From Milestones to Stepping stones. Text: Joshua 4:1-7 Mark 10:17–31

By Rev. James Murray at Dominion-Chalmers United Church, October 14  2012

If your house was on fire, and you had the time to save only one thing, what would you save? Would you save a family heirloom which has been passed down through the generations? Would you save your favourite painting? Would you save your wedding quilt? Or would you try to save a photo album?

Reg Bibby just dropped this into my inbox this evening. It is his latest analysis of where the church is headed in the next few years. Bibby is Canada's leading sociologist of religion and is well known for his trenchant and challenging analysis of Canada's religious landscape.

It is downloadable and free.

See here for more.

http://www.reginaldbibby.com/

A Call to Action

First off, I don't want to pick on waterfall here, but she's made two statements in other threads that reflect an attitude that I've heard before from even liberal Christians. It's not a reflection on her that I'm using her words, she just happened to express the attitude very succinctly and nicely.

Hope was born in a stable, and those the world had judged wise came to see. After witnessing this fragile new hope, the Magi “went home by a different way.” They were not the same.

My thoughts this Epiphany are filled with both the fragile new hope that I saw born at the UN climate change talks in Durban, and the bitter disappointment that calls us to go home by a new and different way.

Like so many Canadian celebrities, it had to go make it big in the United States before it could come back to Canada and be welcomed. I’m talking about the Occupy Wall Street movement, which was born in Vancouver at Adbusters magazine. 
 

Dear Cancer,

You are part of life's dance, an alchemical transformation of us into tumours.

We can imagine being on a small fragile boat, in stormy waters,- no match for the elements..

Just so, we can imagine ourselves feeling very small  and  fragile when the storms of life threaten to overwhelm us.

The ship, or boat, has always been a common image for the church.

That’s where we get the word “nave” for the area you sit in- it’s from the Latin for ship.

There are cruise ships and ocean liners- and some churches are like that., or used to be.

Summer brings many blessings such as the opportunity to spend yesterday with the fine MDiv Summer Distance students at Atlantic School of Theology. These students have studied hard over these last weeks, and will head back to home and learning sites today, as I head for Berwick Camp to join the 140th annual encampment. This camp community continues to work hard to recover from last December's devastating storm, and I will carry the love and support of the church with me.