Everybody Knows… and Still We Sing Hallelujah

A five-year-old boy and his father detained in Minneapolis and sent to a Texas ICE facility… An observer shot dead yesterday when he was already subdued by multiple ICE agents… 100 clergy of all faiths arrested for blocking a road while protesting the airlines that were flying people to ICE facilities…. It’s enough to make…

Rags of Light

Think globally, act locally. That’s a phrase that has been used in a variety of settings and organizations since the late 60s. There is no consensus on just who coined it and where it started, but the general premise is the same. “Think globally, act locally” urges people to consider the well being of the…

The Courage to Stay in the Dance of Love

This little plaque was given to me at my 8th birthday party, and it’s one of the few things I took with me when I left home as a young teenager. Now, I don’t think anyone, even the most religious amongst us would consider giving something like this to a child now. And in retrospect,…

Unlearn and Learn

I thought I knew a fair bit about Indigenous Peoples in Canada. I lived in Labrador for three years and went to school with Indigenous students, although it was as a teenager. I was married to an Inuit man. I did my grad project at AST on Residential Schools. NOTHING however, prepared me for a…

Presence

Surely, the presence of the Lord is in this place. As I pondered the very long reading this week, that line from the hymn we sang a few minutes ago, kept ringing through my head. Surely the presence of the Lord is in this place. I could remember singing it… I went searching in the…

Open Hearts

One of the ways I prepare to write my sermon is to read the scripture slowly… Then I read it again… slowly…. The third time, I pick up a pen and circle the words that jump out at me… This week, the three words that jumped out were opened, heart and listen. I was also…

Decisions, Decisions

My first thought, when I read through this passage last Sunday evening was, “I’m supposed to preach on a church meeting?” Because essentially that’s what this passage is… a report on a gathering, it’s called the Council of Jerusalem. To set the scene, we need to know a bit about what happened after last weeks…

Don’t Throw Hope Off the Cliff

Hope is not blind optimism. It is not ignoring the realities of injustice, suffering, or rejection. Hope is the conviction that even in the face of resistance, even when we are pushed to the edges, God is still at work. Hope is the courage to proclaim a love that is wider than expected, to insist on justice that includes those who have been cast aside, and to trust in the abundance of God’s grace when the world tells us to hoard what we have.