HELLO!

A reminder if you missed yesterday’s World Communion service you can watch it on YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PZ9Wus8fT8g And…please join the choir, the residents and me at Glasgow Hall 76 Baker Drive, Tuesday October 6^th at 2pm for a 30-minute service.

There are TWO faith studies beginning at Woodlawn United Church this week, 1) on Tuesday nights (weekly) at 7pm we will explore Karen Armstrong’s Sacred Nature: Restoring Our Ancient Bond with the Natural World and 2) on Wednesday mornings (monthly) at 11 am we will dive into Rob Bell’s What is the Bible: How an Ancient Library of Poems, Letters, and Stories Can Transform the Way You Think and Feel About Everything. Everyone is invited (bring a friend), and there is no need to own or have read the book as I will offer a summary of each chapter we review.

To give you a taste of what is to be discussed Tuesday night (October 6^th) and Wednesday morning (October 7^th) please read the following:

Sacred Nature: (For the literalists, I am summarizing the Introduction and Chapter 1.) Karen Armstrong comes to her passion for spirituality from deep experience. Before she became a writer/scholar, she was a young nun. She remembers then the western perspective on nature, “Instead of sitting contemplatively beside a river or gazing in awe at a mountain range, we obsessively took photos of the view, one after the other”. And this, “Where we see a range of separate beings tribal people see a continuum of time and space, where animals, plants and humans are all permeated by an immanent sacred force that draws them into a whole”.

Armstrong believes the deepest levels of human experience are concerned with meaning, not practical affairs. Stories convey our sacred nature, more than facts and details. Rituals and ceremonies can affect us deeply. Further, she speaks of myths (stories) and logo (facts), myths take us back to our narrative, who we are, and logos takes forges us ahead. Logos can explain the immediate, it cannot explain the meaning of life. Not all myths or logos are good, a genocide can result from a hateful meaning. Myths are not primitive or charming stories. They represent our most meaningful understanding of the world around us. Myths matter.

What Is the Bible: (Part One, chapters 1-11.) The Bible did not drop out of the sky. “It began as oral traditions, handed down from generation to generation…The Bible is a library of books, written by forty plus authors over fifteen hundred years on three continents”. The stories within inform who Jesus was, who he became and who he remains to us. The author focuses in Part One on those whom Jesus attracted to his mission. There were the 12 disciples, fishermen, tax collectors, women of various backgrounds. Luke 8 tells this story: “The twelve were with him, as well as some women who had been cured of evil spirits and infirmities: Mary, called Magdalene, from whom seven demons had gone out, and Joanna, the wife of Herod’s steward Chuza, and Susanna, and many others, who ministered to them out of their own resources”. Joanna was a VERY wealthy person, and yet, here she was, sitting around a Table with this collection of humanity, a gathering that would make no sense except for the presence of Jesus. Joanna is sitting with lepers, tax peasant farmers and fishermen, tax collectors who stole from her husband and the poor.

In Acts this library of books gives us a higher perspective, we read the mission moves from, “Jerusalem to Rome, from known to unknown, from particular to universal, from local to global, from one people group to all people group”. Backing up to the Older Testament, the Book of Ruth tells us an amazing story about faith, that a mother-in-law and her daughter-in-law, born of different places, religions, and generations would bond so deeply as to suggest, “your God will be my God” (Ruth 1:16). Bell offers insight to the Bible, as it tells people first about their identity, then what they ought to do. “If you offer instructions and commands, people will mistakenly believe God loves us because of what we do” but if we first know we were made in and for love, then our actions become one of thanksgiving, not obligation and reward seeking.

I hope this summary helps you decide to join us Tuesday night (7 pm) and Wednesday morning (11 am) this week. See you then. Peace, Kevin