Wedding Procession

Check this out. Now, if I was the Presider at this wedding you know I would have danced my pretty ass off coming in!



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Sermon - Easter Sunday

As I said before, Easter Sunday was a blast. One of the several highlights was a great example of liturgical dancing. Matthew first played through "Jesus Christ is Risen Today" with the organ and everyone singing. Then the bass player and the drummer and the choir came in and sang it again, but this time we did a simple 8-count dance with it. Meghan had showed everyone ahead of time and we simply danced in this fashion down the aisle, around the sides, and then back up again. It worked perfectly (or as perfectly as any whole-congregation dance is ever going to work)! I put about 45 seconds of the dance in the video to give you a sense of what it looked like. Not the best angle, but you can see that people were enjoying themselves and really being joyful, which was the point!



Here's the audio...


Here's a direct link to the MP3 file...

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All Saint's, King City

I made a visit to All Saint's, King City, to talk to their incumbent (The Rev'd Nicola Skinner) about their recent painting scheme. They worked with a color expert to repaint the church interiors in very dynamic and interesting way. Here's a picture of the Nave...

One of the interesting and subtle effects was created by using slightly offset colors in adjacent panels--so you'll notice that there are actually two blues and blue greens in the picture here. This is designed to create more sense of movement in the space. This replaced a horrid "dirty cream" color that was originally there. The scheme really compliments the stained glass and has a very warm feeling. The project has been well received by the congregation, and confirms for me that bold schemes are not necessarily controversial. The key is that they function aesthetically. So it makes me all the more eager to bring in a good color expert for our repainting project.

After the tour Nicola and I went out for lunch at the only restaurant in King City, a nice little Greek place with a surprisingly good Souvlaki Sandwich. Turns out that Nicola likes really hot peppers, too, so I'll have to send her a jar of my pickled "peppers of death." These are the hottest peppers I could legally purchase at the St. Laurence Street Farmers Market. I'm still searching for the "The merciless peppers of Quetzlzacatenango...grown deep in the jungle primeval by the inmates of a Guatemalan insane asylum." (After Homer eats these peppers in an episode of The Simpsons he has a vision in which his spirit guide manifests as a coyote with the voice of Johnny Cash.) Anyway, Nicola and I had a good talk about respective churches.

Back at COTM, our weekly Staff meeting sorted out various details. I decided to have the meeting in my office now that's in presentable shape. After that I met with a local nun looking for a place to hold her an Out of the Cold supper for Christmas. She's providing the food, the volunteers, and the guests. All we have to do is unlock and lock the building. Naturally, I'm not going to deny a nun a place to feed the poor!

I'm still not sleeping well. Or, more accurately, I sleep well in the morning, but not at night. I'm feeling a bit overwhelmed, I suppose. There's just so much work to be done... and yet I want to have a healthy life and that means going home at a decent hour and praying well and meditating and all that. Then there is a whole 'nother part of me that is screaming for attention. At the planning meeting for the Pageant last Sunday I ended up literally dancing around the nave to demonstrate how I imagined Mary might dance during the Magnificat. I need to get out of my head and into my body. I've got a ton of creative energy to release!

Speaking of the pageant, I need to work on the script, now, so I have it for the planning meeting tomorrow....

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Record Setting Sunday

Today we had 109 souls in church! To find as many on a Sunday previous, I had to go back to Easter Sunday, 2006! Before that it's Easter Sunday 2005, etc. Pretty cool, I must say, though many of those people because of the birthday of a venerable member of our congregation. Of course, it's unfashionable to obsesses over attendance to much--it's not a marker of church health at all, but I still can't help feeling pretty satisfied. It was a really energetic service, too, that included Matthew's Drum Circle kids making their liturgical debut. Meghan Bold also did a dance number with the kids.

Because it was also All Saints (transfered from Thursday) I preached about the kingdom of heaven and worked in the idea of the dancing saints (cf. Gregory of Nyssa--the Saint and the Church). The kingdom of heaven, I argued, is a dynamic and populated place of perfected and harmonious nature dancing in delight (cf. Psalm 149, 150). I went on from there and then invited the kids to dance. At the end of the dance the kids went and pulled adults from the congregation and got them dancing, too. It really got people excited and joyful, which was precisely the point!

After the service a number of people came up to me with ideas and initiatives they want to pursue. One person suggested a mural of dancing saints in the nave. Another wanted to talk about canvassing the neighborhood to attract new members. Another described plans to create a wheelchair ramp up to the coffee hour area. All worthy ideas that will have their day. Of course, it would be impossible to pursue them all myself, so I'm incredibly thankful that these ideas are coming from the congregation. So that's where I'll find the energy and people-power to develop them.

Yes, yes, a good day at church. The funny thing is that last night I was totally in a funk about the whole parish church project. I was moping about how hard parish ministry is, etc., etc. It's a little depression dance that pastors like to do sometimes. But even as I thought these things I realized that I was really just feeling stressed out and spiritually tried, so I put on some intense music (Beta Band, in this case) and got in a better mood. Playing with the kitty helped, too.

Variability in mood is a real problem for people in the helping professions. We tend to identify with our vocations in a strong way that means that we tend to take stuff way too seriously. If things aren't going well for "our people" we get gloomy. If they do well (like today) then we get all giddy. There is wisdom is seeking a more detached way, but who wants a detached priest? I mean, I know priests that try to maintain that kind of level-headedness, but it doesn't seem to be what our age is calling for. No, this is an age for priests made of fire--or at least water....

Betsy's coming home tonight. I'm pleased about that--I have an nice surprise for her when she comes home.

Last night I went to the Brampton Symphony Philharmonic for the world premiere of a piece written by Matthew called "The Refugee Child." It was a lovely piece. Neat to see something a fried wrote performed by a whole orchestra. Apparently, after the show Matthew attended an "Imperial Reception" for a Vietnamese Princess who attended the show. It's not everyday you meet an honest-to-God Princess, alas, I was not invited. But that's okay--I have a Princess at home.

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The Centre for Children's Faith Formation at COTM

Megan and I sat down yesterday to make more progress on our concept of developing a "Centre for Children's Faith Formation" here at COTM. In some ways, this is an extension and elaboration of the work she has been doing here for some years, but as she departs at the end of December, we need to have a plan for what will take her place. There is Diocesan grant money available to support new forms of ministry, and this is a perfect opportunity to develop something really special here at COTM.

Part of the idea is to leverage our strengths: the level of integration children already have in our liturgy, our multidisciplinary approach (drama, dance, and music), and our potential for developing a mutually beneficial partnership with our local seminaries.

So we did some brainstorming and I made some notes. Here's a mind map of what I have so far...


Comments, as always, are welcome...

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