Year in REview Meme

Y'all have seen it before. THe first sentence of the first post from each month of 2008:

• January: The Recipe For Frodo
  3 parts Courage
  2 parts Panache
  1 part Happiness
  
  Splash of Tease
  
  Finish off with an olive
• February: I am mulling over the idea of purchasing a multi-media projector later this year.
• MArch: This story hit the news this week:
• April: LAst night Beloved and I went to a concert. THere were three performers.
• May: Next Sunday is Pentecost, also called the "Birthday of the church".
• June: Just got back from the opening Worship for Worship MAtters.
• July: From RGBP:
• August:
  The RGBP Friday 5.
  Songbird writes:
• September: For the last 2 weeks there has been non-stop speculation in Canada about whether or not PRime Minister Stephen HArper will ignore his commitment to fixed election dates and ask the Governor-General to dissolve Parliament, thus starting the official election campaign.
• October: Next weekend is Thanksgiving up here north of the border.
• November: GO and read this! A reflection on questions that were not (but should have been) asked during the US and Canadaian election campaigns.
• December: Or at least people who are willing to act in an adult manner. IS that too much to ask from our elected representatives???

A Generation Passes

Just got news that my sole remaining grandparent died this morning. He would have been 90 in mid-February and had been declining quickly over the last 6 weeks or so.

So yes it was hardly unexpected. But still...
LAst time we saw him was when Monkey was a baby (so at least he got to meet all the girls, I would say all his great-grandchildren but my cousin had a baby earlier this fall/winter and I am not sure he ever saw that child) it was hoped to have a family gathering this summer as a belated birthday party.

As a generation passes so does some of the history, stories that were told but never recorded. Although I haven't seen him much in the last decade, although I didn't talk to him nearly as often as I should have, I will miss him.

Rest in God's Peace Grandpa

I WOnder....

Several years ago the General Council instituted a policy to ensure minimum salaries kept up with inflation. The policy means that each year minimum salaries increase by the same rate as inflation two year prior . (eg. the increase for 2009 is based on the inflation rate as of Dec 31, 2007). IT may seem fairly basic to build in a cost-of-living-adjustment to salaries but this was a fairly big change.

HOwever, what happens if we have a deflationary year? If the year ends with prices having gone down over the last 12 months what then? Will minimum salaries go down???? I wonder if the powers that be even conceived of such a possibility?

CLergy Tartan

I got this scarf for Christmas. The tartan is called "Clergy Ancient". Did you know there was a clergy tartan?????

This is what the tag has to say about it:

From All of Us to All of You

Merry Christmas!
Joy to the World! The Lord is Come!

Sermon Opener and NOtes For Dec 21, 2008

Songs of Justice

I think I should let you all know that you have just done something that has been banned. Oh not here in Atikokan. But it has been banned by somebody at one time or another. Of course that in and of itself is not unusual. In our lives we all do a variety of things that have been banned by someone somewhere. This may mean dancing, or drinking alcoholic beverages, or eating ham, or celebrating Christmas. But what is notable is what this banned activity is and why it was banned.

We have just read a banned piece of poetry. Again not unusual. Many pieces of writing have been banned over the years. We have just read something that was banned because it was seen as breeding sedition. And that was? The piece of Scripture commonly called the Song of Mary or the Magnificat.

Yes. You heard correctly. A piece of the Christmas story was declared seditious and banned from being read aloud. It was in Guatemala in the 1980's (and I believe the government in question was an ally of the United States). And do you want to know the really surprising thing? They were right! Mary's song is in fact seditious, or at least revolutionary. The words in it call for a total upturning of the world, a “new world order” to borrow a phrase. Like most of Scripture Mary's song is an indictment of the world as it is and a promise of the world as it could be. It is a song of God's justice.

• Look at what the words actually say. What do they call for? Where is the “peace, order and good government”, the “peaceably and in good order”?
• Scripture as counter to the domination and imperial systems of the world – from Moses on.
• God's passion is justice. Justice that sees the world totally differently than the powers and principalities.
• Martin Luther King Jr. The arc of the moral universe is long but it bends inexorably toward justice.
• Medical Mission Sisters On a dark day deep in the present, grinding the loneliness and plight of the poor. Only the clean of heart dare to remember, the poor were his Gospel and their hope is sure.
• Liberation theology Preferential option for the poor
• Bruce Harding In every age through time unfolding your constant love abounded; for through your great subversive power the proud they are confounded...The mighty ones they lose their privilege, you sanctify the lowly. You cry that all need food abundant for every child is holy.
• Jesus as revolutionary, Jesus' passion is God's passion, Jesus' passion for King-dom of God
• Luke reads back his experience of Jesus, Luke the gospel of social justice.
• Christmas as start of the revolution. Christmas as sign of God's justice breaking into the world.
• Christmas revolution calls for more than charity. Revolution calls for real change, calls for challenges to structures, calls for real actions not just to feed the hungry but to ask why they are hungry.
• Dom Helder Camara When I fed the hungry, they called me a saint. When I asked why people are hungry, they called me a communist.
• Play My Soul Sings by the Hardings
• Read from my 2002 column:

On Christmas day we celebrate the birth of the child that sparked Mary 's song. As an adult this child would proclaim his ministry with words that echoed his mother's cry for justice (Luke 4:18-19). If we follow the path he followed, then we need to join in the struggle to fill the hungry with good things, to lift up the lowly, and to free those who are oppressed. On Christmas we mark the beginning of the revolution that will bring on the age of peace, the age where lion lies down with lamb and all have that which they need to live.

Christian faith is not mainly about individuals feeling good about themselves. It is not mainly about life beyond this one. Christian faith is mainly about how we live together in this life, it is about community. The path laid out by the Christ child is one of justice in this world. At Christmas we are flooded with requests for charity. But to truly celebrate Christmas we need to do more than write the cheques and donate the food.

The true Christmas gift is to make changes in society so that people don't need our donations to make it through the cold winter. What will our gift be this year?

This year, as we prepare once again to sing about angels and shepherds, I urge us once more to hear Mary's song of revolution. This year let us join in the revolution of faith - a faith that calls for a world renewed, a people restored, and a hope fulfilled.

• Where will the Christmas revolution take root in our lives?

THe THeological Problem with Santa

Every year there are debates around the land about Santa.

Does the Santa story take away from the true meaning of Christmas? Does the cycle of believing in Santa (and Santa's cohorts for Easter and Teeth, not to mention the Great Pumpkin or the Holiday Armadillo) and then learning the truth breed cynics who won't believe in anything? Does it lead children not to believe in God (or Jesus depending who is launching the argument)?

I find these questions to be pointless. And really the answers depend on the children. My girls are big on Santa but also know the Christmas story. Because we have chosen to make sure of that. And I know few, if any, people who were scarred by the mythic creations of childhood. If we teach our children well they can easily handle the difference between truth and fact and parental "lies" like this. And if the Santa cycle is all it takes to undo your child's faith then I would suggest that the teaching of said faith has not had a lot of depth.

But I do have a theological problem with Santa. Santa, as used to control children's behaviour, lacks grace. Santa, we are told, knows who's naughty and nice, and only gives gifts to well-behaved children.

Where's the grace of God? Where's the graciousness of Christmas, of God-with-us? The Santa story denies the concept of unconditional love. And in this world anything that challenges unconditional love needs to be addressed.

So I am all for Santa, but drop the Orwellian list of naughty/nice and watching us sleep etc. Santa is an agent of God-made-manifest. And as such Santa's gifting is unconditional.

Christmas ALready!! SOON!

Songbird kindly reminds us that:

It's true.

There are only five full days before Christmas Day, and whether you use them for shopping, wrapping, preaching, worshiping, singing or traveling or even wishing the whole darn thing were over last Tuesday, there's a good chance they will be busy ones.

So let's make this easy, if we can: tell us five things you need to accomplish before Christmas Eve.

1. School Christmas Concert this afternoon, PRincess is in the choir and in her class presentation. Scalliwag will be in her class presentation.
2. Set-up and decorate the tree. The plan is for Beloved and I to set it up and put the lights on after the girls go to bed tonight and then all of us put decorations on tomorrow. (It is just so much easier to be moving a tree around without 3 small "helpers")
3. Sermon for Sunday, talking about Justice as God's passion and the subversive message of MAry's song--and of Christmas itself.
4. Sermonette for Dec 24 service. I have written the two other readings and sent them to the volunteers (although the male reader told me he had been "voluntold"). THoughts about fear and change, and keep it brief.
5. Buy some more stocking gifts because sometimes Santa needs help after all.

ETA: Forgot to mention that Chirstmas cards are yet to be done. Guess they will be Epiphany Cards (or on time for those who follow the Julian calendar) this year.

Good Luck!

Back in the fall of 1996 I was looking for a job. AS often with job searches I sent out resumes to a variety of places. I ended up being hired at Kids Kottage (a crisis nursery in Edmonton), and worked there for almost 3 years before going to complete my MDiv.

The Kottage exists largely through the gifts of others. Every year they have a Radiothon and to day is the day of their 15th Radiothon. May they be blessed with the genrosity of the community today!

Here is a video about their ministry (because that really is what it is after all):

I HAve ALways Believed This...

Sugar does not make children hyperactive!

Parents were so convinced about the myth that when they think their children have been given a drink containing sugar (when it is actually sugar-free) they rated their children's behaviour as more hyperactive.

I have had this arguement many times in my working life. Both in camp settings and when working in a crisis nursery. And my observations were that it made little or no difference if kids had a sugary snack/drink at night or a non-sugary one. Many of my co-workers did not agree...

ANd the book looks like something worth buying when it comes out!