A few years ago, someone close to me learned through DNA testing that one of the parents who raised her was not a biological parent. This sent waves of shock through her family, in part because half her DNA was from an entirely different race of people with a different language and culture. “Your ancestry DNA certainly sounds more interesting than mine,” was my response, which I now know was cavalier, given the personal and emotional upheavel she was …
Teach Us Something New
“Do not remember the former things or consider the things of old.I am about to do a new thing; now it springs forth, do you not perceive it?” ~Isaiah 43:18-21
Think back for a moment on the teachers you have encountered in your lifetime. Were there teachers you still remember today as “good” teachers? What do you think made them a good teacher? Were they an authority on an issue …
The Wilderness of 2023
As we observe the Season of Advent amid the wilderness of 2023, we are reminded to not get ahead of ourselves and celebrate Christmas before spending time reflecting and preparing. This is good advice. I do not think we are meant to move from Halloween directly into celebrating Christmas without preparation. But depending on how you look at it, I feel like there is a lot of stuff going on.
Cowboys, Kraft Dinner, and Racism
I recently had a conversation about watching old movies, specifically the John Wayne-type of westerns. In the 1970s and early 1980s you could watch a John Wayne western any Saturday afternoon on one of the two fuzzy channels we received on television in rural New Brunswick. I experience good, warm feelings when I think of these westerns, recalling memories of feeling safe, sitting on the floor in front of the television …
Exodus’ telling of the Israelites camping in the desert, coupled with Jesus’ missioning of the 12 disciples to “go out to the lost sheep of the House of Israel,” brought to mind the ongoing Synod on Synodality underway in our Church and its implications for how we as a Church might become less polarized and exclusive, while at the same time becoming more compassionate, loving, and hospitable to everyone Jesus invited to the table. I do not mean my …
The task of religion is not to turn us into ‘proper’ believers; it is to deepen the personal within us, to embrace the power of life, to expand our consciousness, in order that we might see things that eyes do not normally see. ~Bishop John Shelby Spong
In my last reflection, I wrote about an angel made from a glittery ribbon that watches protectively from the living room mirror in my mother’s home. For years I …
As our Church enters into the desert period of its Liturgical year, I feel as though the world around me is entering into its fourth full, 365-days-a-year-tour through its own Lenten wilderness. Much of what I thought I knew, or took for granted, has been turned upside-down, sometimes in good ways but also in bad ways.
During Lent, Christians know there is a journey ahead, but we also know we are headed into a certain celebration …
Christmas has changed significantly for me since I was old enough to remember Christmases. One Christmas Eve when I was three or four years old, I recall driving from Musquash to Saint John in the middle of a snowstorm to attend mass, imagining I was Santa Claus flying through the snowy night sky. To adult me, this would represent a harrowing, steering-wheel clenched fiasco, but the four year-old in me remembers it as magical.
I have …
“Do you realize how many events and choices that had to occur since the birth of the universe, leading to the making of you just exactly the way you are?”-A Wrinkle in Time, by Madeleine L’Engel
On All Saints (November 1st), we remember those who had a special devotion and connection to God in their lifetimes, all of the Saints of our church. Celebrated on November 2nd, All Soul’s Day (a.k.a. The Commemoration of All the Faithful Departed) is a …
“Here is the God I want to believe in: a Father who, from the beginning of creation, has stretched out his arms in merciful blessing, never forcing himself on anyone, but always waiting; never letting his arms drop down in despair, but always hoping his children will return so that he can speak of words of love to them and let his tired arms rest on their shoulders. His only desire is to bless.” (Henri Nouwen, 1992)