The text of an address given at the official launch for Beautiful Mercy by our senior editor, Bramwell Ryan.

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t’s a delight you have joined us on a night I thought – at times – would never come.

Yesterday morning was another long-anticipated time for me. Around 1 am I completed an 18-day stretch covering the Olympics. It was quite an experience for a confirmed non-jock to spend 12 or more hours a day immersed in the world of sports.

And that experience, while physically and mentally exhausting, was also a fascinating look into a world I don’t usually work in… in this case the world of television sports coverage. I learned a lot while I was in the locker room, so to speak.

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The other night we threw a bit of a party at McNally Robinson Booksellers (and to see a series of photographs from the event, just click here) in celebration of the official release of Beautiful Mercy | A Book of Hours. With readings by Catherine Pate and Brett Schmall, music by Steve Bell, Mike Koop, Jaylene Johnson and Gord Johnson, and brief reflections from Jamie Howison and from the book’s senior editor Bramwell Ryan, the standing room crowd in the McNally’s Prairie Ink restaurant was offered a great sampling of what all went in to making this book and CD project work.  What follows here is Jamie’s reflection on the making of art.

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or tens of thousands of years, humans have used art to try to make sense of the world in which we live.  Over centuries and millennia, stories have been told, songs sung, dances created, images painted and carved and sculpted.  And we are a part of that.

The community that tonight launches the project called Beautiful Mercy | A Book of Hours stands in a biblical tradition that tells stories, some of which are almost 4000 years old.  We read and we sing psalms and the poetic songs of prophets like Isaiah, that take us back hundreds and hundreds of years before the birth of Christ.   We shape our imaginations through the four gospels, each of which is an artfully presented story of the life of Jesus of Nazareth, who himself told those artful stories called parables.

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very year during February, we hold an open congregational meeting aimed at any and all who consider themselves a part of saint benedict’s table.  The past year is reviewed, the finances are considered, and a bit of dreaming and goal-setting is put on the table for wider consideration and discernment.  This year’s meeting takes place on Sunday February 21 at 4:00pm, followed by a supper at 5:30 and worship at 7:00.  This really is an open meeting, so if you’re interested in joining us, just contact us so that we can add you to the list for the meal.

If you keep reading here, you’ll find my refection for the year, followed by one from our music leader, Larry Campbell, and one from John Berard, our part-time ministry coordinator.  Later in the week, we’ll add a bit of a financial summary for the year.  Even if you can’t attend the meeting, these reports will give you a good sense of what all makes us tick.

Jamie Howison

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An invitation to our Wednesday evening Lenten series

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he Claim Upon Us: Learning Lent with Dietrich Bonhoeffer – Five Wednesdays in Lent:  February 24 and March 3, 10, 17 and 24, presented by saint benedict’s table in cooperation with the congregation of All Saints’ Church.

Each of the gatherings will be built around a simple service of Compline, into which will be set a reflection by Dr Christopher Holmes about what we might learn from the thought, faith, and witness of the great German theologian Dietrich Bonhoeffer. With so much of his life and work carried out under the shadow of the Third Reich, Bonhoeffer essentially embodies a Lenten and wilderness Christianity.

We will meet at All Saints Church, located at the corner of Broadway and Osborne, with each session beginning at 7:00pm.

You are also welcome to join us for our Ash Wednesday Liturgy on February 17 at 7:00pm.

Dr Christopher Holmes is associate professor of Theology and Ethics at Providence Seminary, and is currently serving as a transitional deacon at saint benedict’s table. In the spring of 2010 Chris will assume the position of senior lecturer in Theology at the University of Otago in Dunedin, New Zealand.

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Our first round of doing theology in the dark…

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hile racial segregation in South Africa had its roots firmly planted in colonial times it wasn’t until the general election of 1948 that the outgrowth was fully felt as Apartheid (where the rights of the majority blacks were dismissed and minority rule by whites was entrenched). As official government policy, apartheid was a legal system of racial segregation enforced in South Africa between 1948 and 1994. In May of 1994, after years of anti-apartheid activism and imprisonment, Nelson Mandela became the first black President of South Africa in that country’s first multi-racial general election. With a deep and violent racial divide and a new black president, the question on everybody’s mind the day Mandela came to office had to have been, “how does he even begin to envision balancing black aspirations with white fears?”  On June 24, 1995, a rugby game was played that changed the hearts and minds of millions, and for a moment those aspirations and fears were forged into something beyond expectation …  a collective sense of greatness.

Based on the book by John Carlin, Playing the Enemy: Nelson Mandela and the Game that Made a Nation the film Invictus is the newest project from director Clint Eastwood, and was the first to be viewed in a new occasional series we are calling “theology in the dark”. The film is about how Mandela (portrayed well by Morgan Freeman), in the early days of his presidency, set out to re-define South Africa and galvanize a country ripped apart by racial divides, by using the World Cup of Rugby which South Africa was set to host. The dilemma was that the dominantly white Afrikaner Springbok national rugby team was beloved by the white Afrikaners and despised by the blacks.  And frankly, at that point they were  just not a very good team. Mandela set out to enlist the help of team captain Francois Pienaar (Matt Damon) by inspiring him towards building a better team and to go just beyond the expectations of those around them and consider what was then unlikely – win the world cup of rugby.

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o, alongside of the contemplative retreat that we’re holding at St Benedict’s Monastery in February, we’re going to once again head out to Camp Cedarwood for a decidedly noisier and more active version of a church weekend.  The theme for this one is “Playing with Parables”, and we assure you that we will taking a very playful approach to some of Jesus’ stories.

Cedarwood is a comfortable conference facility with lots of options for indoor and outdoor activity.  Time to learn, pray, play, eat, and just relax together… and we promise, the schedule will have lots of time for the playing, eating and relaxing.  Last year on the same weekend, we caught some of the best weather of the whole winter, allowing us to use not only the ice slide but also to hold one of the greatest – and wettest – broom-ball games on record.  You’ll want to bring winter gear, but also to think about shoes or boots that can get wet; there will be a second round of broom-ball.

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Here are the details on our upcoming retreat weekend

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o why would you want to sign up to spend a weekend of relatively free and unstructured time, hanging around at a monastery? Well, maybe because every now and then it is a really good thing to leave behind the television, phone, computer and everything else that distracts us and ties us down, to spend a few days just being… breathing, sleeping, walking, reading, praying, maybe having a conversation or two, and in the midst of that getting back a bit of focus in life.

Maybe the real question is “why wouldn’t you want to spend the weekend of February 12-14 on our retreat at St Benedict’s Monastery?”

We have 20 spaces reserved for this retreat, which begins at 7:00pm on Friday February 12, and finishes up in the afternoon of Sunday February 14.  There will be a bit of structure provided, but not so much as to overwhelm a big part of going on retreat… which is to actually retreat from a whole lot of obligations.

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Last month, we hosted the writer and new monastic Jonathan Wilson-Hartgrove for a series of events in and around our church.  This post gives a bit of background as to where our connection to Jonathan came from, and what it might mean for us over the coming months.  To get a little more context, you can take a look at an outline of the events themselves posted on this site, or you can head to Jonathan’s very fine website, and maybe take a listen to one of the lectures posted in his media section.

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itting at the gate in the Minneapolis airport, waiting to catch my flight on the commuter plane up to St Cloud, I began to play a little internal game.  Who in this little gathering of twenty passengers was headed to the Collegeville Institute, to take part in the 2008 “Writing and the Pastoral Life” summer program?  This was a retreat/workshop designed for a dozen participants in active pastoral ministry, all of whom understand writing to be a key part of the pastoral vocation.  Our facilitator for the week was to be Eugene Peterson, and the whole thing (right down to this quick flight from Minneapolis to St Cloud) was funded by the Lilly Foundation.   “Surely that guy over there is in our group,” I thought, “everything about him just screams ‘pastor’.”  And from the samples of writing we’d all been asked to submit, I thought I’d recognized someone else who fit the bill.  This was going to be an easy game to win

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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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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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