Passing the Peace - February 25, 2022
Dear Glen Morris United Church,
May the peace of Christ be with you this week. As we see the absence of peace here in our own country and abroad in places like the Ukraine, Yemen, and Palestine - may we hold even closer to our hearts the understanding that the peace of Christ is something we tend to in our hearts and work to build in community with one another. I hope you are caring for yourself while taking in the many shocking images playing across the news these days.
This week, we mark the beginning of Lent with Ash Wednesday. I am very excited about the abundance of resources we have to guide us through this season including a devotional booklet that is available at the church so make sure to grab a copy on Sunday.
Our Lenten theme, Full to the Brim, is an invitation—into a radically different Lent, into a full life. It’s an invitation to be authentically who you are, to counter scarcity and injustice at every turn, to pour out even more grace wherever it is needed. And so, this Lent, let us trust—fully—that we belong to God. Let us increase our capacity to receive and give grace. Let us discover the expansive life God dreams for us.
I hope that you will be able to join me for a time of worship and reflection this Wednesday evening for Ash Wednesday. As an invitation, allow me to leave you with the following poem:
On My Way
Written by Rev. Sarah (Are) Speed
You said return to me
so here I am
skin and bones held
together
with memories and a little
bit of
duct tape.
I am bringing
the worst of me,
consider yourself warned—
the furrowed brow,
the achy back,
the slew of judgments,
a pocket full of assumptions,
the track of negativity
that runs
laps in my head.
I am bringing it all
because you said
return to me,
edits not required,
so return I will.
And not all of it will be bad.
Some of it will be lovely.
I will bring
a wagon full of nostalgia,
a melody that won’t let me go,
a million stories that start
with the words,“Oh it was beautiful!”
I will bring a mended heart,
a glass half-full,
two lungs, out of breath
from dancing too long,
and dreams that taste
like honey.
I will bring my
whole
messy
human self
because I know,
I just know,
deep in my bones,
that you are already
running to meet me.
There are no cuts on
this team.
You said you’d take it all,
so here I come.
Me and all my humanity.
We are on my way.
Yours in Christ,
Rev Michiko
Engage
An Open Letter from the United Church’s Anti-Racism Common Table
Many thanks to the work of The United Church’s Anti-Racism Roundtable who has offered us the following reflection on the use of hate symbols at recent protests happening in Ottawa.
"If you are within the United Church community, we challenge you to discern how, as a disciple of Christ, you are called to respond. Please use your voice against racism whenever and wherever you can, with calmness and faithful persistence, with the goal of making the racism and discrimination in these protests unequivocally clear."
Click here to read the full statement.
Next Year in Kyiv?
This week, Diana Butler Bass offers a timely reflection on the Christian context of what is currently happening in the Ukraine.
“The dream gripping some quarters of the West is for a coalition to unify religious conservatives into a kind of supra-national neo-Christendom. The theory is to create a partnership between American evangelicals, traditionalist Catholics in western countries, and Orthodox peoples under the auspices of the Russian Orthodox Church in a common front against three enemies — decadent secularism, a rising China, and Islam — for a glorious rebirth of moral purity and Christian culture.”