It all started with a PBS documentary on the life of renowned architect Frank Lloyd Wright. Then on a trip to Chicago with an old friend we walked the streets of the windy city with the aid of an architecture student, telling us about the various architects who had participated in rebuilding the downtown after the city’s great fire. I’ve since watched extensive interviews with famous architects and two films about architects; Sketches of Frank Gehry where Gehry credits his long time therapist with his creative work and My Architect that shares the search by a son for the presence of his famous father Louis Kahn in the buildings Kahn’s designed. I have become an avid fan of architecture, how buildings are designed, most importantly how the architect imprints a sense of purpose into the structure s/he creates...

On one cold winter evening in 2014 I was in a hurry to get to the bus that would take me home to Tantallon. I was then serving the good people of St. Andrew’s United Church in Halifax and thus I was running down Coburg Road, across South Park Street, to Spring Garden Road. As I passed the Lord Nelson hotel I saw a group of 7-10 young men, likely of Middle-Eastern background, handing out roses to persons along the sidewalk. This sight stopped me in my tracks and I had to find out what was going on. As I came to a halt one man looked me in the eye, smiled, handed me a rose and said, “please give this to your wife.” I was stunned, how did this man know I was married? But then I noticed he was starring at my wedding ring. I thanked him for the rose...

Randy and I met years ago when we planned a funeral together for a man from Advocate Harbour. I had more and darker hair then and he looked exactly like he does now, save for the fact that he no longer has a “perm”. Randy is ageless and I am convinced this has to do with a lingering sense of wonder he brings to life. When we sat down to figure out how we would work as colleagues in team ministry we first had to sort out our expectations. I like working with people who are not “dramatic” and Randy assured me I would not find him so. Randy had heard I was some kind of workaholic and wanted to know if I would expect the same of him. I assured him I would not...

We’ve just heard the moving and personal story of Arlene Riches, a colleague of mine, a member of this church and someone you all know so well from her time serving as Supply Minister on several occasions. Arlene reveals how deep personal pain can be addressed and healed through God’s presence in Creation, how the mystery that is landscape, green life, sky, sun, moon, stars, rocks, trees, air, contain a life-source we often overlook as we try to escape our pain. There is a surprise quality to Creation, a sense that we cannot control her, that she bears life and produces life and can take a moment of death and pain and transform it into something new...

Do you have a crèche scene, a little manger in your home? I am always struck at the ones people have on their lawns, the scene looks so peaceful, so pastoral, so calm and familiar. And yet the story itself was intended to be exactly the opposite. The author of Luke-Acts wanted to surprise his audience, not give them more of the familiar. Here are some surprises to note...

After being married for ten years Kim and I sensed there was something missing in our lives. We had a good marriage but we needed something to save us from ourselves. And by that I mean that everything had become far too familiar. Kim came from a tight-knit family in Timberlea. Everyone in Timberlea knew the Frasers! And I was sixth generation Haligonian, you couldn’t get much more Halifax than me. I had tried a political campaign and Kim tried Ministry in a variety of settings. Something was missing. We needed a light to our...

The writer of this morning’s Gospel text has two words for us, “stay awake!” We preachers are grateful for such backup, not to mention the encouragement to keep alert in case I do utter something relevant to your life. But that writer did not have you in mind when he wrote the text. If I fail to keep your attention the likely reason is that you are bored, distracted, numb, or indifferent. Keeping awake under those conditions is one thing, keeping awake in the context of our Gospel today is quite another story...

When people stand up at funerals and make reference to loved ones who have died they often express deep satisfaction that their mother is now reunited with their father or visa versa. We understand this. There is something deep inside all of us that hopes to be reconnected with those we love who have died. But interestingly in this debate between two large groups within the Jewish faith those who argued for resurrection and afterlife were making their case less because of family reunification and more because a God of love would never allow anything less than perfect justice to stand. In other words a God of truth and mercy would never allow injustice to stand...

For relaxation I like to watch authors share portions of their new book and then take questions from the audience, a bookstore found somewhere across the United States. Usually I just type “Politics and Prose”, the name of my all-time favorite bookstore (Washington, DC), into the youtube search engine. Many authors and book titles appear and then I scroll down till I find a topic or author that holds my interest. Last Sunday I did this and felt immediately drawn to Empathy: Why It Matters, and How to Get It by Roman Krznaric...

This week I spent time with three different families discussing plans to celebrate their loved ones lives. In two of these visits I was meeting the family for the first time. Those funerals present a challenge, how to get to know enough about the person who has died to make the service a meaningful time as family and friends celebrate a life. In 26 years I have learned questions to ask, to be patient with the responses and to keep asking for stories. Facts only go so far, obituaries are limited, only stories reveal the character and personality of the woman or man we mourn...

As a Minister I occasionally get calls from people with really happy news. I receive calls from new parents, from couples who are engaged, from new faces in the church who are finding a home at Bethany, from someone who had a test result that came back negative, from someone who received a surprise birthday present.

But more often than not the call is not good news. “My son is not doing well in school.” “I found a lump.” “I got laid off at work.” “My spouse left me.” “I don’t think I can live alone anymore.” “I can’t stop thinking about my loved one, s/he died two years ago. Isn’t it supposed to be getting better by now?”

And that’s the personal stuff. When our news was filled with stories about the refugees living in over-crowded camps I got calls. When the weather is particularly strange and unpredictable and climate change has us worried about the world our children will inherit, I get calls. When it seemed like murdered and missing aboriginal women were being reported every week with no end in sight for our First Nations communities, I got calls...

A few years ago I read an article about a woman who had died and left her entire estate to three charities. This woman lived in a small town in Nova Scotia where she had worked her whole life. A government employee, this woman never married, had no children and had accumulated all of her wealth from her own income. None of that would normally merit an article. Except the amount of the donation was millions of dollars. That’s hard to imagine. My first thought was that she must have inherited some of this fortune or perhaps won the lottery. Not true, the article included an interview with the Executor who shared that this woman had lived a very frugal life, had no commitments in her lifetime and had invested every cent of her income left over after basic services were paid...

There was a time in my life when I went to a lot of movies. Not now. In the 1980’s and 90’s I went to a movie a month. Now I am lucky to get to one a year. I don’t think movies are getting worse. Rather, I just that I have less free time. Movies are great for preachers, they tell stories in powerful ways, stories that are not only compelling in terms of the people we meet in the movie and follow till the ending but what these lives and these stories tell us about our lives, others’ lives, the world around us. Often when I am trying to explain someone, a family, a community, a culture, the best I can do to describe them is to refer to a film or scene from a film or character in a film...

One of the texts available to those Holy men who discussed and selected which books would be inserted into the Canon of Scripture was the Gospel of Thomas. It did not make the cut. But included in this book is a story much like the one we heard this morning in the Gospel of Luke, also found in the Gospel of Matthew. “Jesus said, the Kingdom is like a shepherd who had a hundred sheep. One of them went astray; it was the largest. He left the ninety-nine and sought for the one until he found it. After he had exerted himself, he said to the sheep, I love you more than the ninety-nine...”

Some of you know I have a part-time job in Dartmouth North and downtown Dartmouth helping people on Income Assistance access employment readiness programs. To do this work I need to be aware of all the great programs in our city that help people overcome barriers to employment. Last week I met the staff at Futureworx, a non-profit agency that trains Income Assistance clients so that they are ready to work at local restaurants and hotels...

Dorothee Soelle in her book The Strength of the Weak: Toward a Christian Feminist Identity tells the story of a Rabbi who asked his students how to recognize the moment when night ends and day begins. “Is it when, from a great distance, you can tell a dog from a sheep?” one student asked. “No,” said the Rabbi. “Is it when, from a great distance, you can tell a date palm from a fig tree?” another student asked. “No,” said the Rabbi. “Then when is it?” the students asked. “It is when you look into the face of any human creature and see your brother or your sister there. Until then, night is still with us."...

This morning’s sermon looks at chapters 6 & 7 of the text: Necessary Suffering and Home and Homesickness. This is the third part of our five part series on Richard Rohr’s Falling Upward. In the first sermon I shared with you Rohr’s belief that all of us need, crave, hunger for, a sense of identity, a set of beliefs, rituals, ways to make sense of the world we have inherited. This experience comes to us, or it doesn’t, at different parts of our chronological lives...

Richard Rohr’s book title Falling Upward is truly counter intuitive. In our culture, how we were raised, to fall, to fall on your face, is to be a loser. Ask Donald Trump! Trump defeated 16 other Republicans, most Governors, Senators, Congressmen, largely on his tweets and verbal assaults in debates and rallies, where he would label those who praised him as winners, good people, success stories and those who dared criticize him as idiots, losers, failures, disasters. And I am only using the kinder words he used...

For the next five weeks I will be sharing with you insights I have found in the pages of Fr. Richard Rohr’s book Falling Upward. This morning’s sermon looks at the first two chapters of the text: The Two Halves of Life and The Hero and The Heroine’s Journey. 

In 1988 my life was at a crossroads. I had just completed a six month work term with Frontier College teaching English to recent immigrants in the far, far north...