Boundary Breaking Books

Thanksgiving and Christmas are fast approaching and there is much to do & much that I want to say over this next week.  One thing I realized is that I have not blogged much about the books that I am reading at the moment, partly because there are so many that I get a little [...]

Civil Disobedience as Spiritual Practice.

I don’t usually do blog posts on Saturday morning but because I still have several articles that I have not been able to get posted I thought that I would post this interview today which was sent to me by Jarrod McKenna from Perth Australia.  Tom met Jarrod McKenna the last time he was in [...]

Planting Seeds of the Kingdom

We are now into the season of the church calendar called ordinary time or more descriptively Kingdomtime.  This is the season for planting and growing seeds of kingdom life.  In the Revised Common lectionary the gospel reading for Sunday’s sermon yesterday was mark 4:26 – 34 in which the parable of the growing seed is [...]

Challenged and Provoked

Tom & Eliacin and I are just back from the Native American Institute for Indigenous Theological Studies Symposium in Langley BC.  Ostensibly we were there to speak but in reality we had far more to learn than we had to teach.
It was one of the most challenging and eye opening conferences that I have been [...]

Peace in the Garden

 
My peace rose has just started to bloom.  It is one of my favourite roses and its fragrance one of the delights of my summer garden.  My appreciation of its beauty grew when I discovered that it was developed during World War II, by a family of French rose breeders.  The rose was actually smuggled [...]

What Have We Done With Jesus?

Easter Sunday is over.  Jesus is risen but what have we done about it?  How have our lives changed because of the life giving presence of Christ?  How many of us are still sitting at the empty tomb with Mary weeping because we are worried about what has happened to the dead body rather than [...]

Listening to Voices from the Margins

This last week I have continued my reading discipline dipping into not just Jean Vanier the founder of the L’Arche communities, but also Mother Theresa from the Sisters of Charity and Richard Twiss, a leader in the First Nation’s movement in North America.  At the same time I continue to grapple with what it means [...]

It Took Jesus A Thousand Years to Die

“It took Jesus a thousand years to die.” say Rita Nakashima Brock and Rebecca Ann Parker in their fascinating book Saving Paradise: How Christianity Traded Love of This World for Crucifixion and Empire. Brock and Parker travelled the Mediterranean looking for early Christian art that depicted the crucifixion, instead they found wonderful images of [...]

Back From Down Under

Tom & I arrived back from Australia on Saturday. At least my body is back but for some reason I still feel as though my mind is only halfway across the Pacific. It is great to return to spring time in the Pacific Northwest. The daffodils are still out and the tulips [...]

Time for Retreat

The MSA team has just been on a 2 day retreat. It was wonderful to get away to relax, refresh and to refocus our lives. The main purpose of the retreat was to brainstorm about developing an MSA rule of life. Here are some of our thoughts on where we are at [...]