For this month’s version of ideaExchange, we’re offering up a conversation between two people with rather different views on how we should keep the feast that is Christmas.  Join us this Saturday, December 5 at 7:30pm at Aqua Books… and come ready to offer up your own opinion…  For a bit of a preview of the conversation, you can read an interview published last December in the Christian Week, in which reporter Josiah Neufeld chatted with our two guests for the evening.

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hristmas: how should we keep the feast? A conversation with Gerry Bowler and Aiden Enns. It really goes without saying that by this point in our movement toward December 25th, many us will have already been caught up in the flurry of activities that almost inevitably comes our way during the final few weeks before Christmas Day. Some will embrace this time of year in all that it brings – maybe even relishing those trips to the mall to find the “perfect gift” – while others will at least want to ask a few questions about what it all really means.

Gerry Bowler would count himself as one of those  in the “embrace the season” side of things.  Author of “The World Encyclopedia of Christmas“ and of “Santa Claus: A Biography”, he has made a bit of a mark as a Christmas guy.  Aiden Enns, on the other hand, tends to see this feast through very different eyes. While anything but a Scrooge, Aiden is a founding figure in the “Buy Nothing Christmas” movement, as well as the publisher of “Geez Magazine“.

We’ve invited Gerry and Aiden to offer up their particular views on the season, and then will turn the microphone over to the gathered audience to extend the conversation.

Aqua Books is located at 274 Garry Street in downtown Winnipeg, just a short walk south of Portage Avenue.

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e are slowly approaching the shortest day of the year known as solstice.  The earth rejoices at the coming of the Saviour.  We are also approaching a season that will pull us in every direction imaginable.  May we assume a stance of watchfulness and waiting for the coming of the Saviour.

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a saint benedict’s table resource for home use

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he crush is on… everywhere you go there are Christmas decorations, piped-in songs and carols, and the endless push to spend, spend, spend.  There is another way to mark this season.

This little resource contains a few ideas as to how you might bring Advent home, so that when the great feast that is Christmas arrives you’ll be able to welcome it with freshness, not with a sense of being exhausted by all the noise and clatter.

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Last winter, as part of our goal of giving a minimum of 5% of our offering income to ministries outside of our own church walls, saint ben’s sent a donation of $1000 to support the Education Medical Aid and Service (EMAS) Healthcare Mission to Haiti. Our connection to this work is through saint ben’s members Pierre and Daniel Plourde.  Here’s an update on how the work for 2010 is unfolding, and how others from the community can become involved. You can also find a great story archived from the Winnipeg Free Press, about how this medical work has extended onto the soccer field…

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r. Pierre Plourde and his son Daniel are preparing for their next trip to Haiti from February 5th to 14th 2010. This will be Daniel’s fifth trip to Haiti, where he actively participates in a healthcare mission outreach to the community of Bon Repos (in Port-au-Prince), a deprived community where a local church has been running a feeding centre for up to 300 malnourished children since 1994 (El-Shaddai Feeding Centre) and a primary school since 2005.
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“Christianity is basically amoral:” Dietrich Bonhoeffer in Ethics Today.

Both as a daringly original theologian and as a modern martyr, Dietrich Bonhoeffer continues to challenge and stretch the imagination of the church. Perhaps best remembered for his resistance to Hitler and Nazism – a theme explored last year in an ideaExchange session – Bonhoeffer’s theological legacy includes his creative treatment of Christian ethics.  In this podcast, Dr Christopher Holmes considers Bonhoeffer’s view of ethics; a view which challenges many of the assumptions around how we often think of what makes for an ethical life.

It is widely assumed that living ethically involves the living of a principled life. Dietrich Bonhoeffer disagrees. For him “there is no Christian ethic.” By calling men and women’s attention away from principles and to the concrete situation of crisis with which God confronts human beings in the giving of his will, Bonhoeffer presents an arrestingly refreshing concept of ethics. The presentation will follow and discuss Bonhoeffer’s early lecture Basic Questions of a Christian Ethic,  which he delivered in Barcelona, Spain in the winter of 1928 at the young age of 25.

Christopher Holmes is Associate Professor of Theology and Ethics at Providence Seminary and an ordained deacon of the Anglican Church of Canada, currently serving a ministry placement at saint benedict’s table.

There are three ways to hear this ideaExchange podcast (runs 30:44):

• click on the arrow below
• use the podcast widget in the left sidebar
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Due to technical difficulties the question & answer session following the presentation is unavailable.

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This is the text of a sermon preached at saint benedict’s table by Jamie Howison on Sunday November 22, 2009.  We are now marking the end of five years since we celebrated our official “birth” as a worshipping community, back on the first Sunday of Advent 2004, and it seemed to make sense to revisit some of what we set out as being at the heart of our vision and identity.

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his is the final Sunday of the church year – a feast day called “The Reign of Christ” or “Christ the King” – which accounts for why the lectionary suddenly offers us two very different readings about kingship.  The first one (2 Samuel 23:1-7) we read was the final public statement from King David, set very close to the end of his life, in which he celebrates the unity of his kingship with that of God; in which he points to “the everlasting covenant” between the Lord and the house of David as the thing that seals his own reign as having been good.

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s a community of believers we gather to hear your word, learn your ways and be transformed by your spirit.  We each carry cares and troubles, we each are grateful for many things, we each have joys to share and so we bring them all to you. There is so much pain in our world this night, we cannot imagine where to begin.  We think of far away places, where water is not clean, and disease is all too prevalent.  We see images of hungry children, who are struggling to even exist.  We watch as people run for their lives during violent attacks.  It is all too easy to dismiss and become  disinterested, help us to remain compassionate.  Teach us to recognise the truth of each person’s value in your eyes.
Lord in your mercy… hear our prayer.

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This is just a brief follow-up on the recent series of events we hosted with the writer and new monastic Jonathan Wilson-Hartgrove.  A longer reflection will follow at some point in the coming days…  You can take a look at a feature article on these events in the latest issue of the ChristianWeek, as well as a piece from the October 14 edition of the Winnipeg Free Press.

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call the community into a time of prayer.

God we gather as your servants this evening, offering up our prayers and petitions to you.  In our desire to know you better, may we be patient and willing listeners of your voice.  May our lives be replete with love, assuring that we never mistake our living as being prompted by anything but, and may those around us who witness our living recognize well the source.
In your mercy, Lord hear our prayer.

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Spiritual angles on H1N1

Winter is coming,  concerns about a possible H1N1 pandemic are filling the media and urgent questions seem to be everywhere. Apparently, more than half of Canadians won’t be getting their H1N1 flu shot – why? Are there any spiritual reasons for not getting vaccinated? Who can we trust – government? the medical community? the media?

Someone with lots of answers drawn from many years of working in the area of infectious disease is Dr. Pierre Plourde – Medical Officer of Health with the Winnipeg Regional Health Authority. Pierre has been involved with high level H1N1 discussions and is a member of the National Advisory Committee on Immunization.

He is also a member of saint benedict’s table and recently worked with Jamie preparing a recommendation for the church on what to do in the face of H1N1.

At the end of October Pierre was interviewed by Drew Marshall, the host of a southern Ontario radio talk show focusing on spiritual issues, and we thought we would post the audio of that discussion as a timely reminder to us at St Ben’s that we’re still grappling with these pandemic issues ourselves.

There are three ways to hear this presentation (runs 21:51):

• click on the arrow below
• use the podcast widget in the left sidebar
• click here to download the episode from iTunes

Audio clip: Adobe Flash Player (version 9 or above) is required to play this audio clip. Download the latest version here. You also need to have JavaScript enabled in your browser.

Audio courtesy of the Drew Marshall Show.

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