HELLO!

I may see you on Saturday as I deliver a chowder order to your car. Jerry, Juanita and I, are the delivery team. You can tell Jerry and I apart by our jerseys, his a #14 Canadien one, mine a #87 Penguin one. Feel free to wear your Leaf jersey in the car, it will help in traffic, people will feel sorry for you, allow you to go ahead of them. Mercy is a Christian virtue.

Speaking of virtue…the theme of Sunday’s service is the Golden Rule. We will be joined by Cubs, Scouts and Venturers, a few will receive their Religion in Life badge. Be patient with your expectations of this service. Woodlawn United has not held one of these services since 2014. Nostalgia is a powerful emotion. It can bring back warm feelings of previous experiences, but it can also prevent us from enjoying present ones.

Pope Francis has written, “Dialogue is born from an attitude of respect for the other person, from a conviction that the other person has something good to say. It is necessary to know how to lower our defenses, opening the doors of our house and offering human warmth”. The Golden Rule (Christian version being Luke 6:31 “Do to others as you would have them do to you”), known as the Ethic of Reciprocity, is the most prevalent and most universal ethical principle in history. The Golden Rule is found in numerous cultures, religions, secular philosophies, Indigenous traditions. And because it crosses so many traditions the Golden Rule possesses tremendous moral authority and reveals a profound unity underlying the diversity of human experience. I find it fascinating, because the world's faith traditions were taught in different eras, different cultures, different countries, and in different languages.

In Judaism in the Torah, “Love thy neighbor as thyself." In Islam, in the Quran, “None of you truly believes unless he wishes for his brother, when he wishes for himself.” In Hinduism, “Do not to others what you do not wish done to yourself and wish for others what you desire and long for yourself.” In Buddhism, “Make thine own self the measure of others, and so abstain from causing hurt to them." In the Bahai faith, “Choose thou for thy neighbor which thou chooses for thyself.” And this same teaching is in Sikhism, in Zoroastrianism, and in Indigenous spirituality as well. There is something to this ethical approach that deserves our attention.

I look forward to exploring this with you on Sunday. Peace, Kevin