an artist profile of Jodi McLaren

From time to time we try to offer something by way of a profile of one of the artists who calls saint benedict’s table home. Last summer we did feature pieces on two recording artists – Jaylene Johnson and Alana Levandoski - so this year it seemed right to highlight the work of one of our visual artists. Not that Jodi isn’t also passionate about music… the photograph below was taken on one of the Sunday evenings that she was singing and playing a bit of percussion with one of our music ensembles.

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or as long as she can remember, colour has caught the attention of Jodi McLaren. “I have always loved colour,” she commented. “I bought a badge the other day that said ‘Life is too short for beige.’” And since the age of eight Jodi has never not had some project on the go. For years, it was beadwork and needlework of one form or another; craft projects into which she would always insert a bit of her own personal touch, along with that passion for colour.

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F ather, we come to you in prayer this mid-summer Sunday filled with the joy of your presence, the faith as confessed Christians, and the hope of your ongoing intersection of our personal and vocational lives.  Just as we witness rich growth in vegetation of both food and flowers in our gardens, tonight’s lesson speaks to the church family being rooted,  built up and established – with the tender balance of rain and  resistance;  sunshine and service.  We are also reminded that consistent, persistent daily prayer can be motivated by the assurance that even if inconvenienced, God will surely answer our petitions.  We pray to God, who when we ask, opens the door. (more…)

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a sermon on the compact version of “the Lord’s Prayer,”  Luke 11:1-13

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esus was praying in a certain place, and after he had finished, one of his disciples said to him, ‘Lord, teach us to pray, as John taught his disciples.’”

The disciples are looking for what? Some sort of spiritual formation or religious training of the sort that John the Baptist seems to have offered to his own disciples? Or maybe they just want something of what they see in Jesus; again and again, they’ve watched him quietly slip off into a space on his own and enter into prayer – into comm-union – with God. We want that, they think to themselves. (more…)

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On Mike Koop’s latest adventures in the recording studio

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ver heard a Hammond B3 organ? Actually, we can pretty much guarantee that you have. Hammond organs provide that classic sound on so many recordings from the 50s through the 70s and beyond. Think “Green Onions” by Booker T. and the M.G.s, or “Gimme Some Lovin’” by the Spencer Davis Group. Think Santana, Three Dog Night, The Allman Brothers, and Tom Petty. Now, think Mike Koop’s Multitude of Sins. Actually, listen to a sample of Al Fehr’s work on a Hammond B3, recorded just this past weekend at Signpost Studio.

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Mike’s version of “I Woke Up this Morning” by Roosevelt Graves

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Icall the community into a time of prayer. Teacher, we are often worried and upset about many things when only one thing is needed. Show us how to choose what is better, even if that means that dinner will be a little late. Sometimes, it is better to sit and listen to a story than to keep to a schedule. Today, as we sit in freedom and safety, we remember the stories of those around the world who are oppressed, in danger, and without the means to meet their basic needs. We have heard and recall the stories of people displaced from their homes in China due to flooding, and those who have lost loved ones in the typhoon that hit the Philippines earlier this week. We recall the three-month-long story of oil gushing into the Gulf of Mexico, and feel both relief that the leak has been stopped and grief for the damage that has been irrevocably done: to people’s livelihoods, to plants and animals, and to the ocean itself. We pray for justice and peace around the world. We pray that the hungry would be fed. We ask for freedom for all who are oppressed. We request healing and rebirth for this groaning planet. As we remember the stories, we also ask to have the courage to contribute well to the ongoing plotline, writing what good we can manage among the fragmented sentences.

Lord, in your mercy, hear our prayer.

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a sermon on Colossians 1:15-20

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mere fifteen verses into his letter to the church in Colossae, Paul suddenly launches into song. At first glance, we might not recognize it as such, as most of our translations don’t show the text as being of a different character from Paul’s usual prose. I suspect as we heard these verses read aloud here tonight, very few people would have had any sense that they were hearing poetry.

But that is what we read, and while he was composing his letter to the Colossian church, if Paul didn’t quite burst into song surely his soul was singing as these words were scratched across the parchment. Hear those words again:

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A couple of Sundays back, someone who might be called a bit of a “lost stranger” wandered across the church yard, and ended up coming into the church and connecting with a couple of different people in the few minutes that preceded the beginning of worship. For all that he came across as a pretty rough looking character – and for all that he was more than just a drink or two on his way – the guy was strangely vulnerable. One of the people he talked with that night wrote the following meditation, imagining how it all looked from the stranger’s perspective. And he wasn’t just a nameless stranger. He said his name was Joey.

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ife is full of mistakes. I walked through the wrong door. I was hoping to score a free cup of coffee from this church, so I asked a girl standing outside the front doors to bring me a cup, and she told me to come in and get it myself. I waited around outside for a minute but another lady started asking me for cigarettes and I didn’t have any to spare. Besides, free coffee seemed like as good a reason as any to walk into a church and so I did.

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aint ben’s regular Robert Johannson is mounting a one-man play in this year’s Winnipeg Fringe Festival, and we wanted to pass along a bit of information regarding the production. Entitled Power, the production is written and performed by Robert, and focuses on the person and character of the key Winnipeg social reformer J.S. Woodsworth.

This is what the playright has to say about his production:

Caught up in an epic struggle for political power, J.S. Woodsworth retells the story of January 1926. Woodsworth, leader of the Independent Labour Party meets for dinner with William Lyon McKenzie King, the Liberal Prime Minister and ledaer of the first minority government in Canadian history. King invited him to dinner to discuss religion, politics, unemployment, the Winnipeg General Strike, the Ludlow Massacre, and King’s intentions in regard to Old Age Pensions and Relief for the Unemployed. A look at the timeless issues of principles, politics and raw political power.

Power runs at Venue 5: Son of Warehouse seven times during the festival; for details on dates and times, just click here.

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Voluntary simplicity as an alternative to extinction

According to writer and educator Mark Burch, this society’s habits and assumptions around what makes for a good and desirable life have placed us on a course toward economic and ecological collapse. Yet while he is unflinching in his critique of consumerism and over-consumption, Burch is not without hope, as he challenges us to consider ways to gracefully step aside and strike out along an alternative pathway of personal, spiritual and cultural development.

In this edition of ideaExchange Burch calls on us to find a better life with less. There are three ways to hear this podcast (runs 1:00:02):

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

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More information about Mark Burch after the jump.

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a sermon for the Feast of St. Benedict, on Luke 10:25-37

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onight we’re marking not only the 7th  Sunday after Pentecost, but also the Feast of St Benedict; our forebear in this faith, whose name this community bears. According to Stanley Hauerwas, the church is a “story-formed community;” a people that derives its common identity through the stories it tells.  It is one of the reasons that church communities in this tradition are named for saints; to locate our life together in the context of a story of someone who has walked before us, and about whom there might just be a story worth telling. Benedict has much to teach us about what makes for a community of disciples, but tonight I want to focus on one particular piece; the extension of hospitality.

In his rule for communities, Benedict wrote, “All guests who present themselves are to be welcomed as Christ, who said: ‘I was a stranger and you welcomed me.’” Lest the monastic communities he founded had any question as to what kind of guest Benedict might have been talking about, he went on to add that “Great care and concern are to be shown in receiving poor people and pilgrims, because in them more particularly Christ is received.”

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