GENEralities

The granddaughters have just returned from their Disney cruise.

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A wee nugget from the Ottawa Citizen’s David Warren on Wild Rose Country. Alberta is

where all the sane people seem to have congregated for a last stand.

A wise man from the east. And to think that it’s Epiphanytide. All here.

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When peaceful silence lay over all,
and night was in the midst of her swift course:
from your royal throne, O God, down from the heavens,
leapt your almighty Word.

The anthem around The Magnificat in Evening Prayer from the C of E’s Common Worship online. What a lovely image. Shades of The Song of Songs:

Behold, he comes, leaping over the mountains, bounding over the hills. (2:8)

Jesus, of course.

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Merry Christmas, one and all!

Christmas Eve Visitor Behind Our House

Silent Night Around the Gospel by Candlelight: Mariah

This and the one below taken with her Christmas present camera by Sharon Hogg, Mariah’s grandmother.

Hezekiah, the Righteous Rodent and His Christmas Cheese

O Christmas Cheese, O Christmas Cheese

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I’m on retreat at Mount St Francis in Cochrane, Alberta; my eighteenth Diocese of Calgary clergy retreat here. Other than in our worship and our retreat leader’s words (National Indigenous Bishop Mark MacDonald) we are silent from just after lunch on Monday to after the Eucharist just before lunch on Thursday.

I love it.

Mind you, it isn’t really silent. It’s amazing how much noise we make even when we’re not speaking; footsteps seem heavy, whispers seem very loud, water runs, toilets flush, the retreat centre phone rings and is answered. But I don’t have to talk to anyone, even at meal time. I love it.

The only words I say are words of worship in the daily prayer and Eucharist.

I read and think and pray and write and listen. The silence makes room for the Lord to download some stuff if he wants. I don’t necessarily know what yet, but I know from experience that there’s new material aboard and it will pop up when I least expect it and at exactly the right time.

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‘Nuff said.

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Some BCP with Attitude!

H/T: Derek Hyland on FaceBook.

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It’s been a while. Lots happening, a trip to Vegas, for example. More on that later.

In the meantime:

This last weekend, Thanksgiving, we had our StB 125th Anniversary banquet and worship celebration. It was good. The organizing committee did a great job, the hall and the church looked wonderful. Sherry Nott’s 125th Anniversary choir was wonderful.

An Honour and a Title Bestowed

To top all that off, in recognition of my service to the diocese, the Bishop surprised me by calling me up at the end of the service and conferring on me the title of Canon, so I am now “The Reverend Canon.” It feels strange. Good, but strange. I really thought my rather out-spoken conservatism had put me beyond the pale for such things.

Blessed be the Name of the LORD.

The Wanderers Return

Son (now “of a Gun,” the wags say) Anth, daughter-in-law, Kristy, and grandson, Levi, all returned from a month in New Zealand on Saturday evening. We headed off to celebrate Thanksgiving with them in Okotoks. It was grand to hear their impressions of the motherland and our families.

Land of the Long White Cloud: the Kaikura coast

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Grandson Levi is staying with us. Tomorrow we go to Swift Current to meet Kate and pick granddaughters Emily and Samantha up, too, so we’ll have all three of them for a few days.

A Levi-line from the other day: someone gave him a toy or something to eat, I forget which, and said, “Levi, what do you say?” to which, without missing a beat, he responded, “Mine!”

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I’ve just finished reading Anne Rice’s, Christ the Lord: Out of Egypt. A lovely read in which she tells the story of some of Jesus’ childhood, from the return to Nazareth from Egypt to his remaining in the temple when his family made their Passover visit when he was twelve years old. She tells the story in the first person, as Jesus. Fascinating.

In the Author’s Note at the end she describes her return to Christian faith after many years away. She also describes her research for the novel during which I was delighted to find she is an NT Wright fan:

one of the most brilliant writers I’ve ever read, and his generosity in embracing the skeptics and commenting on their arguments is an inspiration. His faith is immense, and his knowledge vast. p318

Rice’s research involved much reading of those skeptical about Jesus until:

I became disillusioned with the skeptics and with the flimsy evidence for their conclusions, I realized something about my book.

It was this. The challenge was to write about the Jesus of the Gospels, of course!

Anybody could write about a liberal Jesus, a married Jesus, a gay Jesus, a Jesus who was a rebel. The “Quest for the Historical Jesus” had become a joke because of all the many definitions it had ascribed to Jesus.

The true challenge was to take the Jesus of the Gospels, the Gospels which were becoming ever more coherent to me, the Gospels which appealed to me as elegant first-person witness, dictated to scribes no doubt, but definitely early, the Gospels produced before Jerusalem fell—to take the Jesus of the Gospels, and try to get inside him and imagine what he felt. p319-320

Which is exactly what she’s done. An act of literary worship, in fact. It’ll be going in the StB library.

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