Corinne Plett with news from the 3rd annual summer camp

Who knew “extreme croquet” could be so much fun!  Yes, extreme croquet!  This was just one of the uniquely creative ideas campers came up with for the 3rd annual saint benedict’s table day camp.  The camp ran August 9-13th, and what a fantastic week it was!  Fourteen kids, aged 9-15, eagerly arrived each day and were met by our four kids.  Some of the campers were from St. Ben’s, others came as a result of a connection to our family, and five of the campers were African immigrants who came through The King’s School transitional program, their participation in the week made possible due to donations.

More news and a link to a wild slideshow comes after the jump

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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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A note from Jamie Howison:  Realizing that this post reflects my own personal tastes and biases, and that not everyone will share my sense that jazz music has the potential to “enact” theology and to embody something of the human search for the sacred, I still wanted to put this out there as a way of encouraging our commitment to connecting the arts to the life of faith. If you’re wanting to explore some of these themes a bit more, you can check out two other posts: “God’s Mind in the Music” and “Jazz and the Holy.”

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he Winnipeg Jazz Festival is just about to kick into high gear, offering up various opportunities to hear some great live music. Last night the legendary Sonny Rollins played what was billed as a “festival preview concert,” and it was a very fine way to kick things off. Very fine. Rollins will turn 80 in just three months, and while he walked and moved like an older man, he played with a startling level of  passion and power. His fresh and imaginative solo in the opening song ran close to 15 minutes, and never once was there any sign of his tiring. Great stuff.

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Last week when I was at General Synod in Halifax, we were treated to the debut performance of a unique theatre project written and performed by group of five young people. Coming from various church backgrounds, this theatre troupe has created a production built around the stories of some 70 people from across the Canadian church. By turns funny, poignant and provocative, “Roots Among the Rocks” takes its audience on a searching tour through questions of life, faith, doubt and struggle. The troupe will be in Winnipeg on July 3.

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ow do we find life, faith and authenticity in an ever-changing world, where faith, religion and ‘going to church’ are questioned on every side? Who is Church? Why do we continue to gather in this way? Roots Among the Rocks, a brand new play, explores some of these questions and opens up a whole lot more.

The show has been built using a process called collective creation, where the performers gathered stories from over seventy people, ages 11 – 95 from all over Canada. The stories were gathered from people in church, out of church, people who have stayed or left or struggle to find answers to deeper questions in life. Five actors and two directors have spent a month in the collective theatre process listening and talking, praying and laughing to bring to you the stories that they have heard.

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An invitation to teens (and others) to go a bit Looney…

On Saturday May 8, we’re planning to head over the the Winnipeg Art Gallery to take in an exhibit entitled The Art of Warner Bros. Cartoons, and then to go to Booth College for a bit of supper and to use their recreation room facility.  This is geared for the teens from saint ben’s, but is not certainly not limited to that age group.  Anyone who wants to join us for the gallery tour and/or the dinner event is most welcome.

We’ll meet at 3:00pm in the gallery lobby, and then at 5:00pm walk over to Booth and settle in there.  With dinner and some time to shoot pool and generally hang around, things should wind down sometime around 7:30pm.

So, if you want to take a look at some of the art of the Warner Bros. cartoon world, do join us.  Should be fun.

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he other night, Jeremiah our dreadlocked drummer  assembled an evening of music, drawing on some musicians from around saint ben’s whose music needs to be heard.  You can get samples from a couple of these artists a bit further into this post, so do keep reading.  On Saturday May 1, we were treated to an intimate concert by Anthony Sweet, Aimee Lane, and Trish & Brad Vrolijk, and the 60 or so people who came out had a simply great evening.  At the end, the consensus was that we should do this again (you hear that, Jeremiah?), maybe a couple of times over the year.

We asked a very modest donation of $5 as admission, with proceeds to the medical mission at El-Shaddai Church in Haiti and to HOME/Uganda.  Given that we took in just over $300, and that our only real expense for the evening was the $25 pizza bill to feed those musicians, we produced a nice little piece of “found money” for these two ministries.

So, a little more info on who played that night:

Anthony Sweet is a contributor to Beautiful Mercy, our collection of original art, music and writing.  Samples of his music can be found at on his mySpace page.

Aimee Lane is a young singer-songwriter, whose voice is heard in one of our Sunday evening music ensembles.  She too has tunes available on a mySpace page, along with some video of live performances.

Brad and Trish Vrolijk are both involved in one of our Sunday night music ensembles… but they don’t  have any music posted on line… yet.

So, great music, free coffee (as usual, fair trade), and a couple of good causes.  Next round, you really should join us.

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Rudy Regehr reflects on Crazy Heart and its relevance to Theology in the Dark

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his is the second outing to take place under the Theology in the Dark moniker. It’s a little later in the year than some of us would have liked for this to take place, I’m sure, but it seems it was meaningful for many who were along for the viewing and discussion.  Crazy Heart is actually based on a book of the same name. This is something I didn’t know until it was mentioned in the ensuing discussion. I’m not sure I’ll ever read that book. I don’t know that I need to. Having seen this movie now, it’s very clear why Jeff Bridges won his first ever acting Oscar for the role. For 111 minutes, Bridges becomes Blake and embodies all the characteristics about Blake that are so heartbreaking and truly drive this story.

When the movie opens we are given very subtle clues about the character we are about to meet. A beat up Chevy Suburban wanders lonely down an American highway, traffic busy in the oncoming lanes but no other vehicles accompanying the truck. There are several very beautiful and inspirational shots as the truck gradually makes its way to the next destination. We see the beauty of a sunset, one backdrop for this truck’s journey. When the truck finally arrives where it was heading, out steps Blake…cursing his manager as he realizes he’s been booked at a bowling alley for his next gig.

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or the third summer in a row, saint benedict’s table is collaborating with the Plett family to offer a truly unique summer day camp.  For five days in August, fourteen kids between the ages of  8 and 15 will descend on what we have come to call “the Plett Ranch,” (a great property, just minutes from Bird’s Hill Park) to play hard, do a bit of learning together, build a sense of connection to each other, and generally discover some things about themselves.

Monday August 9 through Friday August 13

$109+GST

There are only three spaces still available!

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This past weekend, a group of about 45 people from saint benedict’s table headed out to Camp Cedarwood (and don’t let the word “camp” fool you… the place is pretty comfortable!) to spend a few days engaged in play (to see a pictorial review of the weekend, just click here). We played a heroic game of broomball, endless rounds of cards and board games, air hockey and foosball…  but most significantly we “played” in the parables of Jesus; What follows in this post is some of the material that informed our approach, liberally citing the work of Robert Farrar Capon.

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want to begin this weekend with a quote from the theologian who has more informed my reading of parables than has anyone else… Robert Farrar Capon.  This is from The Parables of the Kingdom, which is the first in Robert’s trilogy on the parables, wherein he sets out why we should be playful in our approach both to the parables specifically and to the scriptures in general:

… in high seriousness and with equally high glee, we should play with Scripture.  The (treasure) of the kingdom is not something to be kept in the attic and dragged out only on Sundays for loan exhibitions in museums; nor is it something that people should stare at only when wearing solemn faces and three-piece suits.  We may be the (masters) of the treasure of God, but we were meant first of all to spend huge amounts of time in the attic just poring over it and trying all of it for size.  And we were meant, above all, to invite the world up into the attic to play dress-up with us.  We are supposed to be kids, you see:  ‘I thank you, Father, Lord of heaven and earth, that you have hidden these things from the wise and prudent, and revealed them to babes.’  You can’t get more encouragement than that for holy horsing around.” (p. 173)

So, this weekend we’ll be doing a bit of “holy horsing around,” with parables as our starting point.  But first, a few opening notes on the nature of parables. (more…)

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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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