Thanksliving

A number of years ago, when I was in ministry in the Northend of Halifax, I was invited to the ground breaking ceremony of a new L’Arche community. For those of you unfamiliar with L’Arche, it is an intentional community where those with intellectual disabilities live with caregivers in relationships of mutuality. The ground breaking…

Enough

We’ve been reminded frequently lately that living with Covid-19 is a marathon, not a sprint, and that we have to pace ourselves accordingly. That was helpful for me, at least to some extent, but a marathon is still sustained effort, extraordinary effort. Our moderator, the Right Reverend Richard Bott, recently posted on Facebook something different,…

Family Values?

Everything Happens For a Reason and Other Lies I’ve Loved is the title of a book and podcast by Kate Bowler, a young professor at Duke School of Divinity. She wrote it after she was diagnosed at age 35 with stage 4 colon cancer. Everything happens for a reason. Have you said those words, meaning…

Was There an Apple?

When you think of the Adam and Eve story, what is the first thing that pops into your mind? Did you notice that there is not a single mention of an apple? And yet, I bet that image is imbedded in our minds. Whether or not we believe that the story of Adam and Eve…

GraceEconomics: Living the Cycle of Blessings

My sermon wound up going in a completely different direction that I had planned this week! I do not often preach from Paul’s writings, although at times, he had excellent advice to the churches in his letters. In today’s passage from his letter to the church in Rome, he seems to speak from the very…

The Currency of Time and Place

The Transition Team is reading and discussing a book entitled Holy Currencies and I have been preaching on it. It is written by Eric Law, an Episcopal priest. We are accustomed to think of ‘currency’ as money. He redefines it in this way: The word currency comes from the Medieval Latin word currentia which literally…

Women of Courage

Good morning… I am the Pharaoh’s daughter. Did you notice that, in the Bible, I don’t have a name? On the other hand, the Bible tells of two midwives, Hebrew midwives, more or less slaves, who do have names. Shiphrah and Pu’ah. In some ways, I was a slave too. A pampered one, of course,…

Taking Heart in the Midst of Storms

One of the things that I loved about moving back to Nova Scotia 12 years ago from Ontario that all the water illustrations and metaphors are embedded in our culture. The ocean has been a constant backdrop to life through most of my time in Nova Scotia. I have almost always lived within sight and…