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Showing posts from March, 2018

"Finding Uncertainty" (John 12:12-16), Palm Sunday sermon, Mar 25, 2018

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John 12:12-16 Were you happy with the Palm Sunday Rap we did together with the children? What part of it made you excited? What made you feel uncertain? Is uncertainty necessarily negative or bad in our lives? Or can it be a state of being in which we still engage meaningfully with ourselves, with the activity at hand, and learn something?  We’ve all heard of some of the different intelligence categories: the most familiar may be I.Q..These days we talk a lot about the importance of E.Q. (emotional intelligence) and Multiple intelligences. I have one more addition for you - recently, I had an opportunity to learn about “Dynamic intelligence” at a workshop regarding children’s development and thought ‘That really sounds like theology or faith.’  What is dynamic intelligence? To put it simply, “It is the ability to make decisions, and to learn from our decisions, when we face something NEW.”  Our lives continually present us with:  Predictability : (which feels c

Untethered... Beyond Our Walls, Beyond Ourselves (John 12:20-33), Mar 18, 2018

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Untethered…  I don’t speak English as my first language, so I don’t know really until you tell me what 'untethered' means to you. Only over the last weekend, I learned that “untethered” could mean different things to different people. You might be thinking these….   I was thinking of "a grain of wheat." Why?  In today’s Gospel, Jesus says to his disciples, “Unless a grain of wheat falls into the earth and dies, it remains just a single grain; but if it dies, it bears much fruit.”  Imagine that you hold a grain of wheat in your palm - look at it. See how small it is. It is small, yet it has everything it needs in its tiny self. The outer shell, the ‘bran’, protects the seed. Its main function is to protect what it envelops: the endosperm which provides energy and protein, and the germ which is the nutrient storehouse, containing Vitamin E and healthy fats. That outermost layer’s main function is protection, yet th

"Go beyond... Life is helping us." (Immanuel's Newsletter, March, 2018)

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“Go beyond… Life is helping us.”           Message from Ha Na  Last Sunday, March 11, I experienced the “Spring of joy”. It was still the middle of Lent, but there was a sense of accomplishment about the journey we were making through the four Lenten services. Our series of “Steps on the Journey towards Reconciliation” received very positive feedback, but the most important reward for me was to see how people truly seemed to feel their worship experience and learning about reconciliation was heart-changing and meaningful. I could see in people’s faces how pleased, how uplifted, how contented by the spirit of truth they were, when they were leaving. That observation filled my heart with living water to become a spring of joy. If you have joined one or more of our last services on Reconciliation, please do this activity with me as you reflect on what we’ve learned together in community:  What were the highlights or the words you wished to remember?  For me, the highl

Lent Four: "We are All Treaty People" Worship, Immanuel United Church (Steps on the Journey of Reconciliation) Mar 11, 2018

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Mar 11, 2018  "We are all Treaty People " Worship  Act Justly, Love Tenderly, Walk Humbly  Prelude  Ha Na sits in a lawn chair next to the Lenten Campfire.  There will be a few more lawn chairs.  Everyone sing Open our Hearts (MV 21), three or four times, sitting, until all are ready and open.  Choral Introit: MV 21 Open Our Hearts  Open our hearts, open our minds. Open our lives to you O loving God. Repeat  Last time Open our hearts.  Welcome: God, Children & Us  Raise your hand if your ancestors were Indigenous.  Raise your hand if your great-grandparents were born in Canada.  Raise your hand if your grandparents were born in Canada.  Raise your hand if your parents were born in Manitoba.  Raise your hand if you live in Treaty One.    We are all Treaty People, here in Canada. We are all one people. We all come from one Creation… Acknowledgement of the Land As we gather to worship, we acknowledge with respect that we liv