Tuesday, May 12, 2009

Friday - Part 2

This gets complicated because Friday is now in reality, Sunday, and I have returned from a Mother's Day brunch with my daughter in law, grandson and grandaughter preceded by morning service at my own parish church. Ariel, who will be five on June 1, had made me a Mother's Day card on behalf of her father who was away working in Orlando. The artwork, as you can see, is more than one could ask or imagine.



But it is time to fill you in on a busy and fun filled Friday.

Toronto has been filled with changeable weather ever since The Gathering started. I left in the rain and tried a different route straight up Yonge Street. This should be the busiest route of all - after all it becomes the highway that ultimately ends in Thunder Bay - but it was a better route and I arrived in time for Morning Prayer.




I haven't commented on the service booklets that greeted us for the morning and evening office, but they were a great help since they provided the canticles and lections for each day and made them easy to follow.They seem so straightforward but one has to recognize with gratitude that they take hours and hours to pull together. After a brief break we were again ready to hear from Margaret.

She did not disappoint. Her theme for the morning was "More than Discipleship?". Noting that the disciples might have seemed strange choices of people to go fishing for men and women (My late husband always told his small sons that he was busy "fishing people"), but she reminded us that they were already good at fishing for fish. She had been a technical writer when she was later led to realize that she could use her gifts in a new way. God had definitely given her something more interesting to write about. She also led us in a secret about computer manuals that we have failed to understand. "Neither did we!!", she said.

A disciple is essentially a learner, one who learns attitudes and values. Like her doctor daughter, we learn by reading, studying, observing and even interning. But ultimately we are sent out. We too have a mission to participate in to realize the dream of God for the world.

Margaret took us back to the time in the early church where a replacement had to be found for Judas to bring the number of apostles back to 12. The job requirements are rather stringent. It has to be someone who knows Jesus intimately - and that means more than just knowing about him. It has to be someone who has walked beside him in the journey from the annunciation to Pentecost. It has to be someone who witnessed the resurrection - and it has to be someone who is prepared to advance the good news to the afflicted, set free the captives, give sight to the blind,lift the burdens of the oppressed, and proclaim God's love and forgiveness to all. No one can be forgiven for initially responding to this, "Who - ME?"

But that is precisely what WE are asked to do. It's a tall order. It is audacious to think that we would even try. but we were reminded that we can do these things for others because we know them from being recipients of all of them at some point in our own lives. Her stories give the proof.

Her own very small daughter noticed that she was deeply upset one day. Margaret herself had withdrawn, not wanting to upset the child as well and had retired to her room. But the tiny girl followed her anyway and saw her mother in tears. She left the room and returned to her mother with her favourite teddy bear. Margaret remarked on the complete love and trust that the little girl had, even before she could speak that the favorite toy would provide solace - and she didn't even know that in giving the gift that she would ever get it back. Sometimes we are able to take our blinkers off and take risks.

Another story concerned a family who liked to go to the beach in Africa, - but the same beach was frequently inhabited by baboons. So they built a cage for themselves and limited their own space in spite of thinking that they were now safe. Sometimes we are also imprisoned by fear or poverty and small acts can let us out of the cage. What we get in life is lots of "on the job" training that makes it possible to give to others experiences that we ourselves have received. So we were challenged to make our own response as Number 12, - which we did in our small group discussion.

At the beginning I was quietly reminded that we might be straying away from the admonition about group discussion that we had been given when we started, - It comes from Parker Palmer and it suggests "No fixing, no saving, no advising, no setting one another straight". It's a useful one for the whole of life.

We still haven't finished Friday - so that there will have to be more to come.

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