Except for a brief meeting with the informal team that has come together to support the Sackville United Church congregations’ partnership with the Sackville Refugee Response Coalition in sponsoring an LGBTQ2+ individual, yesterday was spent quietly at home with family.
This morning I am busily at work preparing for Sunday and as I read over the psalm as gospel text as suggested by the Revised Common Lectionary, I find myself humming the Hokey Pokey, and coming back again and again to the line: “and you turn yourself around, that’s what it’s all about.”
You can likely figure out where my mind is going if I give you the title for my reflection on Sunday – which is simply two lines, one lifted from each of the texts that will be shared:
Root yourself in Good, and live. Do to others as you would have them do to you.
John Shelby Spong offer us these words,
Love, however, is never disembodied, never found or experienced apart from life. Love passes through us. It neither originates nor terminates in us. We receive it, and only having received it are we able to pass it on. Love does not keep to be consumed later as “leftovers”; it cannot be preserved, It must be shared or it will die. So love opens each of us to a dimension of the human experience that is transcendent. Love relates us to something that is real, but something we can neither create nor destroy. God is the name by which we call this experience of love. If God is love, the only way we can worship God is by loving others. The more we give love away, the more we make the experience of God visible. God is not a a being, external to us; God is experienced in the presence of love. God is the dimension of transcendence flowing through us.
I’ll do my best to unpack these words alongside the ancient texts on Sunday… join us and see if I’m halfway successful?!!?
’til then,
Lloyd
Looking Ahead
This afternoon I am in the office working on the liturgy for Sunday followed by two meetings into the evening. On Wednesday I have a meeting in Amherst in the morning and another at 6PM with the Executive of the Sackville United Church. Thursday will be devoted to wrestling with Psalm 1 and Luke 6.27-38 in light of the wisdom offered by John Shelby Spong above.
Friday and Saturday will be days off (albeit likely still working on the reflection) and on Sunday (hopeful that I’ll have something intelligible and meaningful to say) I look forward to gathering with the folk at Upper Sackville at 9AM and Sackville at 11AM. This Sunday will be enriched with a twinge of jazz as we mark the end African Heritage Month and look ahead to March which is recognized as Herstory Month. Also,