The Worship Symposium Graphic

The afternoon was filled with workshops. Again the presenters I saw included “big” names.  N.T. Wright and Tom Long did not disappoint bringing their wisdom and experience and sharing it generously.

I ended the day with a Taize vesper service of simple repeated (and repeated) songs that became something of a chant in their repetition and, in the fact that we were invited to sing in various languages, making the experience even more meditative and chant like, since the person beside you was repeating different words. The service included long (5 minute) periods of silence, something that we are not accustomed to. It was uncomfortable in many ways, but maybe worship should not always be comfortable.

The program along with the time spent with old friends, new friends, and family (there is a good contingent of family here) has been worthwhile. The evening ended with a couple of hours of conversation with my mentors and a few more words on Sunday’s sermon.

I didn’t spend the whole day with Walter and I didn’t have him to myself. I actually went to church three times yesterday and listened to some of the best, most carefully crafted sermons that I have ever heard. We sang a lot of new songs in those services led by talented song leaders who could get those gathered singing in four-part harmony in minutes. I talked to a lot of people, all interested in worship from all over the world. (there was even one fellow from St Helens…..England), but Walter was the centerpiece of the day.

I’ve read a number of Walter’s books. He’s written around sixty of them. There seemed to be some confusion about the number in the various introductions that people made, but, it is a lot of books, a lot of influence, So many books that, at one point in his informal conversation, he quoted from a book whose title he could not quite remember,but he could describe the cover.

He sees the Old Testament and particularly the Psalms as a script for life. Likely the best piece of advice that came from the day for using the Psalms in our time and as a tool of pastoral care and ministry was to add our own superscripts to the various Psalms. Psalm 3 has one “A psalm of David. When he fled from his son Absalom.”. He suggests that as we read the Psalms we imagine the person or situation in our lives and in our community that could spawn the words “The cry of Herb when he finds out that his teenage daughter is pregnant”,”The song of Donna and Joe when they learn that they will be having a baby after so many years of trying”.

There was so much more from this wonderful, humble, witty, really old man, The superscripts to the script of life is the piece that I am mulling over today.

It was a good day with Walter at the Calvin Worship Symposium.

The house in the 50's

Their posts revolve around our old house. Both of them posted the same picture from an era well before the time that we lived in it. It was a big old farm-house, home for our family for eighteen years. Our youngest daughter was born there. The other two children may have vague memories of other places, but this house would have figured largely in their lives. It was home.

When we moved in it was livable for a family that was trying to start a farm life and  willing to put up with less to make that happen, but really, it was a mess. The windows throughout the house were in bad condition. The frame addition that housed the kitchen and bathroom was sided with rotting painted particle board. There was little insulation. The oil bill was high and we actually did not heat most of the house. A wood stove in the kitchen kept us warm during the day, blankets did the job at night.

As we left it

Over the years we did renovate and fix. If we were doing it today we’d likely have a renovation blog. As it is, there are virtually no before and after pictures and those  there are only happened because we were taking a picture of somebody. There were no digital cameras back then and film was too expensive to waste on remembering what we wanted to get rid of. The house was entirely gutted in three stages over about eight years. A new kitchen and bathroom were installed. All the windows were replaced. The particle board was covered with siding. Two new porches were built. We put on a new roof. The carpets were pulled out and the wood floors underneath were sanded and refinished. A new wood stove, furnace and water heater were installed. Heating bills went down. We started to use the whole house.

It was more than just a house

At the same time, we built barns and sheds and a silo. We built a life and a business. It was a business that allowed us to work together as a family (code for child labour). While money was always an issue since there were more ways to use it than places for it to come from, this time in our life was a good one. We raised our family, we learned together, we dreamed together.

But, life moves on. Life throws curve balls that are unexpected, that change the direction that you think you are supposed to go. So we moved on. We were blessed in that moving as well. Somehow God gets the message through that its time for the next step.

There are things about that time and place that I miss. They are not the same things that my kids may reminisce about. I miss the dreaming, the sense of possibility, the sense of working with, or against nature, and succeeding. The sense that next year would be the one when things would come together. I miss the order of the seasons and the work plan that they wrote. I miss the common cause that J and I once had, every day, on almost every front.

But, I don’t really miss the house.

Genesis 12:1-3

We have been in a lot of churches in Europe and had been in the Notre-Dame Basilica of Montreal that morning. The dome of the Oratory gave the impression that we were in for more of the same, gothic architecture, stained glass, elevated pulpits and all the other bits that make up an old church. What a surprise to walk in the back door of the sanctuary into a space that was so different from expected that it really made you wonder if you were inside the building that you had seen from the outside. It was magical. It was holy.

The space was not gothic, it was not ringed by

Photo Courtesy http://en.wikipedia.org

stained glass windows, It was soaring concrete, open fresh space that had 1960′s written all over it. Clean lines accentuated the soaring heights, heavenly heights. It was amazing in its simplicity, your eyes are drawn to the center, the crucifix, and nowhere else.

It was an amazing surprise. Among all of the other great things that we experienced during this trip to Montreal, this church will live on as one of the highlights. Its going to keep us going into churches, looking to be surprised!

Have you been surprised at church lately?

I finally came across a soup kitchen operating in a town not far from where we live. It was actually surprising to me that there was a regular service like this available and needed.

On Monday, I went for my first volunteer shift. I was asked to arrive about 10:30 at the church where the kitchen is based. We started with prayer led by one of the organizing women. I was the only man in the circle. They assigned me to serving the soup and sandwiches and provided me with an old Stihl chainsaw hat in lieu of a hair net. We were warned not to serve anyone before 11 am, the official opening time or the “customers” would just keep coming earlier and earlier.

At 11 there were five people waiting in line. By 12:15 we had served fifty-two and run completely out of the chicken with rice soup. When the run out was imminent the ladies in the kitchen got to work and produced chicken noodle from somewhere.

Hot Chicken Soup

I’m not sure where all the people came from. Some were obviously needy, some were less so, but many looked like they were really lonely. The kitchen has been running for two years and there have obviously been some strong relationships built between both the volunteers and the clients.

I had a good experience and look forward to my time ladling soup next week.

From the conversations we had over the weekend, it would seem that we were not the only ones who still felt the impact of the time spent in Spain.  Some came home and made significant changes in their lives and we were glad to find that they seem content with their decisions. Others got tattoos to commemorate the event. We found that we were not alone in our struggle/quest to figure out what it all meant, what really happened to us there. The Camino, its experiences and lessons, seems to continue to live on in each of those who were part of the group.

The communitas

The one thing we know for sure is that we have developed a bond of friendship with these people that we never would have had if we had not decided a year ago to take the opportunity to join a group going for a walk. Our shared experience has drawn us close together. The internet and social media has kept us in each other’s lives.

We’re busy planning our next trip to Montreal, and hopefully some of our pilgrim friends will take the opportunity to come and visit us here in Western Ontario.

Reinventing the Rose, Kenneth J. Harvey

An interesting, artsy kind of book. It wraps the idea of an embryo being the common shared property of two people with legal ownership by both with a woman’s struggle with some sort of mental illness. It is interesting that the main character is a woman while the book is written by a man. It is set in Newfoundland. There was more than one time that I found the book disturbing enough that I wanted to put it down.

Water for Elephants, Sara Gruen

The best of this lot of books, this is another Canadian (living in the US) authour. This one, written by a woman is told by an old man and describes love and adventure in the 1930′s as part of the circus. Its a story a life that from the outside appears exotic but from the inside is brutal and sad. The sections told in the present show the loneliness and loss of old age.

Glass Boys, Nicole Lundrigan

Another Canadian author and another book set in Newfoundland. This is a dark book, following the lives of two families and their effect on each other. We see the choices they make and the concessions they accept in their own lives to just maintain their existence. It’s a good read.

Sanctus, Simon Toyne

This one, I wouldn’t read again or recommend. while the first three have a ring of authenticity to them, this one is fantasy pretending to be reality. It reads a little like the Da Vinci Code with all of its fantastic and unrealistic twists and turns. Like Brown’s book it also tries to use the mystery of the biblical story to build an alternative and secret reality.

Now, its back to theology books…..

Our daughter, R, is pregnant, news which we have known for a few weeks, but, which has been made public in only the last few days. She was here over Christmas, but, we followed her wishes and quietly savored the news within the confines of our immediate family. The baby is due to make its appearance in June. We are already planning our next trip west!

One of the good things about this sort of news is that you normally have some months from the announcement to the coming of the new addition to get used to the idea. I’m just not sure if I feel old enough to be grandfather material.  I spend most of my days at school, learning, hanging out with people who are mostly younger than I am. That youth rubs off. Some of my profs are my age (and younger) but somehow I see them as considerably older and wiser. Most of them are not grandparents.

I’m not sure how I feel about sleeping with a grandmother. (she’s not sure about sleeping with a grandfather (she actually said…with such an old fart!!!))

It’s another phase in life, another milestone. Time just keeps marching on. R will always be my little girl, but she went and got all grown up, and now, she’s going to be a mom. I’ve been blessed as a husband, as a father, and now, I trust that I will also be blessed in my role as a grandfather, however that might look.

Really, I am excited about this next phase of the journey!

I wondered why the lectionary passage continued past the familiar first eight verses. It seems to move into another territory. And yet, tucked away in the words of toil, is that small statement that says so much “moreover he has put a sense of past and future into their minds”. We are able to compare one time to another. We can write our Christmas letters from memory. We can dream about what the future could hold. What a gift!

For everything there is a season, and a time for every matter under heaven: ²a time to be born, and a time to die; a time to plant, and a time to pluck up what is planted; ³a time to kill, and a time to heal; a time to break down, and a time to build up; ⁴a time to weep, and a time to laugh; a time to mourn, and a time to dance; ⁵a time to throw away stones, and a time to gather stones together; a time to embrace, and a time to refrain from embracing; ⁶a time to seek, and a time to lose; a time to keep, and a time to throw away; ⁷a time to tear, and a time to sew; a time to keep silence, and a time to speak; ⁸a time to love, and a time to hate; a time for war, and a time for peace.

⁹What gain have the workers from their toil? ¹⁰I have seen the business that God has given to everyone to be busy with.¹¹He has made everything suitable for its time; moreover he has put a sense of past and future into their minds, yet they cannot find out what God has done from the beginning to the end. ¹²I know that there is nothing better for them than to be happy and enjoy themselves as long as they live; ¹³moreover, it is God’s gift that all should eat and drink and take pleasure in all their toil. (Ecclesiastes 3:1-12, NRSV)

New Year’s Eve and New Year’s Day are a good time for remembering and dreaming. We have been blessed here in this household again in the past year. God continues to walk along beside us on our journey (it’s a good thing because He knows the destination). We continue to look forward to what the next days, weeks, and months will bring. I hope that you can as well.

Happy New Year

Yesterday, Saturday, we gathered in the church basement for my parent’s Christmas. I don’t think you could call us a close family, but we have kept up the tradition of coming together at Christmas time to celebrate mom’s birthday and Christmas. We eat together, sing carols, watch as the younger children receive gifts from their grandmother, eat some more, and spend some time catching up. This was the first time in a number of years that all of our kids were able to be there.

Today, we went to church and reflected on the gift of Christmas, described in God’s love letter to us. A big Christmas lunch followed. Both turkey and ham, the amazing mashed potatoes, two kinds of stuffing, great wine, and more. There were lava cakes for dessert. After cleaning up and some naps we went for a walk through the blowing snow in the bush with two very energetic dogs.

Right now, It’s just before 8 pm. There is a game of Risk going on behind me with more than a little bit of blue air being created. Daughter J is playing a computer game. At least two people are sound asleep. Mostly, it feels peaceful.

Tomorrow, its J’s family Christmas and then off to Toronto to get the travelers close to the airport for their Tuesday morning flights. J and I will do some shopping during the day with J and M.

So far, Its been a good Christmas. We are blessed.