Faith

We are the stone-rollers

Jean Morris

I remember one year in Sunday school we made a papier-maché tomb with a stone that covered the entrance. It stood in the corner of the room for a few weeks in Lent as a reminder of what was to come. On Easter Sunday we were stopped in our tracks as we observed the stone pushed away from the entrance and the empty tomb exposed for our viewing. I don't remember the lesson that day – but I'm pretty sure what it was. What I do remember is the stone rolled away. Like the angels at Jesus' tomb, our teacher had come early in the morning to roll away the stone.

Cool heads needed for green debates

davidharris

In the first creation story in Genesis, God puts responsibility for creation in the hands of humans, the creatures fashioned in the divine image. It is an awesome responsibility and one that we haven't always done well. . Over the next 50 years Canada is set to become one of world's largest exporters of crude, the Alberta tar sands being the second-largest known oil reserves on the planet. Western oil is Canada's pension-plan portfolio. There's just one problem: global warming.

Weaving faith into their lives

Jean Morris

In January, Matthew and I spent a week in Guatemala, accompanied by Ken Kim, our church's missionary there. As well as setting the itinerary and making all the arrangements for our visit, Ken served as our translator, driver and interpreter of church and culture. Ken was an amazing host and colleague in ministry. Thanks be to God for his pastoral presence and wise counsel with the people of Guatemala on behalf of The Presbyterian Church in Canada. In and through his work, Ken is an expression of at least two of my moderatorial themes – ecumenism and non-parish-based ministries.

Don't squirm — but God loves you!

davidharris

Recently at church the preacher was expounding on the baptism of Jesus in the context of four infant baptisms. She pointed out that parents' love for their children begins even before they are born, then blossoms at birth, even though infants cannot possibly return that love.

Feeding the sheep

Jean Morris

Many years ago I heard somebody say that February was the longest month. By our calendars it's the shortest month, even in the leap year. But it wasn't chronological time they were counting; it was the feeling that February goes on forever. Stuck between all the newness of January and the possibility of the coming of spring in March, February is caught between what has been and what might be. Stuck in between can feel like a long, lonely place.

The perfect summer vacation

Kendra Shaw

Did hanging out with cows while doing construction on a dairy farm, learning Hungarian from Roma kids, riding for hours in a hot van and being cooped up inside a water tower sandpapering the rust ever cross your mind as the perfect vacation? That's what I did, and trust me it was.

Trying to do justice

davidharris

When Socrates opined in the Republic that "justice is the right ordering of the parts" he was in part saying that justice is frequently complex, with many parts that need to be balanced and given their due. One of the first tests of human maturity, for instance, is the ability to weigh the question of whether a person too poor to pay for food is really stealing if they take food without paying in order to live. Below a certain age (often well into our teens) we are unable to get past having been taught that stealing is wrong. Period. We sometimes forget that point, perhaps because there are so many parts to order correctly. Where human motives are involved, justice is rarely simple, but it must be done and be seen to be done.

Catholic, Protestants unite

Jean Morris

The theme of the 131st General Assembly in Edmonton was Claiming the Joy of our Faith. As Moderator, visiting with congregations, agencies and organizations connected to our church I see signs of joy in the life and witness of our church all the time. One of the joys we can claim is the gift of being catholic Protestants, in that our understanding of the church catholic is to be part of the world wide, universal church of Jesus Christ. As those who confess our faith in the holy catholic church, and as part of the Reformed family, we are catholic Protestants.

The supreme season of stories

davidharris

Such is the power of myth, of story, that nearly 40 years on I can still recall that feeling of entering the wardrobe for the first time – the one that leads to the enchanting land of Narnia in The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe. Opening the book itself was like stepping into that other world of magic and talking animals. I knew nothing of C.S. Lewis then, but I still have the Puffin paperback set – the $5.95 sticker is still on the box—that was first printed the year I was born, a mere three years after Lewis completed the series.

Pledging to the Prince of Peace

Jean Morris

I never really understood the power of Remembrance Day until I led a service in a long-term care centre on November 11. Paying attention to Remembrance Day has been part of my life since I was a child either by attending services at school, or at the local cenotaph. Church services that I have attended, or led, early in November, always had at least a portion dedicated to remembering the lives of those who died in war, and also included prayers for peace. Those services have been memorable and important for me, but not transforming. Perhaps it was because there was always a distance, a chasm, that separated me in time and experience from the pain and suffering of war. When called to remember, I was casting back over decades in an act of respect.

The fragility of civility

davidharris

Almost every schoolchild reads Lord of the Flies, but as hurricane Katrina proved a few weeks ago, it takes little to turn novelist's dystopias into tragic reality. From Margaret Atwood's Oryx and Crake to José Saramago's Blindness; the writer's imagination is little exaggeration on reality. Curiously, the illness that overturns world order in Saramago's novel is a "white blindness." In the case of New Orleans, it's difficult not to assess the post-storm debacle as a serious case of "black blindness": the vast majority of those affected by the storm being black (and poor), an indictment of a nation's insistent blindness to the racism that shackles its black population.

Creating communities of care

Jean Morris

I have just returned from an exciting weekend with Knox, Sundridge, Ont., on the occasion of their 125th Anniversary. The sanctuary was overflowing with people, and also with faith, hope and love. From my vantage point in the chancel, the scope of ministry at Knox, and throughout our denomination, was dramatically portrayed by the baby, weeks old, on the far right of the front pew and a senior member of the congregation in her wheelchair on the far left. It is a symbol of the church* the very young and the very old glorifying and enjoying God.