Lent 3: Living Water

Our Gospel reading from John 4: 5-42 is dominated by the conversation between Jesus and a Samaritan woman he meets at the well.

As in our reading of Lent 2, both Nicodemus and this Samaritan woman are struggling to understand Jesus’ teachings about “spiritual” things.

But this woman is everything Nicodemus is not – she is a woman living in a society where she has no standing and no voice, despised as a Samaritan, morally suspect and isolated from her community.  Why else would she be alone at the well at the hottest time of day?

This is a story about how a woman’s voice changed a community; a community which has shunned her. She is alone rather than with the safety of other women, seeking water in the most dangerous part of the day. 

She is in the wilderness, even though she is familiar with the terrain.

Jesus broke Jewish tradition to engage her in conversation. The woman was interested, initially confused and defensive, but, unlike Nicodemus, she felt she had nothing to lose by engaging with Jesus.

Perhaps it was this fact that allowed her to finally “see” past her physical needs to the spiritual truths that Jesus was teaching her. While the woman needs physical water for her body, it is the spiritual water, the living water of Jesus, that gives her a voice others will hear.

In verse 49, the woman asks a bold question of her community, “He cannot be the Messiah, can he?” She testifies to her community that “he told me everything I have ever done” and uses her voice to tell the truth about her encounter. There is a realization that her voice can effect change. The candour with which this woman had an open and honest conversation with Jesus leads to change. For herself and for her community.

This story speaks to those times when we ourselves may have felt shunned, on the outside, unworthy and yearning for a word of acceptance, a sign of respect, a show of welcome.

This story goes to the heart of what it means to be in a Christian community – an inclusive, intercultural, radically hospitable congregation where absolute welcome is both given and received.

Yes, water is necessary for human life; within the faith community it is we who must make the connection – as Jesus did – that God is the necessity for our daily living.

Like the woman at the well, we can use our voices to quarrel with God, to ask big questions, and to speak the truth. We can use our voices to change our communities and praise God. As we thirst for new life, we find refreshment in the water offered by God in the desert places.

Our Prayer for Lent 3

God of all life, sometimes we think our voices don’t matter.

We have important things to say and wonder if anyone will listen.

We offer a different perspective from the world and it is rejected.

Give us big voices, Holy One.

Give us voices that are loud enough to claim that you are the one who
provided water in the desert, living water at a well, and that in you we find resurrection and claim it for ourselves. Amen.

In peace

Pastor Beryl, DLM

These thought and words are a compilation of reflections I have done over the years, and are also based upon exegesis gleaned from Seasons of the Spirit.

Zoom Lenten Bible Study

You are invited to a scheduled Zoom Lenten Bible Study with Rev. Christine-Marie Gladu, 
Thursday mornings beginning March 2nd at 10:30am.

Please find links below to the materials that will be discussed.

Join Zoom Meeting
https://us02web.zoom.us/j/86964005097?pwd=Sm9aVlFqMFlFaVhuMEVoQlNiTTBnQT09

Meeting ID: 869 6400 5097
Passcode: 830264

Click the 3 links below to save or print PDF documents of materials for the bible study:

The Second Sunday in Lent

Lent Two speaks to us of call; the call of Creator God, the call of Jesus, the call of the Holy Spirit.

The call which is sometimes heard in the still of the night and sometimes even in public and embarrassing places.

Yes, God calls to each and every one of us in different ways and we are free to choose whether to ignore or answer the call.

This Sunday we will meet Nicodemus; a Pharisee and teacher with disciples of his own. After listening to the words of Jesus, he realizes that, in spite of his self-perceived holiness, something is missing in his life.

The reading is as follows:

John 3:1-17 - New International Version - Jesus Teaches Nicodemus

3 Now there was a Pharisee, a man named Nicodemus who was a member of the Jewish ruling council. 2 He came to Jesus at night and said, “Rabbi, we know that you are a teacher who has come from God. For no one could perform the signs you are doing if God were not with him.”

3 Jesus replied, “Very truly I tell you, no one can see the kingdom of God unless they are born again.”

4 “How can someone be born when they are old?” Nicodemus asked. “Surely they cannot enter a second time into their mother’s womb to be born!”

5 Jesus answered, “Very truly I tell you, no one can enter the kingdom of God unless they are born of water and the Spirit. 6 Flesh gives birth to flesh, but the Spirit gives birth to spirit. 7 You should not be surprised at my saying, ‘You must be born again.’ 8 The wind blows wherever it pleases. You hear its sound, but you cannot tell where it comes from or where it is going. So, it is with everyone born of the Spirit.”

9 “How can this be?” Nicodemus asked.

10 “You are Israel’s teacher,” said Jesus, “and do you not understand these things? 11 Very truly I tell you, we speak of what we know, and we testify to what we have seen, but still, you people do not accept our testimony. 12 I have spoken to you of earthly things and you do not believe; how then will you believe if I speak of heavenly things? 13 No one has ever gone into heaven except the one who came from heaven—the Son of Man. 14 Just as Moses lifted up the snake in the wilderness, so the Son of Man must be lifted up, 15 that everyone who believes may have eternal life in him.”

16 For God so loved the world that he gave his one and only Son, that whoever believes in him shall not perish but have eternal life. 17 For God did not send his Son into the world to condemn the world, but to save the world through him.

The Season of Lent allows us the time and space needed to slow down, step back a little, to take stock of our lives, to see where we might need to make an adjustment or two.  In fact, we might indeed think of it as a time to be born anew!

My prayer for this week:

Wind of God, blow through us and refresh us.
Blow through us and heal us.
Blow through us and bring new life.
Blow away the things which prevent us from seeing you in the whole of creation.
Blow through us today and show us ways to help in the healing of this, your world.
Amen

 In peace,

Pastor Beryl, DLM

Walking Through Lent

Walking through the woods is a spiritual experience for me. It is a place where darkness and light interact with each other, and the trees stand witness to the sacredness of creation; of life and death and resurrection – over and over again.

Today is Ash Wednesday and I would love to be out in the woods, but other commitments call today.

So, I sit in my office, watching the birds at the feeder, and wonder what it would be like to walk with the risen Jesus through Lent?  I say “risen” because Jesus is eternally present, eternally dying and eternally risen. 

Do you recall, after the first resurrection, the early disciples did not recognize that it was Jesus who walked beside them on the road to Emmaus?  And other disciples did not recognize Jesus as he cooked fish for them beside the shore? They were looking right at him, but their eyes did not register the person with them as Jesus.

As we walk through Lent this year, let us do so intentionally - open to the process of recognizing Jesus with us.

It may take a few kilometers into the journey before we are able to open our hearts to Jesus’ presence, to open our ears to his voice.  But, when we are finally able to match our footsteps to his, we might find we are open to an even deeper experience of the Season of Lent.

Today, unable to walk in the sacred spaces of creation, I pray:

Jesus, walk beside us, walk us through Lent this year.

Let us feel your presence and hear your voice.

Open our hearts, let light seep into those places where we have not permitted light to enter.

Open the eyes of our hearts to see your face in those with whom we work and walk.

Come into those broken places within us.

In relationships with others, in the world around us, remain with us.

Remind us yet again, instill within us once more

The quiet confidence of hope and joy

Eternally ours in the Resurrection promised at the end of the journey.

In peace

Pastor Beryl DLM

A Plan for the Future

We at SouthWest have been struggling with the 11:30 service. Done with the best intentions, it has left the SouthWest community somewhat divided with some members attending the 10:00 am Summerlea service due to the later time slot.

 After careful deliberation, we believe that Sunday worship, in conjunction with the Summerlea congregation, would be beneficial to both SouthWest and Summerlea on several levels: our congregation will be reunited once again in worship and our church family relationship will be re-established with the opportunity to grow within the larger congregation.

It is our hope to officially join Summerlea United in 10:00 am worship as of March 5, 2023.  This will enable both congregations to travel through the Lenten and Easter seasons as one.

Rev. Christine Gladu will rightfully continue her ministry as she sees fit. Extra resources will be available when and if needed in the person of Beryl Barraclough.

SouthWest United will continue Pastor Beryl Barraclough’s contract for another year but focus will be re-directed to stronger pastoral care.  With Covid and then with our move to Summerlea, many of those who received pastoral care in the past have fallen through the cracks.  The Pastoral Care team will take a greater role in visiting those confined to their own homes, those in senior residences and those who are hospitalized.  Visits, including Holy Communion will be offered to anyone who is unable to attend worship.  Also, if required, our Pastoral Care team will be available to support any of Summerlea’s needs, if required.

Our office administrator and music director will remain on payroll at least until the end of June 2023.

SouthWest United will remain as a pastoral charge until at least the end of the 2024 calendar year.

An updated ministry plan will be prepared and submitted for September 2023.

Dennis Brown,
Acting Chair of Council

God Gives the Growth – 1 Corinthians 3-7b

I would not call myself a hoarder, but I do tend to keep those things which have touched my heart deeply over the years. 

So many of the prayers, the poetry, the pages of the book I am writing are stored in a large blue container.  I must admit that the size of this container has grown over the years – in fact, friends in ministry will sometimes contact me for inspiration and the standing joke has become “do you feel like dumpster diving today?”

If you recall, last Sunday we read from Psalm 119, part one.  Well, way back in February 2014, while a student minister in Lacolle, Clarenceville and Hemmingford, Psalm 119, part 2 was included in the day’s lectionary.  Today I found the bulletin cover from that day.  I kept it because the words on the back of the printed bulletin touched my soul.

So, this week, in a flash-back moment to 2014, I would like to share them with you. 

They begin with the words from Leigh Sinclair:

“Happy are those who…seek God with their whole heart” (Psalm 119: 2)

We hear about God’s love watering and warming us to growth, but where is this Gardener in the dark of winter?  Where is the fertile Lover in this season of parched, frozen ground and bare trees?  Where is this Gardener in our spiritual seasons of parched, frozen prayers and bear hearts?  Can we still seek God with our whole hearts when faith is cold and growth suspended?

Let us remember that God’s love is not season-bound, or dependent on how we are feeling or the weather.  Look up at the night sky – imagine the Northern Lights nourishing your heart.  Seek the Gardener’s voice not by travel or progress but by abiding in these quiet, waiting times.  For with God nothing is impossible.  God made every season of faith (parched, fertile, or flooded) for all Creation.  We are called to celebrate both growth and our time of Sabbath.

This season let us rest, trusting our inner dormant seeds of God’s love.  Let us prepare for the adventures ahead by strengthening our faith with the wisps of dancing colors!

Amen and in peace

Pastor Beryl, DLM

The Mission and Service of The United Church of Canada: God’s Mission, Our Gifts

Faulty Wiring and Empty Buckets

My 13-year-old grandson stayed with us this past week.  My husband and I are not breakfast people - but he is.  At six a.m. on the first morning, I realized that, as modern as my kitchen may look, you cannot plug in the kettle and the toaster at the same time.  And, being it was dark at six a.m., struggling in the blackness to get downstairs to the breakers proved to be a challenge. It was a simple case of electrical overload, in a house which was rewired and re-plumbed top to bottom sometime in the early 2000’s.

It suddenly occurred to me that I really am in my last half of my life.  In the 60’s and 70’s if we plugged in the toaster and the kettle, it was expected that a trip to the fuse box would be necessary. The same applied to the blow drier and the radio at the same time. You see, the apartments I lived in were built in the 1920’s or so. The rent was cheap. They were built at a time when there were no blow driers, electric kettles and, the wiring was a little “dodgy”.

After my grandson left (late for the bus), I sat with my tea and thought about it.  In this day and age, we are truly living in a state of faulty wiring and electrical overload. 

With the lingering aftermath of a Pandemic, increasing tensions between Israel and Palestine, the beating death of a black motorist by five black police officers, the on-going war in the Ukraine, our children being stabbed or shot in and around their schools and everything else we are bombarded with daily on social media and nightly on the news, it seems our own wiring is becoming faulty as we struggle to keep up and choose where to place our actions and prayers.  In 2023, there is just so much demanding our immediate attention.

This brought me to empty buckets.  As a child, I clearly remember my dad telling me that I was born with a bucket, filled with luck or maybe it was water.  He explained that as I journeyed through life, the bucket would begin to empty as I used it up on what I deemed to be important.  And I have.  In the 60’s I used a little of my bucket in my involvement in the Save the Seals Campaign, brought to our attention by an animal rights activist and crusader called Brian Davies.  I used up a little more of my bucket protesting against the US involvement in Viet Nam.  And more still protesting against the testing of nuclear weapons in the waters off Amchitka Island, Alaska, by the United States in 1971.

Over the past few years, the remaining contents of my bucket has been devoted to issues such as Indigenous rights and decolonization, the Residential School fiasco, and locally to the lack of facilities for the homeless and addicted people living on our streets.

In spite of this, social media continues to hint that if I do not get on board with climate issues, blatant dis-information posted by political parties with their own agendas, right wing ideology, the world-wide refugee crises, the loss of Constitutionally guaranteed rights, etc. then I am the problem, not part of the solution.

So, with emotional circuit breakers which keep overloading and buckets which are almost empty or have holes in them, where does all this leave those of us whose parts were built for an older, simpler time?

Doing nothing is simply not the answer.  That, in itself, can and does bring on feelings of guilt and anxiety.

Suzanne Stabile*, a highly sought-after speaker and teacher, known for her engaging laugh, personal vulnerability and creative approach to Enneagram instruction has suggested that, every day, we ask ourselves three discernment questions:

What’s MINE to do, and what’s NOT mine to do?

What’s MINE to say and what’s NOT mine to say?

And the third one is harder:

What’s MINE to care about and what’s NOT mine to care about?

To clarify, that is not to say that a thing is not worthy to be cared about by someone, only that our effectiveness in the world cannot extend to every situation which requires care.

The bottom line is, we get to a certain age when we have almost no water left in the bucket and, unless we can find a way to refill it, we have to choose where to throw it. So, it is okay to do what is yours, to say what is yours to say and to care about what is yours to care about.  That is enough. Be at peace with that.

And I pray

Dearest God,

help us to know when our wires are becoming frayed and overloaded.

Help us to know when there is but a little water in our buckets and which fires to throw it on.

Help us to be patient and trust that you will give us what we are to keep and what we are to give away.

Please be merciful when we are anxious and overwhelmed, and help us show this same mercy to ourselves and others. 

Amen.

In peace

Pastor Beryl, DLM

*Suzanne Stabile, The Enneagram Godmother, Road Back to You, The Path Between Us, The Enneagram Journey Curriculum, The Enneagram Journey Podcast, teaches invaluable lessons on what to look out for in our own behavior, thoughts, feelings, and motivations, while giving ourselves and our families and friends.

January 2023: Something To Be Thankful For

As we hover still between the year passed and the new one opening before us, I turned to treasured and familiar stories and poems I have kept over time.  In re-reading them, I often find wisdom which escaped me until I was ready to receive it.

For some, our old SouthWest United is a place of hovering while we await the spirit’s comforting welcome into our new home.  I found some comfort in the following words from John O’Donohue.  I hope the sharing will be of comfort to you too.

At The End Of The Year

— A Blessing by John O’Donohue

As this year draws to its end,
We give thanks for the gifts it brought
And how they became inlaid within
Where neither time nor tide can touch them.

The days when the veil lifted
And the soul could see delight;
When a quiver caressed the heart
In the sheer exuberance of being here.

Surprises that came awake
In forgotten corners of old fields
Where expectation seemed to have quenched.

The slow, brooding times
When all was awkward
And the wave in the mind
Pierced every sore with salt.

The darkened days that stopped
The confidence of the dawn.

Days when beloved faces shone brighter
With light from beyond themselves;
And from the granite of some secret sorrow
A stream of buried tears loosened.

We bless this year for all we learned,
For all we loved and lost 
And for the quiet way it brought us
Nearer to our invisible destination

John O'Donohue (1 January 1956 – 4 January 2008) was an Irish poet, author, priest, and Hegelian philosopher.

I hope you will join us at our new destination on January 8th, 11:30 a.m.

In peace

Pastor Beryl, DLM

Order of service, Sunday January 8, 2023

Here is the bulletin for Sunday’s service in Lachine at 11:30. The order of communion is also attached, as well as a copy of the New Creed.

The Dance

After worship on Sundays, Sabbath for me is a time of reflection. It is a time to read, or nap if need be.  It is a time to intentionally prepare a Sunday meal and to enjoy the quiet of the evening. 

One of the joys of living in the country is the lack of artificial light; in fact, when darkness falls you have to provide your own source of illumination. In turning on the porch light last evening, as if caught in the blare of oncoming headlights I found myself mesmerized by the still falling snow.  The flakes appeared to be caught up in a dance.  Slow, graceful pirouettes which, with each little gust of wind, would evolve into a group jeté.  Then, suddenly, the stage would clear and a new ensemble of snowflake dancers would crowd into the spotlight. “Wow” thought I. A dance of life unfolding before me; times of slow falling, times of spinning (sometimes out of control), times of leaping with joy, times of emptiness and waiting, times of settling onto the earth below.

Serendipitously this morning, on opening my daily meditation from Richard Rohr, the following appeared.  It is just too good not to share it.  It is about life in two parts; it is about the dance we live as we move from act one into act two.  I hope you enjoy his thoughts as much as I did today, with the snow still softly falling onto the cedars outside my office window.

In his talk Loving the Two Halves of Life, Richard describes the questions we focus on in the first half of life:

I first read the phrase “first half of life” in the work of Swiss psychologist Carl Jung (1875−1971) years ago. It made sense to me then, but I probably was too young at that point to recognize how true it would eventually become. In short—and this is my layperson’s interpretation of Carl Jung—he would say that the first half of life is the task that we think is our primary task. The second half of life is really the task within the task that a lot of people never get to because they’re so preoccupied with the first task, which is all about making money, getting an education, raising children, and paying a mortgage. It’s about tradition, law, structure, authority, and identity. It’s about why I’m significant, why I’m important, why I matter, why I’m good.

Most of us are so invested in these first-half-of-life tasks by the age of forty that we can’t imagine there’s anything more to life. But if we stay there, it remains all about me. How can I be important? How can I be safe? How can I be significant? How can I make money? How can I look good? And how can I die a happy death and go to heaven? Religion itself becomes an evacuation plan for the next life, as my friend and colleague Brian McLaren says, because we don’t see much happening of depth or significance in this world. It largely remains a matter of survival.

I’m sad to say, after fifty-five years as a priest, I think a lot of Christians have never moved beyond survival questions, security questions, even securing their future in eternity. First-half-of-life religion is an insurance plan to ensure that future. In this stage, any sense of being a part of a cosmos, of being part of a historical sweep, that God is doing something bigger and better and larger than simply saving individual souls (and my own soul in particular) is largely of no interest to us. I don’t think I’m exaggerating. That’s all the first half of life can do.

It’s clear that if someone wants to be elected to a political office in the United States or any country, all they need to do is assure people of safety. Bill Plotkin, who’s been such a wonderful influence on so many people in recent decades, speaks of the first half of life as our survival dance, and the second half of life as our sacred dance. [1] Most people never get beyond their survival dance. It’s just identity questions, boundary questions, superiority questions, and security questions. We would call them ego questions, but they’re not questions of the soul.

The soul moves beyond questions of security and importance because it has discovered that it is absolutely important.

In closing, I am reminded of a favourite hymn, played at my mom’s funeral.

Dance, then, wherever you may be,
I am the Lord of the Dance, said he,
And I'll lead you all, wherever you may be,
And I'll lead you all in the Dance, said he

 
God is the perfect dance partner if we learn to listen and follow God’s lead. So, may your heart be always filled with music and your feet never stray from the beat.

 In peace

Pastor Beryl, DLM

[1] Bill Plotkin, Soulcraft: Crossing into the Mysteries of Nature and Psyche (Novato, CA: New World Library, 2003), 84–85.