The Rev'd Canon Marjorie Kennon

A faithful servant of the Lord and deeply loved. May she rest in peace and rise in glory.

Observations on Giving

A number of years ago the college Student Association did a food drive for the college food bank. All the clubs went out as groups and sang Christmas carols while collecting food. I went out with the Student Association itself and we started in an older neighbourhood. Most of the people were seniors or students and everyone who was home gave us something.

Someone in the group decided we'd get even more food if we went to one of the ritzier, newer, ie. richer neighbourhoods. Sadly, after a few blocks they began to sing, "You're a mean one Mr. Grinch." At house after house people told us that they had given at the office, or had nothing in the house to give, or even refused to come to the door but stared at us rather hostilely through the window. The students began to ask how people who lived in such big homes could claim they had nothing to give. I suggested that they probably spent beyond their means and that they were house poor. I suggested we return to the poorer neighbourhood but they said, no, let's go to the rich neighbourhood (the old money neighbourhood).

If people were home in that neighbourhood they gave generously but mostly they weren't home. These are people with lots of Christmas commitments and no doubt they were out at some Christmas function while we patiently rang their doorbells.

When we returned to the college and compared the haul the club that had collected the most food was the club that had gone to the poorest neighbourhood in the city. The students didn't understand how this could be so but it struck me as consistent with the pattern in Canada where the poorest province, Newfoundland, gives the most per capita to charity.

Just thinking about this lately as I prepare for all my Christmas programming. My congregations may be aging, and membership may be declining, and they may be the subject of doom and gloom articles in media but they give and they give generously. At this time of year I am so grateful to all the Anglican, Lutheran, Presbyterian and United churches in South Alberta for the ways they open their hearts and their wallets to care for our students. I am so proud of their deep sense of hospitality and their compassion on stressed out young people. I am so blessed to serve as chaplain to our two campuses and as pastor to one of those small loving congregations.

Listening to Children

One of the things I love about Ascension is that they are happy to see children assume leadership for worship in the church. I've never seen a church community so open to children before. This post over at Caught a Glimpse of Jesus... shows why it is a good idea to be open to children.

African Supper at Ascension

We've been developing a new Sunday school curriculum for our senior kids at Ascension using materials from Peace Jam. We've been integrating Bible study and discussion with a study of a number of issues like clean water and now AIDS. As a part of it we took the kids to a benefit concert for the Harambee Grandmothers last month. The Harambee Grandmothers are the local chapter of the Grandmothers to Grandmothers campaign of the Stephen Lewis Foundation. Over two hundred groups have formed across Canada to raise support for the grandmothers of Africa raising their grandchildren orphaned by AIDS. Since they've formed the Harambees have raised $30,000 in our community as well as making many groups more aware of the issues facing the millions of children orphaned in Africa. They are one kick ass group of women!

Every lent our Sunday School chooses a project to work on and this year they decided that they would do a fundraiser for the Harambees and then collect bottles and do a garage sale for the Canada Foodgrains Bank. So Saturday night we put on an African dinner at the church, decorated the hall, played African music and listened to a presentation by Maureen Ebel, one of our Harambee grandmothers. It was a blast! The middle school kids decorated and the senior kids cooked and a grand time was had by all!

Maureen told us that the Stephen Lewis Foundation is talking about how to connect to young people and that our little parish was cutting edge!

Anniversary

Six years ago today, on the Feast of the Conception of the Blessed Virgin and the Second Sunday of Advent I was ordained a priest by Bishop Barry Hollowell at Church of the Ascension in Coaldale.

Unusual Month

People have asked me why I haven't written much this past month (and my mom keeps asking why I haven't emailed) and I kept saying I was busy but tonight I decided to make a list of what happened this month to see how busy it was. Here are the results:

25 hrs sitting in hospital with people
11 services including 3 out of town, 2 funerals, 1 wedding and 1 baptism
2 Bible studies
2 theology reading group meetings
student referendum
1 pool and pizza party
1 potluck
1 turkey dinner for 400 students
250 campus care parcels collected, sorted, and distributed to students
220 little Christmas treat bags for residence students assembled and distributed
Peter Erb's visit including his 3 talks and 2 dinner parties with him and Betty
1 talk at the public library
2 trips to Calgary
and a whole bunch of meetings, coffees with folks, emails, shopping, photocopying, and general admin stuff

I'm tired but boy I am having fun! And if it wasn't for a huge crew of volunteers this wouldn't have all happened. I am truly blessed in my ministry by wonderful people.

The Blessing of the Animals

Yesterday at Ascension we blessed the animals!

Sunday at Ascension

From this morning's service

Romans 8:38-39
For I am convinced that neither death, nor life, nor angels, nor rulers, nor things present, nor things to come, nor powers, nor height, nor depth, nor anything else in all creation, will be able to separate us from the love of God in Christ Jesus our Lord.

What Wondrous Love Is This

What wondrous love is this, O my soul, O my soul!
What wondrous love is this, O my soul!
What wondrous love is this
That caused the Lord of bliss
To bear the dreadful curse for my soul, for my soul,
To bear the dreadful curse for my soul!

When I was sinking down, sinking down, sinking down,
When I was sinking down, sinking down,
When I was sinking down
Beneath God’s righteous frown,
Christ laid aside His crown for my soul for my soul,
Christ laid aside His crown for my soul.

To God and to the Lamb I will sing, I will sing;
To God and to the Lamb I will sing;
To God and to the Lamb,
Who is the great I AM,
While millions join the theme, I will sing, I will sing,
While millions join the theme, I will sing.

And when from death I’m free, I’ll sing on, I’ll sing on;
And when from death I’m free, I’ll sing on.
And when from death I’m free
I’ll sing His love for me,
And through eternity I’ll sing on, I’ll sing on,
And through eternity I’ll sing on.

O Love, How Deep

O love, how deep, how broad, how high,
It fills the heart with ecstasy,
That God, the Son of God, should take
Our mortal form for mortals’ sake!

He sent no angel to our race
Of higher or of lower place,
But wore the robe of human frame
Himself, and to this lost world came.

For us baptized, for us He bore
His holy fast and hungered sore,
For us temptation sharp He knew;
For us the tempter overthrew.

For us He prayed; for us He taught;
For us His daily works He wrought;
By words and signs and actions thus
Still seeking not Himself, but us.

For us to wicked men betrayed,
Scourged, mocked, in purple robe arrayed,
He bore the shameful cross and death,
For us gave up His dying breath.

For us He rose from death again;
For us He went on high to reign;
For us He sent His Spirit here,
To guide, to strengthen, and to cheer.

To Him Whose boundless love has won
Salvation for us through His Son,
To God the Father, glory be
Both now and through eternity.

Goats

For the past two years our church has been raising money to buy animals for people overseas. It is a programme that the kids really get into...well, the adults too. So how great to read this this morning over on Joe Walker's blog!

Rainbows

After Robbie died I was driving through Bragg Creek and it had just poured. There was an incredible rainbow - a short one but really intense. In that moment I thought of God's promise to never abandon us and felt an intense moment of peace. A friend and the vet's office sent me this little story of how animals go to the rainbow bridge and I thought it was really interesting that people make this connection between animals and rainbows. Then I went to church this morning and one of the kids gave me this picture because Robbie had died. At the announcements one of the women who had walked in the Relay for Life described how an amazing rainbow came out to encourage them at one point.

I am surrounded by rainbows!

Still Crazy After all these Days

So little has changed...things are really nuts here. But now I have only one major project left before the end of term. Of course there is lots happening in the parish with Easter. But most of my big projects are done!!!!!

Interesting conversation tonight in theology reading group about the resurrection and last night at Unchurch about sacrifice. This afternoon I gave a lecture at the university about Christian views of friendship and family - lots of fun unpacking Augustine and Aquinas. So lots of stuff whipping around my brain these days.
And the Sunday School has started raising money for their lenten project to buy animals through Plan Canada. We're off to a good start after serving lunch to the parish this Sunday.

On another note we've begun to plan a celebration for this summer for my folks' 50th anniversary. Look at how young they were:

crazy days

It has been a long week since I last posted - it has been incredibly busy.  Lay readers' preaching workshop last Saturday, AGM on Sunday, Lenten Bible Study Sunday, regular work stuff all week with a whole bunch of extra meetings thrown in and some pension/house/insurance details to look after.  There are times when I really wish I had a personal assistant who ran behind me taking care of the details of life.  But then I think maybe I just need to unclutter my life a little and find more time to pay attention to things.

One really enjoyable thing I did this week was to take a few hours break and go see The Great Debaters with a friend.  What an inspiring movie.  It is based on the true story of a black college in Texas in the '30s whose debate team was so good that they took on the national champions, Harvard University.  In some ways it is a formula film (underdog school rises over obstacles) but it is so well acted (Denzel Washington is amazing and so is Forest Whitaker) and it is gritty enough in its depiction of race and poverty that it doesn't seem like a formula.

I also finished Sarah Paretsky's Fire Sale and thought it was great.  Paretsky writes mysteries with a hard boiled woman detective named V.I. Warshawsky and I've always enjoyed them.  This one is about trouble in her old neighbourhood on the South Side of Chicago.  She gets sucked into a mess while filling in for her old basketball coach.  It gives a glimpse into the problems of poverty and race still occurring today without the same assurance that in the end the underdog will prevail.  Good read.

Now today is my day off and I have a long long list of things to do so....

Turner and Communitas

Victor Turner wrote extensively about the way in which pilgrimage meant stepping out of regular structures producing a sense of communitas between pilgrims. Communitas is a kind of egalitarian community that occurs when the normal ways of relating including authority structures etc are suspended.

We experienced a little communitas this morning at Ascension when we arrived to discovered the batteries in the thermostat were dead and the furnace in the church hadn't been on for some time. It was icy cold so we moved the service into the hall. The whole feeling of the service changed with people sitting around the tables in a rather oddly shaped circle. People spoke back in the service and everyone seemed in great spirits as we moved books and brought in candles and improvised an altar. What fun!

Sleep deprivation

The last few weeks have been crazy busy with work and even one or two social engagements for the Christmas season so I haven't been getting much sleep. Add to that, Robbie has a throat infection happening again and has woken me up some nights coughing.

So last night, after a very busy weekend with the pageant and two baptisms and book study I went to bed at 8:00 pm. Since I normally go to bed around 1:00 am this was a big deal. Unfortunately Robbie didn't get with the programme and he woke me up at 9:30 to go out, 11:30 for a treat and water, and 5:00 am to cough. Sigh. It was a long sleep over all but in individual pieces it was actually just a bunch of short sleeps.

Today some volunteers and I are going to spend a lot of money donated by the good folks at McKillop United to put together hampers for needy students. I love this time of year. I'm always exhausted but it is fun. Come Wednesday though I'm done except for two services and some parish visiting until the 2nd of January!!! Yeah!

Firsts

Today was a day of firsts and an anniversary of a first.

Today for the first time I had a part in a Sunday School Christmas pageant. I played Herod.

Today for the first time I forgot something in the service...okay, that wasn't a first. I forgotten things before but this was the first time I forgot a scripture reading. Oy. Shouldn't try to officiate and play a role in the pageant on the same night. This will be the first and last time I do that.

Today is the fifth anniversary of my first Eucharist (unless my first was the consecration of more wine at my ordination - see below).

Biblical Translations

At Unchurch last week we were looking at the covenant between God and Abraham. We were talking about the promise of children made to Abraham which reminded me of one of those funny moments in church.

We use the Good News Bible in our church. I often don't like the translation and the 18th chapter of Genesis is a good example. One Sunday, when the first reading was Gen. 18, one of the women, a middle-aged woman, got up to read. The Good News bible reads this way:

Abraham and Sarah were very old, and Sarah had stopped having her monthly periods. So Sarah laughed to herself and said, "Now that I am old and worn out, can I still enjoy sex? And besides, my husband is old too."

As she was returning to her pew she looked at me and rolled her eyes. I had a hard time containing my laughter. But there was more. After the service she opened the door into the hall, forgetting that all the Sunday School kids would be there, and says loudly, "I'm sorry, but you are never too old to enjoy sex!"

Blessing of the Animals

Today was the blessing of the animals at Ascension - Fr. Michael officiated and I helped bless. What fun. Robbie loves church. It is one of his favourite places in the world. He's attended most of the Anglican churches in the south end of the diocese and listens very carefully to the sermon. So this blog is becoming all about Robbie. He is doing really well health wise and is a really happy playful dog these days. He has a new little friend in Rosie and about once a week we've been going over to visit her. It has really rejuvenated him. She hauls on him and drags him around by his bandanna and he loves it...mostly. Now he plays with his own toys more and is just plain goofy.

What am I thankful for?

Not in any particular order

• That I have a good vet to keep Robbie healthy and found a good doctor to keep me healthy
• that we hired three great students to be student chaplains this year
• that I got to spend a week with my goddaughter this summer
• that I got to go on holidays to Saskatchewan and Winnipeg
  
• that I've discovered the joys of playing scrabble on facebook
• that I got to serve Ascension for another year
• that I got to celebrate another birthday with friends
  
• that I have a new office at the college and a new espresso machine at the university
• that I finally bought a denim jacket
• that I discovered Prismacolor pens
• that I get to watch Boston Legal Season 3 with friends this weekend
• that I got to spend last weekend playing scrabble with friends
• for East Indian food, especially the green chicken at the Royal India in Calgary
• for Bonny and the Round St. Cafe
• for Unchurch
• for my best friend and my Ya Yas
• for the kids in my life
• for B who mows my lawn and J who cleans my house and for all the ways they make me laugh and delight at how they are growing up
  
• for the ECM board and the golf tournament committee and all the volunteers who make the chaplaincy work
• for jig saw puzzles and cards and lazy evenings
  
• for lattes
• for adopted family, for meals spent with them, for finding home in Lethbridge
• for friends and family, for home and hearth, for dogs and cats, for faith and grace, for books and music, for films and plays, for food and drink, for work and rest, for love and tenderness, for joy and surprise
• for the opportunity to plant vineyards and eat its fruit
  

Discovering our spiritual type

Last weekend our student chaplains and I went on retreat. We went to the Martha Retreat Centre for some time apart to get to know each other and to do some planning. Part of what we did was work with some material from Corinne Ware's book Discover Your Spiritual Type. Ware develops a questionnaire on spiritual preferences using the classic spiritual typology developed by Anglican theologian, Urban Holmes.

The diagram is my rather pathetic attempt to use the paint programme to draw the typology. The horizontal axis is about whether you know things through your head (speculative - ideas) or through your heart (affective - emotions). The vertical horizon is whether you are drawn to the ways in which God is revealed (kataphatic) or to the ways in which God is mystery (apophatic).

If you are head/kataphatic inclined your spirituality is more centred on the head - doctrine, theology, sermons etc. If you are heart/kataphatic then you are more centred on the heart - feelings, experience, heart felt faith etc. If you are heart/apophatic you are more drawn to the mystical, the spiritual journey (journey is a big word for you), and aren't concerned too much about colouring inside the lines. If you are head/apophatic you are more drawn to a spirituality of the hands, service, embodied spirituality. Ware is interested in what happens when there are differences between the spirituality of a congregation and an individual (particularly that of clergy - this is an Alban Institute publication). Ideally people move to an integrated spirituality and Holmes suggests that it is helpful to try to find balance by moving to the opposite. And this I think is true of groups as well as individuals.

The four of us represented all four types and had an interesting discussion about what moves us and why. Part of it is personality but part of it is also experience. I used to come out heart centred which I think was the balancing of my work life which is so centred on the head. But after more than a decade of ministry I find myself more and more drawn to the mystery of God.

I did a service once where I choice hymns from each of these types, a heavy theological hymn, an old emotional revival hymn about personal experience, a simple chant and a hymn about service and talked about Holmes typology in my sermon. I think my parish is heart and hand centred for the most part and people are pretty generous about differences so we don't tend to have worship wars. But I did think that it was helpful to be aware that different things feed the souls of other people. I've come to realize that if I preach a really idea centred sermon that people don't really get into it. The ideas have to be connected in strong ways to experience.

I think with the chaplaincy that we are aware that we need to offer different ways for people to connect that reflect these kinds of differences in spiritual preferences and so we're glad we understand all four of them between us. I'm excited to see what the year is going to bring and to see how these gifted young women will grow in their ministries.

Weekend

It has been a very full weekend with a board retreat for ECM yesterday and our Sunday School start up and a baptism this morning. The retreat was great. We did some great brainstorming and visioning and had a lot of fun in the process.

The baptism this morning was really wonderful too. I preached about the way in which Jesus challenged family relationships and created a new family of brothers and sisters in Christ. (In there I spoke about the women who were martyred in the early church for defying their fathers). I talked about how we made a commitment to be family to the people baptized in our church. I finished by saying that we don't just renew our baptismal vows today but we also renew the vows we made to our children to support them in their lives of faith. The only glitch was that I forgot to invite the kids back in for the baptism. Oy. Robbie is having another bad episode of congestive heart failure and I was up most of the night with him. I was so proud of myself for getting everything set up this morning and not forgetting anything and then I forgot that. Oh well. I had them come in afterwards and gather at the font. We talked about the significance of baptism and the kids blessed themselves with the water. People seemed to appreciate it and no one gave me a hard time about my memory lapse.

Robbie is doing a bit better and I had a great afternoon with some friends. They gave me a Chapters gift card for my birthday (Charles Taylor's A Catholic Modernity? is ordered and on its way already!) and one of my very creative friends made this wonderful collage for me. I can't get the light quite right so you miss some of it but trust me - it makes me smile!