Jess Williams reflects on the lion and lamb imagery used to describe the nature of Christ and how both of these can be useful in times like this. Then she invites the community to pray for the leadership of SCC, opening up a beautiful moment of mutual love and support for the church as a whole
On the first Sunday of Lent, Lorna and Rachael shared some thoughts about life-giving ways to see and approach the Lenten practice of giving something up. Then we were all invited to individual reflection on what might be cluttering our inner lives and what we’d like to welcome into a clearer space, followed by conversation around the breakfast tables.
This Sunday, Marilyn Orr helped us think about what happens when we spend time in the desert and away from the busyness of ordinary life, and to consider the difference between chosen wilderness times and times we do not choose — like the 40 years the Israelites wandered in the wilderness. She encouraged us to share our pain and confusion honestly before God and others, and challenged us to think about how to remain open to views that are different than our own as we walk together through divisive times
Rachael brings back her (made-up!) translations of the Bible – the Trigger Fest Version (TFV) and the Transformational Wisdom Version (TWV) – to name toxic interpretations of Psalm 37 and then, as a community, to seek within it ancient wisdom to help us to live wisely and lovingly in these troubling days.
Jess continues our teaching theme with some reflections on the wilderness and how different turning points in life invite us to leave the path we know in pursuit of something deeper/truer, even when the way is unclear and the journey leads us away from the familiar and into the unknown.
This Sunday, Mel Burns (Canadian Friends Service Committee Peace Program Coordinator & SSU graduate student), joined us during our Second Breakfast Potluck to share about the roots of Quakerism, the journey that led Mel to check out a local Quaker Group during the pandemic, and the many gifts that have been gathered through Quaker practices since then.
Jess invites us to consider how the invitation to exchange the question “Is this right or is this wrong?” for “Is this the path of Love” might transform the way we see and relate to ourselves and others, and serve as a grounding guide through challenging times. She points out how Jesus embodied this principle in revolutionary ways. Then we turned our attention toward Banksy’s piece “Rage, The Flower Thrower” which led to a beautifully complex conversation about choosing the path of love in the face of violence and oppression.
Wendy VanderWal Martin offers a beautiful contribution to our new teaching theme by exploring the possibility that those who have come before us and those who have ‘loved us in the flesh’ are still present to us beyond death and can be significant portals of Love. She turns to the great cloud of witnesses mentioned in Hebrews 12 to help us imagine this and shares her own experiences of this kind of presence in her life. Wendy invites us all to be open to the idea that we are truly never alone.
As we start to move into our new teaching theme of “The Path of Love: A Way in the Wilderness,” Rachael reviews what inspired it and brings forward Walter’s contributions about the vulnerability of love from before the theme even began! Then she explores the idea that our human experience of the path of love is always a way in the wilderness, and that the conditions that make love hard and vulnerable are exactly what cause its most beautiful expressions to emerge.
On this 2nd Breakfast (and last service before his sabbatical begins), Walter shares his inability to tell whether the fact that it’s taken him ten years since he admitted to himself that he was unhealthily over-stressed with work responsibilities is a confession (of rationalizations and justifications) or a celebration that he’s finally made it to a reduced workload. He then invites everyone to reflect on whether they are avoiding or facing reality as 2025 begins.
