When you have a headache, you take Tylenol. When you have a stomach bug, perhaps you reach for the Pepto Bismol. A cut – best grab a Band-Aid, or a tensor bandage for your sprained ankle. But what of the pain of loneliness? Hopelessness? Uncertainty and Boredom? The Pandemic that we are still weathering, has … Continue reading Music as Medicine
As we begin another planetary circle around the sun, there is something we need to add to our list of new year resolutions. Our lives have become so very busy and stressed. It seems as if time is speeding up, and the more we do to catch up, the less we are able. This year, we … Continue reading The Rest Between Notes
For over a decade, our congregation has marked the end of the holiday season with a ‘Mirth and Music Service’ that departs from our standard Sunday format, and offers listeners an hour to ‘decompress from holiday stress.’ Our theme is drawn from the words of award-winning Oregon writer, Brian Doyle, who wrote ‘I sing a song … Continue reading Song of Believing: A Service of Music and the Spoken Word
Let’s reclaim Boxing Day! Let’s yank it back from shouting adverts and the glaring lights of consumer frenzy! The true meaning of Boxing Day is generosity. In particular, a day to give generously to people outside your family. This year as part of the Boxing Day Service, we will create ‘boxes’ for the Unitarian Shelter … Continue reading Boxing It Up & Reclaiming This Day
Charles Dickens wrote A Christmas Carol in 1843*, as he struggled with the meaning of his life and its reflection in the state church. He was looking for a new perspective, one freer of thought and more rooted in the realities of his day. The drama of Dickens struggle is brought to life in the … Continue reading A Christmas Carol Eve
In the dark of winter, deep in our collective psyches, hides the divine dance between our masculine and feminine self. It is the drama of the winter solstice that enacts the awakening of the divine feminine. Beckoned, kissed and honoured, the divine feminine emerges and takes her place of wisdom. To join any of our … Continue reading The Divine Drama in Winter Solstice
What is it like to live “below” middle class? What is it like to be at a church with a middle class culture for those “below” middle class? Socioeconomic class identity is about both culture and finances and is a topic we rarely talk openly and directly about. Let’s start a conversation. Anna Isaacs is … Continue reading Class and Money
There is no better way to understand the emotions and feelings of another person than to walk in their shoes. A close second is to portray a character that walks in their shoes. This is where drama comes in. Through imagining, we experience situations and lives not our own. Those experiences can be vividly real … Continue reading Drama and the Art of Empathy
Where do creative ideas come from? How do you get in touch with that source? For someone who is not a “natural” and must work to develop artistic inspiration, this will be a reflection on my personal journey toward artistic expression, and how I learned to “see” what mattered. Rev Frances Deverell is a … Continue reading Painting and the Art of Observation
The art of Indigenous painter Ken Monkman has shaken and shocked both the Canadian art world and the political world. Monkman is a visual disrupter at the intersection of art, history, sexuality and politics. To be a creative disrupter is to take familiar images and insert the unfamiliar. In so doing the observer is shocked … Continue reading Artist as Disruptor
