Pulpit Exchange

Last Sunday was the Lakeshore pulpit exchange.  I visited Beaurepaire United Church.  Thank you to Rev. Ron C. for having me!  During the music for meditation, this fantastic piece was played on the piano.  Hard not to dance!

Burns’ Supper

On Saturday night was the Burns’ Supper co-hosted with Christ Church, Beaconsfield. This is a picture with Rosemary M., who was the fabulous accompanist for the evening on the piano.

Ministers gathering with Bishop Dowd

On Thursday, local ministers gathered at St. Edmond’s Roman Catholic to meet one of the new Latin Roman Catholic Bishops of Montreal, now the third youngest in the world.  Bishop Tom Dowd is seen in the center.  Local ministers from St. Anne’s to Dorval meet once a month.

Introduction to Wisdom Literature

The Wisdom Literature course I am teaching this semester at Queen’s University, Kingston, Ontario, has begun.  Our first book was the Book of Proverbs.  One amazing discussion was around the section attributed to Agur (chapter 30).  Scholars, such as Purdue, argue that these verses originated in an 8th BCE migratory tribe in the Arabian peninsula.  And yes, it’s in the Bible!  Imagine, wisdom, gathered, collected and refined under the Arabian night sky long, long before God brought you and me into being.  For more on the course, Theo712.wordpresss.com

Two Quotes: On the church & on another road

Greetings.

Some have asked for two quotes from last weekend.  The first is from Archbishop Rowan Williams on the Church; the second from James Howell reflecting on what it means that the Magi went home by another road.

 

Williams

Here we are looking at a Church with deep roots, both human and theological, getting on with the prosaic business (always so hard) without posturing, free enough from anxiety to be grateful for new things happening, even if they are not easily digestible, doing those basic and small things which are also earth-changing – reading the Bible, bringing people to baptism, celebrating the Lord’s Supper.

 

What gives this Church its solidity, I suggest, is that it knows itself to exist because of God in Christ – not as a cultural fact, not as a society of militants with a human programme but as a community living in the space God has cleared; sometimes unclear about what exactly should be said about this, sometimes deeply bewildered about the people who seem to be sharing this space with us, always at a loss as to how we should plan for future security, but confident because it was not our power or initiative that cut through the brambles and made a place to live.

– Archbishop Rowan Williams, 2003 (larger extract from whole “Mixed Economies” speech here – http://www.emergingchurch.info/reflection/rowanwilliams/index.htm)

 

Howell

Nothing is ever the same.  You don’t take the old road any longer.  You unfold a new map, and discover an alternate path.

T.S. Eliot imagined the thoughts of the magi back home: ‘We returned to our places…but no longer at ease here, in the old dispensation, with alien people clutching at their gods.’  Jesus does not make my life more comfortable; Jesus doesn’t help me fit in and succeed.  We are no longer at ease in a world not committed to Jesus; we notice false gods all over the place.  We detect royal pretenders.  Nothing is the same;  nothing comes easy.  A strange, unfamiliar road is now our path – but the road is going somewhere.

– James C. Howell (Feasting on the Word, under Matthew 2: 1-12)