When Moving Day Was in May

Raise your hand if you remember when moving day in Montreal was on May 1st instead of July 1st? Check out this photo dated 1938, showing what passed for a moving van back then, on 4th Avenue between Wellington and Verdun Ave.

I went for a walk earlier this week to attempt to reproduce the view. It’s harder to see Notre-Dame-de-Lourdes in the background today because of a big tree, but that section of 4th Ave hasn’t changed much in 84 years and a few days, has it?

Moving Day in Verdun, 1938

2022

When God Meets Us

Sunday, May 1st, as is our tradition, SouthWest United celebrated the sacrament of  Holy Communion. There is something about the sacrament of communion which can trigger our memory and help us see things as they really are. Something about the sacrament of communion opens our eyes to Jesus at table; be it feeding the 5,000 at the lakeshore, turning water into wine at a wedding celebration, or eating with his friends Mary, Martha, Lazarus.  Even at the last Passover, the night before his death, Jesus was all about feeding body and soul.

The sacraments help us to see, to point us not only to the bread and the wine, but to open us to all the ways in which we are fed; apple orchards, vegetable gardens, food banks, post-funeral refreshments, church harvest suppers.  All these things say “pay attention this stuff matters, these things are all holy.”  When we are able to see beyond, we are able to enter one another’s joy, one another’s family, one another’s messes, one another’s suppers.

Indeed, the word sacrament is derived from a Latin phrase which means “to make holy.” When hit with the glint of love’s light, even ordinary things become holy. And when received with open hands in the spirit of eucharisteo, the signs and wonders of Jesus never cease.

At its best, the church administers the sacraments by feeding, healing, forgiving, comforting, and welcoming home the people God loves. At its worst, the church withholds the sacraments in an attempt to lock God in a theology, a list of rules, a doctrinal statement, a building.

I believe our God is in the business of transforming ordinary things into holy things, scraps of food into feasts and empty purification vessels into fountains of fine wine and, lately, I am seeing more and more the importance of “table”.  That place where we have all sat too many times to count. 

Friends know that I keep a “blue box of treasures” where I frequently dumpster dive for inspiration.  In fact, it is not unusual for fellow-ministers to call me to see if I have something they can use.

So, thinking about table and food, I found the undernoted thoughts from Indigenous writer Joy Harjo which I would like to share with you this week:

 

Perhaps the World Ends Here

 

The world begins at a kitchen table. No matter what, we must eat to live.

The gifts of earth are brought and prepared, set on the table. So it has been since creation,
and it will go on.

We chase chickens or dogs away from it. Babies teethe at the corners. They scrape their
knees under it.
 
It is here that children are given instructions on what it means to be human. We make men
at it, we make women.

At this table we gossip, recall enemies and the ghosts of lovers.

 Our dreams drink coffee with us as they put their arms around our children. They laugh with
us at our poor falling-down selves and as we put ourselves back together once again at
the table.

This table has been a house in the rain, an umbrella in the sun.

Wars have begun and ended at this table. It is a place to hide in the shadow of terror. A
place to celebrate the terrible victory.

We have given birth on this table, and have prepared our parents for burial here.

At this table we sing with joy, with sorrow. We pray of suffering and remorse. We give
thanks.

Perhaps the world will end at the kitchen table, while we are laughing and crying, eating of
the last sweet bite.

 


This week I would like to say “honor the table, be it at home, in the community or at Church for indeed it is a holy place.  Invite family, friends, strangers and share in the mystery of love and sharing.

In peace,

Pastor Beryl

Blog: Easter Three

This Sunday, the third of Easter, we will hear two stories of call.  One in Acts 9:1-6 (7-20) and the second in John 21: 1-19.

Although the main characters are so very different in their living, both have said yes.  Saul, now Paul, believing that in spite of the harm and chaos he has caused in the persecution of Christians, Jesus is calling him to new life. To redemption and resurrection.

Peter, always a little confused, says yes even in the depth of his despair of denying Jesus three times before the cock crowed. Jesus never gave up on him.

Redemption, resurrection – on-going and freely offered to each and every one of us, again and again.

One of my favorite poets, Joyce Rupp, offered beautiful words of hope and gratitude for a life which also knew moments of regret and despair.  I share them hereunder:

This prayer is taken from Little Pieces of Light

O God,
as I look back at my life
I see many little pieces of light.
They have given me hope and comfort
in my bleak and weary times.
I thank you for the radiance
of a dark sky full of stars,
and for the faithful light of dawn
that follows every turn of darkness.
I thank you for loved ones and strangers
whose inner beacons of light
warmed and welcomed my pain.
I thank you for your presence in my depths,
protecting, guiding, reassuring, loving.
I thank you for all those life-surprises
that sparked a bit of hope in my ashes.
And, yes, I thank you for my darkness
(the unwanted companion I shun and avoid)
because this pushy intruder comes with truth
and reveals my hidden treasures.

In spite of ourselves, in spite of our failings and our moments of mis-guidance, God never ceases to offer that promise of Resurrection – new and abundant life. 

All we have to do is say YES!

I pray that you will embrace the grace offered in the on-going invitation to live life as a people of the Resurrection.

Pastor Beryl DLM

  • Sister Joyce Rupp, O.S.M., is a Roman Catholic author and speaker. She is the co-director of The Institute of Compassionate Presence, a member of the Servite Order, and a volunteer for Hospice.

 

Guido Nincheri: The Michelangelo of Montreal

When Ruby Hill passed away in 1966, her husband Donald commissioned a triptych of stained glass windows in her memory. The windows, installed at the front of the Crawford Park United sanctuary (which is now SouthWest United) were the work of Guido Nincheri. Born in Italy in 1885, Nincheri came to North America in 1913 and over the next almost sixty years, created frescoes and stained glass for churches across Eastern Canada and New England.

The following is from a website devoted to his work, guidonincheri.ca:

Guido Nincheri was born in Prato, an industrial town about twenty kilometres away from Florence, on September 29, 1885. Determined to study art, he entered, at sixteen, the Academy of Fine Arts in Florence against his father's wishes. There, Nincheri studied decorative and figurative arts, architecture, sculpting, painting, and different art movements, but it was Adolfo De Carolis who had the most influence on the young man's art. It is undoubtedly via De Carolis that Nincheri developed his love of the Pre-Raphaelites, Symbolism, and Art Nouveau (called Stile Liberty in Italy).

In 1910, Nincheri graduated and established his own studio in Florence. We only know of two projects from that period: murals in Stile Liberty at the Società di mutuo soccorso di San Marco (an assembly room for workers' unions) and at a private mansion, the Palazzo Nanni.

In 1913, Nincheri married Giulia Bandenelli and, while he waited for an important project to start, they went on honeymoon on the other side of the Atlantic. Their ultimate destination was to be Argentina, where school friends had relocated, but Nincheri first wanted to visit Boston and New York. They ended up staying in Boston longer than planned, and Nincheri's father eventually advised him to stay in North America because of the persistent rumours of war.

In November, Nincheri and Giulia left Boston and moved to Montreal where the Latin nature of French Canadians was more in line with their own characters. In Montreal, Nincheri found work with Henri Perdriau, the owner of a stained-glass studio. There, Nincheri drew sketches and cartoons for the windows the studio produced, while learning the art of making stained-glass windows. Nincheri’s reputation grew quickly, and within five years he had decorated the baptistery of Saint-Viateur-d’Outremont Church and the apse of St. Michael's Church, had designed St. Anthony of Padua, the Italian church in Ottawa, and was selected to design and decorate Madonna della Difesa.

In 1924, Nincheri opened his own stained-glass studio (located at 1832 Pie-IX Boulevard), which would make some 5,000 windows over the next 45 years. A year later, Nincheri introduced buon fresco, the traditional way of painting murals on wet plaster, to North America. In 1933, Nincheri was named Knight Commander of the Order of St. Sylvester by Pope Pius XI for the propagation of Faith he accomplished through his art and for his generosity towards priests and parishes that had little financial means.

Over the next few years, Nincheri's life was routine, decorating churches across the country and making stained-glass windows with his team of artisans. But everything changed when World War II broke out and Italy joined Germany's side. Declared enemy aliens, Italian-Canadians were arrested in droves and sent to internment camps. Among them was the 55-year-old artist who, against his will, had painted a fresco of Mussolini in Madonna della Difesa Church. Nincheri spent three months in the Petawawa camp. He was freed when his wife, Giulia, proved that the fresco had not been in his original plan.

Soon after his release, Nincheri moved to the United States where he was starting to find work and had just signed an important contract to decorate St. Ann Church, in Woonsocket, RI. He still had his Studio on Pie-IX Boulevard and a country place in the Laurentians, but Nincheri now lived in Rhode Island.

By the time he retired in 1969, Nincheri had decorated more than 200 churches across Canada and New England.

In July 1972, Nincheri received a knighthood from the Republic of Italy. He died on March 1, 1973, at the age of 88.

An Invitation

Dear Friends

On Sunday, May 1st, the SouthWest United community will be presented with the harsh reality facing our church. Money problems have been in the air for years; we do not take in nearly enough to pay our expenses. We have been drawing yearly on the funds invested following the sale of the Verdun United building in 2007. 2022 is the year those funds will run dry.

At the Annual Congregational Meeting on May 1st, we will be presented with the financial reality but also with some options. The timeline is unclear but our property (which includes the church and the manse) will most likely have to be sold.

If there is a silver lining in this it’s that the real estate market is hot now. We may be cash poor but we are land rich. If we sell, a portion of the profits will be owed to Regional Council, but we would be left with a nice nest egg to start over somewhere else, probably as a renter.

Please don’t think that there is no point in attending the meeting because the future is already settled. There are several possible courses of action and several votes to be taken. We also want to hear any ideas community members have as well. Please come, whether you are an official SouthWest member or not: if you opened this newsletter and have read this far, you are a member of our community.

If you have health or mobility issues which prevent you from attending in person, but still want your voice heard, we encourage you to contact the office or Dennis Brown.

It is important to remind ourselves at a time like this that bricks and mortar are not the church; We are the church.
If you can not attend, please pray for wisdom for those who will.

Amy

SouthWest United Annual Congregational Meeting: Sunday May 1st, following the 10am service (meeting will begin around 11:15).

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