Sacred Reading

Sunday, I presided at St. James, Parkhill and St. John’s Strathroy. The subject of my homily was, The Road to Belief.  In my homily I led the congregations in the practice of Lectio Divina as a way of engaging scripture which can help people to experience how it speaks to them as a living word.  Here are the steps in the Lectio Divina method.  As I noted in my homily, don’t be put off by the official name of the practice, Lectio Divina.  It simply means sacred or holy reading.

There are four steps in Holy Reading.  The first is to read the passage – the Lectio.  During the reading the intention is to be non-judgemental – just be open to what the passage is speaking to you.  Is there something especially in the passage that catches you attention – a phrase or a word?  Make a mental note of this.  You can use any passage from scripture or an inspirational work that is meaningful for you. 

The second step is meditation – meditatio.  Here we reflect and ponder on what we have read or heard.  Remember that Mary pondered these things in her heart.  Ponder and see how Jesus is speaking to you in the passage of phrase or word that resonates with you.  Ask yourself what does this mean for my life today?  Direct it to God at work in your life. 

The third step is Responding – Oratatio.  This is a prayer – a prayer which is unique and personal to you and comes from the heart.  This may lead to response in your outer life but it is an inner response initially.  It may be surrendering your will to God – not something we do easily but something which is important if we are to follow where Jesus leads us. 

Finally there is Rest – Contemplatio.  This is resting in the presence of God.  It is a knowing that God is with you and that you are in God’s hand.  As it says in the Isaiah passage:

For I, the Lord your God,
   hold your right hand;

it is I who say to you, ‘Do not fear,
   I will help you.’

Dreams, God’s Forgotten Language

 

Today, after Easter Sunday, we are in a time when Jesus Christ was raised from the dead.   One may ask, how are Christians to know what God is calling us to do and be in the world today?  One way is to listen to what God is telling us in our dreams.  

 

Dreamwork Canada is offering three opportunities via Zoom to explore our dreams as one of the ways God speaks to us. Each session will enable participants to explore dreams from different approaches within a Christian context using the concepts of Carl Jung. We will be offering an opportunity in learning how indigenous communities relate to their dreams. Our first workshop will feature an opportunity to explore an indigenous approach to reconciliation through dreams.

 

Workshop Opportunities

 

Tuesday, May 10, 2022, 6:30 PM—8:30 PM  ET

Dreams and Reconciliation-Hope for the Future of us All.

Led by Dr. Wendy Whitecloud

 

Tuesday, October 25, 2022  6:30PM—8:30 PM  ET

Movement, Body and Faith in Dreams

Led by Alexandra Caverly-Lowery, MDiv, ThM.

 

Tuesday, February 21, 2023  6:30 PM—8:30 PM  EST, ,

Six Magic Questions, led by Rev. Greg Little

 

For more about the workshops and the leaders please visit our website: www.dreamworkcanada.squarespace.com

 

To register, follow this link: https://www.canadahelps.org/en/charities/bloor-street-united-church/events/dreamworks-exploring-gods-forgotten-language-2/

 

Far From the Madding Crowd

Sunday marked the Sunday of the Passion with the Liturgy of the Palms.  This was what used to be Palm Sunday when I was growing up.  Certainly, the entry in Jerusalem to the adulation of the crowd and the shouts of Hosanna in the Highest was important enough to have its own day in the church year.  The Passion was marked on Good Friday as it also is with our present liturgy and we will share in that story this coming Friday.  I have had difficulty with the combination of these two significant parts of the story of Jesus Christ.  I believe that each should be marked on their own as significant times in the Church year.   

However, there is value to marking both events.  An important part of both events in the life of Jesus, is the reaction of the crowd.  On Palm Sunday, the crowd is upholding and celebrating Jesus as the Messiah, the new king who was going to re-establish the glory of King David’s Kingdom of earth.  Good Friday shows the dark side of the crowd when they call for his execution.

Both of these events illustrate the danger of the crowd or the masses.  This was addressed in an interview with Eugene Peterson, the author/translator of the popular Message Bible.  The interview was an rebroadcast of an episode of On Being on NPR with Krista Tippett https://onbeing.org/programs/eugene-peterson-answering-god/?eType=EmailBlastContent&eId=6470d2a3-3ab7-498a-b281-88aaee187cde:

You wrote in The Pastor, your new memoir, I think you spoke to the phenomenon I’m talking about, which — we’re talking about how the Psalms of the Hebrew Bible bring every human aspect into the light, even the worst. And so that is a way of — you talk about crowds. And you said, “Classically, there are three ways in which humans try to find transcendence … through the ecstasy of alcohol and drugs” — chemically induced transcendence — and “recreational sex, and through the ecstasy of crowds.” And you said, “Church leaders frequently warn against the drugs and the sex, but, at least in America, almost never against the crowds.” And there’s something about the moment we inhabit, I think even globally, that that feels very resonant and psychologically astute.

This raises the issue of the danger of crowds.  When someone is part of a crowd, they are not themselves.  They are taken over by the identity of the crowd.  There is little of no consciousness by people who are part of a crowd.  I recall reading somewhere year ago that the average IQ of people who are part of a crowd decreases significantly.  Crowd psychology has been studied by many with the conclusion as noted in Wikipedia, “Crowd behavior is heavily influenced by the loss of responsibility of the individual and the impression of universality of behavior, both of which increase with crowd size.” 

This behaviour is very clearly evident in the violent storming of the United States Capital in January 6, 2021 because of an unfounded belief that the Presidential election was stolen, as well as the occupation of Ottawa in Canada by the so-called Freedom Convoy by individuals who believed that freedom not to be vaccinated or wear a mask trumped all other freedoms of the people in Ottawa if not Canada. 

So, in the Christian year we have crowds in both these significant events demonstrating the sin of crowd psychology where we are no longer the individuals that God created us to be.  The irony is that Jesus Christ was demonstrating that his relationship with his heavenly Father was a unique one which so frequently went against the popular way of acting and being.  He was often followed by crowds such as at the sermon on the mount or when he pissed off the crowd at the synagogue in his home town of Nazareth.  Jesus frequently angered the Pharisees by doing things such as healing people on the Sabbath.  He finally pissed off the authorities - both sacred and secular, which resulted in his execution.  Jesus called his followers to pick up their crosses can follow him.  This cannot be done as part of a crowd.  We each have our unique crosses to bear as Christians and we must find what it means to follow Jesus Christ.  We can only do that if we follow him consciously being aware of what we are called to do.

As Christians begin their journey with Jesus to the agony of the cross and the glory of the Resurrection, may each of you be blessed to know the path you are called to follow.

There’s No Fool Like and Old Fool

 Sunday, I preached at the Nairn Mennonite Church on the subject, From Scarcity to Abundance.  Here is an excerpt of that sermon which deals with being an old fool as I now qualify in both my age and my status as an April Fool. 

Let’s take a trip – let’s get into the way back machine to channel an old cartoon -- and go back – not far - just a few days.  Friday was April 1^st – April Fools’ Day.  I will tell you something about myself.  I am an April Fool.  I was born on April 1^st, 1949.  I have secretly – or not so secretly - enjoyed being an April Fool.  The day of my birth is significant in Canadian history – or almost was.  It is a little-known fact that NFLD was going to join Confederation on my birthday – April 1, 1949. 

But then Joey Smallwood – who led the country of NFLD into Confederation and became its first premier, realized that NFLD would become a perpetual April Fool’s joke and moved the day back to March 31^st. 

Now you might be asking what this has to do with today’s subject of scarcity and abundance.  Well, don’t worry I will get to that.  Because of my birthright of being and April Fool, I have always been fascinated with the concept of the fool.  Being a fool or foolish has generally had a bad reputation.  There is the parable of the wise and foolish virgins.  The foolish ones did not have oil in their lamps when the bridegroom arrived and missed out while they were away buying oil.  However, there is another way of looking at a fool.  One of my favourite bible passages is 1 Corinthians 4:10, “We are fools for the sake of Christ.”  I actually have a blog with the title, Another Fool for Christ.  The full passage gives a more complete picture of what Paul is saying:

We are fools for the sake of Christ, but you are wise in Christ. We are weak, but you are strong. You are held in honour, but we in disrepute. To the present hour we are hungry and thirsty, we are poorly clothed and beaten and homeless, and we grow weary from the work of our own hands. When reviled, we bless; when persecuted, we endure; when slandered, we speak kindly. We have become like the rubbish of the world, the dregs of all things, to this very day.

To be followers of Jesus we are going to do things that are foolish in the sight of the world.  We are going to live in ways that are counter intuitive – we are going to bless those that revile us, we are going to speak kindly to those who slander us.  We are in effect going to love our neighbours and even our enemies.

Richard Rohr wrote about this way of being recently:

For Paul, the code words for nondual thinking, or true wisdom, are “foolishness” and “folly.” He says, in effect, “My thinking is foolishness to you, isn’t it?” Admittedly, it does not make sense unless we have confronted the mystery of the cross. Suffering, the “folly of the cross,” breaks down the dualistic mind. Why? Because on the cross, God took the worst thing, the killing of the God-human, and made it into the best thing, the very redemption of the world. The compassionate holding of essential meaninglessness or tragedy, as Jesus does on the cross, is the final and triumphant resolution of all the dualisms and dichotomies that we face in our own lives. We are thus “saved by the cross”! Does that now make ultimate sense?

The fool is someone who can give us a different perspective on the world. The fool is the one who is going to show us the world as the way it should be.  The fool is the one who will tell us the truth.  In ancient times the king’s court had a fool who would tell the king the truth.  He would whisper in the king’s ear – figuratively - that he was mortal and would one day meet his maker. 

He has a secular version of Ash Wednesday – remember you are dust and dust you shall return.  In Shakespeare’s King Lear, the fool was the only wise man left with King Lear on the heath.  Carl Jung identified the archetype of the Fool who Jung describes as being a “potential future,” meaning that, through various attempts and failures, the Fool gains experience. As the Fool gains experience, he builds his character and eventually develops into the archetype of the Sage or Savior.

So, what can the fool or the Fool bring to our understanding of scarcity and abundance?   The fool is the one who speaks the truth.  So. What is the truth about abundance and scarcity.  Let me explore another part of psychology to see the truth of this.  The ego is that part of us that enables us to get on in the world.  It is the I that is who we are in the world for better or worse.  I consider the ego to be the greatest gift of God but it is also the greatest curse or perhaps challenge would be a better way of putting it.  The ego wants to be in charge, to be in control – the great danger to the ego is change.  It believes that if it has possession, material things that make it feel in control, then more possession are even better.  One of the symbols of the ego is the dragon who sits at the mouth of its cave and hoards its wealth – the precious jewels it has acquired by hook or by crook throughout its life.  It will breathe fire and burn up anything that threatens to take any of its wealth.  The ego is the basis for the prosperity Gospel which believes if you are successful in terms of money and material goods and power it is a sign God is on your side or God is pleased with you.  The Fool on the other hand can show us a different truth – the truth of being a Fool for Christ.

May you have the blessing of the Fool on your journey.