Welcome back, after a rainy June then a gorgeous summer.  
What better way to start the fall then by counting our blessings.  This prayer was included in our service on September 10th.

I Am Thankful

I am thankful I can walk; there are those who have never taken their first step.

I am thankful I can see the beauty all around me; there are those whose world is always dark.

I am thankful I can hear music playing; there are those whose entire lives have been spent in silence.

I am thankful my heart can be broken; there are those who are so hardened, they cannot be touched.

I am thankful I can move about freely and express my beliefs; there are those who live in constant fear.

I am thankful I have been loved; there are those for whom no one has ever cared.

I am thankful I can work; there are those who have to depend on others for even their most basic needs.

I am thankful to wake-up in the morning and take a deep breath of fresh air; there are those who never got that far.

I am thankful for the opportunity to help others; there are those who have not been so abundantly blessed as I.

🌻🌻🌻🌻🌻🌻🌻🌻🌻🌻🌻🌻🌻🌻

Praying to Forgive

 

Brian McLaren identifies how prayers of petition help us to experience forgiveness:   

Since being wounded or sinned against is a terribly common experience, I suspect we need to pay more attention to it. In fact, being wronged is directly linked in the Lord’s Prayer to the reality of doing wrong; we pray, “forgive us our sins as we forgive those who sin against us.”  

Father Richard Rohr says it well: Pain that isn’t processed is passed on. Pain that isn’t transformed is transmitted. So we need to process our woundedness with God, and that processing begins by naming the pain and holding it … in God’s presence: 

Betrayed. Insulted. Taken advantage of. Lied to. Forgotten. Used. Abused. Belittled. Passed over. Cheated. Mocked. Snubbed. Robbed. Vandalized. Misunderstood. Misinterpreted. Excluded. Disrespected. Ripped off. Confused. Misled.  

It’s important not to rush this process. We need to feel our feelings, to let the pain actually catch up with us…. I’ve found that it takes less energy to feel and process my pain than it does to suppress it or run away from it. So, just as through confession we name our own wrongs and feel regret, through petition we name and feel the pain that results from the wrongs of others…. We translate our pain into requests:  

Comfort. Encouragement. Reassurance. Companionship. Vindication. Appreciation. Boundaries. Acknowledgement.  

It’s important to note that we are not naming what we need the person who wronged us to do for us. If we focus on what we wish the antagonist would do to make us feel better, we unintentionally arm the antagonist with still more power to hurt us. Instead, in this naming, we are turning from the antagonist to God, focusing on what we need God to do for us. We’re opening our soul to receive healing from God’s ever present, ever generous Spirit.

 

 

 

Richard Rohr describes the reign of God as an alternative way of relating:  

When Jesus talked about the reign of God, he was talking about an utterly different way of relating with one another than human society as we know it. The new world order—the reign of God—is the heart of the Christian Scriptures.  

The kingdom is Jesus’ message. He never describes it conceptually; he walks around it and keeps giving images of the Real. This is the classic pattern of the spiritual teacher. Only those ready and seeking will normally understand. 

For example, “The reign of heaven is like a mustard seed which a man took and sowed in his field. It is the smallest of all the seeds, but when it has grown it is the biggest of shrubs and becomes a tree, so that the birds of the air can come and shelter in its branches” (Matthew 13:31–32). The mustard seed is very small and insignificant. Pliny the Elder, a contemporary of Jesus, writes only two things about the mustard plant: It’s medicinal, so it did have some value. But he said not to plant it because it tends to take over the entire garden. It is a weed that cannot be stopped.  

Those would have been the two images on which Jesus was clearly building. He teaches: What I’m describing for you is therapeutic—it’s life, it’s healing, it’s medicinal—but it’s like a weed. I’m planting a weed in the world.What a shocking image! Jesus talks about strange things like nonviolence and living a simple life by saying they’re planted and they’re going to take over the whole garden; the old world is over. 

That’s Jesus’ hope, but we have to witness what patient hope that is. He didn’t see it happen in his lifetime, when religion was highly corrupt and most people were poor, oppressed, or enslaved. Yet still, in the midst of that, he dared to announce the present reign of God! He dared to promise, “You can live the new reality right now.”  

The word for that way of living in the in-between times is faith. Let’s get rid of every thought of faith as belief, as prosperity, or as a set of rules or moral guidelines. Those are fine, but they’re not what Jesus is talking about. He’s talking about the grace and the freedom to live God’s dream for the world now—while not rejecting the world as it is. That’s a mighty tension, one that is not easily resolved.  

Remember this: There are always two worlds. The world as it operates is power; the world as it should be is love. The secret of kingdom life is how we can live in both—simultaneously. The world as it is will always be built on power, ego, and success. Yet we also must keep our eyes intently on the world as it should be—what Jesus calls the reign of God.

Aug 20, 2024 

An important session discussing the historical legacy of the Papal Doctrine of Discovery was presented by Archbishop Donald J. Bolen and Deacon Harry Lafond, Chief of Muskeg Cree First Nations, on Monday, August 12th at the Annual National Convention in Saskatoon.

Deacon Lafond expressed that we usually think of the word “discovered” as a positive term. But for Indigenous communities and the history they experienced from colonization, it is not a positive term. The Cree community sees all things designed to be interconnected and not as a commodity to be parcelled out into pieces, and we need to learn to talk and listen to each other. A standing ovation was given for their presentation as members were encouraged to make this topic a longstanding focus in their work.