Blog: Solidarity With Our Neighbours

With everything else contributing to the increase in frustration and disbelief with the “freedom” protest in our national capital and our continuing prayers for a peaceful ending to the whole situation, I welcomed the information which was shared by Doug Hastie this past Sunday.

Doug brought to my attention that various churches in the downtown Ottawa area have written a letter of solidarity for those living in and through the chaos. Yes, with all the attention focused on those with the loudest voices, we may have forgotten those who are the least heard.

It may seem that the “church” has been conspicuously silent of late, but there has been action taken by Anglican, United, Presbyterian, and Baptist denominations. I share hereunder the letter written by church brothers and sisters in Ottawa.

In Solidarity with our Neighbours:

As Christian Clergy in downtown Ottawa, we write in solidarity and care for residents, retailers, restaurant owners, and all who work in the city centre during the ongoing protests and occupation. We see and know the anxiety and distress that this causes, particularly to the most vulnerable among us.

Our faith tradition calls us to seek the welfare of the city in which we live. It pains us to see how the chaotic, unruly and unlawful behaviors, and hateful language, signs and symbols hurt our community.

Like many of you, we have experienced the intimidation used by protesters to target our city’s citizens. We lament how this tears at our social fabric and we call on all levels of government to continue to work for a peaceful end to the protest.

The present protest shocks us all. We know the civility, respect and dignity within the DNA of our neighbourhoods. Because you live and work in the Nation’s Capital, you have seen many protests, but this situation has become untenable.

While the language of individual rights permeates much of what we are seeing, we would recall you to the identity we have as a community and the care we are called to offer each other, body, mind and soul.

None of us are in this alone. Along with other faith traditions and community support, we are also here for you. Our resilience can come from the hope we find in mutual encouragement, the recognition of our neighbours and their needs, and the generous flow of compassion.

From our love of this city, our pain and sorrow, and even our outrage, will come resolve to carry us through this present darkness.

In hope and solidarity,

Clergy of Downtown Ottawa Christian Churches

The Very Reverend Beth Bretzlaff, Rector of Christ Church Cathedral, 414 Sparks Street

The Reverend Teresa Burnett-Cole, Glebe-St. James United Church, 650 Lyon Street South

The Rev. Dr. Karen Dimock, St. Andrew’s Presbyterian Church, 82 Kent Street

Rev Demanya Kofi Akoussah, Eglise unie St-Marc, 142 Lewis Street    

The Rev. Dr. Caroline Ducros, St. Albans Anglican Church, 454 King Edward Avenue                                            
The Rev. Simone Hurkmans, St. Albans Anglican Church, 454 King Edward Avenue

Rev. S.K. Moore, Southminster United Church, 15 Aylmer Avenue

Reverend Canon Hilary Murray, Chaplain, Cornerstone Housing for Women, 314 Booth Street

The Rev. Canon Stewart Murray, Church of St. Barnabas Apostle and Martyr, 70 James Street

Rev. John C. Perkin, Minister, First Baptist Church, 140 Laurier Avenue West

The Rev. Jim Pot, Knox Presbyterian Church, 120 Lisgar Street

The Reverend Canon Doug Richards, Christ Church Cathedral, 414 Sparks Street

The Reverend Victoria Scott, St. Luke’s Anglican Church, 760 Somerset Street West

The Rev. Gary van der Meer, St. John the Evangelist Anglican Church, 154 Somerset Street West

The Rev Rhonda Waters, Church of the Ascension, 253 Echo Drive

Rev. Paul Wu, Minister, St. Giles Presbyterian Church, 181 First Avenue

Rev. David White, Centretown United Church, 507 Bank Street

The Venerable Mark Whittall, Archdeacon Ottawa Centre, Anglican Diocese of Ottawa

 

An old Jewish saying comes to mind: “from their mouths to God’s ears.”

Pastor Beryl, DLM 

image: Centretown United Church, Ottawa

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The Winter Hymn Project 4

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I know it’s going to be colder on the weekend, but right now, yesterday and today, there’s been a hint of spring-to-come in the air. Bliss! Anybody else looking forward to that first cup of coffee outside? Let the countdown begin, and that includes the number of weeks left in the Winter Hymn Project. So…keep those hymn suggestions coming (email addresses below), and we’ll sing our way through to spring!

We have a wonderful collection of hymns this week, including two that are not in the ‘regular’ hymn books. I’ve copied out a few verses for each of them, which you can find below.


Angela Barraclough: VU 291 All Things Bright and Beautiful

I would appreciate hearing All Things Bright and Beautiful. This was one of my Mom’s favorite hymns. I am sure she really loved it because of her love for animals and nature.   We played it for her funeral at the church and also played it for my Aunt Rene’s funeral. I have been fortunate to watch the South West’s services on YouTube each week. I love the music. It has been so uplifting.

 

Douglas Hastie: VU 409 Morning Has Broken
*Standing by a Purpose True

A couple of my favorite hymns are Morning has Broken and an old Presbyterian one, Standing by a Purpose True (sometimes known as Dare to be a Daniel).  The first time that I heard Cat Stevens (Yusuf Islam) sing Morning Has Broken was in the early 70’s. I was hooked and it became one of my favorites. It still is. When I was 9 or 10, I would sometimes stay after Sunday School and go to church with my Uncle George. My father had died several years earlier and my mother worked on Sunday at CJAD as the switchboard operator. It seemed like Standing by a Purpose True was the favorite of the minister as we seemed to sing it often. I remember belting it out while standing on the wooden floors in the old church.

 

Cheryl Runciman Mees: VU 703 In the Bulb There is a Flower

In the Bulb There is a Flower is one of my favourites because of the hope it offers. I especially love listening to it on bad days and in the winter.

 

Bruce Padgham: *I Come to the Garden Alone

I would like the hymn I Come to the Garden Alone in memory of my Grandmother Padgham. It was her favourite hymn.

 

*I Come to the Garden Alone

I come to the garden alone,
While the dew is still on the roses;
And the voice I hear, falling on my ear,
The Son of God discloses.
And He walks with me, and He talks with me,
And He tells me I am His own;
And the joy we share as we tarry there,
None other has ever known.

He speaks, and the sound of His voice
Is so sweet, the birds hush their singing,
And the melody that He gave to me,
Within my heart is ringing.
Refrain

I’d stay in the garden with Him,
Though the night around me be falling,
But He bids me go; through the voice of woe,
His voice to me is calling.
Refrain

*Standing by a Purpose True

Standing by a purpose true,
heeding God’s command,
honor them, the faithful few!
All hail to Daniel’s band!

Refrain:
Dare to be a Daniel!
Dare to stand alone!
Dare to have a purpose firm!
Dare to make it known!

Many mighty men are lost,
daring not to stand,
who for God had been a host
by joining Daniel’s band. [Refrain]

Hold the gospel banner high;
on to vict’ry grand;
Satan and his host defy,
and shout for Daniel’s band. [Refrain] 

 

To request a hymn for an upcoming service, contact :
Sarah: saromica@yahoo.ca
or the Office: Southwestunited@gmail.com

Esther Howland: Mother of the American Valentine

By Ray Cavanagh, TIME magazine, February 10, 2017

For the artistry of her designs and her success at commercializing Valentine’s Day cards in the U.S., Esther Howland became known as the “Mother of the American Valentine.” Her distinctive cards are cherished by collectors to this day.

Howland did not invent the Valentine’s Day card — handmade versions had been circulating in Europe since at least the 15th century, and by the early 19th century, the U.K. was producing significant numbers of commercial valentines. In that period, however, American valentines frequently were comic rather than romantic. Often ethnically pejorative and personally insulting, these types of cards — many of them sent anonymously and with malice — were far removed from the sort of sentiment Esther Howland had in mind.

Born in 1828 in Worcester, Mass., she entered a family of comfortable means, as her father, Southworth Howland, owned a successful stationery business thatproduced such items as textbooks and engraved cards. She attended nearby Mount Holyoke College (then known as the Mount Holyoke Female Seminary).

Around the time she graduated, she came across valentines imported from England. They were beautiful, but also very expensive. Howland thought that she could make cards of comparable beauty for a considerably lower price. So she set to work. Her brother, who worked as a salesman for their father’s company, agreed to show samples of her initial creations to potential clients. He returned from his sales trip with numerous orders.

Hiring a crew of local girls, she set up shop in the Howland family home, converting the third floor into a miniature assembly line. Under her oversight, the workers glued together layers of colors and textures. Gilded lace and arrangements of wafer paper made the cards three-dimensional and lifelike. Such ornaments as cupids and flowers were often pasted onto the cards, the centers of which might feature images of frolicking couples or a girl with a bouquet. Most of her cards bear some kind of marking – such as a red letter “H”on the back – to indicate the designer.

“No other producer of commercial valentines understood so well their potential for the tactile communication of complex feeling,” writes Barry Shank in his book A Token of My Affection: Greeting Cards and American Business Culture. Be the sentiment amorous or platonic, Howland had created the nation’s best visual correlative for the words, “I love you.”

She not only had the aesthetic gifts to convey sentiment but also the business acumen to market it: Multiple accounts hold that, during the 1850s, Howland earned $100,000 annually (about $3 million in today’s money). Though she sold many pricier cards, some of her handiwork could be purchased for as little as five cents, making cards affordable to the amorous masses.A fine example of independent womanhood in the 19th century, Howland is described as being audacious enough to travel “without a chaperon” and also was among the “first employers to pay women a decent wage,” as described by Michele Karl in her book Greetings With Love: The Book of Valentines. The New England Historical Society describes Howland as “an aristocratic woman with high color and glossy chestnut hair” who “drove high-stepping horses, dressed fashionably and had facials.”

In 1866, Howland, then in her late 30s, suffered a debilitating knee injury, as reported in a 2007 Worcester Sunday Telegram article. From a wheelchair, she continued to conduct her business, which was incorporated as the New England Valentine Company. In the late 1870s, she released a small book of valentine verses, so that if customers liked the artistry of a particular card but didn’t think much of the verse printed within, they could cut out a more suitable verse from the book and affix it inside the card.In either 1879 or 1880, she sold her enterprise to the George C. Whitney Company (also of Worcester) in order to attend to her ailing father, who died in 1882. The Whitney Company, after absorbing Howland’s business, would become the world’s largest manufacturer of valentine cards. It ultimately had to liquidate in 1942 amid a paper shortage caused by World War II.

As for Howland, who died in 1904, she left behind a legacy as a brilliant commercial artist and a pioneer in the commercialism of a day that is now, to many, obscenely so. In 2016, Americans spent about $20 billion on Valentine’s Day, according to the National Retail Foundation. The Greeting Card Association reports that Valentine’s Day, with 145 million cards (not counting classroom-made valentines) sent each year, is the nation’s largest card-sending day next to Christmas.

There is no evidence that the “Mother of the American Valentine” ever had any romantic attachment. The cards she created, however, gave expression to the sentiments of lovers far and wide.

Blog: Embracing Love

There is probably nothing that changes your life more than the death of a loved one, even a pet.

As I write the blog for this week, the call has already been placed and the appointment made. I have put it off more than once since Christmas, hoping against all hope that the good days in between the bad ones would prevail.

He came in the late fall of 2009.  He appeared in the back yard, where so many had appeared before him.  Living on a Cul de Sac beside the Douglas Hospital Grounds saw many abandoned or homeless animals appear.

We already had taken in so many over the years we lived there.  We really did not need just one more cat….and we tried to dissuade him from hanging around.  But he was adamant so we opened up the pool shed and put down warm blankets and food, hoping to at least get him through the coming winter.  An early freezing rain in late November changed all of that.

In he came, relegated to the empty apartment upstairs as both my mom and aunt had moved into cared living by then.  He was pure grey and infested with fleas.  And he was not neutered.  At first, I believed him to be on the autistic scale as he would not make eye contact.  But he was regal in posture and highly intelligent.  So, we named him Charles.

For so many, the isolation of the past two years has been made bearable by the companionship of pets.  The blessing of animal companionship and their unconditional love and loyalty is something which has to be experienced to be understood.

For those whose childhood has been filled with animal friends, it is hard to imagine a house without the presence of such life; the chair not claimed, the bed with so much space, the newspaper spread out on the table without a face staring up at you, the key board not being walked over as you work……

Having experienced the loss of parents and friends over the years, I have come to realize that grief is not something we can shun or pass through.  It is something that is a part of you and longs to be embraced.  You see, grief numbs your body, breaks you heart and drains you tears, but grief is also another form of love.

The reason grief is isolating is because talking about death in our society is off-limits. Death is inevitable and touches each one of us, but talking about it is a complete taboo. But, the only way through it is to face it head on.

For all those of you yearning for your loved one, nothing can justify your suffering, and there is no end of grief, but I hope you can see the beauty in grief at the time. We grieve because we love. How lucky we are to have experienced that love.

 And, when all is said and done, love is how we keep them alive, even after they have gone.

In peace

Pastor Beryl, DLM

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