creating justice in the midst of injustice, creating vaccines in the midst of this pandemic, and offering compassion, kindness, and LOVE, as we work together to keep as many people as possible safe and healthy. Even in this COVID chaos in which we are locked-down, LOVE is working miracles. We are not alone in this chaos.

Christmas is the celebration of new birth and birth is chaotic, messy, frightening, painful, and anything but silent! The parable of Christmas is a raw story, a bare bones story, to which we have added our own desires for a Silent Night. Whatever our imaginings about that holy night may be, one thing we can know for sure there was nothing silent about Jesus’ birth. It was a birth like any other birth, with all the mess of blood, urine, mucus, pushing, screaming, and amniotic fluid. This birth had more than its fair share of fear and anxiety. Whatever Jesus’ birth was it was not the Silent Night of our dreams.

Jesus birth was just like your birth and my birth. Like every birth, Jesus birth was chaos filled with the excitement and the worries which come before something wonderful happens. I suspect that Jesus’ young mother, Mary, was screaming, cursing, pushing, crying, bearing down, and sore afraid. Christmas was not a silent night and therein lies our hope for the world. For a god who is a creator of angelic, surreal, nativity scenes, would be a god far removed from the chaos and the reality of our lives. A god who is devoid of the messiness of life, isn’t any kind of god that I want to be a part of, let alone worship. I need to know that we are all part of something so much bigger than we can begin to imagine that isn’t some kind of distant creature, aloof, and separated from the reality of our lives. I want to be part of the SOURCE of ALL, ALL that IS, a deity, a force, a LOVE which is capable of working in, with, through, and beyond us to bring order out of the chaos, to inspire scientists to create vaccines. I want to be part of the ONE who weeps with those who weep, who suffers with those who suffer, a LOVE which dances, sings, laughs and rejoices whenever and wherever LOVE emerges in the midst of the mess and chaos of life. I want to be part of a LOVE which is beyond my ability to comprehend and yet a LOVE which works in, with, and through those who work to heal the sick, care the dying, toil away in laboratories seeking vaccines, who seek for justice for the poor, the oppressed and the marginalized, a LOVE which works, in, with, through, and beyond us to heal the wounds of the afflicted. I want to be part of a LOVE which challenges us, and at the same time, a LOVE which allures us in ways which empower us to live fully, love extravagantly, and be all that we are created to BE.

The Christmas story is the story of such a LOVE; LOVE which emerges in the midst of chaos, LOVE which empowers us to prepare new ways of being LOVE, which is born in a baby, for this is how LOVE is always born. This is how LOVE was born in you. At your birth LOVE came into the world and in you lie the hopes and dreams of all the Earth. “A thrill of hope the weary world rejoices. A thrill of hope the wear world rejoices. Fall on your knees, fall on your knees” and LOVE will be there.

LOVE which is the MYSTERY we call, “God” is gestating in you. We will get our Silent Night. It may not be the Silent Night of our sentimental rememberings, but like all nights, it will provide darkness from which we can give birth to LOVE; LOVE powerful enough to bring peace on Earth and healing to the nations.

Prepare the way for LOVE to be born here and now! Trim your trees. Mull your wine. Wrap your presents. Sing carols. Zoom, Zoom, Zoom as we must. Reminisce to your hearts content as you, stay home. Stay safe. Keep your neighbours safe. Make room for LOVE to be born here and now! LOVE which IS, BEYOND, the BEYOND and BEYOND that also. Our CREATOR, CHRIST, and SPIRIT, ONE. Amen.

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Christmas Oranges: LOVE Quenches!

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Stories have the power to open us to the LOVE which we call God. A story’s ability to open our eyes to LOVE has been true since the “Once upon a time” days of our childhood, through to the “Way back when,” stories handed down from one generation to the next. I don’t exactly remember when or where I first heard this particular LOVE story. I do know that the depth of LOVE which this story reveals opens us to the LOVE which lives in, with, and through each of us.

Way back when, World War II had just ended, and refugees were herded into camps until the world could figure out what to do with the millions of displaced people in it, LOVE was revealed. Back then, refugee camps were filled to overflowing with children who’d lost their families during the war. Apparently, there was this little boy in a camp in France. The little boy’s name has long since been lost to me. So, I’ll call him Andre, a French name derived from the word for “man” for Andre could be any little boy. Andre couldn’t have been more than about seven years old and he could barely remember the family he lost almost three years before the war ended. He’d been living in the refugee camp, more of an orphanage really, for almost a year. A few nuns, who never could scrap together enough money to feed the children properly, ran the camp. But they did their best and the children were, after all was said and done, lucky to be alive.

The children hardly noticed that Christmas was approaching until one of the nuns announced that a neighbour had promised to come by the orphanage on Christmas Eve to drop off a sack full of oranges. Andre had only a vague memory of an orange actually is. The year before a stranger had shared an orange with him and he remembered the taste of the tiny sections of his share of the orange that oozed precious juice down his half-starved throat. Andre spent the days leading up to Christmas Eve dreaming of having a whole orange of his very own. He thought about the smell of the orange. He dreamed of peeling the orange, and carefully considered whether or not to devour each and every section of the orange all at once, or whether he should divide it and save a section or two for Christmas morning.

When Christmas Eve arrived, the children were so excited as the nuns did what they could to bring some Christmas cheer to the camp. When the neighbour arrived, there was so much jostling for position that little Andre found himself at the end of a very long queue. He strained to see the treasure that awaited him and sure enough the aroma of oranges began to waft Andre’s way. As campmates danced their oranges around the room, Andre saw the neighbour’s expression begin to change. The neighbour looked so very sad when he began to deliver the shattering news to Andre that all the oranges were gone. The neighbour was trying to apologize when Andre shot from the room and ran all the way to his dormitory and flung himself on his bed and began to sob and sob, and sob.

In the midst of his grief, little Andre didn’t hear the other children come into the dormitory. As his body heaved and his sobs robbed him of his breath, Andre didn’t feel the tap on his shoulder. It was the smell of orange which finally caught his attention. As Andre raised his head from his pillow, he caught sight of the little girl’s outstretched hand. On her palm lay a peeled orange, it was made up of wedges saved from the oranges of the other children. Each child had donated a wedge. Together, they had created the most beautiful, tangy, juicy orange which Andre ever tasted in his 93 years of savoring oranges on Christmas Eve.

LOVE oozes, drips, and pungently presents itself in, with, through and around each one of us. Savour the LOVE which quenches our thirst for life. Embody that LOVE for the thirsty ones of the world.

May the HOLY ONE who IS LOVE continue to live and move in, with, through, and beyond you and yours during these challenging times.

LOVE Story: the Living Nativity

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Once upon a time, Lesley was a member of a small church in the suburbs. Every year toward the end of Advent the members of this church would create a living nativity. About a week before Christmas when most people were busy getting ready for the holiday, this congregation would conscript a few members to begin the preparations for the living nativity. Out on the front lawn of the church, the volunteers would slap together a few boards in the shape of a stable. Costumes would be created out of old sheets and bathrobes, so that children from the congregation could be dressed up as Mary and Joseph, shepherds, angels and wise guys. Then the children would be arranged in the make-shift stable so that people passing by in their cars would be reminded of what took place in Bethlehem on the first Christmas. The church was located at a fairly busy intersection and year after year, Lesley would marvel at the fact that the Living Nativity had never caused an accident, as drivers strained to see a motley band of children pushing and shoving each other inside what only remotely resembled a stable.

The Living Nativity was the brainchild of Deedee the dreaded church organist. Deedee was a rather severe woman, who always wanted everything to be done just so. Deedee worked hard to plan various grand events that she felt would benefit the congregation. But somehow, Deedee’s grand plans were always beyond the capabilities of the volunteers she usually managed to conscript. Over the years, people in the congregation learned to hide whenever they saw Deedee coming toward them with her clipboard. If Deedee managed to corner you and your name was put onto her clipboard, you were sunk.  Once your name was on the list, you were one of Deedee volunteers. 

Deedee’ s conscripts never really knew what it was they had volunteered for until they arrived for the first rehearsal. By then it was too late, because Deedee had never been known to let a volunteer slip through her hands. Deedee the dreaded church organist was a hard taskmaster. There was only one thing that Deedee disliked more than uncooperative volunteers and that was children. Deedee was convinced that children went out of their way to mess up her grand plans. But Deedee had to tolerate children in her living nativity, because try as she might, even the dreaded Deedee couldn’t convince any of the adults in the congregation to dress up like angels, shepherds, and wise folk, and stand outside in the cold, in a dilapidated stable. Adults were only too pleased to offer up their children as sacrifices to the dreaded Deedee in order to avoid the cold stable themselves. Continue reading →

Gestating in MYSTERY: the Darkness of this Pandemic

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First Sunday of Advent – Mark 13:24-37

I realize that inviting you to contemplate the safety of the darkness of the Womb which gives birth, is a bit of a risk in the midst of a pandemic. Surely, the hope we crave might be more easily come by with images filled with light. Alas, Advent is a season of waiting in expectation. So, while we long to rejoice in the light, I’m inviting you to wait in the expectation that there is so much LIGHT emanating from the LOVE which gestates in darkness.

The anonymous-gospel-storyteller which we know as Mark provides us with a kind of pathway into the very darkness which we all too often fear to embrace. Peering into an unknown future, this ancient gospel-storyteller speaks of a time of distress which is passing. This distress gives way to darkness; a time when, “the sun will be darkened, the moon will lose its brightness, the stars will fall from the sky and the powers of the heavens will be shaken.”

Look around you. Let yourself see the darkness in which we find ourselves in this Advent like no other we have experienced. These past months have seen so many of the things we take for granted fall away, only to be replaced by dire news of rising numbers, which threaten to breech the very foundations of institutions and systems which we have always assumed will save us. Is it any wonder that prophets heralding the news of salvific vaccines curry our favour amongst the clamor of the prophets of doom, who warn us of the end of the world? It is so tempting to abandon the darkness, lean into the light, and rush beyond the end of the world, to the promised land of milk and honey, where all is calm, and all is bright. But linger with me in the darkness for a while. Perhaps there is WISDOM which can only be revealed in the darkness; the kind of WISDOM which has the power to give birth to new ways of being LOVE in the world.

It has been said that a crisis reveals what has always been there. Perhaps the same can be said of the darkness? If someone had told us, last Advent that the world as we know it is about to come to an end, many of us would have assumed that such predictions are simply rhetorical devices designed to make us wake-up and pay attention to what is happening all around us. Indeed, like so many preachers, I too have employed end of the world rhetoric in my own Advent efforts to wake-up complacent listeners. This year, perhaps we are more willing to concede that the world as we knew it has already come to an end, back in the first wave of this pandemic. But every year, the world as someone knows it comes to an end. Poverty, oppression, hunger, illness, disease, racism, anger, violence and greed, these aspects of our lives together, bring an end of the worlds of so many of us, each and every year. Someone’s world is always coming to an end.

This pandemic, like all crises has done so much more than simply bring hardship and death to the world. In the early days of lockdown, a journalist Peter C. Baker wrote this, “When a crisis visits a community, the fundamental realty of that community is laid bare.” This pandemic has revealed to us the problems which we are all too willing to ignore, or to tolerate, or to deny. In addition to exposing what was already there, the pandemic exacerbated the suffering of those who were already struggling under the weight of our treasured systems and ways of being in the world.

If you are watching me on a screen, chances are you are richly blessed and well placed to be insulated from the full impact of this pandemic. Many of us have the option to flee the darkness and distract ourselves with light which is a paler version of the very Light we long for. It is so very tempting, to forsake the revelations of darkness in favour of visions of jolly old super-santas capable of numbing us back to sleep. But the echoes of cries from our distant past, stir us with warnings, “Stay awake!”  “Keep watch! For you do not know the day or the hour.” As much as I’d like nothing better than to lull myself into a long winter’s nap and wake up to find we’ve arrived on the far side of this pandemic, I believe that our ancient ancestors were on to something when they warned that as the world grew darker people should “Stay alert!”.

I’m convinced that if we have the courage to see what is being revealed in the darkness of this pandemic, something new will be born! My hope is, that what is about to be born will not be born out of our fear, but rather out of the LOVE which lives, in, with, through and beyond us. Birth and darkness are intimately related to one another. Gestation takes place in the darkness; seeds need the darkness of the earth, and humans we need the darkness of the womb. Movements and revolutions are created in the darkness. The darkness of poverty and despair, the darkness of injustice and war, the darkness of danger and death germinate the seeds of movements and revolutions which change the world. We have scarcely begun to imagine what might be born out of the darkness of this pandemic. But I am convinced that in order for LOVE to be born out of the darkness, we must have the courage to look beyond our fears and peer into the contours of the darkness.

Yes, we long for the way things used to be. I miss you all, more than I know how to say. I long for the day when we can gather together in person, here in this sanctuary. I can’t wait to share the peace with embraces so tight that they will give us comfort and strength. I would love to be able to sing carols, and celebrate communion, on Christmas Eve. I have faith that those days will come again.

But if they come again and we have failed to see what this crisis is revealing, we will return to a Church which was failing in all kinds of ways to usher in the DIVINE MYSTERY’s Reign of Peace. Yes, I want the stores to fully open again. I want people to be able to go back to work. Yes, I am convinced that in time the various vaccines which are within our grasp, will make it possible for us to return to what so many of us see as “normal life.”  But if we go back to the status quo without seeing what is being revealed by this crisis, we will fail accept that our economic systems are oppressing the poor in ways which cannot and should not be tolerated? Yes, I want to be able to travel again, and I am confident that the day will come when I can get on an airplane and fly across the country and see my family. But if we fail to see the benefits which lockdown brought to our bruised and battered Earth, we will fail to face up to the impact modern travel has on the fragile ecology of our planet? I want to celebrate Christmas with my family. I want to see my grandchildren open their presents. I want to gather around a Christmas feast and celebrate the LOVE that we share. Like many of you I grieve the loss of so many moments together. I will be the first to rejoice when the all-clear is sounded and we celebrate the end of this pandemic. I am confident that a new age is about to be born in which we can rejoice and be glad. I long to celebrate the death of the coronavirus. But I also believe the words of Joan Chittister, who said, “Every age that is dying is simply a new age coming to life.”

If we have the courage to peer into the darkness to see what is being revealed, we will surely see that we cannot simply return to the way things were. Longing for a return to what we call “normal” will only lull us back into sleep, from which we may never again give birth to LOVE.

Keep awake! Be alert! For a new age is about to be born. Look into the darkness and you will see new ways of being, born out of what is being revealed. In the darkness of this pandemic, there is much more to see than the death-throws of all that must die in order for new life to be born. Look into the darkness and you will see that new life gestating, as LOVE is born again, and again, and again.

In the darkness of this pandemic, we have also seen the courage of doctors, nurses, caregivers of every kind, as they have healed the sick and accompanied the dying. In the darkness of this pandemic, we have seen the compassion of neighbours reaching out to neighbours in ways which have inspired hope, even in the most jaded of us. In the darkness of this pandemic, we have seen LOVE’s birthing revealed in so many random acts of kindness. There is so much WISDOM being revealed in the darkness.

As we journey through Advent this year, let us explore the contours of the darkness in which we are gestating, so that what is about to be born, might be a world in which we see the LIGHT of the DIVINE MYSTERY, which is LOVE, live in, with, through and beyond us, empowering us to forsake the way things were; to let go of our longing to return to “normal”, so that we are ready to embrace new ways of being, as we usher in a new age in which justice leads to peace.

Keep awake! Stay alert! LOVE is being born in the of the darkness, and the LIGHT, which is DIVINE MYSTERY, is being revealed, over and over again! May the LIGHT which is LOVE, be born in you, so that the world may know in you, the ONE who IS our LOVER, BELOVED, and LOVE Itself. Amen.

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FULL WORSHIP VIDEO for the First Sunday of Advent

 

 

LOVE Story: Remembering the LOVE born from Grandma’s nativity

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It was the day before the day before Christmas and Angela had just about finished decorating her band new swanky apartment on the West-side. Everything was just perfect; each of the decorations had been chosen with such care. Just like all the furniture in her apartment each and every one of the Christmas decorations was brand spanking new. In a couple of hours Angela expected that her apartment would be full of guests. Her guests had been as carefully chosen as each of the items that adorned her apartment. It was all designed to show everyone how very well Angela was doing.

This Christmas, unlike so many other Christmases that Angela had endured, this Christmas everything was going to be perfect. Angela planned to lavishly entertain her guests. The evening’s entertainment was guaranteed to get Angela’s Christmas off to the best of starts. At least here in her lovely new home, Angela would be in control. Unlike the chaos of her family’s Christmas gatherings.

All her life, Angela had endured the trials and tribulations of her family’s dysfunctional yuletide gatherings; gatherings that always ended up with various family members arguing over some perceived slight. Tonight, things would be different. Tonight, Angela hadn’t invited a single member of her outrageous family to come to dine. Tonight, Angela’s guests were made up of the great and the good, new friends and work colleagues; people Angela could count on to behave admirably. Tonight, everything would be perfect.


All she needed to do to finish off the room, was to assemble the new nativity set which she had just purchased up on her beautiful fireplace mantle. She hadn’t planned to purchase a nativity set, but when she saw the hand-carved, olive- wood nativity set in the window of the swanky gift shop, she just knew that it was perfect. As she carefully unpacked her perfect nativity, Angela’s mind wandered back over the years to the very first Christmas that she could remember.

Angela was just four years old. She and her brother, together with her parents were living in her Grandma’s house in England. Above the coal fireplace, high on the mantle, out of reach from Angela or her brother’s tiny hands there was a small nativity set. It had been Angela’s Grandma’s when she was a little girl, and it was the focal point of all the Christmas decorations in her their small sitting room. Continue reading →

LOVE Story: Keep Watch! LOVE has many disguises!

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When I was a young woman, I lived in an apartment, in a very rough neighbourhood. Many of the people who lived in this neighbourhood survived on government assistance, while others earned their living any way they could. I moved into the apartment because the rent was cheap and quite frankly, I was young and foolish. Despite all the warnings my family and friends were all too willing to issue against, what they saw as the unsavoury characters who inhabited the neighbourhood, I was convinced that I would be able to handle anything which came my way.

The office where I worked was just down the street from my apartment and every morning as I walked to work, I would meet some of my neighbours returning from an evening of plying their trade on the streets and in the alleys. Each morning, I would be met at the entrance to my office by an old man named Ed. Ed was a wild character. He’d had been living on the streets for years. He was extremely hairy, very dirty, and he tended to rant and shout a great deal. I suspect that Ed slept on the doorstep of the building which housed my office because it was somewhat protected from the winter weather. 

Even though Ed made the me nervous, I eventually got used to seeing him. Ed always gave me a warm welcome when I arrived at my office. He knew that when I got inside, I would brew a fresh cup of coffee. He used to tease me that I was a sucker for a sad face, as he waited patiently for me to bring him a cup of coffee. We never talked much, though, at least not about anything personal. Ed would just rant and rave about the injustices of the world.  I never did find out how Ed ended up on the streets. Nor did I ever know how he spent his days. Continue reading →

LOVE Stories for Advent & Christmas

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What about those raging anti-maskers, pandemic-denying, conspiracy-theory-loving, in your face, right-wing nut-jobs?

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Bless me, folks, for I have sinned. It has been far too long since my last confession. But what with COVID and all, I haven’t been too eager to look into the mirror. But we have arrived at the end of the church year, and with this comes a parable attributed to Jesus, about the sheep and the goats, and I must confess my goatyness has become all too apparent. It has been sneaking up on me for weeks now. I blame the media. Why not, everyone else does? Over and over again, the news media has delivered reports about various prominent, what shall we call them, Trumpsters? who are testing positive for the coronavirus. The news of raging anti-maskers, pandemic-denying, conspiracy-theory-loving, in your face right-wing nut-jobs who, are making fun of science one minute only to test positive the next, well, forgive me but I can no longer stop my lips from twitching and breaking out in a self-righteous smile. Not that I wish them harm, but a few weeks on a ventilator might just be the medicine they need to convert them to my way of thinking.

I know. I know it’s wrong. This is after all a confession. But admit it. Go on. Tell me you don’t smirk even a little when “those people,” you know the ones who rant and rave, in that self-righteous way of theirs, ridiculing, or denying, or objecting to all the stuff that we care about. You know the stuff “we” progressive, forward-thinking, smart people, us, the ones who know better, all the stuff “they,” “them,” “those,” “others,” well let’s face it, they just don’t have a clue about.

Forgive me. I confess that I am in bondage to sin and cannot free myself from judging “them,” those others, whether they’re Trumpsters, or those science-denying, greed-inspired, racist, ignorant, card-carrying nut-jobs. Why shouldn’t we take some delight that when they get what they deserve? After all good christian folk like us, have been judging people for centuries! You’ve got your sheep and you’ve got your goats. And the good shepherd knows enough to separate one from another: sheep to the right, goats to the left. Yay sheep! Boo goats! The parable is clear!  Yay us! Boo them! Continue reading →

Turning It All Upside-down and Inside-out! – Parable of the Talents

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Black lives matter. Indigenous lives matter. Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual, questioning, queer, pansexual, two-spirited androgynous and asexual lives matter. Asian lives matter. The lives of the poor matter. The lives of the oppressed matter. Now, I’m making a deliberate choice here not to include the phrase, “white lives matter” or the phrase, “All lives matter.”  Yes, I know, if you are white, if you are wealthy, if you are successful, if you are heterosexual, your life matters. But I believe that there are moments in time when it is vital that we stand in solidarity with particular lives which are being devalued in particular ways. During these days, when those of us who have benefited all our lives from white privilege, we are beginning to learn the true cost brought to bear on so many lives by systems which by design ensure that some lives in particular matter more than other lives. White, heterosexual, and dare I say it, male lives, for generations have benefited from systems created to preserve their place in the “matters more” column of the way things are, simply because that’s the way it’s always been.

This week two stories collided in my being, leaving me to grapple with my own white privilege. As a preacher, the first story is to be expected. Every three years, the story known as the Parable of the Talents rolls around and I must do my level best to sort through generations of interpretations which often fail to sound anything like Gospel to me. According to the Parable, a slave-master gave talents, which represent a huge amount of money, to his slaves; that’s right we are talking about a slave master and his slaves. This particular slave-master has a reputation for being both harsh and greedy.

Now, at the time, making money at the expense of others was frowned upon, so slaves were often used to extort money on behalf of their masters. The first two slaves managed to more than double the master’s investment and the third slave managed to keep the master’s initial investment intact but couldn’t quite manage to earn any interest at all. Continue reading →

A Peace Remembered: Lest We Forget

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The young woman can still remember one particular Remembrance Day when her words and actions did nothing more than offend someone she loved so very much. It was the one and only argument she ever had with her Grandmother and it happened over Remembrance Day. At the time, the young woman was living and working in London. She remembers noticing that Londoners take Remembrance Day very seriously indeed. More so, she thought, than in her native Canada. She wondered if the blitz had something to do with this.

While most of the poppies people wore were red, she began to see white poppies appear on the lapels of more than just a few people. She read in the newspaper that those who were committed to peace and believed that, for the most part, Remembrance Day only serves to glorify war, were donning white poppies. You could pretty well draw a dividing line between the generations using the colours of poppies as your guide. Young people, who had never experienced war tended to wear white poppies, while those who were older and who still had vivid memories of war, they tended to wear red poppies. In many homes poppies in and of themselves managed to create wars. The idealistic young woman was just twenty and her commitment to peace determined her choice.

She was wearing a white poppy the day she traveled up to the Midlands to visit her Grandmother. It was the day before Remembrance Day when she arrived on her Gran’s doorstep. She’d forgotten all about the white poppy which adorned her lapel. She couldn’t help thinking that there was something odd about the reception she received from her Gran. It wasn’t exactly what you would call a warm welcome. Her Gran was upset about something. But the young woman couldn’t quite figure out what, because her Gran appeared to be giving her the silent treatment. Continue reading →

Keep Me Trucking! – Sermon: Matthew 25:1-13

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Earlier, while on a Zoom meeting, I was complaining about this parable about the “Ten Bridesmaids.” I mean, what is a progressive preacher supposed to do with this parable? A friend and colleague who was also on the call, began reminiscing about how this parable always reminds him of church camp songs, and he proceeded to sing a few bars of, “Give me oil in my lamp, keep me burning!  Give me oil in my lamp, I pray.”  Anyway, he put that into my brain with just those few bars and it’s firmly planted there, this ear-worm, all day long and I’ve been singing it over and over again my head. Only I haven’t been singing the verse which my friend planted in my brain. No “oil in my lamp for me” Oh No!  Over and over again, I’ve been singing in my head: Give gas in ford keep trucking for the Lord. Give me gas in my ford I pray!”

I don’t know about you, but I’m running out of gas. I don’t have much oil left and my light is beginning to dim. It’s been more than 9 months since we first began worrying about the coronavirus, and the numbers are all going in the wrong direction. As if a world-wide pandemic isn’t enough to dim the lamps which used to burn bright in our psyches, there’s the endless turmoil of the never-ending election in the United States. If anxiety could fuel a lamp, or fire up a car, not even the prospect of winter’s cold and darkness could stop me from singing. Forget oil, or gas, right about now, I’d settle for another verse of that earworm which better describes my sorry state: Give me umption in my gumption, help me function, function, give me up umption in my gumption, I pray.

The enormity of the anxiety, fear, and genuine hardships which have been inflicted upon us, I’m wondering why should we even try to wrangle some meaning out of this obscure parable? My lovely Nanny used to say, “you gotta laugh, or you’re gonna end up crying.” So, have you heard the one about the “Ten Bridesmaids”? “Ten bridesmaids” were waiting for a bridegroom, they waited so long that they fell asleep! What a joke? But where’s the laugh? Continue reading →

The Plague and the Printing Press to the Pandemic and the Internet: Always Reforming!

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Semper Reformanda, Always Reforming! This tired old phrase is trotted out each Reformation Sunday by preachers like myself to encourage our listeners to embrace the need for the reformation of the Church to continue. However, appealing it may sound, Semper Reformanda, to be always reforming, is not a task which is often embraced by the Church. Take for example preachers: we who are called to earnestly exhort our listeners to be about the task of reforming the Church, we preachers, we all too often fail to reform our own preaching, especially when it comes to Reformation Sunday. A quick review of some of my sermons and my colleagues sermons  written for this occasion, reveal a tendency to narrow our focus upon the story, or the legend, perhaps dare I say it, myth that on October 31, 1517, the Reverend Doctor Martin Luther nailed his 95 Theses to the door of the Castle Church in Wittenberg and launched, “THE Reformation.” We proclaim the central thesis of Dr. Luther’s theology, that we are justified not by church rules or doctrine, but rather, we are saved by the grace of God, by faith in Christ, then we all sing a few verses of the good doctor’s “A Mighty Fortress” and give thanks that we have been set free from the errors of the Church’s past and move quickly onto next week’s celebration of All Saints. Alas, our annual, protestant reformation rituals, are in and of themselves designed to free us from the burden of always reforming! So, on this Reformation Sunday, I would like to embrace the Reformation tradition of preaching a loud “semper reformanda” by giving thanks that on this Reformation Sunday, the church’s pandemic predicament makes it impossible for the church to do anything but reform. In the words of the wise Dr. Luther, “Here we stand. For we can do no other.”

Here I stand in an empty sanctuary, for we can do no other! Ten months ago, this sanctuary was effectively shut down and I have been leading worship from my home to your home. Remaining physically distant is what LOVE-ing our neighbour looks like in 2020. So, here I stand!  Alone, preaching into the camera on my phone, trusting that the miracles of technology will bring us together. What I wouldn’t give to see this sanctuary filled with your smiling faces. I miss you all and my longing for the traditions of old is only accentuated by the reality that we are headed into what promises to be a long, dark, and difficult winter. There is no end in sight. So, we must content ourselves with our hopes and dreams of a vaccine to cure what ails us. Or do we?

I know that many of us are blessed with the wherewithal to hunker down in our homes and sit this winter out, as we wait for the scientists to do their magic. If you’re watching this on a screen, you like me are among the wealthiest people on the planet and while we are not immune to COVID, we are insulated in ways that the poor, the dispossessed, the oppressed, and the homeless can only dream of. So, if we are careful, follow all the rules, and forgo some the pleasures we used to take for granted, we stand a pretty good chance of survival. Well today on this strange Reformation Sunday, I am here as your preacher, to proclaim that survival is not enough. I want us to consider the possibility, indeed the hope that we can do so much more than simply survive this pandemic. I stand here today to encourage us all to consider the hope which comes from semper reformanda; the hope found when we truly engage in the process of always reforming. Continue reading →

Reformation Sunday Resources

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semper reformanda

Preparing for Reformation Sunday? Some of these posts might be useful:

Always Reforming: Freedom and Loss

”The Truth Will Set You Free. But First It Will Piss You Off!”

Echoing the Divine Plea: “I Lay Before You Life and Death. Choose Life!”

What if we won’t ever really understand Jesus’ life, death, and resurrection until we understand that God is dead?

Enough with “A Mighty Fortress” Already! Sing a New Song!

95 Theses for the Twenty-first Century

Freedom from What?  All this Reforming is Wearing Me Out!

What Darwin Never Knew

A Reformation Day Nailing to the Internet – John Shelby Spong

A Prayer for Reformation – Thomas Berry

GOD’s Backside Passes By Our COVID Regulated Wilderness – Exodus 33

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Yesterday, I while on my way to preside at a wedding, my mind kept wandering away from the imminent nuptials toward the vivid autumn colours and all that they foretell. I love autumn. I’m fond of saying that autumn is my favorite colour. But as I drew closer to my destination, thoughts of the passing of autumn into winter saddened me as I thought about how this wedding would unfold. Here in this region we are about to go back into lockdown, so this wedding was a wedding like no other wedding, I have ever been part of. As we hastily drew up plans for the event, we joked about our new reality and the challenges which have become all too real during this pandemic. Only a handful of guests would gather outside, in the back yard of the parents of the bride. Masks would be mandatory, and we would be required to keep our distance. The realization that this couple was just one of many couples whose weddings have been postponed or curtailed or carried out under strict social distancing regulations began to lower my mood. So, returned my focus to the vivid autumn vistas which lined my route. As my mind soaked up the beauty, it also began to wander toward the reality that these bursts of colour mean that the leaves are about to die. Soon they will all fall, just as the snow will begin to fall. Winter is coming.

Winter is coming and it shall be a winter like no other we have ever experienced. For in addition to the hardships which winter inevitably brings to this part of the world, the increased presence of the coronavirus will force us into the kind of hibernation which this past spring’s lockdown only hinted at. As my mood began to spiral down into the deeps of the wilderness into which we will soon find ourselves, I couldn’t help wondering, in the words of the psalmist in the old King James version, “from whence cometh our help?” I know the psalmist provides the answer, “My help comes from the LORD, the Maker of heaven and earth.” But I have long since given up the notion that the DIVINE MYSTERY which the interpreters of the King James Version of the Bible called, “LORD” was waiting around to magically solve all our problems. Continue reading →

Brussels Sprouts and Coronavirus at Thanksgiving

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This year, an unwelcome presence looms large over all of our Thanksgivings. Oh, how I long for those childhood thanksgivings when the only unwelcome presence at Thanksgiving was the brussels sprouts, which thanks to my Mom, always managed to make their way onto my plate. If only the coronavirus was as easy to deal with as brussels sprouts. As a child, I became quite adept at swallowing those little suckers whole so that I didn’t have to bit into them and have their flavor invade my senses. I’d take one look at the obligatory brussels sprouts on my pate, take a deep breath, and pop them in my mouth and down they went, one at a time. Fortunately, my Mom was a cook from a different generation who always boiled vegetables into mush. So, there was no fear of choking on a whole soggy brussels sprout.

This Thanksgiving, the unwelcome presence of a global pandemic, is keeping us from gathering together in our homes with family and friends. Most of us will sit down with only the people we live with, no invited guests, no visiting family, no large tables, filled to overflowing with loved ones. Small turkeys rather than large turkeys were all the rage in the grocery stores this week. Over Zoom, I have heard people lament the empty spaces which will dominate their Thanksgiving celebrations.

Like the lepers who failed to give thanks for their healing, some of us may even be tempted to give Thanksgiving a miss this year.  I know, I know, we do indeed have so very much to be thankful for. A small turkey is better than no turkey. A small gathering is better than no gathering. The lingering presence of COVID is better than having COVID. We are so very richly blessed! We have so very much to be thankful for. We have roofs over our heads, food on our tables, technology to connect us, and most of us are healthy! We have the means to protect ourselves from the lingering presence of COVID and should we find ourselves testing positive, we are blessed to live in a country where our medical needs will be met. In a world-wide pandemic, Canadians are blessed to have the odds in our favour.

We have so very much to be thankful for. We ought to be among the first to offer our thanks and praise. I suspect, if the questions I’ve received from some of you over the course of this week leading up to Thanksgiving are anything to go by, I suspect that some of us may be keeping company with the nine lepers who failed to offer thanks and praise to “God.” This Thanksgiving is much like other Thanksgivings, when folks have asked me a perplexing question: “How or to whom do progressives give their thanks?” Over the years many of us have moved beyond the old images which personified the DIVINE MYSTERY which we call “God” as a person, a super-hero kind of super-person.

Who am I kidding those old images personified “God” as an old-man in the sky who enjoyed various omini super-powers. This omni-god was omnipotent, omniscient, omnipresent – all powerful, all knowing, always and everywhere present – sky-god is the same god which so many people conjure up when they tell me that they don’t believe in God.To which I usually reply, I don’t believe in the same god which you don’t believe in. This image of the DIVINE MYSTERY falls far short of the ONE in whom we live, and move, and have our being, the ONE who in IS BEING ITSELF.

So how or to whom do we give thanks and praise when we no longer think of God as a super-hero, up there, or out there, who functions as a kind of master puppeteer in the sky? I will admit that it is so much easier to say, “Thank-you” to a deity that we have personified than it is to give thanks to a deity which is BEYOND the BEYOND and BEYOND that also! Our thank-yous to the ONE in whom we live and move and have our being, tend to be expressed in words which are so much more awkward than simply saying, “Thank-you Father” or “Thank-you Lord” or even “Thank God.” Continue reading →

Gratitude for the Great Fullness of Life Is Only the Beginning – Thanksgiving

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A couple of years ago, I began experiencing chest pains, nausea, and cold sweats. As these are signs of a heart-attack, I went up to the local walk-in clinic and soon there-after I found myself sitting in the emergency room. The doctors and nurses were convinced that I was in the midst of what they now refer to as a “heart event”. While awaiting some further tests, my mind raced to all the worst possible scenarios that I could imagine. Fear was my over-riding emotion. Fear that my heart was failing. Fear that decades of not putting my health first was catching up with me. Fear of what my future might hold. Fear of impending medical procedures. Fear of not being able to work, to pay our bills, especially our mortgage. Fear of turning into some sort of invalid. Fear that my future was being taken out of my control. Fear that I was getting old long before I expected to.

There is nothing like an emergency room to strike fear into your heart, especially when the pain that drove you there is throbbing in your chest. So, by the time I’d spent several hours enduring various tests, I thought I was ready for anything. That is until a young doctor who looked like he was about twelve years old walked into my cubicle. A part of me wanted to ask this child-doctor to go find a grown-up doctor, because this was serious business and I wanted to talk to an adult. Fortunately, I managed to suppress my ageism.  You cannot even begin to imagine my delight when the child-doctor pronounced his diagnosis. Gallbladder. No heart-attack. A severe gallbladder attack. These kinds of attacks are quite common in people who have recently managed to lose weight.  My reward for loosing 50 pounds was an afternoon in the emergency room.

I couldn’t believe my luck. I begin thanking everyone and everything for my extremely good fortune. Thanks be to God. Thanks be to medical science. Thanks be to my heart. Thanks be to the child-doctor! Thanks be for the opportunity to do better in the future. Thanks be for a future! I wept with joy! A gallbladder attack is a wonderful thing. A gallbladder attack is not a heart attack. I could go home. I could go back to work. I could pay the mortgage.

All my worst fears were gone. I would take this as a warning to never ever take anything for granted. When I went outside, everything looked so beautiful. It was as if I had awakened from a nightmare. I was so very grateful that I promised myself never again to take my health for granted, never again to take life for granted, never again to forget what a precious gift life is. From now on, I was going to pay attention to the wonders of this amazing gift of life. Continue reading →

The Blessing of Michael’s Story – a Thanksgiving reflection

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I went to bed early one night with only a rough outline for a  Thanksgiving sermon in mind. I usually struggle with Thanksgiving sermons. It’s not easy to come up with something new to say about an annual holiday. So, I’d spent most of digging deeply into what other people have written about the power of gratitude, so that I might be better able to encourage folk to express their own gratitude. But no matter how deeply I dug into the wisdom of gratitude, I couldn’t quite pull a sermon together. So, I went to bed early, hoping that something would come to me in the night and I would arise early in the morning and somehow pull it all together.  

I was awakened in the wee hours of the morning by a howling wind and the sound of rainfall. The sounds reminded me of winter in Vancouver and my mind wandered off into a dream about the doldrums Februarys in Vancouver. February can be the most challenging month that the weather in Vancouver can throw at you. Usually by about the middle of February it has been so wet, damp, and grey for so long, that most Vancouverites cannot remember what the sun looks like. There’s a kind of malaise that rolls in over the city like a fog, that seems as if it will never lift. There are days when it seems as though the entire population is suffering from seasonal affected disorder. People don’t smile very much and depression is the order of the day. During February in Vancouver, the suicide rate is higher than at any other time of the year; and this in a city that has the highest suicide rate in North America.

I remember one damp and dreary day in Vancouver that stands out from all the other damp and dreary days. It had been a particular damp, grey February. It had been overcast or raining for weeks and weeks and weeks. I was riding on the busy to work. It was the same bus that I had been riding on for two years. Every weekday morning, I would commute by bus from the suburbs into the heart of the city. At six-fifteen, I would stand with the same people at the same bus stop and get on the same bus, that carried all the same people to their same jobs. On a good day, the trip would usually take 45 minutes. Nobody ever spoke on that bus. Occasionally people would nod or smile at the all too familiar faces of their daily travelling companions, but conversation would be reserved for sunny days, when people could only manage a word or two. It was like there was this unwritten rule that nobody had the energy or the inclination to break. We saw one another almost every day, and yet, we knew absolutely nothing about one another and that was the way we were determined to keep it. On this particular dull, depressing, February morning, in addition to being tired, I was also wet. The wind was really blowing so I carried my umbrella in vain. Unable to open my umbrella, I had to rely on my hooded jacket to keep me dry. The bus was running late and the water was just beginning to seep through my jacket.  When I finally climbed aboard, the windows of the bus were totally steamed, obscuring the view of the darkened wet world. I was determined to ignore the damp and settled in for what I hoped would be a short nap before we reached the city. I was just managing to doze off when the bust screeched to a halt. Several passengers climbed aboard. All but one of the passengers were recognizable. I’d seen them a hundred times before. But the young man, who loudly greeted the bus driver with a “Hello”, him I’d never seen before. He struggled to fold his broken umbrella as he stumbled to the rear of the bus. He sat opposite me, and proceed to greet everyone around him.  People weren’t sure how to take this.  Some just nodded and then looked away.  Others mumbled a greeting before fixing their gaze out the window. I smiled, nodded and then closed my eyes, determined to escape into sleep. Continue reading →

Being LOVE in Toxic Soup??? coping with Trump’s toxicity!

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My oh my, what a toxic week this has been. The bilious rhetoric went off the scale this week when the most-watched debate in history transmitted ignorance and hatred around the world like poison.  I know that there may be some of you who did not watch the presidential debate for all sorts of really good reasons, not the least of which may be your desire not to be infected by the toxic politics of our neighbours to the south. However, unlike wearing a mask, which offers the best protection we have in this pandemic, not watching the debate on Tuesday night offered little protection from the fumes of the toxic soup which is being cooked up by our neighbours.

I myself, I breathed far too deeply as the fumes from the bubbling orange cauldron travelled through various media into my home. I am ashamed to confess that the steam from this toxic soup nourished my own dark side. I did not know how dangerously infected I had become until the media brought the news that the most powerful person on the planet had tested positive for the coronavirus. I simply couldn’t help myself. Try as I might, the darker side of my nature positively bubbled up with glee, as smug retorts collided upon the tip of my tongue. “That’ll teach that arrogant, orange, idiot!” This was one of the kinder retorts that I will confess in this context. I shall leave you to imagine the more colourful thoughts, words, images and desires which sprang to mind as I smugly anticipated a fellow human being’s demise and gleefully rejoiced in my “I told you so!s”. I know that I can trust you to come up with more than a few dark thoughts of your own, some harsh words, and some smug images as well, because we’ve been swimming around together in this toxic soup for years now, waiting for the orange fellow who holds the nuclear football to receive his comeuppance.

It took more time than I care to admit for my kinder, gentler self to begin to choke on the bile being generated by my darker self. May all that is HOLY forgive me, but it sure isn’t easy to be LOVE in the world. As we flail about in this hate-filled toxic soup which feeds our baser instincts, it is difficult to remember those things which nourish, ground, and sustain us as the LOVERs we are created to be. Continue reading →

St. Francis – BEYOND the bird-bath!

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This coming Sunday, the Season of Creation concludes with the celebration of the life of St. Francis – Matthew 6:25-29 – this video was recorded in 2019 – when we looked beyond the ubiquitous bird-bath image to uncover the radical Giovanni di Pietro di Bernardone (1181-1286), who posed a prescient question which continues to resonate with those of us who live lives of privilege?  ARE WE BEING LOVING ENOUGH WITH EVERYTHING WE HAVE? As we learn to understand the Gospel as LOVE, then putting the Gospel at the centre of our lives requires us to ask ourselves, over and over again, “I am I loving with everything I have?”