Musings

Hi Friends,

We are delighted to welcome the Children’s Touring Concert Choir to our worship this Sunday — an acclaimed ensemble of dedicated young people from many cultural heritages, ages 8-15. This Vancouver choir performs many times during the year for community and corporate events, local and international conferences and at many festivals.They will be doing a couple of anthems during the service, but in order to hear more of their repertoire, we are replacing our usual Hymn Sing with a choral “Prelude” that starts at 10:20.

We continue with our series on David — this week the focus will be on David’s lament for the death of King Saul and his son Jonathan (II Samuel 1:1-27) — “A Time for Tears” is the title of the sermon.

And then, right after a short coffee time, we head off to Nelson Park (Nelson and Thurlow) for our CHURCH FAMILY PICNIC — everyone is invited; just bring a chair or a blanket and something to share (e.g., finger foods like veggies, fruit, pretzels, cookies, etc.). We will have pizzas, juice and frozen treats for folks by donation. There will be Face Painting, a Bubble Station, Parachute Fun and some good old fashioned visiting! See you there!!

GLEANINGS… a prose poem by a fine Celtic writer, John O’Donohue, from his last work, To Bless the Space Between Us: A Book of Blessings; entitled “Grief”

When you lose someone you love, your life becomes strange, the ground beneath you gets frgaile, your thoughts make your eyes unsure; and some dead echo drags your voice down where words have no confidence.

Your heart has grown heavy with loss; and though this loss has wounded others too, no one knows what has been taken from you when the silence of absence deepens.

Flickers of guilt kindle regret for all that was left unsaid or undone.

There are days when you wake up happy; again inside the fullness of life, until the moment breaks and you are thrown back onto the black tide of loss.

Days when you have your heart back, you are able to function well until in the middle of work or encounter, suddenly with no warning, you are ambushed by grief.

It becomes hard to trust yourself. All you can depend on now is that sorrow will remain faithful to itself. More than you, it knows its way and will find the right time to pull and pull the rope of grief until that coiled hill of tears has reduced to its last drop.

Gradually, you will learn acquaintance with the invisible form of your departed; and when the work of grief is done, the wound of loss will heal and you will have learned to wean your eyes from that gap in the air and be able to enter the hearth in your soul where your loved one has awaited your return all the time.

An experiment… the Lectionary (the assigned Scripture readings for the day) walks us through the story of David during the next two months, and it seems like a good opportunity to explore how this central figure in the history of Judaism might speak to our own times. The Biblical record of David’s life starts in the middle of I Samuel, goes right through II Samuel, and ends with his death at the beginning of I Kings — David is remembered as a shepherd, a poet, a warrior, a lover, a king and a father; it’s a great story!! So, each week in worship we will be highlighting a particular facet of David’s life, a specific story, and we’ll discover what word emerges. And, because David is credited with having written so many of the Psalms, we will include a responsive Psalm reading each Sunday; but note, we will be using paraphrases of the psalms, from Nan Merrill’s Psalms For Praying: An Invitation to Wholeness.

June 21: “Confronting Our Enemies”
I Samuel 17:1-51; Psalm 91
The story of Goliath

June 28: “A Time for Tears”
I Sam.31:1-7, II Sam.1:1-27; Psalm 42
David lamenting the death of Saul and Jonathan

July 5: “Dancing for God”
II Samuel 5:1-5, 6:1-5, 16-19; Psalm 24
David becomes King and brings the “Ark of God” to Jerusalem

July 12: “Where God Resides”
II Samuel 7:1-14a; Psalm 84
David is told he is not to build the temple.

July 19: “He Saw Her Bathing on the Roof”
II Samuel 11:1-27; Psalm 53
David falls for Bathsheba.

July 26: “You Are the Man”
II Samuel 11:26-12:1-13a; Psalm 51
The prophet Nathan confronts David

Aug. 2: “Things Fall Apart”
II Samuel 18: 5-9, 15, 31-33 and 19:1-8a; Psalm 77
David’s son Absalom is killed.

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Greetings… and hope to see you on Sunday.

We will be celebrating the baptism of little Clover and Henry, two fairly recent arrivals in our church family — an opportunity for us all to discover that Grace that is wide enough and deep enough to embrace everyone.

The St. A/W Chamber Choir (21 voices strong) will be singing a powerful anthem by Paul Halley; here are the first two verses:

Come, my friends,
Now the wind fills the sails,
We are bound for the wide open sea.
Here’s the rising sun,
It’s the dawn of a new day.
We will go where the rivers run free.

For the waters of life
Are the waters that we sail,
And our boat is the bond of our love.
And the wind is our hope
That can never ever fail,
And our guide is the light that shines above.

You’ll also get to hear Steve Denroche on the French Horn.

This Sunday we will starting a summer sermon journey through the life of David — shepherd, king, poet, warrior, lover, father — hero of Israel. Each week, following the Lectionary (the suggested Scripture readings for each Sunday) we will explore a different moment in David’s life, seeking connections with our own times. This Sunday is the beginning — when David is “called”.

In my file entitled “Words I Wish I’d Written” I find these words about call… I think they came as a gift through my partner, Tim, many years ago. So long ago that the name of the author and the title of the book are both missing; so with credit to a fine unknown writer:

But, what if obeying our calling means to respond to the new energies churning out of our deepest integrity? Obeying our calling might mean having the courage, as did Abraham and Sarah, to obey that inner yearning calling us to leave home and go out on a wilderness journey. It might mean being obedient toward our own meaning and responsible toward our own destiny. Being called might mean being found, discovering that we belong to the world, that we have enough worth to be invited, urged, and summoned to participate in a work in the world. It might mean realizing, with a fierce joy, that tomorrow’s truth beckons us in our wants as well is in our oughts, as often in those inner agendas that swell within us as in those outer agendas put upon us by peers, parents, colleagues, and constituents. Obeying our calling, following Jesus, might mean not imitating him in the sense of seeking to become a carbon copy of him, but like him, living out of our deepest integrity in response to God and neighbor. It might mean looking for tomorrow’s signals in our needs, as well as our duties, knowing that God exults when one comes through a wish of one’s own. While taking the markings along the trail — those outer agendas of church and world — seriously, obeying the Spirit might mean honoring those sighs too deep for words in the depths of our own being in the confidence that we are being drawn, propelled, called, nudged and wooed by a lover… one who calls us out of our time and place toward a new time and place. We are in the hands of one who loves us. Obedience has nothing to do with punishment but with promise, nothing to do with submission but with responsibility, nothing to do with compromise but with choice, nothing to do with being right but with being real.

Dear Friends,
So… it feels like summer has arrived in Vancouver… and we gather for worship, to give thanks.

This Sunday we will be celebrating communion (which won’t happen again until September).

We also have a band joining us and they will be leading us in a couple of the hymns, though the organ will be the instrument for the opening and closing hymns (”Joyful, Joyful, We Adore You” and “I Feel the Winds of God”).

The focus for this Sunday is the story of Nicodemus, a member of the Jewish upper class, who went to talk to Jesus and got caught up by Jesus’ invitation into a changed life — it’s the passage that includes a conversation about being “born again” (John 3:1-17). It’s another sermon about Spirit (”The Wind Blows Where It Will”) — and about the possibilities of transformation.

GLEANINGS… just a few lines to wet your Sunday appetite… they come from a Pamphlet entitled “Seeds for the Morrow” (which is sub-titled “Inspiring thoughts from many sources collected by Dorothy Millar”); it was put together by her husband Peter, when Dorothy died young and unexpectedly. Both she and Peter were deeply involved in the Iona Community (off the coast of Scotland).

Then, as now, I have no earth idea who it is I am thanking. But I think I know what it is I am thankful for: the privilege of being a small, frail, faulted, but integral part of the magic of life on earth. You can do worse.
(Author not known)

God help us to change,
- to change ourselves, and to change the world:
to know the need for it;
to deal with the pain of it;
to feel the joy of it;
to undertake the journey
without understanding the destination -
the art of gentle revolution.
(Michael Leunig)

One of the disconcerting facts about the spiritual life is that God takes you at your word.
(Dorothy Day)