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Newsletter # 31
CANADIAN RURAL CHURCH
NETWORK
INDEX:
RURAL ISSUES ● Rural Heritage An Asset
RURAL MINISTRY (life and faith) ● Why Garden With Children?
WORSHIP RESOURCES ● Original Blessing ● ... In Broken Places ● On Eagle's Wings ● God the Great Composer ● Beethoven Helps Us Celebrate ● God's Rainbow (Paraphrase of Psalm 118)
INTERNATIONAL ● After Disasters and Personal Tragedies
RURAL ISSUES
Rural Heritage an Asset
The CNN reporter was shocked. When he dared to visit rural USA his preconceptions were turned up-side-down.
In Fargo, North Dakota, the economic well-being of the community appeared to be hail and hardy. Employment statistics were around 98 %. Major constructions projects were meeting their deadlines. Business was carrying on as if the economy hadn't imploded in "the rest of the country".
We just carry on, the Mayor said. We are somewhat conservative in our spending, and don't get caught up in all these schemes for sub-prime investments. Matter-of-fact, the spendings of our State Government are right on target. We're not gong to need bail-out money here.
I wonder how many other rural-based regions are the same? We don't hear much about them because, from the urban media perspective, there really isn't much of a story here.
Or is there? Most rural folks have lived underneath the media radar for years. They've faced the ups and downs of weather, politics, and economics with the same stalwart stoicism. They've banded together as community when it was necessary to give a hand up, and have had the courage to go against the current when they believed they had an idea that would improve things. Life hasn't been spectacular, but it has been good!
Pamela Wallin, recently appointed Senator from Saskatchewan, talks about how her small-town up-bringing in Wadena, Saskatchewan gave her the roots that encouraged her to pursue a most fascinating career.
She grew up in a community where she was free to roam around, to explore and play and get to know the various characters in the community. On her uncle's farm she learned about the land. This was a kid who wasn't afraid to check things out and take risks.
With that rural grounding, she moved from social worker, to TV and print journalist, to Canadian Consul General in New York, to Chancellor of the University of Guelph.
Now Senator Wallin is ready to challenge that great prejudice that implies nothing of importance happens in the hinterland. What a myth to suggest cities are the future for our country!
Good luck, Pamela, and God bless.
(Written by Joyce Sasse, March / 09)
RURAL MINISTRY (life and faith)
Why Garden with Children?
It's easy to head out into the yard in the spring and start planting, weeding, and digging, dwelling only on the end goal of a beautiful yard and a bountiful harvest.
When you bring children into the equation, gardening becomes an exploration of many interrelated aspects of the world. Why are there good bugs and bad bugs? How do worms live in the soil? Why are carrots orange and beets red? How do trees get so big when their seeds are so small? Why do perennials come back year after year? I find the discussions to be heady when I have children with me in the garden.
As I look back on my own experiences of planting pansies with my mother and my little evergreen tree with my father, I felt like an equal as we dug and tamped. Perhaps the only time my parents would casually seek my advice was in the garden. "What do you think, pink or yellow here this year?"
Gardening with children helps to keep a sense of wonder alive in me. Taking something as tiny as a carrot seed and watching its luxuriant green growth with a strong orange carrot hidden beneath the soil is northing short of miraculous. For many adults, these everyday miracles become commonplace. But for children, they are magic.
(Written by Susan J. Wittrup, a clipping from a scrap-book)
WORSHIP RESOURCES
Original Blessing
Lent is a time when we are invited to think about how suffering impacts our lives. In modern society, we would rather suppress that way of thinking. But when we try to ignore pain, it becomes a dead weight that clouds our lives.
Neither alcohol, nor drugs, nor foolish living can make our problems disappear. So why not try reaching inside, look at the situation, and call on your spiritual resources to help you work through that which is bothersome?
There are many clues inside and outside of scripture to help us know we don't face these struggles on our own. We see evidence of a compassionate God who does not leave us to walk through life by ourselves. Each of us has a soul - a godly touch-point. That is part of our blessing.
We are encouraged to recognize the common spiritual heritage we share with Christ. Compassion is the bond.
The poet Anne Weems writes: "Jesus wept. It was as simple and complicated as that. He wept, and in his weeping he joined himself forever to those who mourn. He stands throughout all time, this Jesus weeping, with his arms about the weeping ones."
If we scorn such sentiment, maybe our image of God is too narrow. Behind the Gospel stories, I catch glimpses of a God who brings hope and vitality and peace to those who feel caught in the web of darkness.
What else could the Apostle Paul mean when he wrote: "God's foolishness is wiser than human wisdom, and God's weakness is stronger than human strength."
One of the hymns concludes: "When we sing to God in heaven, we shall find such harmony, born of all we've known together of Christ's love and agony."
Trust in God and let the light of hope touch your whole being. (Written by Joyce Sasse, February 2009)
... In Broken Places
Regrets and laments can be healthy for us, but they need to have an expiry date.
If we spend the whole of our lives remembering all the things we should have done, or if we remain resentful of some limitation we have, life becomes burdensome, and we become sour. Past regrets are a drain on our vitality.
I think of the lame man in the Gospel Story. He was angry with Jesus because Jesus declared him healed and then asked him to throw his crutch away. That anger was his real handicap!
Some people live by the adage "a chain is only as strong as its weakest link". What they keep looking for are the weak links. The Biblical stories, especially the Lenten chapters, invite us to think about how we can "grow strong in our broken places".
A youngster, when others tried to bully him, shouted out "God made me, and God don't make junk!". Every one of us needs to repeat that as part of our morning prayers.
It is true, I do have regrets. It is true I have hurtful memories. At times I do feel handicapped by my limitations. But we can't let these things define us. Probably they are the very things that have taught us patience, courage, and endurance. Often these are the things that have gifted us by deepening our understanding and encouraging us to be more charitable to others.
The Apostle Paul had all sorts of physical afflictions, and when he was younger he did many things that he came to regret. But what his faith taught him was this. "Even when we don't know how to pray, the Spirit pleads with God for us in groans we cannot express."
With the Spirit's help it is true that we can grow strong in places where we once felt broken. (Written by Joyce Sasse, February 2009)
On Eagle's Wings
To listen to the news or read the paper, one might think the only item of interest is the economy. Always, the words associated with it spell gloom and doom and pending disasters.
That news combined with the harshness of the weather can weight heavy on our psyche. It is important we keep our thinking in balance.
I recall a Christmas story that told about a depressed king who was so miserable he made life miserable for everyone else.
His subjects tried to cheer him by distracting his attention. First, they gave him a dancing bear. Ridiculous! Then a case of mirrors (so he could see how sour he looked.) Imagine his reaction to that!
Finally a box with holes in it was left on the palace steps. When it was opened it had a baby inside. A real live baby, who laughed and cried and reached out for him. The old King couldn't help himself. He tickled and cooed and rocked the baby. And smile-lines wrinkled his face.
The connection was made to the way God gave us a similar gift - or should we say gifts: the Christ child, our own youngsters, and the children around us.
In their innocence and naivety, they can call us back to a world that is full of joy. We are reminded of the other things that bring life and hope to our day.
"And I will raise you up on eagle wings" song-writer Michael Joncas wrote, reflecting on the Psalms. "Bear you on the breath of dawn, make you to shine like the sun, and hold you in the palm of my hand."
Think of the exhilaration, the strength, the security, the feeling of peace we have when we look at things from God's perspective.
We need to remember to celebrate our gifts. (Written by Joyce Sasse, February 2009)
God, the Great Composer
Priest and paleontologist Teilhard de Chardin observed the Creation by studying about the world millions of years before it was inhabited by humans. And from his studies, he found reason to celebrate the progression he saw.
God, with infinite wisdom, built layer on layer: the geographical forms, the biological forms, the development and accumulation of knowledge. Ultimately all of this would evolve into the "Christosphere" - the age of Christ-like love.
In his Hymn of the Universe, Chardin writes "I love you, Lord Jesus, because of the multitude of shelter within you and whom, if one clings closely to you, one can hear with all the other beings murmuring, praying, weeping ..."
From a clipped church bulletin, our ear catches the celebration side of this Gift of Creation.
"Gracious, loving God, You are the great composer, from your creative energy comes the great symphony of creation of which we are small but essential notes.
"Wondrous God, You are the great singer, your divine song is sung by sparrows, mountain streams, the rushing wind and countless human voices.
"Awesome, mysterious God, dancing through space and time, You choreograph the path of the stars and the flight of snow geese. We rejoice to be part of the world and lift our voices in praise both of the singer and the song."
With respect we are led to sing Shirley Murray's hymn - "Touch the earth lightly, use the earth gently, nourish the life of the world in our care; gift of great wonder, ours to surrender, trust for the children tomorrow will bear... God of all living, God of all loving, God of the seedling, the snow and the sun, teach us, deflect us, Christ reconnect us, using us gently and making us one." The Creation, the gift of Christ so lovingly given, and the song of caring do become one. (Written by Joyce Sasse, February 2009)
Beethoven Helps Us Celebrate - thoughts for Easter
"Joyful, joyful we adore thee ..." It's a good hymn to sing because it's familiar, it's celebrative, and it carries within it the very essence of the Easter Message.
Would you believe the "Ode to Joy" (on which this hymn is based) was written by a person who was totally deaf?
Would you believe, also, that it was written in a time when the known word order seemed about to collapse?
Imagine yourselves in Vienna in 1800 - where the mood was ugly.
It was under these heavy, dark conditions that Hayden, Mozart and Beethoven composed their greatest musical works. All of them lived in Vienna as contemporaries.
Add to this the additional, growing burden that Beethoven had to bear. He, a pianist and composer, slowly became totally deaf.
Think of the months of distress and misery he endured when even the loudest of talking and the loudest of music was taken from him. Ever since he was four years old, music had been his life. It was his escape from a drunkard father. It was solace when, as a teenager, he lost his mother. It became a means of support when he assumed responsibility for his two younger brothers and a sister.
We can hardly imagine how many times Ludwig despaired as he saw his world crumble. But he swore fate would never drag him down. One of his biographers wrote "With Beethoven for an opponent, fate hardly had a chance".
He never lost faith in himself. What is more, as the "Ode to Joy" attests, he never lost trust in God. The music from which our hymn was derived was Beethoven's masterpiece. It was the final movement of the eloquent, passionate Ninth Symphony. At this moment in the musical work, the singers can keep silent no longer. With their voices, they announce a powerful expression of worship. What raw Faith! What tremendous courage!
This is the kind of music that leaves us standing on tiptoe, and that is what the Easter Experience is all about. We come from our everyday lives, hungry and needing to be fed. Each person carries their own silent burdens of pain / grief / despair. Fear touches us, for our economic world seems to be in total disarray... And we wonder how long we will have the health and strength and will to carry on.
But for just these few moments we are invited to lay our burdens down. We have been invited to put on our finest, and to share of our best. We are invited, through song and prayer and sacred story, to join in the celebration, acknowledge God's promise, and think about those things that are good.
We share the stories of faith that have been passed down through the ages. We look around and acknowledge familiar faces ... and think about how we can help someone else have a better day.
Beethoven's music, the Scriptural story, and our own experience help us as we try to span the gap between reality and ecstasy: between the surface world and the ultimate realm of meaning that God has promised.
In many ways we are a broken people living in a broken world. During the past 40 days of Lent we have traveled on a special journey, but we did not make that journey alone. Now we celebrate the life of One who has crossed that gap beyond which we cannot see ... and beckons us to follow without being afraid.
My prayer is that this time together be a time of celebration, an occasion which brings the kind of joy that will enable each of us to carry a spark of light into even our darkest moments.
My prayer is that this time together will generate memories of promise and an aura of peace - so that we can look for the rainbows reflecting off our tears.
(Written by Joyce Sasse, March 2009)
God's Rainbow (Paraphrase of Psalm 118: 14 - 24)
God's rainbow arches over me; I fear nothing any more. For what can conquer God? Before the beginning, and after the end, God is, and God will be. Everything works together for God's goals. If God is with me, nothing I do is wasted; like sunbeams dancing on a lake, even my weakest efforts will gather into the glory of God. Gales may buffet me, and storm clouds may darken my face, but God will never give up on me.
I will arise and go now; I will sink into God's watery womb, and rise again into a new life. A new day has dawned.
God will look after me. As a piece of driftwood becomes a work of art, so God will find new uses for me.
Do not try to second-guess God, for God is greater than all our imaginings. This is the day God gave us - rejoice and be glad in it.
(Paraphrase written by James Taylor in "Everyday Psalms")
INTERNATIONAL
After Disasters and Personal Tragedies
Some excellent Liturgical Resources that can be used after disasters and personal tragedies can be found on the web site of the Uniting Church of Australia (Synod of Victoria and Tasmania) https://victas.uca.org.au . Philip Liebelt has edited a column called "Carrying Rainbows of Hope".
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