He’s Not a Tame Lion

Through all his writing, speaking and preaching, Rowan Williams, Archbishop of Canterbury 2003-2012, would want us to experience the God he knows, the God who is “not a tame lion.” The quote comes from C.S. Lewis’s series of children’s books, Chronicles of Narnia, in which many of the characters, in discussing the Lion Aslan, who represents God, will remark., “He’s not a tame lion you know.”  Lewis and Williams highlight this God of surprises, the God who does the unexpected and asks us to surprise ourselves too. This God is wild, powerful, unpredictable, as well as loving.

Archbishop Williams is the author of many books and is a theologian, scholar, poet and mystic.  He speaks 11 languages. However, when Williams speaks of his experience of God, he poetically reflects the Mystery, where words about God cannot go.  That’s why his insights on the Narnia Chronicles are so powerful and helpful. He reminds us that this God of surprises stretches us and calls us to surprise ourselves. In his book, The Lion’s World: A Journey into the Heart of Narnia, (2012) Williams says:  “The truth of God is found in rebellion against the oppressive clichés of the world.”   He reminds us that our idea of God is often soft and cuddly and may come from our own ego needs and not our experience...

In his latest book, Christ: The Heart of Creation (2018) Williams further challenges our ideas about God and asks us to confront the inadequacies and dangers that come from ideas and beliefs, but not from a true and personal experience of God. He wants to connect us again to the God who people experienced in the life and resurrection of Jesus. This God is not a tame lion.

A C.S. Lewis Lenten Series (2013) is available here

Even better for us, Dr. Rowan Williams will be in London beginning Saturday March 16^th for three events:

• Metropolitan United Church is holding a Saturday morning workshop March 16^th.
• The William T. Orr lecture will be held, along with evening prayer, at St. Paul’s Cathedral on Sunday evening, March 17th
• Dr. Williams will receive an honourary degree at Huron College on Monday, March 18^th. 

For further information please click here

Granola bars and curbside sharing

Well, here we are beginning another sequence of 40 days in preparation for the celebration of Easter! I have been around this cycle 70 odd times. What is the new for this year? What energy and hope is equal to the great mystery of love that Jesus offers?

I recently read an article that immediately shifted my thought back to a dear relative, who practices almsgiving not just during Lent, but every day of the year. I admire her so very much. She has that wonderful ability to hold compassion and common sense in one basket. A solid woman of faith. Whether it be a granola bar or a $5 Tim’s gift card, she is ready to share what little she has with the outstretched hand on the corner, at the intersection, in front of the grocery store. She recognizes struggle and dignity. I see in her actions the sacred. Recognizing another human being, sharing an awareness that the life we all share is life given by God. That brief encounter can be more than one person helping another; it is an exchange of love inherent in all whom God has created. Christ’s birth into human life has raised the bar. Every encounter is a God encounter, concretized in the ordinariness of daily life.

Lent, characterized by the actions of prayer, fasting and almsgiving is filled with liturgical readings that remind us: “I was hungry and you gave me to eat”. Maybe this Lent, my “new” will be to focus on all those miracle moments when the hungry are fed . . and give thanks, that humanity cares.

You might like to view the article that got me thinking

- Loretta Manzara, csj

Lent, God’s Love Story for His Children

Lent is often associated with ‘giving something up’, but it is really a time of spiritual discipline, a time of preparation for the great feast of Easter.

A disciple is one who learns from the master. Immediately after his baptism, Mark says that the Spirit drove Jesus into the wilderness/desert to be tempted by the devil. The desert represents times in our lives of struggle, disorientation, and painful experiences that make us vulnerable to temptation.  Lent offers a special opportunity of taking our woundedness to the divine physician for healing.

We enter into the rhythm of lent beginning with Ash Wednesday.

Jesus invites us to greater intimacy through

Prayer – healing for ourselves and the world;

Fasting – depriving self of physical support through discipline and growing trust in God.

Almsgiving – sharing our resources generously with the poor.

In the following five weeks, we journey with the gospel themes of repentance, mercy, forgiveness, as we build the Kingdom of God in preparation for Easter.

Passion/Palm Sunday week, the holiest week of the Christian year, focuses our attention on the sacred mysteries of:

Holy Thursday: the Blessed Eucharist and the washing of the feet,

Good Friday: the suffering and death of Jesus for the salvation of the world

Easter Sunday: Jesus vanquishes death forever through love.

Lent is a good time to begin or deepen the Lenten practices of prayer, discipline, and almsgiving.  Through these ascetic practices we learn to nurture the silence within, and come to experience joy and wellbeing.

Maranatha, Come Lord Jesus.

                                                                                                                         Anne Marshall, csj

The Blanket

How a blanket covers what is beneath depends upon its size, but when nature creates its own blanket the beauty of what’s beneath enhances the blanket itself.

The contrast of darkness covered by a brilliant white of fresh fallen snow gives the look of a winter wonderland. As the small winter birds flutter among the branches knocking clouds of snow to the ground, as like children playing on a field of fresh fallen snow as the snowballs float through the air.

Nature’s blanket covers all it touches, no tree, roof or lawn left untouched. The sun makes it glitter as each flake reflects the light from above.

Like any blanket it is tossed off. The gentle breeze removes the blanket from the trees and sheds it to the ground below, uncovering the beauty it once covered. The nakedness once again revealed for all to see.

- Sr. Donna Smith, CSJ February 18, 2019

(Photo Credit: Sr. Donna Smith)

A Wall Never Comes Up Trump

From day one of my life, they were there.  First, an invisible, ideological one, then the visible one, dividing east from west Germany.  It stretched for 66 miles from north to south. To detain those defecting from oppressive East Germany, the Berlin Wall was erected.  But I am running ahead of myself.  I was born in East Germany before the wall was built. In Wolfen, just a short distance from Leipzig where such famous people as Richard Wagner and Clara Schumann were born and where Johann Sebastian Bach worked for many years, I was born on the wrong side of the wall. 

Walls! All this talk about erecting a new wall in-stead of building bridges. It seems we have always built walls.  Walls, to either keep people out or in.  But, eventually, all walls fail or fall.  The wall of Jericho, the oldest city wall built about 8000 BC.  The Great Wall of China built around 500 years ago. The Western Wall, also known as The Wailing Wall, built by Herod the Great.  These are some of the most iconic walls that have been erected over the years.  Perhaps all walls should be dubbed ‘wailing walls’, be they those visible ones made of concrete or brick and mortar, or those invisible ones we put up internally to protect ourselves from those who might harm us.  Walls tend to make us wail or weep silently.

But let me come back to the walls closer to home.  As my life began behind a wall, I tend to have a deep-seated dislike for walls of any kind.  With all this talk about the Trump wall going up, old memories of walls raise their ugly heads.  Long story short, my family managed to flee to West Germany. I have vague memories of time spent in a Flüchtlingslager in the Black Forest.  These would have been the equivalent of present-day camps where millions of refugees live these days.  Like so many Germans at the time, after a few years we were on the move again.  This time we crossed the ocean to South Africa, another country familiar with walls and divisions separating the ‘European’ from the ‘non-European’, the black from the white.  It has been a seemingly never-ending story of walls.

The irony of the never-ending story of walls is this - those made of mortar and bricks can be torn down.  The invisible ones we build within our inner sanctum tend to be incredibly resis-tant to being torn down.  With blood, sweat and tears, and only brick by brick, so to say, can we set ourselves free.  So, how do we live healthy lives while we carry the memories of those old concrete walls as well as the reality of our inner walls?  Forgiveness extended to others, and to myself, has been key for me.  No, it is not easy.  Yes, it takes a very long time.  It takes time to recognize the inherent dignity in those who have wronged us.  It takes time, a very long time often, to begin to love those who have hurt us.  When I struggle to turn the proverbial ‘other cheek’ it helps to recall the guidance Jesus offers, which is always challenging and counterintuitive.  Finding common ground with those who have hurt us, is counterintuitive, for our natural inclination is to be angry and resentful instead of loving. However, when we come to a place of understanding of the one who has hurt us, as well as of ourselves, it may also be a place of peace, where walls are no longer needed. 

- Sr. Magdalena Vogt, cps