An Ancient Imprint

An ancient

imprint,

a fossil,

on the 

edge

of the 

continent,

a silent

witness

to evolution’s

unfurling,

evolution’s

becoming,

emerging

from the 

heart

of the 

planet,

awakening

in my 

heart,

the same

heart,

the One

Heart,

fossilized 

and

breathing.

26 July 2019

Reveal Yourself

Reveal yourself

and save us

from ourselves.

Reveal yourself

in every 

face,

in every 

body,

in every 

mind,

in every 

heart,

in

every

thing.

For You Are

Presence

waiting

to be 

noticed.

My Love,

the more

I notice

You,

the more

I Am

saved

from myself.

23 July 2019

Rector's Report for 2018, Parish of the Resurrection

Rector's Report for 2018, Parish of the Resurrection

Dear friends in Christ, friends who are sharing in the Great Love together, 2018 has been a great year for our spiritual community in many different ways. God continues to bless us, and God continues to bless others in and through and as us. Thanks be to God.

For the Parish of the Resurrection, 2018 has been a healthy year for us. As individuals and as a community, we continue to deepen in faith and love, in diversity and inclusion, in care of each other, and in reaching out to the larger community and those on the margins. 

2018 has brought new participants into our community of faith. This includes new pilgrims to our Sunday liturgical community, but also new pilgrims to the other spiritual communities within the circle of the Parish of the Resurrection. The Parish of the Resurrection is much more than the total of those who participate in the Sunday liturgy. The Parish of the Resurrection has become a collection of communities within a community. We have spiritual seekers who are seeking their Higher Power, who are seeking to connect in meaningful ways with others in ways other than the liturgy or religion per se. 

In addition to our ongoing communities that gather at the Resurrection for Yoga, Saturday Brunch, Seniors Cafe, Bereavement Support, Knit Wits, Scones and Tea, three new and very exciting communities have emerged at the Resurrection over the last year.

So many of us and our families are effected by drug addiction and the mental illnesses that are part of addiction. With no resources in our immediate region, we discerned and formed a Narcotics Anonymous Group in the parish that I, as the pastor, am directly involved with. This community has taken root and is growing with the need for addiction recovery support in our region. Our Tuesday night meeting is called the Baccalieu Trail Recovery Group. As this community has taken root, and as relationships of trust have been built, we have also discerned and formed a Recovery Peer Support environment on Wednesdays. The Parish of the Resurrection is being established in our region where those struggling with drug addiction can come for compassion, inclusion, and support. Thanks be to God.

Another exciting community that has emerged in 2018 at the Resurrection is what we call an Alternative Spiritual Community. With so many people today indicating no interest in religion, but having an interest in spirituality, we have discerned and formed an alternative community at the Resurrection where people can come to explore spirituality and spiritual practices, without the obstacles of doctrines, creeds and religion. This community continues to meet and continues to slowly grow, meeting a spiritual need for a segment of our population. Thanks be to God.

The beautiful truth is that God is in God’s world doing what God is doing, with or without the church. The church has no monopoly on God (though the church tried teaching that for 1700 years). The new and emerging church has to learn to listen with its spiritual heart for how God’s Life is emerging in our communities and the people around us, and we have to simply join in, in new and creative ways. The future church will always have the Eucharist and the Sunday liturgy. But the future church will have to be much, much more than that. We have to have the courage, trust and love to know that God is life, and to invite and welcome that Life in its ever new and emerging forms.

The Diocesan Synod in the fall of 2018 has given direction to the people and parishes of this diocese to find new ways of being church into the future, and to give more attention and energy to being mission focused. The parish of the Resurrection is well away along this path, and we will be looking at new ways to partner with neighbouring parishes in mission objectives into the future. 

2018 has been a reasonably good financial year for our parish. Although we have met our budget projections, it has been done with fairly heavy reliance on fundraising. With more people less regular at the Sunday liturgy, our free will offering continues to be in a slow decline. If you are someone who is not at the liturgy every Sunday, and if you are someone who loves your spiritual community, in whatever form that is for you at the Resurrection, please consider automatic deposit. Regular monthly offering to your parish would greatly help our mission objectives and making positive contributions to our common life together and to the life of our region. 

The Parish of the Resurrection received a number of fairly large donations in 2018. A $5000 donation was gratefully received from the Brigus Blueberry Committee (who disbursed funds to large number of charitable organizations in Conception Bay North). This very generous donation was used to install a much needed wind break at the entrance to our House for the Church. 

The other area of donation was for the paving of our parking lot. We received very generous donations from Floy Doull and the family of Fred Andews. It was their desire that these donations be used to provide paving for the parish parking lot.

These donations are wonderful examples of how people can support this parish through financial bequest. 

Remembering the Parish in your Wills: Floy Doull has included the Parish of the Resurrection in her will, and she has done it in such a way that she can see its benefits to the parish while still living. 

Remembering the Parish with Funeral Memorials: With the passing of Fred Andrews, the family’s wish was that all funeral memorial donations to be made out to the Parish of the Resurrection.

Remembering the Parish with Family Memorials: One of the wishes of Fred Andrews, a supporter of the parish and a believer in our evolving mission, was to see the parking lot paved. With Floy Doull’s willed donation toward paving the parking lot, coupled with the funeral memorial donation, the Andrew’s family, in memory of Fred, have made a memorial donation to help complete the paving project.

We, as a parish family, are thankful for the generous donations from these two families, to pave the parking lot, and to support the rebuilding of the church both materially and spiritually. 

On a final note, and with reference to the wider church, noting that your rector continues in the role of the Diocesan Canon for Spirituality, encouraging the deepening of spiritual practice in our diocese; that I continue my role as Adjunct Faculty at Queens College teaching Pastoral Studies; and that I’ve been working with the Shalem Institute for Spiritual Formation in the discerning, designing and leading of a contemplative pilgrimage to our Southern Shore in 2019.

For all of you who love your church, and contribute to our shared life together in so many and varied ways, thank you. It is because of your ever depending hearts in God that we are IN Love with each other, and delighting together in the Lord’s School of Love.

In the Great Love,

Father Gerald+

Meditation as the Path to Universal Love

Twenty five or thirty years ago (I am getting old) when I heard the word “meditation,” I understood it to mean something that only Christian or Buddhist monks and nuns did. I didn’t know of anyone who meditated, and if there was someone around who meditated, they probably would not admit it publicly. The practice of mediation was far from mainstream in our culture. The value and practice of meditation has thankfully come a long way from the hidden fringes of our society and much more into the mainstream.

In my first full time semester at Queens College as a young seminarian in 1993, Sister Anitra, a nun of the Anglican Sisters of St.John the Divine in Toronto, led the very first retreat that I was ever on. During that time, she introduced us to a little book titled “Seeking God” by Ester DeWaal, and with that, an introduction to Benedictine spirituality and the Christian mediation practice of Lectio Divine (Holy Reading). Lectio Divina is an ancient form of Christian meditation, but not the only form of Christian meditation. With the growing interest in Eastern Religion Spirituality (Buddhism and Hinduism) in the second half of the last century, Father Thomas Keating, a Cistercian monk in the USA, in 1975 emerged as one of the principle developers of what is known today as Centering Prayer - another form of meditation found within the Christian tradition (in the Christian Spiritual classic “The Cloud of Unknowing”). 

Since that time a number of Christian schools for meditation have emerged including the Shalem Institute for Spiritual formation and the Center for Action and Contemplation. Again, over the last fifty years, the Buddhist practice of Mindfulness has become mainstream, being used in Health and Education institutions to promote mental health and wellness. 

The practice of meditation crosses all religious and cultural boundaries, and it has everything to do not only with the universal evolution of the human consciousness as a whole, but it has everything to do with the evolution and deepening of every single person’s consciousness. 

In the Christian tradition, to follow the Way of Jesus is to die to self - die to self consciousness in order to open up to and live out of the deeper Mind of Christ, the Love that is Christ. Meditation is the universal spiritual tool used to empty our selves of the prison of the unrelenting and repetitive thinking mind. Much of the rampant anxiety of our day comes from people being stuck in the cages of their thinking minds. In the Christian tradition, Jesus tells us that there is more to being human than the thinking mind. We have a soul. We have a spiritual heart, a deep treasure in the soul waiting to be discovered. Meditation is the path that will lead you from the prison of self consciousness to the open, spacious freedom of Love Consciousness. Too much of public and cultural life is lived at the self conscious level only, full of fear and division. As we learn to walk the meditative path, we will discover a deeper Unitive Consciousness, and we will have eyes to see the Oneness of all of life in every person and in all of creation. We will learn to be IN Love (In Christ) with all of life. What a world it would be.

12 Step Spirituality: A Spirituality for Everyone

In the spring of 2018, and in response to the number of people in our region living with substance addictions, the Parish of the Resurrection in South River initiated a Narcotics Anonymous Group. The intention was to form an NA group in which the priest could be pastorally present and available as a form of outreach to the region. Since June of last year, what is now called the Baccilieu Trail Recovery Group has emerged and continues to take root. 

There are pastoral and spiritual benefits to my presence in the meetings each week, but mostly I am a listener, learning from the wisdom of those who are walking the difficult path of recovery. In addition to the regular meetings, Twelve Step Spirituality is also part of the NA AA program. Twelve Step spirituality is not just about staying clean or sober, but even more importantly it is about spiritual enlightenment. One of the many things that I have learned from the weekly meetings, is that twelve step spirituality is not just for recovering addicts. A member pointed this out to me when he said that twelve step spirituality is a spirituality for everyone because it is a program for life. And he is right. 

The word “addiction” is only used in step one, with the truth remaining that we are all powerless over our lives and that we need to believe in a Power greater than ourselves in order to be restored to sanity. All of the twelve steps are spiritually relevant to all people of our culture today, but two in particular stand out for me. The first is step two, the invitation to believe in a Higher Power, whatever that may be for you. This is brilliant. The Twelve Steps is not telling the seeker what to believe in. The invitation is one to spiritual exploration and discovery. When someone is intentional in seeking God or your higher power, God always shows up. “Seek and you will find.” So religion or creeds or doctrines are not obstacles to be put in the way of someone beginning to seek out a spiritual path to wholeness. 

The other step that stands out for me is step eleven, the use of meditation to improve our conscious contact with God. The various forms of meditation, across traditions and cultures, are pathways for us to deepen our conscious sharing in a Larger Life, our higher power. The path to enlightenment or spiritual freedom is learning and practicing how to get out of our addictive thinking minds. All of us are addicts, minimally to our own addictive thinking patterns. Step eleven invites us to go deeper than our thinking, to discover a deeper conscious contact with our Higher Power, where we are liberated from the prisons of our thinking minds. For the Christian, to follow the Twelve Step Spirituality is to put on the Mind of Christ. Twelve Step Spirituality is worth a try. In case you or someone you know  were interested, on Sunday nights at 7pm at the Resurrection, we offer an Alternative Spiritual Community where we gather to learn about Twelve Step Spirituality and to learn and practice meditation. 

Contemplative Conversations

I have recently been in Washington DC attending a Shalem (Institute for Spiritual Formation) gathering with a theme focus of “Contemplative Conversations.” In the United States (and in a growing number of places around the world) there is not only a deepening and polarizing political divide, but there is a dangerous emergence of social permission for racism and hatred. To be clear, there is a tendency to socially and publicly demonize those who are different or who hold different views and opinions. There is a diminishing willingness to deeply listen and to hold and live in the tension of diversity. We are living in a time like no other when our future together as a human family depends on our desire and willingness to listen deeply to those who differ from you. The contemplative path, which is the self emptying Way of Jesus, is the only hope for our world. In a word, contemplative prayer moves us from “head” space to “heart” space. The dualistic mind, or “head space,” is where most of our culture lives life from. Most social conversations are from head space to head space, which is always separate, never unitive. The dualistic mind is a binary organ that can only operate in terms of “either/or, right/wrong, us/them.” If this “head space" is the only place where divisive political and moral conversations are happening, then there will be no reconciliation, there will be no depth or openness to diversity and inclusion. On the other hand, a contemplative conversation is a communicating and communing from the “heart space.” When we listen from our “heart” space, we are listening from a place that is not interested in being “correct,” but from a place whose deepest desire is to “connect” with the other. A contemplative conversation is not an either or conversation. A contemplative conversation is a both and conversation. A “heart” space conversation is an ever new and emerging relating that can live in unity with ambiguity, uncertainty and mystery. A contemplative conversation is the Way of Jesus. To learn this deep Way of listening is what our polarized and fearful world of politics needs. To learn this deep Way of listening is what our uncertain church needs. 

Pilgrimage in Newfoundland and Labrador

Pilgrimage is at the heart of the human experience, and it is a spiritual intention worth discovering and practicing. Pilgrimage is practiced in all of the world’s religions. Among many many holy sites in the world, Jerusalem, as one example, has long been a holy place drawing pilgrims from Judaism, Christianity and Islam. Each and everyone of us are pilgrims, whether we acknowledge it or not. We are all pilgrims walking together along the road called Life. How awake are you to the journey? How awake are you to the path under your feet and before you? The universal invitation to the human pilgrim, across all cultures and creeds, is a journey into deepening consciousness, a journey into being more awake to life, awake to Love, in every moment of every day. Pilgrimage is a necessary spiritual practice for spiritual seekers. There is a spiritual need within our souls to step outside of our normal daily routines and responsibilities, in order to travel to special landscapes and holy sites to find and regain perspective on our lives and the lives of our communities. 

Over the years I have been on a number of pilgrimages with spiritual intent. I have travelled to Canterbury, England, the mother church of Anglicanism. I have traveled to the Holy Lands to walk in the steps of Jesus. I have recently traveled to Iona, a tiny island in the north west of Scotland, that was settled by St.Columba and his Celtic Christian community in the 7th century, and has been attracting pilgrims every since.  These pilgrimages, and others, have been significant events in my spiritual journey. 

But you don’t have to travel around the world in order to go on spiritual pilgrimage. Every summer I travel to Port Rexton on pilgrimage. Port Rexton was my first parish as a priest, and it is the place where I learned to pray in and with nature. Every summer when I return on pilgrimage, I prayerfully reconnect with the landscape as I walk the trails and beaches. 

Every Friday I travel to the Southern Shore. My family roots are in Bay Bulls, and my mother lives in a seniors home in Witless Bay. It is a pilgrimage in which my intention is to lovingly reconnect with my aging mother. And to make a day of it, when I travel to the Shore on Fridays, I always spend time on the various and beautiful trails, inviting and allowing the rugged and beautiful landscape to restore my soul. 

Newfoundland and Labrador is a special place in our global village that attracts pilgrims from all over the world. Not just because of our people and uncommon hospitality, but because of our beautiful and unique landscape. We have a beautiful spiritual treasure in Newfoundland and Labrador - our nature, our landscape. Be a spiritual pilgrim, travel into the landscape with intent, and restore your soul.