One feature of pandemic time is our continually shifting social landscape. Activities, events, appointments and gatherings are cancelled and endlessly rescheduled; schools and businesses close and reopen repeatedly. It used to be the snowy weather.
For one constant in today’s world, we need look no further than the timeless theme of love. Call it Universalism writ large — together let’s re-imagine what love looks like in our time.
It is always a joy to welcome Scott MacLeod back to our congregation. In the past, he has shared his animated early immigrant stories from three of Canada’s largest cultural communities as well as the heartbreaking tale of one of Canada’s indigenous peoples, the Abenaki.
Scott will now share with us his own story. He has created a series of self-portraits examined via grounded theory in an art-based research exploration of his identity and past, present and future. He collected nine cultural myths/gods of his predecessors that best reflect his own life history – what Joseph Campbell called the “hero’s journey.”
Matthew Hunt-Russell will discuss and show examples of music that have shaped the way he plays and listens to music. As a musician, listening to music is as important as instrumental practice, and certain artists have played vital roles in his cultivation of a personal sound and style.
Calogero Cumbo returns and he sets out his theme: I believe that the exclusivity of action and contemplation is a false dichotomy: action and contemplation can work together, each leading to the other. In my talk I outline the four stages of what I call The Mystical Way, a way which undulates between action and contemplation.
Unitarian Universalist congregations are rightly held up as havens of hope – houses of hope – in difficult times. In this emerging new world we now face, is this still true? We will gently consider this question with music, readings, and reflection.
Three words. Ecstatic Thanks. Giving. Capitalized. What do you feel, think, suppose, when these words appear before you? Where is the pleasure and the pain within these few words? Where is the challenge and the hope?
Whether face down in the mud or dancing a jig, may we dare to be lifted by the Spirit and Mystery of Life. This Thanksgiving. May there be Ecstatic Thanks Giving.
It is summer! Time to play. Rev. Heather Fraser-Fawcett, at McGill and later at Oxford, learned about J. Moltman’s Theology of Play. She adds: That theology especially came alive for me at Oxford. At the beginning of COVID, I began what has been a continuing period of study of the the Swiss psychiatrist who founded psychoanalysis, Carl Gustav Jung, with a focus on dreamwork and embodiment.
The great hasidic master Reb Nachman of Breslov taught that the way to happiness is to find the good in others always. Furthermore, he wrote that finding points of goodness in everyone – including ourselves – creates new songs of joy in the world.
Professor Blackstock will review the Five Touchstones of Hope needed to improve the lives of Indigenous nations in Canada. The focus is on improving child welfare and the Spirit Bear to witness reconciliation efforts and the need for compensation.
As we lift ourselves out of the ashes of the pandemic, we look towards a rebirth, a renaissance, or in the language of this Easter morn, a resurrection. What have learned, how will we face these new challenges?
