Warm days and cool nights!

Well September was filled with beautiful days as well as a little rain which the farmers didn't really need, but it certainly has made our countryside green. It is very unusual to see the leaves falling from the trees and green grass underneath. September to me has always been a time when I start to settle in. The summer is done and fall is upon us and I love the cooler nights and warm days. Things start to get back to normal, whatever normal happens to be.

I just got back from my third residential course of my Prairie Jubilee Program in Spiritual Direction. What a great week, lots of hard work, but so much learning. This term we are working on contemplation, discernment, imagination, transformation. Easy things like that, ha... I will be needing a couple of people who would like to take spiritual direction to work with me this winter, once a month for an hour. So if you are interested, call the office and we can talk. Spiritual Direction is the process of discovering where the spirit is working in your life and also discovering your own ability to discern with some direction the answer you may need to a burning question. So if you have decisions to make, concerns to think about, or just want to explore more about where and how the spirit works in your life, this may be the process for you. I am still in training so there is no charge for spiritual direction right now. When I meet with my spiritual director, we always have lots of think about and discern. She gets me to look at life in a different way and I am more clear on what it is I need to do or think or perhaps process for a while.

I am also interested in contemplation and would be very open to having a Contemplative service once a month if folks are interested, so once again, call the office. In a world such as we live in now, we all need to be able to take the time to breath. Just to be and not have anything else we need to do at that particular moment. Often life's demands don't allow us downtime. Perhaps if we form it in the shape of a church service, in an evening, we can actually give ourselves permission to take the time we need to do this. So, let me know if this is something you are interested in.

Have a peace filled Sabbath all!
Namastè

Getting Desperate!

Well Good Sunday Morning everyone, it is a chilly damp day here in Eston.

Today in church we are going to look at the gospel from Mark and the letter from James. In the gospel story we hear two cases of healing and in both bases, the folks who bring the people for healing are desperate for this healing to occur.

Where in our world today do we see folks desperate for healing and What it is we can do about it. Do we every get that desperate life and death feeling here in our lives, I certainly hope not. At least not for ourself or our family and friends but I certainly hope we can get that feeling for the people in our world who are suffering. I think sometimes it is hard to put ourselves in the position of a woman or man in places like Syria or Libya who are so desperate to save their families that they would do anything, risk everything to leave their country. How about the people in Budapest, Hungary this week trying to get on the trains to leave. I am not sure we can even imagine that desperation. Living in such a beautiful country where we have freedom of speech, the freedom to get a job, or to live safely, without fear for our lives, it is very hard put ourselves into their place. But perhaps we need to, we need to hear the stories, see the pictures and react as the outraged people we can be when we see things harming other people. We have been so fortunate to have been born in a country where peace prevails, but so many people have not had that opportunity. So please, do what you can, do things like sign petitions, write letters to the government, here in Canada and in other places, and make donations to reputable places to help make the world a more safe and secure place for everyone to live. Let's all get a little desperate.... So much of our world is falling apart right before our eyes.

a long break!

It has been a very long time since I posted anything on this blog. I always sit in front of the computer and draw a blank on what to write. But this morning I will just let my fingers tell the story. Jim and I drove to Nova Scotia for our holiday this year. It was great so see family and friends again. We spent a week at my sisters on the Mira River, beautiful spot and even though the weather wasn't great, we all had such a good time. It is so great of my sister Sue and her partner Dana to open their home to all of us. There were 19 in total this year. We seem to be growing each year. Then Jim and I went to Margaree for 6 nights. It was great to see so many people even though we didn't see everyone we wanted to see. It is so little time and so often people are busy with family or away on vacations of their own. We ended up in Amherst for a night for a reunion of Jim's mother's family, The Christies. We got out of our truck in River Hebert and a man beside us said, Saskatchewan, what town, well I said Eston and he said No Way. Paul and David Christie, relatives of the Hartsooks, also cousins of Jim. It sure is a small world.

Now that we home and both back to work, things are starting to get busy. I have been working on the Sunday School Curriculum. It is called, "Me and My Faith". It is lectionary based and we are using hte stories of Jesus to help teach the children that our work as church doesn't stop when we walk out the church doors, it continues into our community and our world. We will be doing lots of fun things. It is being held on Wednesday afternoons right after school. All children are welcome ages 4-12. The registration is on September 8th from 5-7. We also have registration forms on our website so download one and fill it out and drop it at the church.

This morning in church we will be talking about where we find God in our lives. So come and join us for our service!

LONG WEEKEND

Well it is the long weekend and I am sure lots of folks are gone away but for us here at St. Andrew's it is family Sunday. It is our time to gather for a meal together, to share fellowship.

In church this morning I am going to be using my favourite little theological book called, "Faith, Hope and a Bird called George" written by Michael Morwood. It is a great book that I think everyone should read. I still have a few copies if anyone wants to borrow one. We are going to focus today on Prayer. Do we pray the right way? Is there a right way? And whose way is the right way? Have you ever thought about how and why you pray?? Are you praying to a God who is out there somewhere just waiting to hear your prayer and decide if you are worthy enough to have it answered, or do you pray to help strengthen yourself and the person you pray for, not to a supernatural deity out there somewhere but to the divinity that resides within us all. Strange, most of us don't think about this at all. We learned how to pray at our parents knee or in Sunday school or from a book even, but do we think about why we do it and what happens when we don't get the answer we think we need to have.

This is what today's service is about.

This year at our United Church Conference of the Saskatchewan conference we are having what is being called Spiritual Nurturing times as opposed to Worship times. This is a term I like much better than worship. What is worship anyway? Well another question for another blog.

Hope you will come out and join us at 10:30 and hopefully you will find this a time of spiritual nurturing. All are welcome!

MOTHER'S DAY

Good Morning Everyone, it is a beautiful day here in Eston, a little chilly to start out but it will warm up. It is mother's day and with my mother living so far away I just want to say thank you to all the people here in Saskatchewan who help me in my life. But a special thank you to my Mom, for all she does for me, even all the way from Cape Breton!

I just got back from 12 days away. It was way too long to be gone. I had meetings and the second residential for my Prairie Jubilee Course on Spiritual Direction. it was a very intense week of study in Beausejour at the Sandy Saulteaux Spiritual Centre. What a beautiful place. I was surrounded by nature and by a group of folks who were so supportive and welcoming. The staff at the centre were amazing, the cooks spoiled us with great food. So the topic this week was Soul Work. What is our soul, how does our soul work, how do we communicate with our soul, how do we know what is the soul filled thing to do. Do we live from our soul, or from another part of ourselves, not quite ready to delve deep enough for soul work. So much to think about. So it was difficult deep work, but totally worth it. I learned so much about myself and about why I act the way I do sometimes. I learned that our memories from our past play an important part in our living today along with our hope for the future. So it is all intertwined.

It is a pleasure to be home and back in this wonderful little town that I have become part of. Take care all,
Barb

Snow in Spring?

Now Snow in Spring reminds me of living back in Nova Scotia, where it snowed yesterday as well. I headed out yesterday to go to Saskatoon with my daughter, Tracey, and had on jeans, rolled up and sneakers, no socks, and a lightweight sweatshirt. I knew it wasn't going to be hot but I never dreamed there would be 3 or 4 inches of snow and I would get wet cold feet. It is way too late in the season for snow.

On a brighter note, it is Sunday, a time for us to gather together as a church family in this place in Eston and remember our responsibility to our neighbours, to our world and to ourselves. There has been a exceptional outpouring of love and compassion in our town this week as we joined together to help a member of this community whose home burned to the ground last Sunday. It makes me proud to be part of a community that can band together so well to help.

My daughter Tracey was here this week and she loved Eston. She said the people were so friendly and nice and if she didn't have such strong ties to the east, a family and a husband who is a lobster fisherman (hard to do that here) she would move here in a flash. Wouldn't that have been great for me. I would love all my family to move closer. Tracey was so amazed by the prairie landscape, the wildlife, the river valley, she loved it. So thank you to all of you who made her feel so welcome.

ON a more practical note - work wise... I will be going away on Tuesday for a combination of a course I am taking, Prairie Jubilee, in Beausejour, MB at the Sandy Saulteaux Spiritual Centre and meetings in Regina and Saskatoon. I will be back on May 9th just in time for mother's day. If there is any kind of emergency, please contact the office and Dianne will put you in touch with Jim who is covering for us during this time. Gail Bevill will be leading the service next Sunday and we thank her for that. There will be no bible study on April 29th but there will be on May 6th. Stay safe and healthy everyone,

How honest should ministers be? A question to ponder!

So, I came across a question in my research for my sermon today. The topic was doubting Thomas. So the question is: "how honest should minister's be to their congregations?

Should ministers tell folks just what they learned in seminary, should they be truly honest about what they think and what they believe or should they just keep compromising what they believe to make church a safe place for people to never have their faith challenged, just a nice place to visit on Sunday morning so we can feel better for the coming week.

So I am putting this out into the world, I wonder what folks really think about this. How would you feel about your minister, or any minister, standing up in the pulpit on Sunday morning and telling you about something that he or she no longer believed in. Would it change the way you felt about them, would it put their job in jeopardy. I think many ministers as they learn and grown have their faith grow with them and often they are left trying to decide what they can still say with integrity to a congregation of folks who aren't still studying and learning. For most of us our faith grows as we grow and mature throughout our lives, but for people who study a lot, who read a lot and who are challenged by their peers a lot, their faith may grow in leaps and bounds and have a huge impact on their lives. What happens then? Where is their place in the church? Does this change their ability to be a pastoral minister. Would you still want this person to be your minister. I think this is the struggle a lot of clergy have in our world today.

Just some thoughts running in my mind this day. What do you think? Talk to me sometime if you see me out and about or stop in and have a visit at the office. I would love to hear your thoughts on this subject.

Have a great Spring Day!