Rev. Joëlle Leduc gave birth to a bouncing baby girl on April 18th. Jacqueline Lisa Owers-Leduc and mum were back home by Monday night and doing well. Our SouthWest community sends a big congratulations to Joëlle, Jen and big sister Katelyn!
Thank You, Nurses!
Nursing Team Recognition Week is at the beginning of May, and one Montreal nurse is asking people to send cards and letters of appreciation to nurses at the MUHC. We thought this would be a nice project to get involved with as a church, and that is why this week, people who receive the Friday newsletter by snail mail are also receiving a blank card and pre-addressed envelope. We hope many who receive the e-newsletter will be inspired to participate as well.
No one likes being hospitalized, and I sincerely hope that has not been your experience this last year. Still, all of us have spent time in hospitals at some point either for our own health issues or those of a relative.
If you have had no other contact with the health system recently, many of you have received a Covid vaccination in the past few weeks or months. Chances are it was administered by a nurse.
If you’ve ever had a nurse take the time to talk to you and answer your questions, here’s your chance to “pay it forward” by thanking a member of the hard-working team at the MUHC.
Anyone can participate in this campaign to show nurses they are appreciated. They hope to receive 5000 cards and letters. Why not take a picture of your letter before sending it and share it with us?
Some pre-addressed cards will be available to those who attend church this Sunday.
Find out more here. (CBC news story)
Cards and letters to the nurses should be addressed to:
D05.5428-1001 boul. Décarie,
Montréal QC Canada H4A 3J1
Save Fairview Forest
On April 22nd, we celebrate the 51st Earth Day. Given the Climate Change and Biodiversity Crises and resulting loss of species, it has become crucial that we preserve our remaining natural spaces..
Locally, Sauvons la Forêt Fairview/Save Fairview Forest is trying to protect the forest to the west of the Fairview Shopping Centre. If you haven’t yet done so, we invite you to join the over 25,000 that have already signed the online petition.
In addition, there is a paper petition, specific for Pointe Claire residents, that must be signed, even if you already signed the online one.
If you live in Pointe-Claire, please print it (or a printed one can be supplied), complete it and drop off to:
97 Parkdale, Pointe-Claire (or pick-up can be arranged by contacting foretfairviewforest@gmail.com )
Save Fairview Forest has also planned a whole week of family-friendly activities for Earth Day.
Head to their Facebook page @Sauvons la Forêt Fairview – Save Fairview Forest for a detailed list of all the events! Hope you can join in!
The Forest thanks you !
Shared by: Merging Waters Pastoral Charge
Beryl's Blog: Springtime Resurrection
We are still in the season of Resurrection – new birth, new life, a new thread in the cosmic weaving of God’s creation.
As I searched for a hymn which would connect me with the new hope budding inside of me, I came across one in our own Voices United which I have never sung. It is numbered 632 and titled “O Blessed Spring”. Perhaps some of you may have sung it at some time.
O blessed spring, where Word and sign
embrace us into Christ the Vine,
here Christ enjoins each one to be
a branch of this life-giving tree.
Through summer heat of youthful years,
uncertain faith, rebellious tears,
sustained by Christ’s infusing rain,
the boughs will shout for joy again.
When autumn cools and youth is cold,
when limbs their heavy harvest hold,
then through us warm the Christ will move
with gifts of beauty, wisdom, love.
As winter comes, as winters must,
we breathe our last, return to dust;
still held in Christ, our souls take wing
and trust the promise of the spring.
Christ, holy Vine, Christ, living Tree,
be praised for this blest mystery:
that Word and water thus revive
and join us to your Tree of Life.
Within our own hymn book, I continue to discover words which are new and life giving.
Is that not what Resurrection is all about? New discoveries, new opportunities, new challenges, and God’s on-going invitation to reach the potential which God sees in us.
The season of Resurrection opens us to the possibility to “get it right” – to be right with God, right with our neighbor, right with creation and, to be right within ourselves.
Thanks be to God!
Pastor Beryl, DLM
Sunday Service April 18, 2021
Sunday Service April 11, 2021 (2nd of Easter)
Easter Sunday Service April 4, 2021
Centenary News
The Centenary United Pastoral Charge is selling their building on Fortune Street in Point St-Charles, but the congregation will live on at St. Columba House.
The following is a brief history of this formerly Methodist, now United Church congregation (from the Société d’Histoire de Pointe-Saint-Charles).
“In 1864, Point Saint Charles’ first Methodist church opened on the corner of Wellington and Charon Streets. In 1891, a new, bigger church was built and given the name Centenary Church in honour of the centenary of the Methodist Church in Canada. It cost $32,000 and could seat 950. The congregation counted 400 families and its Sunday School was Montréal’s largest. The Hope Chapel on Ryde St was also built, served for ten years and, then was sold. It is still standing today.
Centenary joined the United Church of Canada in 1926.
In 1950, fire ravaged the church. It was rebuilt on a smaller scale, with only 250 seats and at a cost of $70,000.
The Mount Zion Seventh Day Adventists bought the church for $300,000 in 1990. The front and side walls date from 1891.
Since the church’s sale, Centenary United Church has been holding religious services in the presbytery at 585 Fortune St.”
A new chapter for Centenary began, appropriately, we would say, at Easter. Sunday services are now being held at St. Columba House, 2365 Grand Trunk in Pointe-Saint-Charles. SouthWest United wishes them all the best!
The Centenary we know on Fortune Street will soon be sold.
The congregation’s new home, St. Columba House on Grand Trunk.
Pastor Beryl's Blog: 2nd Sunday in Easter
It’s the Sunday that Thomas gets a lot of bad press. He lives down through history as “Doubting Thomas”. I don’t think he deserved it. Thomas, like so many of us, just wanted to touch Jesus.
Some years back, I was invited to listen to a CD called Love + Anger, a production of Wild Goose Worship Group, from the Iona Community. One of the worship songs had a chorus which went like this:
I need to know that God is real
I need to know that Christ can feel
the need to touch and love and heal
the world including me
That's something that Jesus' followers most definitely needed as they gathered in this Sunday's gospel. They were gathered secretly, behind locked doors, "for fear of the Judeans."
So the question on the minds of Jesus' followers, in the dark and confusing days immediately following Jesus' execution at the hands of Roman soldiers and the instigation of the Judean authorities, was probably not so much "will we be next?" but, "how long do you think we can last?"
However, someone was missing in that group – Thomas. He was not there when Jesus appeared. He did not see Jesus. He did not experience Jesus breathing on them and he did not receive the commission which Jesus gave the others.
We know that Thomas wanted to touch Jesus…..(I want to touch Jesus), but that does not mean that Thomas was less faithful. It is possible to see this in a different way.
Thomas was the disciple who wanted to touch Jesus. But he was also the disciple who was not locked away in fear. When he finally experienced the presence of Jesus, perhaps the biggest mistake he made was in thinking that the body he wanted and needed to touch, the body of the risen Christ, was the body that had been nailed to the cross. But, perhaps it's not like that at all.
If Thomas was out in the world, he was in precisely the place Jesus wanted him to be. If Thomas was out in the world, he didn't need to hear Jesus' commission to the others “to go out into the world and forgive as Jesus forgives”, because he was already following it.
So let the gospel come alive
in actions plain to see
in imitation of the one
whose love extends to me
I need to know that God is real
I need to know that Christ can feel
the need to touch and love and heal
the world including me
Thanks be to God!
Pastor Beryl