~Bob Wallace

Over the past few weeks we have been following the stories of the Matriarchs and Patriarchs of our faith – men and women who heard a promise spoken from beyond their everyday lives and who committed their futures to the fulfillment of that promise.

That promise has been transferred from generation to generation through what the text calls a “blessing” – words spoken, accompanied by specific actions, transferring the promise from one generation to the next. And once spoken, those words cannot be recalled. There is, then, a power in words … a power to shape and define, to create and destroy.

This year’s encounters with racism reminds us again of the power of words – words used to deny, to hurt, to enslave, to harm. The old adage: “sticks and stones may break my bones, but names will never hurt me!” is a lie! Words can hurt. Words can destroy, words can deny futures. Words are powerful.

In fact, from a biblical perspective, the power of words lies in the capacity to share (or deny) future. Such power lies in the spoken words and accompanying actions of blessing.

Walter Brueggemann writes of these stories we are reading:

(they) offer a fresh discernment of the nature of power. … (they) understand that power, the capacity to shape the future, lies not in weapons and arms, but in the use of language, gesture, and symbol.”

[Interpretation: Genesis, p. 228]

As we continue our journey through these stories, look for the way in which the stories talk about the power and use of words and the gestures that accompany those words. It is my belief that these stories, heard as promises not only to those who have gone before, but as continuing promises spoken to us, empower us to discover our new future, a future filled with promises of life in all its fullness rather than despair.

More than anything, then, these words empower us to believe, despite all evidence to the contrary, that “God is with us. We are not alone.” And in that power, we are claimed once again as beloved children of our God.

And, from a world before we were concerned with gender issues in language, here’s a quote from Sigmund Freud.

Words have a magical power. They can bring either the greatest happiness or deepest despair; they can transfer knowledge from teacher to student; words enable the orator to sway his audience and dictate its decisions. Words are capable of arousing the strongest emotions and prompting all men’s actions.

Sigmund Freud

~Jocelyn Smith

I grew up in the golden age of the video game console. But in my house we had very little screen time and no video games. As a result, I am one of the only people my age who cannot pass the first level of a traditional Mario game. I always run Mario into a hole!

My parents decision to limit our screen time continued to impact my life after I moved out. In the 20 years since I lived at home, I have never owned a television. That’s not to say that I don’t watch shows and movies. But for two decades now, I’ve consumed my media via my computer. In the current era of Disney Plus, Netflixs and Youtube, that’s not too hard to imagine. But 10+ years ago, it was not easy to find good shows online from a legitimate source. Imagine my delight when I discovered Knowledge Network online. A whole repository of great viewing, all free.

I started watching shows on Knowledge.ca and became a knowledge partner. One day, an email arrived in my inbox. Knowledge inviting us to an advanced screening of an Agatha Christie Christmas mystery. I may or may not have whooped in excitement but I did immediately rsvp.

Several weeks later I sat in the Queen Elizabeth theatre and felt right at home. The audience members closest to us in age had at least three decades on us. It felt like attending Queens United. 🙂 I enjoyed the show and the whole experience.

Aside from Agatha Christie mysteries, Knowledge hosts an excellent selection of murder mysteries online. They also host a lot of great documentaries and feature many made in BC programs. Recently, I came across Just Eat It. I watched it and now I find myself looking in my fridge a bit askew.

Just Eat It follows one Vancouver couple as they eat only waste food for 6 months. The results are surprising and somewhat confronting. Have a watch. https://www.knowledge.ca/program/just-eat-it

And now please excuse me, I need to go. I’ve got some saggy parsnips and a browning apple in my fruit bowl that can’t go to waste.

~Cheryl Perry

As I step away on a couple weeks of holidays I wanted to give you an update. Throughout July and August we are continuing to offer Outreach on Tuesdays and Thursdays from 10:00-11:00AM in the sunshine and fresh air. For the summer months we have moved to providing $10 grocery gift cards instead of bags of groceries. This will give our Food Shelf volunteers who shop and put the bags together a couple months’ break. We are still serving a take-away lunch as well. This is very appreciated.

We are seeing an average of 23 people on Tuesdays and 15 on Thursdays and serving about 50-80 sandwiches per week. If you would like to provide sandwiches (or homemade cookies or baked goods) you may drop these off any Tuesday or Thursday morning between 9:00-9:45.

As the summer weather arrived we have offered items such as water, hats, and sunscreen to people. Gerry Hewitt’s sister also sent some wonderful fabric masks she had made. They came in many colours, and men’s and women’s patterns and sizes. These were very popular!

We continue to put out a table of items to help through this time of social isolation: books, jigsaw puzzles, yarn, Sudoku/crossword/word find puzzle books, and board games. If you have anything to donate you can drop these off at the church or phone me to arrange a pick up (250-575-1780).

Thanks to a donation from Daphne and Paul Might we offered a “Pop up Picnic” in June and another in July. We served our donated Kentucky Fried Chicken and added take-away potato salad or chips, cans of cold drinks, and ice cream treats. And on July 2, we celebrated Canada Day by using up some hot dogs in the freezer, purchasing fresh buns, sauerkraut, potato salad, and watermelon which we served with delicious squares that were like S’mores—baked and donated by Jean Mackenzie!

Some have donated, and have encouraged others to consider donating, the extra money that they received from the government due to COVID19. Jayne Brooks wrote an excellent article that appeared in the First Word to encourage people if they didn’t need the extra money that was provided to seniors—some who have been very badly affected by the pandemic—to consider donating this to a social agency or charitable organization.

Many thanks to my regular Tuesday/Thursday volunteers—Leslie Atwell, Jayne Brooks, Tanya Pritchard and to all who have donated food or made financial contributions in June.

Thank you all for your continued support of our Outreach program – with your donations, your time and most especially your prayers!

~Graham Zell

I’m a big fan of axioms and short, punchy sayings that succinctly encompass complex ideas. One of my favourites is: “Data is not information. Information is not knowledge. Knowledge is not wisdom.” I came across it a couple of years ago in the Avalanche Journal in an article about building skill over time in avalanche forecasting.

The article laid out a framework for thinking of our relationship with the world: what we can sense or understand, how we interpret it, and what we learn from it. A great example is the weather. If I tell you the temperature is eighteen degrees, that’s a data point. If I add that there are tall, dark clouds, cloying humidity, and gusty winds, those data points taken together become information.

You’ve seen this information before; your knowledge tells you an electrical storm is brewing.

Wisdom manifests in your course of action: I shut down my computer, close the windows, stash the lawn furniture, and find a good perch to watch the show.

How does knowledge turn into wisdom? It happens inside us as individuals. There is no shortcut, no way to drink wisdom directly from a teacher. Often it comes with the experience of pain or loss, and sometimes we can understand another’s pain without experiencing it exactly for ourselves. We watch a building fall down, and respond by investigating, understanding, and correcting our actions. We have codified much knowledge and pain in building codes, fire codes, work safety regulations, and food safety standards. If we adhere to these codes, we can trust that we are acting with the wisdom our ancestors learned through blood and loss and pain.

There are many forms in which we codify and transmit social, emotional, medical, technical, strategic, and spiritual wisdom. But we have to be careful: transmission is not a perfect replication process. We cannot pass on wisdom the way we pass on heirlooms; if we try, wisdom ossifies and turn to dogma. We can only pass on knowledge and inspiration, and let those be a seed of wisdom. We have to acknowledge that our wisdom is less universal than we would like it to be, pass on important knowledge, and guide the next generation towards a questioning and understanding attitude.

The Bible is one source of knowledge and inspiration for me. Its value comes from the density of its passages and the way that it has survived and changed and been reinterpreted countless times through millennia. It is wonderful and nourishing as a source of inspiration: we live in changing, uncertain times, and that human experience of uncertainty is comfortingly universal. It could also be deadly, confining, and limiting as a source of dogma; it is, in parts of this continent. The Bible is only one of many sources of knowledge in my life; there are many books, lessons, and stories that balance its perspective and inspire me in different directions. What sources of knowledge are important in your life?

We have access today to more data and more information than ever in the history of humanity. More voices, more stories, more statistics. (More noise, too, but cutting through to find trust is a separate topic.) This moment in history is our time to throw out two pieces of knowledge that many of us have synthesized from the information in our lives:

Our experience is basically universal
The Black Lives Matter protests across the United States, the Truth and Reconciliation movement in Canada, and the uneven impacts of COVID-19 on global society should teach us that our experience of the world is not “normal”. It is not some baseline from which everyone’s success or failure in the world should be measured. Our experience of the world is our own set of data points woven into strands of information, reams of knowledge, and the garments of wisdom that gets us through this massively complex world. Some of us have more diverse sets of data, or richer sets of data, or higher stakes for loss or pain. If we listen to the voices crying out to be heard in protests, podcasts, media, and in the street, maybe we can learn that we don’t know what someone’s experience is until we listen to them. We can’t listen to them until we can meet them where they want to speak.

We need to be ready before we change
COVID-19 is a blessing. It is happening because of very real, identifiable things that we do every day, like go to the office or eat at a restaurant. In BC at least, we have done a solid job of curtailing those activities to limit the harm of the virus. It hasn’t been easy, because we dismantled a whole social system almost overnight and are trying frantically to fit it back together around the reality of the virus. But we’re doing it. That’s the knowledge we need to come away with. It hurts, but we can change hard and fast if we decide to. If we can take that knowledge and use it for courage in the climate crisis, we might call ourselves wise. We have all imagined what might have happened if we had stayed attached to our economic dogmas and kept the world running in the face of the virus. Why are some of us doing the same against the climate crisis?

I think these things that we “know” hold us back from true wisdom and compassion as a society, and as individuals. What will you learn if you let go of your easy answers?

~Bob Wallace

From time to time I find myself looking at meditative writings. One I recently returned to is a little book entitled Celtic Parables: Stories, Poems & Prayers. These short items were translated into English by Robert Van de Weyer, and the book was published in 1997 by SPCK, London. My edition came from/through Wood Lake Books.

One that struck me this week, and which I shared with the staff at our weekly meeting was entitled: Martha Being Mary.

We need people who search for the truth,
And we need people to proclaim it.
We need people who quietly contemplate God’s love,
And we need people to express it.
We need people who devote their lives to prayer,
And we need people to enact those prayers.
We need people who are free from all worldly ties,
And we need people to manage our affairs.
We need both Mary and Martha.
At times every Martha must become Mary,
And every Mary must become Martha.

For some reason those words gave me a sense of freedom – freedom to listen to the new rhythms of my body, to attend the new tasks of this pandemic-driven world; to acknowledge the time I need “apart from work” and the times I need to focus solely on the tasks of the day.

It also set me free from the guilt I sometimes have of only irregularly turning to the meditative writings.

In short, this brief reflection reminded me that faithful living is to embrace all sides of myself (and of other people’s selves!) because all is a gift from Creator-God.

Grace and peace,