sagartan

So. again my fantastic blogging prowess rears its head. September. wow.
so, I am heading off to a meeting shortly where the future is possibly, probably already decided for my parish. Big questions though – what do I do with it – how do I work with it and the people from the AS community to find the best possible outcome?
Change is scary to most of us.
I just got back from a week in Seattle where my wife and I were hanging out and playing tourist – which was awesome! Celebrating our 1st anniversary. We also checked out Church of the Apostles and connected with the community there a little bit. They were inspiring and engaging and as far as pursuing emerging / new / fresh expressions of church here at home, very supportive and helpful in thinking on things. I have so much to learn and figure out, but I am excited to at least start off on the journey…or continue on? I don’t really know. But moving at the very least, and praying and hoping and breathing that this is where I’m being pointed to.

What do you want? As a parish, as an individual, as a follower of Christ, as a companion along the way, as a child of God…?

I can tell you what I want – I want All Saints to feed the hungry with a food-pantry like St. Gregory of Nyssa in San Francisco, or with bread like the Bread Church in Liverpool in England, or with a meal like the Rainbow Kitchen in our own Victoria. I want All Saints to sponsor refugees, as many as we possibly can like Holy Trinity in downtown Toronto. I want All Saints to house the homeless – advocating for those who have no homes, helping those who live in sub-standard housing, participating in shelter programs for those at risk – imagine what we could do with our own site? We could make part of our property affordable housing? I want All Saints to connect with all the lonely people, the rejected people, the afraid people, the marginalized people, the persecuted people, the weak people, all people, and build a wonderfully chaotic community that is full of bumps and wrinkles and messes and chaos. I want All Saints to come into loads and loads of money so that we can give it away to those who need it most. I want All Saints to explore liturgy and music and to enter more deeply in to the mystery of the Eucharist and see how it connects us to feeding people, clothing people, housing people, and reaching out to risk more of ourselves and thus gain more by God’s abundant gifts of love being shared with us when we make ourselves vulnerable. I want All Saints to enter more deply into prayer and listen for the things that God is telling us to do. I want All Saints to be led by the Holy Spirit and to do things that we never thought we could possibly do! I want All Saints not to be good Christians but to be followers of Christ, emulating with the whole of our beings the actions of Jesus, the way he treated people. I want All Saints to have relationships with all of our neighbours and to learn from them, and to have them change and transform us. I want All Saints to welcome strangers as though we were welcoming angels or even God Godself. I want All Saints to be working at building up the kingdom of heaven right here and right now. This is what I want. My problem is I cannot do all that by myself. So….. so what?

…..but you….. what do you want?

The peace of Christ which passes all understanding keep your hearts and minds in the knowledge and love of God, and of his son Jesus Christ, and the blessing of God almighty, Father, Son, and Holy Spirit, be with you and remain with you this day, and forever. Amen.

I thought I could easily make an install of buddy press and create this amazing parish super website. Its not going very well. I am not as technically proficient as I would like to be. I did sign the parish up for Facebook though, and am trying to get that going and useful, as well as I have been using twitter – with the goal of the twitter sermon. Preaching in 140 characters or less! Ah well. There are lots of other things to do. Lots and lots. However, I have been riding. That makes everything better.
Last week I went to a wedding, then a funeral, then my grandfather’s funeral, then another wedding. Thankfully I wasn’t working any of them. That was a long week. Lots to think about, death and life – it seems to be the theme of late!

Sermon / submission for newsletter.

Death and Life are intrinsically connected. We are surrounded by it – all of you gardeners watch plants grow and die. Nature around us is full of death and life all at the same time – plants, and animals. We do not and cannot have one without the other. What our faith and what our belief tells us though, is that it is not a one way street: Life → Death. Our faith, and our belief, our hope in God and what God has revealed to us is that it is at least a two way street. Life → Death and Death → Life. In fact it might be more helpful to think of it in terms of a circle. The faith of our baptism has us say that we believe in resurrection, re-birth, new life, life after death as we know it; that as unstoppable as death is (despite our best human efforts), God’s promise to us and proclamation is that Death has an end, and that actually it is Life that is unstoppable. This is one of the central things that we proclaim in our worship, and why the Eucharist is such an important part of that, and there is strength and support and comfort and inspiration in that.
One of the most difficult things about living and dying I think is that as things live and die, it doesn’t just happen to things, it also happens to thoughts and ideas and society and culture. What this means is that things do not stay the same. They never have, and it seems that they never will. As people that live in society and culture though, we tend to want to find that sweet spot, that perfect place and have things just stay there, and not change. That leads us down a difficult way though, because in the understanding of that living and dying life cycle, we become too attached to things that need to be allowed to die an honourable and graceful death. We forget God’s promise of new life and miss the possibilities that it brings.
In terms of our physical living and dying, that is wholly in the hands of God as far as our faith and hope in new life and resurrection. In terms of things living and dying in society and culture, we can actually be witnesses, and participants in that cycle of dying and then living again – I find this very very exciting – a glimmer, a window, something to help us see and think about the resurrected and forgiven life that we proclaim – life after death.
In September of this year, I will have been here as part of the community of All Saints for two years. There has been two years of breathing room, and I would hope two years of having some faith and hope restored. As we embark on the next year together, I would invite each and every person of this parish family to put your faith and trust on the line, and together to examine where we are in terms of living and dying as a community – to be totally honest, and to believe in God’s promises of new life, and to explore what new Life God has in store for All Saints. One thing is for sure – the status quo, the way things have been, and where things are is going to change. The questions are, is that change going to happen to us, and we won’t have a part in it, or are we going to put our faith where our mouths are, trust God, and commit to a future and a life that is unknown to us, but known to God?
If you think that the future of the All Saints community is a “derelict” or a “hole in the ground,” then you have answered the first question, and change will happen to us, and death will happen to us, and we will not be engaged in searching for the new life, because we will be stuck on death.
If you don’t know what that future looks like, if you don’t know what that new life looks like, then you are open to listening to God, listening to the Holy Spirit, listening to Jesus and following God’s call to a place that is unknown and scary because of that, but exciting and full of life. Jesus’ promise was that he would not leave us alone, that he would be with us always. As Martin Luther King Jr. said, the only thing we have to fear is fear itself – because Jesus will guide us and protect us from the unknown. Being a Christian is not about living the easy life, it is about living the life of Christ. May God give us the strength, the courage, the hope, and the vision to engage in death, so that we might be reborn as a community, and live out Jesus’ mission. Amen.

Community, any community, has norms and standards, and rules. That’s how it manages to stay together as a community. This is part of who we are, this is how we work. We all struggle with this, and some of us rile against, and some of us rise against. Not all of those norms, standards and rules are positive and healthy. They can become exclusionary and divisive, setting up uneven balances of power and lack of care for one another. People are pushed to the fringes, some are pushed beyond, and there is emphasis on what is right and wrong and acceptable and unacceptable in a way that ultimately comes to fear as a motivator.
I’ve probably said this before, but fear is the biggest motivator – it gets people to do all kinds of stupid things. Fear of a myriad of different things, but fear nonetheless. The worst though, is the lengths to which we as humans will go to avoid being uncomfortable, for fear of being uncomfortable. Faced with death, we often find ourselves rising to the challenge / occasion and break out of our norms and are able to do extraordinary things. But faced with the fear of being uncomfortable, we take the path of least resistance.
Somebody on the street, known or unknown, a conversation we might not want to have – hope they don’t see us, we ignore them, eyes averted, or turn around and walk away. Or, a problem that needs to be addressed, all it takes is a few words to get the conversation started, but it is “too uncomfortable” and so the words are not said, the problem is allowed to continue and it is either status quo or it gets worse.
So, love. Love for each other takes us from that place of fear and the status quo and challenges us. Love has us face death, all the time, so that we rise to the challenge and occasion all the time. Love has us speak to that person we would avoid. Love has us make those conversations that are uncomfortable. Love has us do that, and much more. Love as a starting point helps us define or redefine those norms, standards and rules so that we are inclusive and not pushing people away. So that power is not unbalanced, so that fear is not a motivator, so that people are not divided.
I don’t mean this in some sort of naive utopian sort of way, because people are people and we make mistakes and there are problems and not everyone gets along all the time. The real difference, I think, is that when love becomes our starting / motivating point for actions, then we approach those problems and difficulties differently. It is way easier to say than do all this. But that is also part of the beauty of it – the challenge that it presents us with keeps us growing, and not stuck in a status quo place – it keeps us alive and living.
A very wise man said – “This is my commandment, that you love one another as I have loved you. No one has greater love than this, to lay down one’s life for one’s friends. You are my friends if you do what I command you. I am giving you these commands so that you may love one another.”

I struggle – I struggle with time, I struggle with getting things done, I struggle with being effective, or at least thinking that I am.
I am a priest. I pray, and I try to make my life into an act of prayer so that everything I do is prayer. Easier said than done. In a lot of ways I think I fail miserably at this, but it is such a great ideal to hold on to – I think that is largely why I stopped drinking, and smoking cigarettes, and drugs – although simply cutting those things out, doesn’t necessarily mean that I don’t find other things to take their place. So again, I struggle. I struggle with my own prayer and life, striving to be relevant, engaged, active and living out my faith.
I have recently had the “fortune” of reading and digesting some feedback – ultimately I take this personally (especially when I see my name printed on paper or when things are addressed to me), all the while knowing that I shouldn’t. What I find I need to remind myself of is that when we are in the business of dealing with faith, spirituality and religion, it becomes very personal and often private and intimate for people. I don’t mean intimate in the sense of behind closed doors with your lover, I mean that it is close to the very fabric of our being. When we start talking about these things we tend to slip very easily into the dualistic “black” and “white” territory without taking into account the variety of ways of approaching and talking about all this. In response to an email I received I tried to clearly identify what it was that I believed. In the response I got back, I was asked why I was lecturing the person on basic Trinitarian theology (ask me if you don’t know what that is). Somehow, me trying to explain and express where I am came and what I believe, was perceived by this person as telling them what it was. It is tricky trying to remember and take into account perception when trying to explain and establish where you are, especially when there are no points of reference.
So in day to day life – where does that leave us? We all have the things we do – are they divorced from any thought even of being more than just physical actions taken.
As somebody in the midst of “the Church,” and a mainstream liberal one at that, struggling for a voice of relevancy and active engagement in everyday life, I recognize that the struggle is less between what is and the perception of what is – what is, at least in what I believe is, that Christianity, the story of Jesus, the Good News etc. does continue to have things to say and is relevant to every day life in terms of relationships, how we treat each other, how we treat ourselves, how we treat the earth around us, our attitudes, thoughts, prayers, actions – everything. The disconnect comes when we gather as corporate community to engage in worship, to engage in corporate prayer, to engage in teaching and learning, to engage in dialogue, and when all of that is not able to connect and or address things happening in our daily lives.
What does it mean to die, so that we can live?

Its Dec. 28th. Day four of the 12 days of Christmas. I feel as though I spent all my energy getting to Christmas, and now I don’t have very much to celebrate with. I struggled yet again against falling in to the consumerist trap of the holidays. Some days won, others didn’t. There is still something that felt real about it though. My mom and fiance were here this year which was a nice change from last year. An 8 year old’s excitement hit home, which was also nice. That helped to make sense of something, although I’m not sure what yet. I might get back to you on that, if I figure it out. I am at least somewhat proud of the fact that I went to kiva.org and read up on it, talked it over and gave microcredit/finance loans for Christmas, or rather gave my parents and siblings the opportunity to engage in lending microcredit/finance loans. Strange though, that I understand that Canada is a leader in this, and yet there doesn’t appear (or at least I haven’t found one) a canadian site like kiva. Please correct me if you know otherwise. Still something that somebody really needs in one part of the world is better than something that somebody doesn’t need in another part of the world. Or something like that. ….

So, its -4 in Victoria tonight. And I checked and the normals for the weather are around 2 – 7 degrees, not minus 4. Oh, and it snowed and lots of stuff shut down. Fun city. I went to work, and decided, with the input of the wardens that people were probably not going to make it out anyway, and we should cancel services. And we did, so I went to St. John’s to join Su. After the service there was lunch which was nice. And in case you are saying c’mon get to the freakin point, well here it is.

A “homeless” guy who has been going to St. John’s for a while was concerned about some women he met last night (Saturday night) who were sleeping outside, so he brought them to church with him so they could warm up and get a meal at the lunch.

After the lunch, it turned out that Our Place (drop in centre) was not open today, but the shelter would be open tonight. None of the other drop in places were open either, so it was decided that St. John’s would open up the crypt (where they do the night shelter) as a drop in centre. I was asked if I would stay and help for a few hours, so I did. From about 1 – 4:30.
So a bunch of people came in over the course of the afternoon.

I realize that I haven’t done that kind of volunteer work in a while. And I also realize that I miss it and would like to do it again, and do more of it. It is important to stay connected to street level. I think I’ve been fooling myself that I have, and need to reconnect. Its a pretty important part of ministry.

so I’ve been thinking more and more about trying to actually really take advantage of this technology crap. I spend enough time with it, but don’t use it like I should. I am going to try and use this the way that I intended. Upload a bunch of new pictures to Picasa, and write and think and all that. I’ll bet you were just dying to know that too weren’t you.

Anyway.

In the midst of Advent and struggling to find the "holiday spirit" in myself. I feel as though I’ve got a lot going on – trying to stay on top of work (who isn’t), wedding coming up in January and all the arrangements around that, and trying to be somewhat "normal." It doesn’t look like that much in text. I also know I have a lot less going on than a lot of other people.

Advent is supposed to be this time of preparing for celebrating Christmas and what it means. At least in a spiritual, let alone religious perspective, it is totally lost in the midst of the shopping and sales and ….. So why is that? There is still some latent sense of it in the idea behind gift giving, but that has also become completely skewed, at least in my opinion. Check out Buy Nothing Christmas – I fully support people looking at alternatives. But its not just the gift giving – for one thing, at least in the Religious Calendar Christmas starts December 25th. But secularly it starts after halloween almost now. Why the time shift? What’s wrong with celebrating it then? What’s wrong with celebrating things like St. Nicholas Day (Dec. 06th)? And the 12 days of Christmas etc. etc.  So its all fine and good for me a priest to wax eloquent about this, but I still struggle to understand how all of this stuff is totally supplanted by "Christmas" sales, specials, Boxing Day sales and specials etc.  How do you bring this stuff up without people thinking that you are trying to "wreck their Christmas!?" I am not sure. No answers their yet.

You be the judge! I haven’t written here again in a really long time. 4 (almost 5) months this time though. new tatoos, marriage, a dog, and a lot more. I  am going to be back on track because I need to write here and get some feedback from “out there.” I should have some motorcycle trip pictures, but I don’ because I haven’t been riding nearly as much as I would like. hmmmm.