Quiet In Advent?

It's only a few days until Advent and I am finding life is as hectic as ever. Is it that way for you?

As this season begins, I am paying attention to Kent Groff, who reminds his readers that silence is an important step in creativity. He cites Nobel Prize winner Werner Heisenberg known for his uncertainty Principle of quantum physics, Heisenberg tells his researchers in the midst of a perplexing problem. "Wait, I think we have touched something very important here. Let's not talk about it...Let's wait for two weeks, and let it solve itself."

Some of our greatest insights simmer or bake beneath the conscious mind. This is a reminder of out need to regularly sit quietly, maybe meditating in silence, or listening to some quiet music as I am doing right now, or walking in the snow. Find your way to lie fallow this Advent, even if it's just for a little while each day.


Peter

Faith Shared...Faith Enriched

I spoke to a young couple this morning after church about a baptism for their son. I told them how baptism happens in our congregation. They were quite accepting of our practice.

Then I asked if they had any thoughts or questions on the baptism. Yes, it turns out they had several.

They were not born in Canada and in their tradition there are a number of godparents. There will be seven godfathers and seven godmothers. Usually, he explained, there are many more. Maybe they don’t want to overwhelm us who have one or two or more often none.

They also would like to sing a blessing while we walk out into the congregation with their son. So the whole extended family, which is a choir, will come forward and sing their blessing.

We are so deeply blessed and enriched by the faith-filled, intercultural traditions that our ever-expanding community share with us.

Moment Of Awe

There are awesome moments that take place everyday. Sometimes I give them my full attention; other times I glance at them, smile and then forget. Yesterday I had one of those very special moments that I will put down in my journal.

It took place in a quiet family memorial service. A woman stood up in the little semi circle and began to read a poem. Already it was a transcendent moment as she was reading a poem that I dearly love, John Donne’s “Death, be not proud.” The poem and the circumstances caused the reader to tear up. Suddenly the four-year old granddaughter stepped forward.

She had already had an important part to play as she lit a candle for her great grand-father. She had slowly and carefully moved the stick match to the large candle and then so carefully blown it out. Her actions had the reverence of a Japanese tea ceremony.

This time she came forward, put her little arms around her grand-mother’s legs and hugged her. Then she took her elder’s free hand and kissed it gently.

Just one of the God-moments in that time together.

Slowing Down

I have two framed photographs on the wall in my office that remind me to slow down.

One is a winter scene of a trapper’s tilt in North West River, overlooking Hamilton Inlet in Central Labrador. There are no people in the scene, just deep snow, snow covered tilts, snow speckled trees and a pale blue winter sky. Just looking at the picture reminds me of my walks around town. You didn’t need to drive in the village and the paths through the woods were lovely, especially on a winter evening. There were no streetlights so you took your own flashlight. And you always looked up at the brilliant stars and northern lights. I look at the scene, and can’t help but breathe more slowly.

The other photo gives me almost the same feeling. A friend took a picture of me from a distance, standing by the Sea of Galilee back in 2001. The sun was just rising over the Golan Heights in the distance. It was the quietest moment of the day. In 10 minutes I would be on a noisy bus headed to the dig site, but for a few moments each morning, I stood and contemplated what had taken place on this lake so long ago.

Do you have icons on your shelves or walls, that take you to a quiet place? Maybe it’s a place in your imagination, which re-orients you, re-stores you, re-news you. Take a deep breath. Where is that scene for you? What are the sounds, the smells, the tastes? Where is the place for you that ushers you into the peaceful presence of God?

Strands In The Wind

I notice that as the weather begins to slowly cool, at least at night, that I am beginning to close windows and move inside. That’s too bad as there is something about summer that brings more of us outdoors. We read the paper on the balcony. We sip a coffee on the patio. We get our hands dirty in the garden. We float in the river, cycle, jog and walk around the neighbourhood.

Summer is over but we are now two weeks into the new Season of Creation. Through the first four weeks of September we are exploring our relationship with this marvelous world of ours. It’s a new time of year and the outdoors still has marvels in store for us. I wish for you a season to explore the new colours, smells and changes to the strands of life around us.

In and with God,

we can direct our lives toward right relationship

with each other and with God.

We can discover our place as one strand in the web of life.

A Song of Faith

Still Green

Thirty years ago Jan and I started a church newsletter in our first pastoral charge in Gaspe. We called it, The Evergreen. That came from a verse in Psalm 92.

“Still bearing fruit in old age, still full of sap, still green, they proclaim your constancy.”

Thirty years later, I have a greater appreciation for what the aging process does to us.

I am conscious of the reality of slowing down and feeling the aches. I have joined the group that think about physical and mental decline.

But here is some good news! The most recent Smithsonian Magazine tells us that one recent study reported that despite losses in short-term memory and visual spatial processing, older air traffic controllers maintained a high level of expertise because they were so proficient in navigating, juggling multiple aircraft and avoiding collisions.

Another study showed that when giving advice in “Dear Abby” letters, adults 60 years and older did a better job in dealing with social conflicts. Compared to younger subjects, these older adults were better able to imagine different points of view, consider multiple resolutions and suggest compromises.

I could go on but it might be too depressing for the under 60s.

Apparently the psalmist’s words were not just wishful thinking. The golden years may also be green years.

Bethsaida - Connected Through Time

For a week in May, the rocky ruins of Bethsaida in Galilee was home to a group of seventeen volunteer archaeologists. Or maybe we were just movers of sand and rock. But now and then a little treasure would emerge from the sand or from the sifters and we felt like so much more than labourers.

We tried to picture the town in its various stages of history,

     - a vibrant city at the time of David with walls between 20 and 30 feet thick.

     - a smoky ruin 260 years later when the empire of the day, the Assyrians, tore it down. We handled the grain that was burned in that conflagration.

     - a little fishing village in the time of Jesus when he came here to find several of his disciples.

     - Here according to the Talmud, 300 different kinds of fish were served in the same dish. Must have been a bigger dish than we found.

This is a place where one little shard from a 3000 year old pot or a silver earring from the first century invites the imagination to run wild. Who wore this? How was it lost? How long did she search for it?

We touched broken and lost artifacts that were once part of the daily life of people like us. Their stories are lost to us but we were here because one set of stories was told and retold until they reached us, stories of a man strong in spirit and in love who changed our world and changed us.