Our 2023 Fall retreat at Falcon Trails Resort in Manitoba's boreal forest helped find a framework to articulate our thoughts to God, and articulate the theological and liturgical language that could ground us in our future steps. Our hope for this retreat was to explore more deeply how to relate to all of God's creation in an intentional way. To share our laments and joys. (Read More)

This letter addresses a young man's anxiety about life. A recent Christian, he is wondering about the difference between the promise of new life in the Spirit and the apparent mundanity of the everyday. The letter seeks to offer enlightenment from one further along the journey. (Read More)

Everyone wants justice done on somebody else (Bruce Cockburn). Often getting angry at injustice masks an avoidance of our own hurts. Unwittingly we project these hurts outward and excuse our hostility as “justice”. Biblical justice cuts through this defensiveness, inviting action and reflection, restoring both the victim and the oppressor. This begins with an honest searching for truth: personal, relational and social. God wants justice for all to flow like a river. (Read More)

Luke’s story of Jesus asleep in a boat captures us at so many levels. The onslaught of personal and/or news feed storms, the desperation of the disciples, the inexplicable calm of the sleeping Jesus, his piercing post-storm question about faith in the midst of chaos. This meditation on the boat in the storm gives us a line into Jesus’ anchor, inviting us to trust and engagement. (Read More)

We are trained early to compare ourselves to others; social media is based on this. But Christ in the Philippians hymn shows us another way. He learned to be fully human in order to identify with humanity. And he calls us to the same path of self-awareness, humility, compassion and service. Ultimately our worth comes from God not each other, from seeking God’s way, not our own. (Read More)

Sometimes when we’re honest enough with ourselves, our musings can lead to a deeper place. Arthur Paul Patterson starts with his default distrust of kindness, which can be seen as manipulative, giving to get. He allows his honesty to get behind his cynicism to his curiosity. If we listen closely to how the word evolved, and how Jesus lived it, we see it is a freely given gift without coercion. Follow Arthur’s reflections as he discovers what allows kindness, where it leads, and what it does. (Read More)

The parable of the dishonest steward teases our imagination. It seems to suggest self-interested shrewdness. But is there an anti-establishment twist? Are we to be cheats? Is there something we are missing? Eldon takes us down some of these rabbit holes and imagines how our limited cleverness could be met by the Spirit’s overflowing generosity for the sake of human flourishing. (Read More)

When we get lost in woods of our own making, we long to find home. John reminds of the expansive, extravagant love of God is always calling us home even as God makes God’s home among and within us. God’s suffering love, shown through the life and resurrection of Christ, shows us the way out of the dark woods, our patterns and predilections, our sin, to the One who calls all us prodigals home. A homecoming like no other. (Read More)

“Who do people say I am? Who do you say I am?” are indeed honest questions. Answering objectively from a historical point of view, and sincerely from a subjective point of view, is absolutely essential. For those who find their spiritual center in Jesus, allowing their lives to be rewritten by meditation on this life is even more daunting because it threatens our religious creeds, lifestyles and cultural certainties. It leads through human suffering to a global love for one another and ever-partial but authentic responses to who we are and who Jesus of Nazareth is for us today.
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In our deeply divided times, the Lord’s Prayer seems so rote and innocuous. But we have no idea how radical Jesus was to teach us to pray to “Abba”. Although undeniably anchored in the faith of Jesus of Nazareth toward his Father, the prayer is for everyone, in all times and places, despite differences of cultures or ideologies.
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Sometimes the best way to look at complex issues is the sidelong gaze, out of the corner of your eye. Sometimes a poem is the only way to express an immense sorrow, a desire for healing or the agony of the daily news. Sometimes reading poetry gets us in touch with our deeper selves. (Read More)