Sacred Places.......

 What makes a place Sacred?  What makes it holy?  Why does it get set apart?

Every continent has sacred places.  Every major religion has sacred places.  This link has a selection of images, this one is divided by country.  In the case of Christianity, I work on the presumption that many Christian sacred places (particularly in Europe) were sacred places for the old religions and then got "baptized" as Christianity took over -- Glastonbury comes to mind as an example. 

Sometimes Sacred Places have buildings on them, or the sacred place is in fact the building.  Sometimes they are natural spaces that have never had anything built on them.  Sometimes there is no building but humans have put a marker of some sort (Stonehenge or Native American Medicine wheels for example).  But there is something about a sacred place.

My Celtic ancestors used to talk about the thin place, which I understand as another way to describe a sacred place.  They are places where the Divine just feels more present than other places.  When enough people feel that a place is "thin" then it becomes more widely known and described as such.

But I think sacred places go far beyond the ones that have been culturally recognized.  I believe that we all have our sacred places.  We share some of them with others and for some they are only special to us, a closely guarded secret we hold in our hearts.

I visited three of my sacred places this summer.  As it happens two are on the same lake.

One is Rundle's Mission, a place that has had special meaning for me for approximately 40 years now.  As I was growing up we had congregational camp weekends at that place once or twice a year.  Over the years it became a very homey place to go.  When I am there, when I have time to wander around, I find peace, I know that I am with the Divine One.  I can't define it, but it is a thin place for me.

I have introduced the girls to it.  I know it will likely never be as special to them as it is to me.  They just don't have the history.  But I can tell them the stories.

Another is Camp Maskepetoon.  Just down the lake from Rundle's, a nice walk takes you from one place to another (indeed sometimes we would walk down to Rundle's from Camp--one year we took the whole camp down the road for a picnic).  I went there 3 times as a camper (1978, 1980, 1981).  But it really became special to me as a young adult.  I applied to be summer staff at the end of my 2nd year of university, got the job, and caught the bug.  Over the next 10 years I would end up being on staff for 5 summers and spend 3 years on the board (during those 3 summers I spent most of my days off out at the lake).  A holy and special place indeed.  It was there that I first felt what became known to me as the call to ministry.  It was there that I started to develop my adult spiritual self.  Without that place I would not be the person I am today.  When I go there I feel God.

And this one the girls, at least the older two who have gone as campers, have started to share with me.

The third is the church of my childhood.  Well technically now it is the sanctuary of my teens and young adult years, the sanctuary of my childhood has long since been redone, changed into the Friendship Hall as part of the 1983/4 expansion--and I have no picture of it as it once was.  This is the congregation that nurtured me, that helped/watched me grow.  We started attending there when I was 2.  There I started teaching Sunday School, there I learned what it meant to be church (both positive and negative).

When I am there for worship, as I do most times I am in town on a Sunday (or a Wednesday in the summer) I feel at home.  Yes the congregation has changed much in the 20 years since I was an active part of its life.  But still I am home.  And God is there with me.

Of course there are many other places.  Cemeteries (pretty much ANY cemetery) are a thin place for me.  I can spend hours wandering around looking at headstones and drinking in the ambiance.  And the odd thing is that some places can be "thin" one day and not the next.  So it is sometimes hard to know what makes it thin. 

What are your sacred places?  Why are they holy?  What makes them special?

Book 8 of 2013: William Shakespeare’s Star Wars

"Friends, rebels, starfighters...."  "Once more into the trench dear friends..."

Now admit it, who could resist a book with a title like that?!?  Star Wars Episode IV: A New Hope (or, as most of us originally came to know and love it, Star Wars) as a Shakespearean play.  I mean it just cries out to be read!

It was a chance find, the sort one sometimes happens upon when browsing.  And I needed at least one light "nothing" book to read while on vacation.  So I bought this one.  It works out to about an average length Shakespearean play, according to the afterword and is a delightful way to spend part of a day (if you enjoy iambic pentameter and the Star Wars universe that is, so there may be a bit of a limited target audience).  And, as the author says there is in fact some academic/philosophical/theoretical rationale to the project.

One who knows the works of Shakespeare would likely find passages (like the two cited above) that echo specific scenes and passages.  And because of the Shakespearean structure we have monologues!  We see inside Luke and Han and Vader and Kenobi--and also C3PO and R2D2, we hear their thougths and feelings.

Btu lets be honest, I didn't get it for any academic value (which it does have).  I got it because it looked like fun--and indeed it was.

Book 7 of 2013 -- The Definitive-ish Guide for Using Social Media in the Church

For a while I contemplated going back to school to do a D.Min.  I have since realized that I have not the time nor the money to do that (nor, apparently, the burning desire).  But if I did it was with the intent to do focused work of Social Media and the church, well computerization and the church generally but a specific focus on Social Media.  Why?  Because I think that topic area is one of the growing edges for the church both in understanding and utilization.  While I have pretty much laid aside the D.Min idea it may become a Sabbatical topic in a couple of years (I am eligible for a sabbatical in 2015 but likely wouldn't take it until 2016 due to the fact that I will be Presbytery chair in 2015--and that is NOT a sabbatical task).

So when I first heard about this book I knew I was going to buy it eventually.  Eventually happened to be this summer.

This book is a good start on the topic.  A very good start in fact but still only a start.  And I strongly suspect the author would agree with that statement.  Social media is such a new topic and much of the church is still getting its feet wet in it that a start is all we can have at present.

But this is also a book that church leaders (lay and ordered, local parish/pastoral charge and judicatory) need to read as we make decisions on how we will be the church in a world where social media is the norm.  It is a book I will need to go back to and review again in bits and pieces.

Letter to the Editor

To all those running in this fall's municipal elections:

I have some requests.

First, please read, re-read, and commit to memory Fred Rinne's column in this newspaper from July 11. It is not often that I read an opinion column in this paper and agree with everything it says. But this time Fred was right on the money.

Second, while certainly name recognition is an important part of an election process, please avoid the temptation to plaster your signs all over the city. In my opinion this is not only unsightly but is a waste of your money. If you have a lot of signs, convince private landowners to let you put them up. That tells me a lot more than seeing a whole line of them cluttering public property. And if you do put them up, please monitor their condition and clean them up when they become torn or broken.

Third, and most important in my mind, is tell us your vision for the city. I don't want to hear about taxes or snow removal or how to deal with the Park hotel (which needs to be dealt with sooner rather than later). After all you all the councillors and the mayor each have only one vote. None of you can make something happen by yourselves. But I am a person who believes strongly in the need for vision. Tell me your dreams about what Grande Prairie could be in its second century. And if you can convince enough of us to share that dream then that tells me you can also share your vision, your dream with the rest of the folks around the council table.

Certainly decisions get made about details, but the details need to be in support of a vision. Show us your vision, tell us why your vision is the one we should support into the next 4 years.

25 Years, Where are we now?

Last week a colleague of mine in the US wrote this post.  And in reading it I was reminded that 25 years ago this summer the 32nd General Council meeting of the United Church of Canada dealt with what many in the church now simply refer to as "the issue". 

More specifically, the Council voted to receive and adopt a report titled Ministry Membership and Human Sexuality (MMHS for short), which stated that sexual orientation was irrelevant where full membership in the United Church was concerned -- and with full membership comes the right to be considered for membership in the Order of Ministry.

And then all hell broke loose.

By the time of the next meeting of General Council in 1990 hundreds of petitions had been written calling on the church to reconsider this decision.  The grounds of opposition were based on tradition and on interpretations of Scripture.  (As it happens one of the results of this process was a church-wide study on the Authority and Interpretation of Scripture as the debate leading up to and following from MMHS had amply proven that there were a variety of approaches to Scripture in the UCCan -- though really we knew that already).  The church of my childhood and the church where I am currently in ministry were among those who expressed their disagreement [although it was not well publicized in my childhood congregation that this was being done by the Board.  People were sent to the meeting with strict instructions to "fix" the horrible mistake that had been made.  Congregations were threatening to leave the UCCan (and sue so they could take their buildings and property with them), some congregations had a mass exodus of members [and some people came to the church precisely because of MMHS], there was a fear that the church would be split asunder over the issue.  A vocal protest movement from the "conservative" side of the church sprung up calling itself the National Alliance of Covenanting Congregations (NACC).

And where are we now?

In 1992 one of the issues that was discussed at General Council was same-gender marriage.  But there was no great appetite for carrying that issue forward at that point in time.  However by a decade later there were folk in the UCCan who were loudly calling for both church and state to recognize such unions.  There were [and are] also UCCan folk loudly objecting to such unions.  Because of the way our polity works, each congregation needs to make their own decision on that issue.  Nationally the UCCan made statements urging the federal government to change the law, but each congregation decides what weddings happen in their midst.

So where are we now?

We are still somewhat split on this issue of human sexuality (meaning not only orientation but also abortion and sexual activity outside of legal marriage).  But there have been changes.

The NACC has largely gone away as a force.  There are still congregations who were members and whose congregational theology has not truly changed.  I know of one who in their Joint Needs Assessment report proclaimed proudly their traditional marriage policy and then a couple pages later said there was no reason that any clergy, regardless of orientation, would not feel welcome in their midst -- and were totally unaware of how these were mutually exclusive statements (I did not apply to that place).  But there is not the same level of antagonism.  And some churches have made a complete turn around.  There are congregations that protested in 1989 where now "the issue" is no longer an issue but have now called married gay clergy.

But there is still work to do.  Gay and lesbian clergy still (last I heard) have more chance of having trouble getting a call, particularly in certain areas of the country.  There are still people who do not want to touch these discussions with a ten foot pole for fear of reawakening old arguments.  I remember when my last pastoral charge was reviewing marriage policy and I asked if they wanted to discuss same-gender marriage -- the answer was that they were not sure the congregation was ready (the congregation WAS ready, and it would not have been an issue in my opinion) largely because there was a memory of how people had reacted in 1988-89.

So there is still work to do.  There are still conversations to be had.  And given that hetero-sexism is still rampant in our society as a whole (and plausibly in many of our pews) in both open and hidden forms we who believe that God calls all people good need to push for the conversations to happen.  If our beliefs mean anything they need to be lived out.  It has always been tempting to let people for whom the question is more pressing take the lead.  Or try to not talk about it until we have no choice.  And to be honest I believe that has been how the church has approached many issues (race, human sexuality, interfaith dialogue) over the generations.  And that is not enough. 

May we have the courage as a church to admit that the questions are not all behind us.  May we have the wisdom to see that we are not in the same place we were 25 years ago.  And may we have the faith to hear God calling us to name what we believe openly.

Book 6 of 2013 -- Speaking Christian

I first saw this book in a book display at a Presbytery meeting.  And thinking of all the times over the years I had said that there were words we needed to reclaim as part of our heritage and identity I was intrigued.  But I had a good number of books waiting to be read and so I did not buy it at that time.  But one day this year I was browsing through the Kobo list and saw that it was available as an e-book and decided it was time to grab it.

For those of us who have read Borg's other work, the theological bias in this book will hardly be a surprise.  (And I would suggest that for those of us who continue to read Borg's work the bias is one we more or less share).  What I like is that Borg encourages us to look beyond the assumed meaning of the words/terms and ask what else they could have meant to the communion of saints.

I think this book would be an excellent discussion starter in a Christian Education/Christian Development/Discipleship program.

RevGal Carnival -- Galship

Teri laid out this challenge over at RevGalBlogPals:

This week's blog carnival topic is: What does Galship mean to you? The phrase was originally coined to refer to RevGal Fellowship--all the ways we build community, share our lives, support each other, and have fun. So blog about Galship--have you had an experience of galship in person or online? Has galshipping changed your life or ministry? what's your favorite part of our galship? Or whatever way you understand the question--there are no wrong answers! What does Galship mean to you? Ready, set, write!

And well here is my response.....

As it happens this is a fitting time for this post.  Because my 8th Blogiversary is this coming Friday, and my link to the RevGals goes back pretty much the entire time I have been blogging.

One of the reasons I started blogging was reading the blog of my friend and colleague at Inner Dorothy.  And through her blog I followed a few links to "meet" folks named Songbird  or Will Smama at Preacher, Blogger, Procrastinator (admittedly that one I grabbed to read because I am an unrepentant procrastinator) or St. Casserole or purechristianithink or the Peripatetic Polar Bear or NotShyChiRev and many many others.  I watched as some of these people formed a group that called themselves the RevGalBlogPals.  I was intrigued but as an onlooker as I saw it a group primarily for the "Gal" part of the title.

Then in this post from late September 2005 (when RGBP was just over 2 months old) I was invited to join the ring [mind you now that I re-read the invitation there was a bit of an instructional tone to the invitation).  Which I did.

I remember the first book, ordering it, ordering extra copies for some people in my congregation, getting even more extra copies because the printer screwed up the cover in the first run.  Then I remember the second, BIG book (Ordinary Time is a LOOOOOOOOOOOOOOONG season) in which I took part.  I read about the various Big Events and other blogger meet-ups with a touch of jealousy, because I knew the chance of my being able to make those travels was pretty small.  Mind you, I am strongly thinking of going to the Festival of Homiletics next year so maybe a meet-up with some of these virtual friends will in fact happen....

One of the grand debates in the world of on-line communities is if they are true communities.  It is my experience as a member of the RGBP community that they are.  There are times when (in blog posts or in the RGBP FB group) the community supports each other, rants together, celebrates together.  When I shared concerns about early birth as we went through the last month of our third pregnancy there were prayers abounding from the community.  And when we we got back home after her birth I found this post and this post as the community celebrated with us.

Over the years I have enjoyed being a member of RGBP.  Yes there are lots of blogs in the ring now I have not read.  But there are the ones I happen upon in reading the posts at the home blog and check out.  And for the last year or so I have even been a contributor.  An easy task (as long as I remember what month it is) to write a weekly post for the Tuesday Lectionary Leanings each month.

One last note.  For the Friday 5 meme when the blogring was a year old we were invited to reflect on the community.  Here is what I wrote then. I still stand by all of it.


PS: this post took an incredibly long time to write given its length and content.  Why?  Because I got lost in reading old posts.  Always a dangerous thing.  But I was downright well written in those early months and years.  Now I hardly blog at all....

Happy Canada Day!!!

A reflection may come later.  But here are some videos....

On Poverty Reduction...

So I was called a hippie today.... (by someone who is just as much a hippie as I am--and a fellow clergy person) but more on that later.

I was invited to spend this afternoon and tomorrow morning at a meeting to discuss poverty reduction within this community.  And, seeing this as a valuable way to spend my time (although there are lots of other ways to spend that time), I chose to go.

Our first task in this strategic planning process was to define poverty.  Which really is harder to do than it sounds.  I mean in some ways poverty is one of those "I can't define it but I know it when I see it" types of things (although the reality is that often we don't see it when it is right in front of us).  And certainly poverty definitions have a sense of context and perception about them.  What are basic needs and rights when it comes to shelter?  What is a secure food supply?  What makes a safe place?

Then we identified our stakeholders in the discussion.  And in addition to the homeless, and seniors, and those of set/fixed incomes (such as disability), and the working poor, and those who go through episodic poverty (one of the realities of this community is seasonal shut-downs that sometime last for months), we started to realize that all of the community has a stake in reducing poverty.  I suggested it is because of the reality that when the least of us is healthier then we are all heathier (which is the first time I was called a hippy).

We continued to work on vision and mission statements.  And tomorrow we get closer to brass tacks.  In the end the committee that is being formed will not do this work.  The committee will help created a framework for the community to do the work.  Because we need a transformed society to actually do something meaningful about poverty.  And because there are a lot of myths out there (eg: well people just need to pull themselves together and work harder, if people could manage better/work harder they could solve things themselves, it really isn't my problem/doesn't impact me, that everybody has equal chances to succeed).  If we don't engage the community and challenge the myths then we will get nowhere.

One of the interesting things about the day was something really only mentioned in passing.  The committee that has been working on these issues thus far has done some work on determining what a Living Wage would be here.  For a two parent, dual income, family with 2 children that number is both parents working full time at $15.55/hr (in conjunction with federal and provincial tax credits that they would be eligible for).  And then 60% of their income would go to shelter food and child care.  Just for fun I did the math.  That wage, assuming working 40 hours a week for 52 weeks a year--no vacation time--comes to a gross family income (before tax credits are added in and statutory deductions are taken off) of $64 688.  Which means no frills.

But here is the kicker.  My gross income for this year will be roughly $67 200 (although a third of that is tax free due to the Clergy Residence Deduction which makes a "real" income of closer to $73 000).  Which means we are not all that far above that no frills line.  And if you asked I would not say we were only just above that Living Wage line.  I am still pondering what that means...

So what do you mean when you say poverty?  What is the path to making a difference in your mind and context?  How do you transform your community so that all families within it can thrive?

Trust as a Community....

This week the Psalm reading in the lectionary was Psalm 146.  When I first read it I was seized by verses 3 and 5 which end up reminding us that we can/should trust in God.  Trust, I realized, is a key issue not only in the life of faith but also in life as part of a community.  And so I worked with the sermon title Whom Shall We Trust?. 

From the beginning of the week I knew that there were at least two possible sermons with that question.  Do we take it from a personal/individual basis or from a communal basis?  For a while I thought about doing both in one sermon but that was not a helpful path to follow.  I went with the individual basis.  For Children's Time I drew on my Camp experience and thought I would do some trust falls.  That "fell" flat when Scalliwag daughter was unable to just fall backward and let me catch her.  Then the sermon turned out to be this.

But still there is a part of me wanting to preach the communal side of the question.  As a community of faith do we choose to trust in God as we look to our future directions?  OR do we trust in marketing advice or demographic/sociological studies, or our own ideas?  Given what weekend this is it would have been a perfectly valid approach to take.

A Picture from the Inauguration of the United Church of Canada

Today is Anniversary Sunday in the United Church of Canada.  Tomorrow, June 10, marks our 88th anniversary as a denomination (and how stereotypically Canadian that we were birthed in a hockey arena?).  At present there is a Comprehensive Review Task Group working within the United Church to determine how best to be the church given our current challenges and our outlook into the future.

Theoretically "everything is on the table" with this review.  Major changes are in the air we are told.  Some of us hope these two statements to be true.  Some of us are also a little bit cynical and skeptical about what will come about.  Will it be truly transformative or will it be a fancy way of shuffling deck chairs on the Titanic?  Too often in the past we have been promised transformative stuff and have gotten deck chair shuffling.  Why is that????

I think there are two reasons.  And both are related to trust.  First, there is an alarming (though not really surprising) lack of trust within the church.  So when something major is suggested the lack of trust kicks in and submarines it.  Change rarely has a real chance because people are unwilling to take the risky step into the unknown and/or because they do not trust that the proposed changes are worth it.

At the same time, I am convinced that sometimes the changes are based not on trusting God and listening for a truly transformative answer but rather on institutional preservation.  Again not surprising.  The first thing institutions do is try to preserve themselves.  A normal human reaction.  But this is the church.   This is the body which regularly reminds ourselves that we are not here for ourselves.  This is the body that is called to die to new life, to be a resurrection people.  And so we get tweaking for survival rather than risk true transformation.  But God calls us to transformation.  Do we trust God?

Do we trust that maybe God is calling us to rethink who and how we are?  Do we trust that if we truly put "everything on the table" God can take those random ingredients and turn them into something wholly new?  Do we trust that God is at work in the church today?  OR are we relying on our own intelligence and understandings to find a way to survive?  I am hopeful enough to suggest that it is at best a combination of the two.  On my more cynical days I think that human intelligence and understandings trump trusting in God every day.  And that way we end up avoiding transformation--we end up not being the community God would have us be.

It is tempting to trust in ourselves and our own understandings.  WE can even (in fact we are quite good at it) convince ourselves that we are trusting and listening to God as we do it.  But that is not what Scripture calls us to do.  Admittedly it is hard to listen when we are in crisis, but we have also shown an inability to listen before the crisis.  I just hope we are able to get to the point of living on faith and trust.  If God wants this faith community to continue, if God wants us to truly be resurrection people, we need to do more than shuffle deck chairs.  We need to trust, we need to risk, we need to go beyond who we are.

May God help us to do so.

Amen.