Tongues of Fire

 Yesterday was Pentecost Sunday in our church year.  This is the event when a great sound and light show came upon the early followers of Jesus Christ who had gathered from the known corners of the world.  The Holy Spirit invaded the gathering of those people in Jerusalem and there was a great wind, tongues of fire over their heads, and the local people were speaking in the languages of everyone who had gathered there

When I was trying to discern my call to be ordained, I was in some ways hoping for something as distinct from the Holy Spirit as all the action on the Day of Pentecost.  I was hoping to get a Road to Damascus experience – like the original one in which Paul was knocked off his horse when he received a voice from Jesus asking him why he was persecuting Jesus?  A voice that would have given me a clear message that the road to ordination I was embarking on was the correct one.  Well on reflection, and considering what happened to Paul, I decided that I would prefer a more subtle message after all. 

I received that some time later.  I was in the process of deciding to begin the path to ordination with the diocese and went for an interview with the Dean of Theology, at Huron College, John Chapman as part of that process. 

Well, I had a very positive interview with the Dean, and the indication seemed to be that I was beginning the journey that God intended for me. 

After the interview, I got in my car to drive home and turned on the radio.  A CBC program was on air in which three people were being interviewed about their becoming clergy later in life – second or third careers like me.  I took that as the work of the Holy Spirit - my road to Damascus or road to ordination experience.  Now this could be dismissed as a mere coincidence.  However, Carl Jung has called these experiences of meaningful coincidences, synchronicity.  It certainly was a meaningful coincidence for me I was certain that this was a sign for me as the work of the Holy Spirit and one that has helped sustain on my road to ordination and as a priest since.

So, can we conclude that the Holy Spirit does not always work in such dramatic ways as it did on the Day of Pentecost which we celebrate today?  Let’s look at some other accounts of the Holy Spirit in the bible.  Jesus promises his disciples in John 16:13 that the Spirit will be a guide and “the Spirit would guide them into all the truth.”  In Acts 8: 29, the Holy Spirit instructed Philip to go to the chariot of the Ethiopian eunuch, leading to the eunuch's conversion. The Holy Spirit is a teacher - Jesus referred to the Holy Spirit as the Advocate who will teach His followers all things and bring to their remembrance all that He had said to them.  The Holy Spirit also has the role of sanctifier.  Paul writes in 2 Thessalonians that God chose the believers to be saved, through sanctification by the Spirit and belief in the truth. 

The Holy Spirit was there in the beginning when God created the world – a wind from God – the Holy Spirit swept over the face of the water before God said, “Let there be light.”   The Holy Spirit the creative power of God – the empowerer, guide, teacher, and sanctifier. 

As I discovered in my road to ordination experience, the Holy Spirit is not always as easy to discern as on that Day of Pentecost.  However, be assured that it is still at work in us and in the world.  We must play our part in working with God by identifying how the Holy Spirit is at work and responding to that knowledge.  It can be in the still small voice we hear; it can be in our dreams if we pay attention to them; it can be in meaningful coincidences; it can be in the inspiration that gives you the answer that you have been struggling to find for a long time.  It can be in the inspiration we receive from an unexpected encounter in reading the bible as you come to gather in bible study or on our own.  It can be when we come together in the name of Jesus Christ to worship and partake in the body and blood of our Saviour.  Be assured that it is there at work in and for each of us. 

May we be blessed to recognize the Holy Spirit guiding us on our journeys. 

Count Yourself In

Tomorrow, May 12^th, is Census Day in Canada and like other households in Canada we received a census form in the mail a while ago.  It wasn’t a form to fill out, rather it was information about filling out the census form on-line – a first I believe for the census.  The census is done every five years and if memory serves me, we received the census form in the mail which we completed. 

We completed the on-line form which took about 40 minutes.  I’m not sure if we were fortunate enough to receive the long form which goes to about a quarter of households but it included questions on a range of subjects such as income, employment status, education, sexual orientation, homelessness, religion, amount paid for utilities and property taxes, marital status, and other areas that I may have forgotten being a retiree and born in 1949. 

Listening to an interview with a rep from StatsCan this morning on CBC radio, he noted that the completion rate was 98% for past censuses, which makes Canada the envy of other countries.  There are a few people who object to the census as an invasion of privacy.  However, these have been relatively few in past years.  I have a suspicion that this may be larger in these times when conspiracy fears are growing and separation movements with them in Alberta and Quebec.

Having worked with StatsCan data in a past life and worked with staff at StatsCan, I am able to affirm how important the data that is collected in the census and other surveys conducted by StatsCan.  The staff that I worked with were dedicated and hard-working and wanted to produce the best results for the people who utilized the data.  Census information is a valuable resource for academics and planners in many fields and is an invaluable resource for the country.  I would encourage everyone who has not yet filled out their census form to do so.  If you aren’t willing or able to do it on-line, it can be done the old-fashioned way. 

Censuses are not something new and have been around for a very long time.  Indeed, there is mention of censuses in the bible.  The book of numbers recounts a census taken by the Israelites in the exodus from slavery in Egypt.  God commands Moses to take a census of the Israelite community in the wilderness of Sinai. "Take a census of the whole congregation of Israel by their clans and families, listing every man by name, one by one."  This information was valuable in planning by Moses and other leaders for battles with tribes they encountered before and after entry into the Promised Land.  

King David also undertook a census of his kingdom.  It was a census of the troops available to him.  However, as was often the case with David, his actions often did not please God as, unlike in the Exodus, God had not commanded the census to be undertaken.  God saw this as an act of pride by David. 

Finally, we have the census that most Christians are aware of, being part of the Christmas story.  This was the first census to take place while Quirinius was governor of Syria.  This census is significant as it fulfilled the prophecy of the Messiah's birth in Bethlehem according to the Gospel of Luke.  This has been problematic for the accuracy of the birth narrative, as there is no historic record of a census at that time.  But that is an issue for another time.

There was a saying when I was involved in planning and utilizing data, you can’t make good decisions without good data.   That may not always be true, but it certainly helps.  Fortunately, the census data has been a good and valuable resource for Canada to use.  If you haven’t yet completed it, please do your part and complete the census and count yourself in as a household in Canada.     

All Shall Be Well

Julian of Norwich, an anchorite and mystic who lived in the fourteenth century, is famous for having said, “all shall be well, all shall be well, and all manner of things shall be well,”.  That saying came to mind when I read a comment on Richard Rohr’s Daily Meditation drawing on a quote from another English writer of a later time, G. K. Chesterton:

G. K. Chesterton’s comment, in his wonderful economic critique, The Outline of Sanity, which takes aim at industrial capitalism’s takeover of small shops and farms: “Do anything, however small, that will prevent the completion of the work of capitalist combination. Do anything that will even delay that completion. Save one shop out of a hundred shops…. Keep open one door out of a hundred doors; for so long as one door is open, we are not in prison. Ahab has not his kingdom so long as Naboth has his vineyard [1 Kings 21]. Haman will not be happy in the palace while Mordecai is sitting in the gate.” [Esther 5:9–13]

 

Chesterton was prescient on the inexorable march today of capitalism overwhelming the small, independent business.  All that is small and individual is being consumed by the industrial complex.  This is happening when even large companies are taken over by gigantic ones.  I heard recently that independent veterinary services are being bought out by chains.  Fortunately, this hasn’t happened to our wonderful vet, but it doesn’t bode well for the future.   

I sound rather more left-wing ideological here than usual, however, anyone who has had to deal with a mega conglomerate e.g. Bell or Visa will know that bigger is often not better.  Amazon is devouring its share of the world as the conglomerates divide up the world into bit sized chunks until they are in turn taken over by its neighbour conglomerate.  I think of the revelation about Ticket Master which had a near monopoly on tickets for live performances.  There was a recent court case in the United States with the judgement that Live Nation, the entertainment giant which owns Ticketmaster, has been illegally operating as a monopoly and overcharging fans.  Live Nation was previously allowed by the U.S. government to merge with Ticketmaster to consolidate the control of concert venues (Live Nation) and the ticketing platform (Ticketmaster).  This gives us some hope that it is still possible to provide limits on the trend towards commercial megalomania.   

To draw on another inspired source, W.B. Yates, who knows “what rough beast, its hour come round at last, slouches towards Bethlehem to be born?”  It is very easy to believe that the march of rough beasts is inevitable and all we can do is keep our heads down and try to survive.  However, to live in hope, inspired by St. Julian, can and does give us a way forward. 

May we be blessed to believe that all manner of things will truly be well.  

Are We Like Sheep

Yesterday was Good Shepherd Sunday in our church calendar.  The readings, including the 23^rd psalm – you know the one the begins, the Lord is my shepherd, were all about Jesus as the good shepherd.  That left us – the people who follow him - to be the sheep.  Not that complementary when you think about it.  However, there are lots about that analogy that is true. 

What comes to mind in this vein, is the quote from Isaiah 53:6, “We all, like sheep, have gone astray.”  Actually, it comes into my head – or my ear – as the line from Handel’s Messiah which states emphatically and in great music, “All we like sheep.”   Here’s a link to a version on You tube if you would like to sing along, https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bOaSa78_NM0.

In our weekly bible study last week, in preparation for Sunday worship, one of the participants asked a very good question.  He noted that since Jesus used, as he often did in his parables, the  common things in his society – sheep being something that was very important to people in his day, rather than sheep, what would he use if he was speaking and teaching today?  The thought came to me that he would probably use algorithms which will often lead us down rabbit holes to dark places if we follow them.  Most everyone who spends time on social media, has the experience of being fed suggestions which would lead us down – shall we say to interesting, if not dangerous places.

In the Gospel reading from John 10, Jesus tells us that the sheep – that’s us – “will not follow a stranger, but they run away from him because they do not know the voice of strangers.”  That may be true of sheep, but it is not true of us today.  We have, I think, forgotten what the Good Shepherd’s voice sounds like. With all the noise and distractions on social media today, it is very easy to mistake the voices out there as the voice of the Good Shepherd. 

So how do we know that a voice we hear is the voice we should be listening to?  Well, the simple way is to pay attention to what it is saying.  Is it giving us a message of love or is it giving us a message of something else such as envy, or lust, or hate.  As Bob Dylan sang, “Well, it may be the devil or it may be the Lord, But you’re going to have to serve somebody.”

So, I guess it is up to us to decide who’s voice we are going to listen to.  Remember that the next time we are tempted to listen to the myriads of voices on social media or elsewhere.  May we be blessed to hear the voice of the Good Shepherd beneath the tumult.

The Toad Prince

Last week, I noticed a toad in the window well of one of the basement windows.  This happens occasionally and it often gives our cat Trixie endless entertainment watching it until Lorna rescues it – the toad that is.  Well, Lorna rescued this one and set it free from the bottom of the (window) well and all was well for it.  Trixie missed all the excitement this time.

This incident brought to mind the Fairy Tale of the Frog Prince.  As a reminder, the original tale involved a beautiful, spoiled princess who loses her favourite possession, a golden ball, in a well.  She is devastated by the loss, and a frog inquires why she is crying.  Upon hearing of her plight, the frog agrees to retrieve it from the bottom of the well if the princess will agree to inviting the frog into the castle and treat her as one of the family. 

She does this at the insistence of her father, the king, who impresses on her the importance of princesses keeping their word.  Although unstated, this would appear to be out of character for the way the princess was raised, as she was a rather spoiled princess and used to getting everything she wanted.

In any case, at the king’s insistence the frog is treated as one of the family and eats at the table with the family and even shares the princess’s bedroom.  However, the frog, not to be denied, demands that he share the princess’s bed (symbolism running wide here).  This is too much for the princess and in a rage, she throws the frog against the wall.  This breaks the curse the frog has been under, and he turns back to his true form – a handsome prince.  Well, as readers of fairy tales know, this fairy tale ends with the princess marrying the prince and they live happily ever after.  In the better-known version, thanks to the Disnified version, the frog is transformed by the princess’s kiss.  However, I like the original version in which the frog is thrown against the wall by the spoiled princess. 

Now I know that our little tale of an amphibian at the bottom of a (window) well involved a toad and not a frog.  It also didn’t involve the toad rescuing a princess.  Rather it was rescued by the beautiful maiden.  However, it could have been the making of a good fairy tale.  After all, a toad has many similarities to frogs so why not having a toad turning into a handsome prince of Wall Street i.e. the tale of the Toad Prince and granting Lorna (and me) our hearts’ desires.  O well, at least Lorna’s good deed was unpunished – so far.

By the way, both frogs and toads are symbols of transformation, spiritual growth and creativity.  They undergo almost magical metamorphosis in their life cycles even without being cursed.

Ponder that the next time you encounter a frog or a toad.  It may be a blessing for you.

 

Give Peace a Chance

The recent “little incursion” by the United States and Israel into Iran has brought into focus the sharp contrast between the might-makes-right approach to international relations and the hope that peace will reign in the world.  This is a war by any definition.  However, President Trump and his minions are reluctant to use that word as only the United States Congress has the right to declare war – which it has not done in this case.

In his approach to the “little incursion”, Trump has waffled on what his objective or objectives are in launching the American attack on Iran.  It seems to me that the bottom line for Trump developed into a “kill them all and let God sort it out” approach to the Iranian people.  This developed as Trump became more and more frustrated with the stubbornness of the Iranian regime to admit defeat and continue to resist despite the defeat of the Iranian military.   Surprizingly, Trump was not prepared for Iran to take control of the Strait of Hormuz and block the shipment of oil which has led to sharp increases in the world price of oil and the price of gas at the pumps.  In his frustration, Trump declared that if the Strait was not opened within one of his many deadlines, “the whole (Iranian) civilization will die tonight, never to be brought back again.”  This statement amounts to an intention to commit genocide and has been condemned generally as such, even though, thank God, he did not carry through with his threat.

This should be condemned by every civilized person.  However, what brings this into a Christian focus is that Trump and his band of not so merry minions have put this “little conflict” into a Christian perspective as shown in Trump’s social media post:

“Remember when I gave Iran ten days to MAKE A DEAL or OPEN UP THE HORMUZ STRAIT. Time is running out - 48 hours before all Hell will reign down on them. Glory be to GOD!” - President DONALD J. TRUMP pic.twitter.com/cVb7leFmAv

Similarly, Pete Hegseth, the Secretary of Defense who accurately renamed himself the Secretary of War, at a Pentagon church service held weeks after the Iran war began, prayed a prayer that called for violence against military enemies:

Let every round find its mark against the enemies of righteousness and our great nation. Give them wisdom in every decision, endurance for the trial ahead, unbreakable unity, and overwhelming violence of action against those who deserve no mercy.”

Apparently, both Trump and Hegseth, who call themselves Christians, have missed the principle commandment of the founder of Christianity, to love your neighbour even if your neighbour is your enemy. 

In opposition to this approach to Christianity, Pope Leo XIV clarifies where Trump, Hegseth et al have gone astray:

God does not bless any conflict.  Anyone who is a disciple of Christ, the Prince of Peace, is never on the side of those who once wielded the sword and today drop bombs.”

In considering the conflict, it is problematic as the Iranian government does not deserve any consideration.  It is a regime that should be replaced as it is a supporter and instigator of terrorism and is responsible for much of the conflict in that region of the world.  However, the Iranian people deserve to be treated with Christian compassion and concern.  In this time of increasing international conflict and threats, how are we Christians to approach the increasing militarization of international relations?  Can we support and approve of recent move by the Carney Government to meet the elusive target of 2% GPD spending on our military?  I must confess that I support this move and am not ready to turn the other cheek if Russian or Chinese forces were to land on our northern shores or anywhere else in the true north strong and free.   

In clarifying a Christian position in all this, it might be helpful to turn to the Just War Doctrine.  Here is a summary of this from Wikipedia:

The just war doctrine of the Catholic Church found in the 1992 Catechism of the Catholic Church, in paragraph 2309, lists four strict conditions for "legitimate defense by military force:"^[65][66]

·         The damage inflicted by the aggressor on the nation or community of nations must be lasting, grave and certain.

·         All other means of putting an end to it must have been shown to be impractical or ineffective.

·         There must be serious prospects of success.

·         The use of arms must not produce evils and disorders graver than the evil to be eliminated.

Above all, we can pray for peace in the world and do whatever we can to work for peace in our time and in the time to come. 

 

 

At Home in the Tower of Song

My musical thoughts have turned back to Leonard Cohen in recent days.  I was recently lent an anthology of Leonard’s songs by a friend, Carolyn Hull-Johnston.  I have been perusing it and have been reminded of some of his wonderful songs that are not in my repertoire, as well as, surprizingly, a few of his songs that I was not familiar with – I thought I knew all his published songs.  I must say that these few are not memorable – but I guess even Leonard couldn’t be brilliant all the time or perhaps I haven’t given them a proper chance to grow on me.

As it said in his song, ‘I’m Your Man’, Leonard Cohen was my man when it came to songs that I love to play and sing. Now that the season of Easter has arrived and Lent is passed, I can report that Hallelujah is my all-time favourite song of Leonard’s – for you non-Christians, we are not to say the H word during Lent as it is a time of reflection and repentance and not celebration.  Before that it was ‘Suzanne’ that for many years was in the top spot in my Leonard Cohen hit list. 

During my personal Leonard Cohen song revival as I perused the Anthology of his songs, I woke up one morning with his song ‘Tower of Song’ in my head.  This is one of his really good ones, but I had to wonder why would my unconscious be bringing that to my awareness?  Then I remembered the great opening line of the song, “Well, my friends are gone and my hair is grey.  I ache in the places where I used to play.”  As I had just marked my 77^th birthday, perhaps this was an appropriate theme for my time of life.  However, on reflection, it’s likely the unconscious didn’t want me to stop there in my exploration of the meaning of the song for me at this time.

Looking at the rest of the first verse, “and I'm crazy for love, but I'm not comin' on.  I'm just payin' my rent every day, in the tower of song.”  Perhaps the message for me right now is that my love of music and particularly his music has been on hiatus and I need to fall in love with it again to pay my rent in the Tower of Song.  Something for me to consider.

That first line of the song, “Well, my friends are gone and my hair is grey.  I ache in the places where I used to play.”  It is one of Leonard’s many great lines from his songs which resonate with me and with many of his fans.  I think of the line, “Forget your perfect offering. There is a crack, a crack in everything. That's how the light gets in.”  His opening verse from ‘Passing Through’ sums up the message of Jesus Christ for me:

I saw Jesus on the cross on a hill called Calvary

"Do you hate mankind for what they done to you?"

He said, "Talk of love not hate, things to do, it's getting late

I've so little time and I'm only passin' through."

 

There is that hope in life that you will be able to say for the bottom of your heart that someone or something will, “dance me to the end of love.”  Or you will know what it means to go to your depth, “a thousand kisses deep.” You may have had the experience of someone bringing you, “tea and oranges all the way from China.”  But we all know that in the end, “there ain’t no cure, there ain’t no cure for love.” 

In the end, “I have tried in my way to be free.”  However, I have found it is really not something that is easy.  Perhaps I do, “want it darker” as Leonard says.

In any case, I’m sure you Leonard Cohen fans have your own experience of listening to and singing his songs.  I will keep searching for that, “secret chord that David played and it pleased the Lord.”  If you aren’t a fan, I invite you to listen to a few of his songs and see if they resonate with you.  I know his voice is an acquired taste, but he really had the gift, “of a golden voice.”  Yes, I do really care for music.  Leonard did get me singing and I hope I have more songs to sing in the years left to me.  May you be blessed to visit the Tower of Song many times in your life.