Community garden

This weekend our community garden began to take shape in our backyard. The vegetable garden is joined by four 6' x 10' flower gardens that await four "church gardeners" to plant and oversee them. Within the next two weeks gravel for pathways, soil and mulch for the gardens will be delivered.

Everyone interested in assisting with spreading of gravel and soil, as well as those who would like to make the gardens sprout, please speak to Mimi or Gail regarding specifics of the schedule.

We would be grateful for donated plants, and are looking for some funding for rain barrels.

Mimi

Embodying Scripture through Movement

Following a summer break, our weekly Bible Study recommences on Tuesday, September 14. We will meet, as usual, in the Parish Hall at 7:00 p.m.

Our dear friend Tony Johnson has designed this course entitled

"Embodying Scripture through Movement"

The program schedule is as follows:

Introduction:

Journey through the Book of Mark

Music: Saint Matthews Passion Tears from Heaven

Week One: Mark Chapter 13 verses 1-33

Week Two: Mark Chapter 14 verses 12-31,verses 43-73

Week Three: Mark Chapter 15 verses 1-15

Week Four: Mark: 15 verses: 21-40

Reflection and discussion

How do you identify with the Passion story and what role you play within the story?

What ways does this story speak to you today.

Journey Through the Book of Acts

Week Five: Acts: Chapter 4 verses: 1-36

Week Six: Acts: Chapter 6 verses: 1-9; Acts: Chapter 9 verses: 1-19

Reflection and Discussion

How do you identify with these readings and what role you play in the readings.

How does these readings reflect on your community?

Whose own the journey with you in your community and what gifts they bring?

What do we believe and experiences through the gospels?

How has these readings scripture transform your live and your call to serve?

_____________________________________________________

I'm sure that this will be an enlightening, moving, educational and knowing Tony, an entertaining course. Please do join us.

Mick

“The Lord is my Shepherd…”

This line of Psalm 23 has kept popping into my head this summer. The psalm is one of my favorites, as it is of many people; what Christian wouldn’t find comfort in the beautiful scene evoked by green pastures and still waters of the first few verses?

This psalm is also a popular one for funerals, and it is this association that I find striking as the opening line “The Lord is my Shepherd” has crept into my mind over the last few months. No, I have not been to any funerals (knock on wood), but I have found myself in mourning over the loss of St. Joseph’s priest. Weeks of supply priests, graciously fulfilling their sacramental duty and privilege, have only exposed all the more the deep emptiness that has pervaded my soul in the absence of our vicar. Don’t get me wrong, St. Joseph’s is a wonderful church body made up of committed people; I would not want to wander through “the valley of the shadow of” loss together with any other group of lay persons (as well as our beloved deacon). But the struggle to continue “finding our way together” without a priest has been like being “sheep without a shepherd”—at least, this is how I have felt, and others may share these weighty sentiments.

So when the words “The Lord is my Shepherd” resound within me, I cannot help but trust it to be the voice of the Spirit, lovingly inviting me to remember and trust that God has not abandoned us. God has continued to lead us, carry us, and provide for us, and God has given and will give healing comfort to us through God’s own presence among us. Whatever has happened and may happen, we truly are not without a Shepherd in our Savior Jesus Christ.

“The Lord is our Shepherd, we lack nothing.

The Lord makes us lie down in green pastures, the Lord leads us beside quiet waters, the Lord refreshes our soul.

The Lord guides us along the right paths for the Lord’s namesake.

Even though we walk through the darkest valley, we will fear no evil,

for You are with us; Your rod and Your staff, they comfort us.

You prepare a table before us in the presence of our enemies.

You anoint our head with oil; our cup overflows.

Surely Your goodness and love will follow us all the days of our life,

and we will dwell in the house of the Lord forever.”

Alleluia.

-jb

Another busy breakfast

Morning Prayer reverted to the original time of 8 a.m. today. This was welcomed by most, not least by those who are not early morning people and had found the 7:30 a.m. start a tad too early.

During the experimental earlier start, numbers had dropped, but so had numbers attending breakfast, even more so, in fact.

Imagine my delight when, this morning, I found myself busy in the kitchen cooking eggs, making toast for nine, and for the first time in six or seven weeks running out of, rather than throwing out, coffee. My spirits were lifted on seeing lively discussions around and about the breakfast table on a wide range of topics. It was great to see "M" back following an absence, looking well and instructing me how to cook the eggs. "C" had a headache(?), but still managed to be his incorrigible self, "Big S" was planning to remove his weather-beaten tent and replace it with another, new model, in the same spot. “Mick,” he shouts, “I need to borrow your car. I’m moving today and have some furniture to shift”.

Following these past weeks, when on some mornings we had none of the guys in for breakfast, I was struggling with the feeling of “what are we doing wrong?” What I realize now is that in switching the Morning Prayer time and the consequential earlier start for breakfast, we did not take in the feelings of all our community.

St. Joe’s is a community for those both inside and outside the buildings. Would we have told our family at home that “breakfast is now at 8, not 7:30?” Of course not. We would have asked them what they felt about the change. Lesson learned. Thank you guys, you contribute to my life more that I sometimes admit.

Mick