It has been a very busy weekend. I was only home for a couple of hours between meetings, services and some fun. Friday evening a friend and I went to see The Queen. Good movie. Helen Mirren is brilliant in it. It is hard when you see a movie like that not to spend the time trying to figure out if something is what was actually said or if it was creative licence. They did a really interesting job of weaving together images from the media and the movie.
Saturday I went with my rector's warden to a meeting in Macleod of about 75 Anglican clergy and lay leaders from our area. Our bishop called us together to discuss the current state of the Anglican church. He made a short presentation on the Canadian church's response to the Windsor report and explained what would happen at General Synod in June. Then we talked about ministry in our parishes, what worked and what didn't and what we might do instead. It was a big conversation to have in a short time and I think there was a lot we didn't discuss. We didn't talk about the radical changes occurring in agriculture and the impact that is happening on our communities. And even though we have two reserves in this area, two First Nations parishes and many First Nations Anglicans there was no one present from these communities and nothing was said of issues for this community. It seems like our church is facing huge issues and all we did was scratch the surface.
Saturday evening a friend and I went to see The Marriage of Figaro at the university. It was the first time they had ever staged a full opera there and they did a marvelous job. The singing was great and the sets were spectacular. It was really a wonderful evening.
Today we had services in the morning and evening. Then a few of us met to look at the life of Henri Nouwen. We are meeting during lent and looking at the lives of some contemporary saints. Henri Nouwen has had a huge impact on my own faith journey and it was really good to share some of that with folks. There are so many paradoxes in Nouwen's life - he was so loved and yet so insecure about that love. He could speak so profoundly of the love of God and yet knew such darkness. Someone said of him that he witnessed to the fact that one could be a saint and wounded at the same time. I guess that means that there is hope for the rest of us.
2 comments:
Re: Huge issues in the church...and so it goes. There so much ministry to do and all we can manage is to talk about sex. I detect in the church the faint whiff of Pharisee thinking. Never mind God's mission, let's hash out the RULES! Who's in? Who's out?
Sigh. Henri Nouwen was never more appropriate. Wounded, indeed.
One of the men in our small group wanted the bishop to speak more bluntly about 'the issue' but I was grateful he kept it brief. It is frustrating that this is all we ever seem to want to talk about.
What is that expression about arranging the deck chairs on the Titanic?
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