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Please note the buttons over on the right side of the screen, the Episcopal Relief and Development and the Primate's World Relief. People need our help right now, especially in Kashmir. Both of these groups are excellent ways to help make a difference...because they use church workers who would be on staff one way or another, and operate rent-free out of church buildings that would be there anyhow, their overhead is minimal and a huge portion of donated money is actually used on the ground, where the need is. And consider this - most people living in the "developed" west think nothing of indulging superfluous needs, for themselves or their family members and friends, while millions go without basic necessities of life. Does your kid really need the new Playstation? Is it doing him/her any good? My guess is that most kids would be healthier if they were a bit less spoiled, and I'm sure that the money would be better spent on children who lack food, clothing and shelter. The same could be said of adults. O.K. Sermon over. Now back to our regularly scheduled entry. I must have that African sleeping sickness...narcolepsy. Yeah. I've been so sleepy lately, there can be no other explanation. Sitting in the back seat of a car seems to make it worse. When Amy's mum and dad gave us a ride back to the Big Smoke, and when Fr. O gave a couple St. Anne's parishioners a ride home from the house blessing...both times I nodded off in the back seat. Sleeping in cars is not something I'm prone to, but this weekend? Zzzzz... It was as if tryptophan was in the very air. Yesterday there was another blessing to do. Epiphany and St. Mark, a small church in Parkdale where Amy and I went for a short time, has been broken into numerous times over the past couple months. There has been theft, arson (thankfully not serious) and vandalism, and the parish had a sense that the church had been violated. I imagine it'd be like coming home to find one's house had been broken into, combined with the unsettling notion that a holy place has been desecrated. So Fr. O offered to re-bless the space. The priest in charge of Epiphany and St. Mark needed to take part in the healing himself, so Fr. O did the blessing while Fr. D read Psalm 118 and sprinkled holy water. I swung incense and another student carried a candle...all symbols of blessing and prayer, to reclaim for God a place that had been tainted by violence. We probably looked a bit kooky when we processed around the outside of the church...but then who cares? We blessed every room of the complex (which is enormous considering how small the parish is) and I can report that swinging a thurible in the basement men's room is a surreal experience. Still, it felt good to help the parish exorcise a demon, even if it was only a demon of perception. My favourite part of the event was blessing the children's daycare centre. Swinging incense toward and around tiny chairs, chairs in which little kids gather for crafts and meals and reading, was strangely powerful. I felt that we were extending a sacred protection, ours and God's, around the most vulnerable among us. And knowing that a little kid would sit right there the next day and have no idea what we'd done...it was charming and awesome at the same time. A little kid ought not have to worry about being protected; the protection should just be there, part of the background of childhood, unnoticed but all encompassing. |
