Congratulations to our friends at The United Church Observer! The independent United Church magazine won more awards than any other publication in the recent Associated Church Press awards in Chicago! This is a pretty awesome accomplishment! http://www.ucobserver.org/
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THE UNITED CHURCH OBSERVER
LEADS ACP AWARD-WINNERS
The United Church Observer, The United Church of Canada’s independent national magazine, has won more awards than any other American or Canadian magazine in the 2011 editorial excellence competition run by the U.S.-based Associated Church Press (ACP).
"Days of Rain" is an art installation by Paul Roorda at the abandoned Lamlash Church near Durham, Ontario.
Rev. Keith Hagerman of Parkminster United Church in Waterloo, Ont. shared the following reflection about the art installation with his congregation:
"It could be said that artists are the theologians in our time, forcing us to look at the world with different eyes, seeing moments of grace or of destruction, turning our preconceived notions on their head."
For more photos from "Days of Rain" and other art works, see Paul Roorda's website:
Keith Howard, former executive director of Emerging Spirit, writes:
If an apocalyptic meltdown of the national umbrella of the United Church does occur – as some predict – what will be the last things standing? The Pension Fund (I hope); the Standard Salary Schedule; our penchant for meetings?
A friend casually remarked that the roots of the system upon which ours is based actually reach back before the time of the telephone.
Historically meetings have served many purposes – information sharing, an excuse to socialize and organize and, occasionally, to make or (double) check decisions.
Al Pittampalli’s e-book, Read This Before Our Next Meeting probes the role of the much maligned meeting in this postmodern time. (And in this the subtitle perhaps misleads – “the modern meeting standard for successful organizations.”) He seeks to redefine the purpose and style of meetings.
In a resolutely secular society like Canada, one of the jobs of a theologian is to point out where the new theological language is emerging. One of those places is in Jack Layton's final letter to Canadians. There he provides a synopsis of his own theology.
"Love is better than anger
Hope is better than fear
Optimism is better than despair"
What most Canadians will find difficult to articulate is where they've heard that language before. Consider the following passages from Christian and Hebrew Scriptures.
"There is no fear in love, but perfect love casts out fear" (1 John 4:18)
Starting on August 20 in Washington, D.C., “we, the people” launched a protest to raise our citizen voices against TransCanada / Cononco Keystone XL pipeline project. People are sitting in front of the gates of the White House to bring attention to this issue. The Park Police are slapping plastic handcuffs on them and keeping them under custody.
This is a two-week campaign (Aug. 20-Sept. 3) in which leading environmentalists including Wendell Berry, Naomi Klein, and Bill McKibben will join a peaceful campaign of civil disobedience to block the approval of a dirty oil pipeline that will cross the United States. As one Canadian wrote, “This [pipeline] will make the Great Wall of China look like Tom Sawyer’s picket fence.”
August Farewell – The Last Sixteen Days of a Thirty-Three-Year Romance by David G. Hallman
It was August 7, 2009, when the doctor stood at the foot of the hospital bed and with a deliberation that was both efficient and compassionate, looked directly at David Hallman and his partner Bill Conklin and said, "Our diagnosis is pancreatic cancer, stage four." In his thoughtful and deeply personal memoir, David Hallman narrates the sixteen days after Bill was diagnosed with terminal cancer and intersperses vignettes drawn from their thirty-three years together as a gay couple.
