Thanks to all of you who attended our worship and workshop last Sunday. It was a great success. And it was fun (we promised some fun didn't we?!) We are so grateful to the Rev Sharon Moon who facilitated the process for us. 

You listened carefully to the work of the Strategic Planning Working Group. You took time to ask questions and add our own thoughts. You considered four scenarios which the SPWG had developed from the work you had done at the previous workshops. Weighing the pros and cons of these scenarios helped you discern your sense of direction as Aylmer United Church. At the end of the day there was a sense of accomplishment, and a satisfaction about that direction. You let God's Spirit guide you.

If you were not at the event then plan to come 10 or 15 minutes early this Sunday to find out what happened, and to see where your gifts and skills might support to work going forward. Members of the SPWG will greet you and explain the process we went through with the help of visuals. 

I am excited for you as you look to the future! I am happy to have been part of this energizing process! If you keep up this good work  the future of Aylmer United Church within the community looks bright. Let your light shine. Be faithful to the Spirit of Christ who calls you to listen and to respond, and  who calls you to compassion and action.  May it be so!

​Spirit has been blowing through the planning meetings of the Strategic Planning Working Group (SPWG) these past few weeks as we prepare for our congregational worship and workshop this Sunday! There have been many meetings - often two a week with sub-groups meeting together as well as numerous emails and phone calls. The bulk of the work has been taking what we all have done together in our congregational workshops throughout the year and preparing recommendations and scenarios going forward as the the people of Aylmer United Church. I am so grateful to the faithful members of this group who will offer leadership this Sunday -  Anne Little, Darlene Turiff, Deborah Buck, Ewan Vost, Leslie Jamieson and  Richard Van Ravenswaay, 

Things are happening! Energy is moving! You will definitely want to be part of the gathering on Sunday as we hear and see the work we have already done. You will be asked once again this Sunday to participate in the vision and the direction for the congregation, and to discern the next steps. 

Once again Sharon Moon will facilitate our discussions. 

There will be lots of food (come at 10:15 for coffee and muffins). We will share lunch together (please bring a salad or desert to share). We will meet in the downstairs hall for both worship and the workshop. We will be finished up by 2:00. 

Come and be ready to feel the Spirit of God blow within and amongst us!

​As I mentioned last week, the Strategic Planning Working Group (SPWG) has done a lot of reading over the past year.  I would be very grateful if you would allow me to share some of the ideas found in Holy Currencies by Rev. Eric H.F. Law, an Episcopal priest who founded an American institute to provide training and resources to churches throughout North America.  In 2009, he noticed that half of the 37 congregations that he surveyed had concerns about money.  Interestingly, Rev. Law discovered that those who spoke about being missional tended not to talk about sustainability, and those who spoke about sustainability, were often preoccupied by money as the only currency, and tended not to talk about being missional.  Sound familiar? 

Over half of the church leaders of these congregations also wanted resources to move their churches towards becoming both sustainable and missional.  Rev. Law found that there weren’t many resources to help churches become more missional (until his book).  So, what is a missional church and why is this important to Aylmer United?  “It is a community of people who look outward and are able to connect with others who are not already members of any church organization”.  Some of the questions the SPWG asked ourselves included whether we were focussed externally or were we so caught up on finances that we’ve lost the big picture of being a church?  What is God’s plan for us and what makes Aylmer United different from the Knights of Columbus or the Optimists? 

Rev. Law’s research summarized that in sustainable ministries, in addition to money, at least five other currencies flow through them: time and place, gracious leadership, relationship, truth, and wellness.  Essentially, these currencies flow through the ministry and are exchanged for each other (like a barter system), which he called the Cycle of Blessings.  I will elaborate on these currencies in future blogs.  However, the sequence of the exchanges does not always follow the same pattern and not only replenishes the currency that was spent initially, but recirculates resources and regenerates more currencies, allowing the ministry to grow and expand.  This model is based on the premises that God owns everything (we live in God’s creation after all), that God gives abundantly (all of the resources are here already), that we are to circulate God’s resources rather than keep them, and that God’s blessings are then recycled to create more blessings.  Rev. Law notes that there is a Chinese saying “Water is money” and talks about how money and resources need to move and flow to do good and that if they stagnate, they become breeding pools for trouble and unsustainability. 

The choice is ours, we can choose whether we use our currencies to flow in life-giving, truth-telling, relationship-building and community-building ways, or not.  However, to be sustainable, Law summarized that it is the flow that gives these currencies value, that all of the currencies need to be used (not just some of them) and that the flow of these currencies must recirculate back to replenish depleted currencies, in fact making the ministry grow and be sustainable.  Law also talked about doing more with less and how there were always people over at his house for Sunday dinner.  He did not know that they were not well off and assumed that this meant that his family was “rich”.  The reality was that his mother stretched the food into a feast for $3 by bargaining and careful purchasing AND there were leftovers!  The interesting thing about that was that each member would refuse to take the leftovers and offer them to another person at the table who was more “deserving”.  Each person would name someone else to eat the leftovers with a corresponding reason.  Ultimately, they were used in the meal the following day.  Talk about a “less is more exercise” and validating each individual person’s worth as deserving! 

​This is the kind of thinking about abundance and generosity that keeps these currencies flowing and continues this giving and receiving cycle.  On Sunday and in the coming weeks, I would like to continue this discussion and try to impart some more of Rev. Law’s findings and how they related to the work that the SPWG is doing.

Pentecost Alert!! Wear your fire colours on Sunday to church. Let's see how much Holy
Spirit-fire we can see on Sunday as we gather for worship!

Come, O Hoy Spirit...set the church on fire;
strike it as the lightning hits a posing spire.
Burn away the structures and consume the sham
of our holy systems:
Come in Jesus' name!

So goes the first verse of hymn 23 in More Voices. The author, The Rev Fred Kaan, who died almost 10 years ago at aged 80, was the foremost of a new generation of post-second world war hymn writers who expressed the dreams of an emerging new humanity. His theology reflected a God committed to a world crying out to be set free from every form of injustice. Fred's poetry centred on a Jesus who embraced the whole of creation and excluded no one and nothing from his love. We have many of his hymns in our United Church hymn books and sing them regularly at AUC.

Kaan was born in Haarlem in the Netherlands. His teenage experience of Nazi occupation never left him. His parents were deeply involved in the resistance movement. His family hid weapons under their floor; and they successfully hid a young Jewish woman and a political prisoner who had escaped from Belsen. 

His passion for the Spirit of God - the Spirit of love, compassion and justice - gave him his life's work and his reason to live. He was what I would call a Pentecost person.  

Pentecost is my favourite Christian festival! It is so full of life, and possibility. Let those Pentecost winds blow and those fires burn. They are not sent to destroy us but to renew us as God would have us be. 

Come, O Holy Spirit ...
Blow away the cobwebs of our stubborn past.
Come, send flying from us myths unfit to last.
Wind of change refresh us and disturb our calm;
teach us what true love is, take our hearts by storm!  (Verse 2 MV 23)

 “A Mother is one
who can take the place of all others
but whose place no one else can take.”
~ Wise Old Irish Words
Did you know that celebrations of mothers and motherhood can be traced back to the ancient Greeks and Romans, who held festivals to honour the mother goddesses Rhea and Cybele. In the Christian church the clearest modern precedent for Mother’s Day is the festival known as “Mothering Sunday, which is still celebrated in the UK.
A precursor to Mother’s Day came from the abolitionist and suffragette Julia Ward Howe (an American who wrote The Battle Hymn of the Republic) in 1870. Howe wrote the “Mother’s Day Proclamation,” a call to action that asked mothers to unite in promoting world peace. In 1873 she campaigned for a “Mother’s Peace Day” to be celebrated every June 2.
The official Mother’s Day holiday that we celebrate in North America began in the 1900s in the US when Anna Jarvis, daughter of Ann Reeves Jarvis, wanted to create a special day for  mothers as a way of honouring the sacrifices mothers made for their children.
More recently Mother’s Day has also been a date for launching political or feminist causes. In 1968 Coretta Scott King, wife of Martin Luther King Jr., used Mother’s Day to host a march in support of underprivileged women and children. In the 1970s women’s groups also used the holiday as a time to highlight the need for equal rights and access to childcare.
​No matter what you do for your mother, grandmother, step-mother, mother-in-law or the mother figures in your life, do it with gusto and exuberant love. It will mean the world to her. You may want to give her this blessing:
​“May you always know… The fragrance of flowers, The feel of the sun on your shoulders and always – the warmth of your child’s love.” An Irish Mother’s Blessing

In the gift of this new day,
In the gift of the present moment,
in the gift of time and eternity intertwined
let me be thankful
let me be attentive
let me be open to what has never happened before,
in the gift of this new day,
in the gift of the present moment,
in the gift of time and eternity intertwined. Amen
                 (J.Philip Newell "Sounds of the Eternal")

"What has never happened before" is happening right outside my window. Yours too. Yes, in previous springs in my backyard, the daffodils have bloomed and the rhubarb has sprouted. But not exactly like this year. In this spring of new life, everything is new. And I don't want to miss any of it. 

It's not that the differences are "good" or "bad". That's not what it's about. The differences just are. And we are called to engage as we are now, in this moment. We are called to be present, thankful, and attentive.
​
Go outside to your garden, or on your balcony and notice what is new. Around you and within you on this spring day. Then offer the prayer above.
​God bless you!

As St Paul told his friends in the church at Ephesus "Be kind and compassionate to one another, forgiving each other, just as in Christ God forgave you."

The next time you find yourself angry with someone, or frustrated, or annoyed - stop for a moment before you let yourself react. Give the other person the benefit of the doubt. Chances are they are not trying to annoy you or hurt you or dismiss you. Chances are they just look at things differently than you do. And that's okay. Chances are they are just trying to do their best. Just like you.

I have found in such situations that a little reflective time before responding out of anger leads to a lot more understanding. And that understanding  leads to an altering of my perspective. And that altering of my perspective usually leads to something better. For example an even better idea, or way forward. 

And that new or better idea leads to gratitude. Gratitude for the other person's thoughts and the way they look at things. Gratitude that together we are better. Gratitude for our differences and the many gifts that we offer each other. Gratitude that we are all made uniquely and we all have something precious to offer each other. Gratitude for God's great wisdom in blessing creation with so much variety.

So the next time it happens - that you find yourself at odds with someone in your family or community - practice appreciating their unique gift - their different opinion, their different way of doing things. 

Then offer a prayer of gratitude and thanksgiving that God delights in the great diversity of God's creation. And that you - as well as that other person - are God's beloved ones and bring God great delight because of that diversity.

It's not always easy, and it's not always fast. But it is the best way forward. 
​With gratitude and thanksgiving for the great diversity in our church community,
Susan 

Stop for a moment. Close your eyes. And listen. Just listen.

If you are like me, it can take awhile to tune into the sounds around me. There is so much chatter in my head. So many thoughts cluttering the spaciousness of my surroundings. But when I can settle into the listening, that's when I might hear God. 

Prayer has two parts. The talking part, and the listening part. We are really good at the talking part. We are good at words. Good at getting our point across and listing our requests. There is much to pray for in our world. We want God to know what is on our hearts. We want God to know what we celebrate and what we yearn for. What grieves us and for whom we desire peace and healing. This is important, but I dare say that God wants us to know what is on God's heart too. This is why we need to listen. 

It takes practice. But it is worth it. It brings our hearts closer to God's heart. It makes our relationship stronger. And when our relationship with God is strengthened, our relationship with all Creation is made stronger. Compassion and  joy overflows. 

​Stop for a moment. Close your eyes. And listen. Do this for 5 minutes every day. And see what happens. You may be surprised!

​Many North American churches are resurrecting an old Easter custom begun by the early Greek Christians --- "Bright Sunday" or "Holy Humor Sunday" celebrations on the Sunday after Easter. For centuries in all Christian faith traditions, the week following Easter Sunday was observed by the faithful as "days of joy and laughter" with parties and picnics to celebrate Jesus' resurrection

The custom is rooted in the writings of early church theologians (like Augustine, Gregory of Nyssa, and John Chrysostom) that God played a practical joke on the devil by raising Jesus from the dead. "Risus paschalis - the Easter laugh," the early theologians called it.

God smiles, this much I know
for God created laughter 
so that we might join in the enjoyment of Holy creative energy
those wonderful colour schemes of bird butterfly and flower.
The shapes and expressions on so many creatures and insects 
These weren't created by a boring God
they were drawn by a God with a sense of humour
and that's a comforting thought!  (John Birch)