10 Trinity Sq
Toronto, ON
M5G 1B1
416-598-4521
416-598-1432 (fax)
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Sun. 10:30 am, 2:00pm;
Wed. 12:15 pm
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reflections and sermons posted here are the work of individual members of Holy Trinity. Opinions expressed are those of the writer or preacher and do not necessarily reflect an official or even popular opinion within the parish.
Neat and Tidy?
SARA BOYLES
I like things clean and tidy. I know I can go with the flow but really, deep down, most of the time, I like things to be predictable. I like to know what is coming. I like my world neat, tidy and everybody happy.
The question is, "What happens when the world is not flowing that way?" Do I turn to my horoscope and find out if will be better tomorrow? Do I bury my head in the sand? Do I race around beating my chest? What do I do when my world is out of sorts? Fortune tellers are not the place I look for my answers.
Usually, in the words of the Shaker song, I want it to "come round right". That includes the larger world too, not just my personal world. I want the earth to stop shaking and spewing. I want the avian virus to be stamped out. I want the thousands of families without shelter and light and heat to have plenty. I want human beings living in the west to do that with responsibility. It is not the sharing of resources that bothers me, it is the sharing them to be wasted in buildings that are taller and more demanding, products that are more frivolous or badly designed and road vehicles that guzzle enormous quantities of oil and gas.
So, what do I do? Partly, I have to admit, I hold my breathe. I do not function at my best and am anxious that I don't exacerbate a problem rather than help solve it. I admit to deciding where I can best put my resources and soldier on, when I ask someone to help and what are the things that need to be reduced, reordered or changed. I pray and hang on. There are times we are asked to hold up more than our own part of the sky. Young children show us we can generally hang on much longer than any one of us would probably have believed.
Life is an unknown and we do not know where it will take us, what lessons we will be asked to learn, what decisions we will have to make. Under that however, the truth is, we have life. That in itself is the greatest of gifts. It changes the giver and binds the receiver to all that have gone before and all that is to come.
Confirmation is an affirmation of life and full of promise about who we yearn to become. Today we stand inside the Christian tradition with Michael and Robbie. They receive it in its complexities and confusion but also in its promise and what it has delivered in local, small grass roots communities like this one. May it hold them when life is not perfect, give them a frame of reference for decision making and a reason for much celebration. May they each have abundant life.
Sara November 30, 1999 |
