UCC Formation Worship

I apologize - I know that I have missed a couple of weeks worth of posts (and I'm not even into the end-of-term madness yet).  Anyways, at the request of a friend who shall remain nameless (unless she outs herself in the comments below), I am posting the script of a sermon that I wrote for worship at school a couple of weeks ago.  Every Wednesday, we gather in our denominational groups for the afternoon (most of the rest of the time, we're pretty ecumenical around here), and part of the afternoon includes worship that is student-planned and student-led.  We take turns, and on February 4, I was on the team, and I got to preach - my first time preaching in the chapel here, and my first time preaching anywhere since last August.  And here is what I talked about…


Isaiah 40:21-31
Mark 1:29-39

Have you ever had the experience of a word or phrase or name that keeps following you around?  Likely it is a word or a concept or a person that you had never really considered before, but all of a sudden, it keeps popping up everywhere.  Last November, in my world, that word was “hope.”  It was everywhere – it seemed like hope was the theme of every class I went to.  We hit Advent 1 and there was hope again.  We met in our Formation small groups, and there printed on the side of the candleholder that we use was hope.  I even wrote a 7-page paper all about hope.  Someone pointed out to me that there were many, far worse words I could have following me around!  I think that part of this phenomenon is that once you notice something, your brain is sensitized to noticing it again and again and again and again.

So when I read through the scripture readings for today, I have to confess that I was not at all surprised to find myself picking out themes of hope.

Have you not known?  Have you not heard?  The Lord is the everlasting God, the Creator of the ends of the earth.  God does not faint or grow weary; God’s understanding is unsearchable.  God gives power to the faint, and strengthens the powerless.

If you think back to Biblical Foundations class, you will remember that these words, from chapter 40 of Isaiah, actually come from Second Isaiah, and were probably written after the fall of Jerusalem to people who were living in exile in Babylon.  The people in exile must have been living with much grief and loss – they had lost their temple where they worshiped God, they had lost their homes, and they were now living in a strange land – they likely felt as if God had abandoned them.

In the overall structure of this passage from Isaiah, this is the problem that is presented, but it is actually presented half-way through what we read today.  The answer is presented first, then the problem, and then the answer is repeated.  There, buried in verse 27 is the problem that the writer is addressing – “Why do you say, O Jacob, and speak, O Israel, ‘My way is hidden from the Lord, and my right is disregarded by my God’?”  Essentially, why are you complaining that God has forgotten us.

And the answer to this problem is there at the beginning, and there again at the end.  “Have you not known?  Have you not heard?  Has it not been told you from the beginning?  Lift up your eyes on high and see:  Who created these?  He who brings out their host and numbers them, calling them all by name; because God is great in strength, mighty in power, not one is missing.”  God knew each one of those people in exile – not one would or could be forgotten.  And it carries on – “those who wait for the Lord shall renew their strength, they hall mount up with wings like eagles, they shall run and not be weary, they shall walk and not faint.”  Not only does God remember each and every person, but God will give them the strength that they will need to make their long trek home when the time of the exile is over.  Hope is pouring out of these words, like a bucket that has been filled so that it is overflowing.

Our reading today from Mark’s gospel is also one that is overflowing with hope.  Simon’s mother-in-law was in bed with a fever.  We aren’t told how long she had been sick for, but when you are sick, those sorts of things usually don’t matter.  I don’t know about you, but when I have a fever, I am miserable.  I don’t want to move.  I don’t want to open my eyes.  I don’t want to see anyone.  It doesn’t matter how long I am sick for – however long it is, it feels like forever.  So Simon’s mother-in-law is in bed with a fever, and likely feeling miserable and sorry for herself.  She, like the Israelites in exile, may have felt like God had abandoned her.  And in to the house comes her son-in-law, bringing a group of friends with him.  Can things get any worse?  But Jesus comes over to her bedside, and he takes her hand, and he lifts her up.  And all of a sudden, the fever is gone!  All of a sudden, she’s gone from a place of sickness to a place of healing; from a place where things seem hopeless to a hope for better things.  “Have you not known?  Have you not heard?  God gives power to the faint, and strengthens the powerless.”  Hope lives.

I’m not going to presume to know where you might be facing hopelessness in your own life.  Maybe it is through sickness or loss, like Simon’s mother-in-law.  Maybe it is in being cut off from everything that is familiar like the Israelites in exile.  Maybe it is in papers and deadlines and marking that you have looming ahead of you this term.  I don’t know.  Maybe you feel forgotten by God.  I don’t know.  But what I do know is that when you are sensitized to look for it, hope is everywhere, all around us, hard to escape at times.

“Have you not known?  Have you not heard?  God stretches out the heavens like a curtain, and spreads them like a tent to live in.  Lift up your eyes on high and see:  Who created these?  God brings out their host and numbers them, calling them all by name; because God is great in strength, mighty in power, not one is missing.  God does not faint or grow weary; God gives power to the faint, and strengthens the powerless.  Those who wait for the Lord shall renew their strength, they shall mount up with wings like eagles, they shall run and not be weary, they shall walk and not faint.”

And so I leave you with this challenge – go looking for hope.  Once you go looking for it, you will see that it is all around us.  Remember the word of hope from God that Isaiah spoke to the people in exile.  Remember the touch of hope that Jesus brought to Simon’s mother-in-law.  But most of all, go looking for the word or touch or vision of hope in your life especially at times when hope feels far away.

Have you not known?  Have you not heard?  Hope is all around us.  Thanks be to God.

Snow Day!

I realize that I missed a week on this blog - sorry if you are a regular follower!

On Tuesday, the school was closed for a snow day.  Remember that big storm that was forecasted to move up the east coast and shut down major cities like Boston and New York (and then didn't quite live up to expectations most places)?  It was forecasted to hit Halifax just before dawn on Tuesday, and so on Monday afternoon the school made the decision to close for the day on Tuesday.  Which was nice, because I was then able to disarm my alarm clock and sleep an hour later than I would have otherwise.

There was some snow and some ice pellets and some freezing rain and some regular rain.  All very lovely to watch from my window as I sat at my desk.  I used the day as a Paper-Writing Day (also known as a pyjama day).  I had a paper due on Thursday, and before the snow day was called, I wasn't quite sure when I was going to have time to write it.  And so Tuesday morning, I sat down at my desk and got all of my research done for it by early afternoon.  I then had a lovely nap; and when I woke up the snow had stopped and so I went out and spent an hour shovelling the driveway and front steps.

The way my brain works is that if I can get away from what I am working on, especially if physical activity is involved, my brain will write what I am working on in my head so then it is just a matter of sitting down and getting it from my head in to the computer.  That is what I did after supper, and with only an hour or so of typing, I had my paper done.  Final proof-read on Wednesday night, and I had my paper ready to hand in on Thursday (and it was a much better paper than it would have been if Tuesday hadn't been a snow day!).

(After shovelling the driveway, I headed out to the grocery store, as Tuesday is student discount day.  I called ahead to make sure they were open, and the second place I called was open.  The great thing about grocery shopping on a day when the city is essentially shut down is that at 4:30 in the afternoon, the store was practically empty.  Mind you, the freezing rain was starting as I left the store, so I drove home very carefully.)

No picture of the snow to go with this post.  I could take a picture of the snow shovel that I bought on Monday in anticipation of the snow, and then put to work on Tuesday, but that would be boring.  A picture of my sore muscles after my first time shovelling since last April would be more interesting, but a bit more challenging to take!  Plus they are feeling much better today.

Spiritual Direction

Looking back over the past week, the most significant thing that happened in my world was probably my first meeting with a Spiritual Director last week.

Spiritual direction is not something that I have been very familiar with so far.  The role of a Spiritual Director is to accompany a person on her or his journey to become closer to God, or the divine, or the Holy, or however you choose to phrase it.  A Spiritual Director can listen, ask questions, and gently guide a person to a deeper faith.  Meeting regularly with a Spiritual Director is a requirement for the Anglican students at school, but not for those of us from the United Church.

Last term, through conversations both in and out of class, I started to think that this was something that I wanted to explore, even though it wasn't required.  And then, just before the Christmas break, I met a woman (not through school - through a massed choir that I sang with) and we connected before she knew that I was a student at seminary and before I knew that she was a Spiritual Director.  We exchanged e-mail addresses; and once I was back after the Christmas break, I sent her an e-mail.

Which brings me to last Wednesday morning, when I arrived at her house, not quite knowing what to expect.

She practices in the Anglican tradition, which says that the Holy Spirit is the only Spiritual Director, and so most of our time together was spent in silence listening for the Holy Spirit.  A lot of silence.  45 minutes worth of silence at the beginning of the session.  I am comfortable with silence and solitude, but this mutual, shared silence was different.  It was a very holy space carved out of that morning.  It took me some time to quiet my brain down, but then when I did, I was able to simply be and listen.  The only thing that I can compare it to is the holy silence that I have reached in the centre of the labyrinth on the few occasions when I have been able to walk the labyrinth.

Then, after I broke the silence, we spent some time sharing the thoughts and insights that we had received in the silence, with lots of space for processing, and then we finished with a shorter period of silence and prayer.

And I am looking forward to meeting again with her next month.

Second Term

Week One of Term Two is now over, and Christmas holidays are a quickly fading memory.  I am reminded of my feeling at the end of week one of term one when I was overwhelmed with all of the assignments that I was going to have to do over the course of the term.  But I can learn from last term that everything will get done in time, and that panicking will not make it any better.  One class at a time,  one reading at a time, one week at a time, one assignment at a time.

It's all new courses - this term I am taking:

• Supervised Field Education.  Yep, I get to do a placement for the next 3 terms at a real live church.  Except my supervisor is out of the country until the 19th, so I don't really get to start until he is back.  Today, I went to the Sunday morning service there - my initial impression was of a beautiful space filled with friendly people.
• Worship Foundations.  Pretty self-explanatory, I think.
• United Church Doctrine.  This one is interesting in that the evaluation is a choose-your-own-adventure.  We were given a list of possible assignments, and we get to choose what we want to do in order to make up a total of 100%.
• Wisdom Literature.  A look at the books of Proverbs, Ecclesiastes, Ruth, Job, and Song of Songs - all of the fun books in the Old Testament!
• Biblical Foundations - Matthew and Method.  Last term was part one of Biblical Foundations (Old Testament), this term we get the second part.  One of our initial assignments is to learn the Greek alphabet - finally my science background is coming in handy, as I already recognize and can name most of the letters.  We've been joking that I could have fun with transliteration assignments if I do them by substituting the mathematical/scientific meaning rather than the English letter…

(this term's textbooks, minus 2 - one has been shipped and should arrive tomorrow, 

and one I am waiting on the St. Mary's bookstore)

Favourite Books of 2014

It was my annual tradition over on my other (now defunct) blog to sit down on New Year's Day and list my top 10 books of the previous year.  Since much of my reading this year has been text books, it was a bit harder than usual to come up with 10; but here they are (in no particular order, other than the order in which I found them on my bookshelves!).

Dynamics of Faith (Paul Tillich):  This one was one of my textbooks, and I enjoyed every word of it from cover to cover.  As one of my friends (LM) said, "I love those moments when you read someone putting your unarticulated thoughts into precise words."  That describes this book.

An Everlasting Meal (Tamar Adler):  This was the first book on my Christmas-Holiday-Reading-List.  It is a book of essays all about cooking, with an emphasis on the ethics of cooking.  There are recipes scattered through the book (I've flagged a few that I want to try), and they include ingredients such as "3 pounds of meat from a tougher part of a happily raised animal."  The writing is beautiful - precise and poetic at the same time.

Adult Onset (Ann-Marie MacDonald):  I was so excited when I heard that this book was coming out, since it had been 11 years since her last novel, and the book did not disappoint.  It ended up as my bedtime reading through the late autumn when school was at it's busiest (10-15 minutes at a time over about 6 weeks); but I was invested in the characters and it was a pleasure to spend time with them each night before drifting off to sleep.

Stone Mattress (Margaret Atwood):  Let me just say that no one can craft a sentence the way that Margaret Atwood does.  This is a collection of short stories that I read in almost one sitting.  As soon as I finished one story, I wanted to start the next one right away.

Tell (Frances Itani):  There has been a bit of buzz about this book, as it made the short-list of the Giller Prize last year.  It is a gently-written book, set in southern Ontario (very near to where I grew up) in the aftermath of the Great War.  It deserves all of the praise that it has received.

Seconds (Bryan Lee O'Malley):  It has been a while since I had read a graphic novel, so I'm glad that I brought this one with me to read over my Christmas Holidays.  A quirky story, combined with brilliant expressive illustrations made this book a pleasure to read.

Pretty Girl-13 (Liz Coley):  I tend to download e-books from the library to read at the gym, since I can make the font nice and big and easy to read while I am on the elliptical machine and I don't need to worry about the book closing on me.  The trick is to find books that are light enough for gym reading (after all, the goal of going to the gym is to exercise!), and engaging enough to keep me from getting bored (with the added bonus that a very interesting book keeps me motivated to come back to the gym to keep reading).  I heard about this book from one of the blogs that I follow, downloaded it, and loved it.  In the Young Adult genre, with a puzzle to solve, it fit my criteria perfectly.

Wild (Cheryl Strayed):  Another book that has been receiving a lot of buzz recently, due to the movie that was recently released.  I downloaded this one from the library - not for gym reading but to read on a day trip to Winnipeg for a big interview in church-land.  With an early-morning flight there and a late-evening flight home, several hours to kill at the airport on either end, and some down-time after lunch before continuing the interview, this book kept me absorbed so that the hours flew by, and I was able to relax and read a few chapters after lunch so that I was refreshed for the second half of the interview.  I love going on outdoor adventures, and it was entertaining to read about someone else's outdoor adventures.

The Absolutely True Diary of a part-Time Indian (Sherman Alexie):  This was another gym read, but was an incredibly powerful book that made me both laugh and cry (sometimes on the same page).  He is blunt about the dark side of living on a reservation, but with an undercurrent of love and laughter.  This book has been banned in many school boards, but I don't understand why - it should be required reading for all North Americans.  We are all treaty people, after all.

Ready Player One (Ernest Cline):  Ending off with one more gym read, also in the YA genre - this time, a dystopian future.  Unlike some other YA dystopian novels (I'm looking at you, Divergent), this book felt as though it took place in a future that really could exist.  Plus, all of the '80s pop-culture references were amusing to read about.  I wasn't quite sure if the target audience for this book is young adults (the age of the protagonist), or those of us Gen. X-ers who remember the '80s!

And there is my list for this year.  Mostly fiction this time around - when I have time for reading non-school books, I tend to gravitate towards fiction as an escape.  I have also listened to a pile of audio books this year while driving - for the 8 months I was working, I spent one day a week working in the district with 6-7 hours of driving associated, plus there was the whole cross-country move.  None of the audio books made the cut though.

I think that this is the first year that any e-books have made the list.

So that is my list for this year - a pretty good list, if I do say so myself.  Wishing everyone who reads this a very Happy New Year, filled with lots of good books to read!

Silent Night

"Silent night, holy night"
Breathless anticipation
standing on the threshold of holiness
time stretching out
and yet
over in a heartbeat.
Tongues and hearts falling silent
standing on the threshold of holiness.

"All is calm, all is bright"
In the stillness of the hours before dawn
in the velvety darkness
in the light of the street lamps
sparkling snowflakes drift softly towards the earth.

"Round yon virgin, mother and child"
The mystery of the incarnation
the improbability
the impossibility
the glorious absurdity of it all
God-with-us.
Emmanuel.

"Holy infant, so tender and mild"
It is easy to imagine Jesus as a baby,
innocent, helpless
growing into smiles and love.
What about Jesus as a 7-year-old boy,
full of energy and questions and pranks?
What about Jesus as a teenager,
testing limits, growing independence, swinging needs?

"Sleep in heavenly peace"
Sleep little baby, knowing you are loved.
Sleep exuberant child, knowing you are loved.
Sleep uncomfortable teen, knowing you are loved.
Sleep questioning adult, knowing you are loved.
Sleep patient elder, knowing you are loved.
"Sleep in heavenly peace."

Reflections on the End of Term

Well… I survived!  I made it to the end of my first term of my M.Div., and I haven't run away screaming yet.

I submitted my final paper on Wednesday (and then returned a stack of library books that I had out for research), had the snow tires put on my car on Thursday, and then spent Friday and Saturday driving back to Ontario.  My plans for the next 3 weeks include visiting family and friends, reading a stack of non-school books, and generally trying to let my brain turn to mush after the busy-ness of the past 3 months.

Overall, I've enjoyed the past three months.  The school is a lovely place - there is a real feeling of community there - we are one family caring for one another, even when we don't always get along or agree.  It is a highly supportive place to be.  The community wasn't the reason that this was my first choice of schools (chosen for a combination of the ecumenical nature and the location); but it is the primary reason why I am glad that I ended up here.

That being said, I'm also very glad that I have my own apartment, and that I'm not living in residence.  It has been a big shock to return to school after 15 years away - trying to live in a residence room probably would have been a bit too much.  Instead, I have a beautiful apartment, a relaxing commute to and from school, and my cats can stay with me.

With every paper that I've submitted this term, I've had a fleeting thought that, "maybe this is the paper that will prove that I don't belong here.  Maybe this is the paper that will prove that I'm a fraud."  I don't mean this in terms of a sense of call - all term long (after I got through the first couple of weeks), I've felt very strongly that I am exactly where I am supposed to be, doing exactly what I am supposed to be doing.  Rather, it has been more in a sense of an academic fraud.  My undergraduate degree was in sciences (Physiotherapy, to be exact).  It was very much a knowledge-  and skills-based undergraduate degree.  This term, I have written more papers than I wrote in my entire undergraduate degree.  I also wrote my first academic essay in 20 years - last one was in high school English class.  Each time I have submitted a paper, I have done so with a touch of self-doubt that it wouldn't be up to the standard.  That was one of my big fears in coming back to school - I was worried that I would be able to keep up, academically.  But so far, I've received mostly positive feedback on my papers.  They haven't "found me out" yet!

And I have loved being back in an academic environment.  It is a privilege to be able to spend my days reading and writing and learning and generally stretching my brain.  Just think - I have 5 more semesters of this excitement!

And so my books are packed away, and my desk is tidied, all in readiness to begin my next term on January 5.  I loved all of my classes this term - I can't wait to see what next term has in store for me!

(desk and bookshelf, tidy and waiting for me when I get home)