To Your Excellency, the Right Honourable Julie Payette, Please don’t make fun of my faith. I cheered you on the day you were installed as Governor General of Canada. I celebrated that you acknowledged the Indigenous Peoples and spoke in one of their languages. I agree with you that climate change is mostly human caused and that we must quickly become the solution. I also believe in God, a God who is the creator of the universe. To me, it takes just as much faith, maybe even more, to believe that the universe started with a random fluctuation. I believe in...

For a lot of people, populist Christianity makes no sense, isn’t credible or relevant.  I think these folks have a point.  I don’t blame them for thinking so, especially if their source of information is primarily TV, radio, angry editorials, scathing social media posts, or some hapless simpleton blaming the recent hurricanes on God’s judgement against gays and lesbians—yes, that was really said.  And sadly, similar pronouncements continue to be voiced out-loud that are equally vitriolic and full of hate against “others”.  No wonder many steer away from church and Christianity.    At times, it feels like an up-hill struggle to...

I’m comfortably settled in seat 13E for the 5 ½ hour flight home from Halifax.  I scan through the selections of onboard entertainment and select a film called “Lion”.  After a light-hearted chat with the young landscape design guy on my right who has somehow managed to fold his lanky 6’ plus frame into the window seat, he puts his hat over his face to catch some shut-eye after a long and shall we say… arduous Cape Breton family reunion.  Susan, seated on my left is well into her book.  I pop my ear buds in and press “play”.    The...

I have long held onto the wisdom that there is no “them” or “us”.  We are all human.  When we cause harm to another we harm ourselves.  When we act compassionately toward one another we appeal to the human heart—we become aware of not only our experiences of pain and suffering, but we also “see” each other as wondrous creatures full of capacities for love, understanding and gratitude.  When one or more of these capacities emerge, any notion of “them” and “us” fades away and we experience a deep and simple joy.   The deep and simple joy that I am...

Easter joy is soul joy.  It cares nothing for how much we have, what we own, how busy we are, or however we understand success.  Most of us know that none of those things foster soul joy.  Easter’s transforming joy is deep.  It comes along side our soul and when joy and soul connect, we know we are OK no matter what.  We can rest in the midst of all the demands we face or the hard labour that we endure.   So you might wonder how do we place soul joy alongside the gospel’s account of the resurrection which ends...

Almost a year ago the HRUC Council and a small visioning team began the work of discerning our congregation's mission goals for the next few years.  At that time, we invited the congregation to imagine what it would be like if we were Noah and his family standing on the threshold of the Ark’s big doors peering out and across the landscape of their new normal.    The story of Noah is a powerful narrative for us.  We know the territory of the flood very well.  And we know what it’s like to live into a new normal post disaster.  I imagine that...

Earlier this month we sent the following text to our sisters and brothers at the High  River Islamic Centre:   Greetings and peace to our brothers and sisters of the High River Islamic Center.  We are writing on behalf of our faith community to express our compassion and concern following the recent violence committed in Quebec City against the Muslim community.  We are all deeply saddened by this atrocity.  We are without adequate words.     Your faith community remains to be a treasure in our hearts and it hurts us deeply as we try to imagine how this shooting impacts each of...

I woke up at 4:45 this morning.  I was gripped by some form of deep-seated fear—the kind of feeling that seems all pervasive, lacks logic and often occupies that precious place between sleep and awake.  For some reason, I started praying to the 5th century Irish Saint Brigid who is known for her gifts of protection and healing.  It was enough to get me through to 6:45 when the clock radio goes off.   Why the fear, I wondered?  I mentioned my pre-dawn fear to my partner Susan during breakfast.  Turns out, she was awake about the same time with the...

People are choosing their own reality, says Matt Taibbi contributor for The Rolling Stone magazine.  In conversation with Trevor Noah on the Daily Show, Taibbi was referring to Kellyanne Conway’s comment on Trump’s version of the inauguration attendance numbers as alternative facts (contrary to what the press and real-time photos actually report).  Excuse me for a moment while I put my seat belt on so I don’t fly out of my chair.  As Barak Obama would say, “C’mon people.”   Interestingly, this whole transaction evokes a much older one.  During his interrogation of Jesus, Pilate is on record as asking, “What...

My grandfather and his brother, my great uncle, were born in the late 1800’s.  Both were farmers in Southern Ontario.  My grandfather voted Liberal. My great uncle voted Conservative.  As I paid attention to my extended family, I noticed that one’s identity was tied to a particular party and that’s how one voted—pretty much always for “the party”.  For my grandfather’s generation and their children, who we affectionately call the baby boomers, partisan politics is for the most part, a way of life.  For those who are Boomers and older, politics is often a “dyed-in-the-wool” expression of either/or—one political party or...