Reflections on looking for the light....

This past Sunday I took part in the worship service at Stairs Memorial Church in Dartmouth.  Their minister, Sarah, has been speaking about the Season of Creation.  With a small worship team, she has designed a sermon series based on the unfolding of creation from the Genesis story.  I love how it truly has been unfolding.  They have shown that visibly with a large wall hanging just behind the communion table.  This was the first Sunday - not much there other than showing the world as being light in the midst of the darkness around it.

Each week the kids are invited to add whatever is the focus for that day - earth, sky, planets, sun and moon, animals....this was the third week.

This week it was my turn to talk about the creation of humans.  I found a wonderful story in Krista Tippett's book: Becoming Wise - an inquiry into the mystery and art of living.  She was interviewing Rachel Naomi Remen - a Jewish woman - who told her the story that was told to her by her grandfather, a Hassidic Rabbi.  But the story itself is much older than that - it comes from the 14th Century and is called "the Birthday of the World".

In the beginning there was only the Holy darkness - the source of life.  In the course of history, at a moment in time, this world - the world of a thousand things - emerged from the heart of the Holy darkness as a great ray of light.  And then, perhaps because this is a Jewish story, there was an accident.  The vessels containing the light of the world - the wholeness of the world - broke and the light was scattered into a thousand fragments of light.  These fragments fell into all events and all people, where they remain hidden until this very day.

Rachel went on to say that her grandfather explained that the human race is a response to this accident.  We are here because we are born with the capacity to find this hidden light in all events and all people, and to lift it up and make it visible once again - to restore the innate wholeness of the world.

This is very much a collective task - carried out by all who came before us, by those of us in the here and now, and by those who are yet to be born.  And it is about healing the world that is closest to you - that world that you can touch.

I absolutely love that story - it speaks to how I want to live my life - to be bringing out the light that is surely present all around us, if we but tune in.

Yesterday morning I was sitting at my dining room table looking out over the water, and I pulled an angel card.  This is the one that showed up:

As I finished my breakfast and thought about that word, I was listening to The Current on CBC.  Anna Maria Tremonti was interviewing a man who has been called "The Toy Smuggler".  Here are a few excerpts I took from the CBC website (well worth reading if you get a chance):

With a bag full of Barbies, Rami Adham walks over 12 hours into war-torn Syria across the Turkish border. 

The 44-year-old father of six, who has lived in Finland since 1989, is originally from Aleppo. For the past four years, he has been making this perilous journey in order to distribute medicine, money and, most importantly, toys to the children of war-torn Syria.

"I started going to Syria in early 2012 to deliver aid. I wanted to see my people face to face, to see exactly what they need."

Adham has made 28 trips into Syria and has distributed over 20,000 toys to children in Aleppo and surrounding refugee camps.  He says "words can't describe" the feeling of handing out toys to children living through a war.  

"[It's] the least I can do to restore some of their childhood." 

It was a powerful interview.  He said he was inspired to take toys by his own 3 year old daughter, who, when she heard his plan to go to Alleppo, went and filled a bag with her own toys for him to take.  

And there's my sermon for the day:  children can lead us to figure out how to bring out the light that is there in all events and all people. It has been difficult to think of any light in relation to the frightening and desperate situation in Alleppo.  This story doesn't take away from that reality - but it is a reminder of the heart-felt prayer that somehow children be allowed to be children, even in the midst of such violence and despair.

I was thinking about what pictures of children I could show, and remembered this one from a family dance we had last spring at our church - this little girl is going through some major health difficulties right now, so this picture seems all that much more poignant somehow - that we need to figure out how to keep on dancing whenever we can cause who knows when and how our lives may turn upside down.

This afternoon my partner, Art, will be arriving in Halifax.  We have been offered the huge gift of a cabin to stay at near Yarmouth - about 3 1/2 hours south of Halifax.  So I am going to have yet another transportation challenge - we are renting a car and I have to figure out how to drive it from the airport to our apartment!  And then tomorrow we will head on a bit of a road trip.  Since we will have very spotty access to the internet (and because I will have company and won't feel the need to be quite so chatty through my blog connection to all of you!) I likely won't be posting any new entries for a few days.  The leaves are becoming ever more impressive with their reds and yellows and oranges - looking forward to showing you the beauty of October in Nova Scotia!