BLOG ..BLOGUE
News from SouthWest ..Des nouvelles du Sud-Ouest
Standing in the Need of Prayer
Last Sunday, Thanksgiving, we heard Jesus say to the Samaritan your faith has made you well.
This coming Sunday, we will hear Jesus speak about the importance of persistence. Especially persistence in prayer.
I guess, no matter how you look at things, gratitude, like faith and prayer, can be optional. But, if we are who we say we are, then we truly know all three are essential on our journey. You could almost say they are obligatory.
We are facing a time of great change at SouthWest. The situation is clear; but the questions and the answers are not. Now, more than ever, we are being called to trust that God is God.
Over the next weeks, we will be invited to weigh the pros and cons of how we want our beloved church to look, what we want it to become (or not). Essentially, we are being called to fill in the blanks.
I would invite you to view this as a beautiful invitation. A beautiful gift. And why? Because God is inviting us, you and me, to be active participants in our own future, our own destiny.
Someone once said that faith is relaxing. Relaxing in the presence of God, like being in the presence of a trusted and long-time friend. And prayer? Well that is the act of sharing your deepest concerns with that friend, trusting that they will help you discern the right answer, which might not necessarily be the one you think you want.
No matter what the outcome may be, when the dust settles, we are able to see God’s hand at work in the process and understand that we get what is needed.
So relax. Let God work through and walk with us in the days ahead and trust that all will be well.
In peace,
Pastor Beryl, DLM
*1 Not my brother, not my sister, but it's me, O Lord,
Standin' in the need of prayer;
Not my brother, not my sister, but it's me, O Lord,
Standin' in the need of prayer.
Refrain:
It's me, it's me, O Lord,
Standin' in the need of prayer;
It's me, it's me, O Lord,
Standin' in the need of prayer.
2 Not the preacher, not the deacon, but it's me, O Lord,
Standin' in the need of prayer;
Not the preacher, not the deacon, but it's me, O Lord,
Standin' in the need of prayer. [Refrain]
3 Not my father, not my mother, but it's me, O Lord,
Standin' in the need of prayer;
Not my father, not my mother, but it's me, O Lord,
Standin' in the need of prayer. [Refrain]
4 Not the stranger, not my neighbor, but it's me, O Lord,
Standin' in the need of prayer;
Not the stranger, not my neighbor, but it's me, O Lord,
Standin' in the need of prayer. [Refrain]
Source: One Lord, One Faith, One Baptism: an African American ecumenical hymnal #147
Author anonymous
The Autumn of our Being, and the Ripening of the Soul
Somewhere about the age of 60, we begin to realize that we really are aging.
Now, at 76, I have come to see that old age is a complete changing of gears and does not happen without the slow realization, almost calming feeling that we have journeyed through the protected space of childhood joy and innocence, the rocky road and angst of teenage uncertainty, the no-handbook reference library for marital life and parenthood, the sadness of empty nests, the joy of grandchildren and now find ourselves slowing passing through inner resistance and denial into a place of peaceful surrender.
As paraphrased by Father Richard Rohr, Franciscan friar and ecumenical teacher, “Most of us tend to think of the last half of life as largely about getting old, dealing with health issues, and letting go of our physical life, but I simply don’t believe that’s all there is to it. What looks like falling can largely be experienced as falling upward and onward, into a broader and deeper world, where the soul finds its fullness, is finally connected to the whole, and lives inside the Big Picture.”
I would wholeheartedly agree that the “falling” is indeed a falling upwards…to that place from where love first brought us into existence.
That falling upwards is a time of ripening, of rounding, of mellowing and, most importantly, of finally understanding that our desires and hopes for everything good, true and beautiful is the result of our willingly emptying our selves and leaving space for the fulfilment of God’s great outpouring of love.
Benedictine Sister Joan Chittister writes “If we learn anything at all as time goes by and the changing seasons become fewer and fewer, it is that there are some things in life that cannot be fixed. It is more than possible that we will go to our graves with a great deal of personal concerns, of life agendas, left unresolved. [ ]”
Something we have to face is that to live as an “elder” (a position much respected in many cultures) is to ripen into clear-eyed acceptance of the way things actually exist. For many of us, this ripening involves the multidimensional understanding and acceptance that everything as we now know can and will be lost and will be replaced by questions such as: what will happen to me? To my body? To my mind? Will I matter to anyone? Will I be a burden? How will I die?
The truthful answer to all these questions is - we do not, we can not know because the moment which changes everything usually arrives unannounced.
James Finley, a colleague of Richard Rohr at the Centre for Action and Contemplation shared his thoughts on spiritual maturity as a form of ripening:
“We ripen in holiness and spiritual fulfillment as we learn to sit in the sun of God’s mysterious, sustaining presence that energizes and guides our efforts, bringing us to realms of grace that are beyond, way beyond, anything we can achieve by our own efforts alone. . . . As a person ripens in unsayable intimacies in God, they ripen in a paradoxical wisdom. They come to understand God as a presence that protects us from nothing, even as God unexplainably sustains us in all things. This is the Mystery of the Cross that reveals whatever it means that God watches over us; it does not mean that God prevents the tragic thing, the cruel thing, the unfair thing, from happening. Rather, it means that God is intimately hidden as a kind of profound, tender sweetness that flows and carries us along in the intimate depths of the tragic thing itself—and will continue to do so in every moment of our lives up to and through death, and beyond.”
And so, we, like fruit, ripen. As we age, we realize that in all we have been through, Love has been using us for its own purposes. And for this I feel immensely grateful. We know, too, that our inevitable passing away, in which we fall into the ground and die, is not the end of our ripened and transformed life.
Again, to share the words of Richard Rohr “When we can let go of our own need for everything to be as we want it, and our own need to succeed, we can then encourage the independent journey and the success of others. The grand parent is able to relinquish center stage and to stand on the sidelines, and thus be in solidarity with those who need their support. Children can feel secure in the presence of their grandparents because, while their parents are still rushing to find their way through life’s journey, granddad and grandma have hopefully become spacious. They can contain problems, inconsistencies, inconveniences, and contradictions—after a lifetime of practicing and learning.”
Hopefully, as ripened fruit, we have come to trust life because we have seen more of it and, as a consequence or blessing, we trust death because we are closer to it. And, somewhere along the journey, something has told us that who are now is not the final stage.
We need to be close enough to our own death to see it coming and to recognize that death and life are united in an eternal embrace, and intimate and continuing dance, and one is not the end of the other. Death is what it is.
Someone once said “the truth will set you free.” Perhaps the love and truth of God is what finally allows us to soar and meet our Maker unencumbered.
At this moment, as I share these thoughts, I hold even dearer the words of our beloved creed:
“In life in death, in life beyond death,
God is with us. We are not alone.”
Thanks be to God.
In peace,
Pastor Beryl
Worldwide Communion Sunday
It is Worldwide Commmunion this Sunday, in honour of which we will be singing our order of communion. Please find the downloadable insert below. The weekly bulletin is also attached. Hymns will be added on Sunday.
A Song of Faith, 3
This, our third and final journey through A Song of Faith, we explore what the church is and our relationship to it. The words speak truth to the past and hold hope for the future. May they be comforting as we continue our journey.
We sing of a church
seeking to continue the story of Jesus
by embodying Christ’s presence in the world.
We are called together by Christ
as a community of broken but hopeful believers,
loving what he loved,
living what he taught,
striving to be faithful servants of God
in our time and place.
Our ancestors in faith
bequeath to us experiences of their faithful living;
upon their lives our lives are built.
Our living of the gospel makes us a part of this communion of saints,
experiencing the fulfillment of God’s reign
even as we actively anticipate a new heaven and a new earth.
The church has not always lived up to its vision.
It requires the Spirit to reorient it,
helping it to live an emerging faith while honoring tradition,
challenging it to live by grace rather than entitlement,
for we are called to be a blessing to the earth.
We sing of God’s good news lived out,
a church with purpose:
faith nurtured and hearts comforted,
gifts shared for the good of all,
resistance to the forces that exploit and marginalize,
fierce love in the face of violence,
human dignity defended,
members of a community held and inspired by God,
corrected and comforted,
instrument of the loving Spirit of Christ,
creation’s mending.
We sing of God’s mission.
We are each given particular gifts of the Spirit.
For the sake of the world,
God calls all followers of Jesus to Christian ministry.
In the church,
some are called to specific ministries of leadership,
both lay and ordered;
some witness to the good news;
some uphold the art of worship;
some comfort the grieving and guide the wandering;
some build up the community of wisdom;
some stand with the oppressed and work for justice.
To embody God’s love in the world,
the work of the church requires the ministry and discipleship
of all believers.
In grateful response to God’s abundant love,
we bear in mind our integral connection
to the earth and one another;
we participate in God’s work of healing and mending creation.
To point to the presence of the holy in the world,
the church receives, consecrates, and shares
visible signs of the grace of God.
In company with the churches
of the Reformed and Methodist traditions,
we celebrate two sacraments as gifts of Christ:
baptism and holy communion.
In these sacraments the ordinary things of life
—water, bread, wine—
point beyond themselves to God and God’s love,
teaching us to be alert
to the sacred in the midst of life.
Yes, the church has not always lived up to its vision. We have and will probably continue to make errors in judgment, follow paths which, in hindsight, are discriminatory and polarizing, contrary to the teachings of the one we profess to follow.
But we cannot lose sight of the core message of Jesus – to love God and to love neighbor as we would be loved. If we can hang onto at least that one thing, I believe that there will always be light in the world.
In peace
Pastor Beryl
Order of service, Sept. 25, 2022
Sunday’s service will be led by Dennis Brown and Sarah Fraser. Here is the bulletin.
A Song of Faith, 2
This week we explore the attributes of God as well as who we are in relation to God and to each other.
God is creative and self-giving,
generously moving
in all the near and distant corners of the universe.
Nothing exists that does not find its source in God.
Our first response to God’s providence is gratitude.
We sing thanksgiving.
Finding ourselves in a world of beauty and mystery,
of living things, diverse and interdependent,
of complex patterns of growth and evolution,
of subatomic particles and cosmic swirls,
we sing of God the Creator,
the Maker and Source of all that is.
Each part of creation reveals unique aspects of God the Creator,
who is both in creation and beyond it.
All parts of creation, animate and inanimate, are related.
All creation is good.
We sing of the Creator,
who made humans to live and move
and have their being in God.
In and with God,
we can direct our lives toward right relationship
with each other and with God.
We can discover our place as one strand in the web of life.
We can grow in wisdom and compassion.
We can recognize all people as kin.
We can accept our mortality and finitude, not as a curse,
but as a challenge to make our lives and choices matter.
Made in the image of God,
we yearn for the fulfillment that is life in God.
I sincerely hope you enjoy the excerpts from A Song of Faith and I will continue to provide excerpts over the next few weeks.
In peace,
Pastor Beryl