Stories of hope and faith

Christmas symbolises hope and faith — in God, in ourselves, in our ideas, in others and in future. Below, people tell of times when they had nothing but hope and faith — and that was all they needed:

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When our son, Zachary, lived up to his name

By Craig Thiessen

We were assured the surgery they’d perform was relatively common for the surgeons, and we had no doubt of their abilities. But heart surgery on an infant is scary no matter what, and the thought ran through our minds, “what if this is the last time we hold Zachary like this?” We gave him into the hands of his doctors, trusting that in doing so, Zachary’s broken heart could be mended.”

Almost two years ago, my wife Carolyn and I were expecting our second child. We had gone in for our 20-week ultrasound at BC Children’s Hospital, expecting it to be as routine as our daughter’s. It soon became apparent, however, that the technician was taking much longer than usual, scanning the images repeatedly. The room grew tense and quiet before she informed us we would need to return the following week for more tests. At that appointment, we discovered that along with a number of other conditions, our son only possessed one heart ventricle. His physiology would require a number of heart surgeries, with a range of possible outcomes.

Our immediate emotional reaction was one of shock and grief. We expected a healthy child; most people likely do. To know that our son would face all kinds of challenges and limitations upended our fairly comfortable life up to that point. Over the next months, we told many people, and being very connected to our church family, we were prayed for…a lot. We found out later that entire churches were praying for us, churches where we didn’t actually know anyone, but somebody knew somebody who knew us! It was overwhelming to know that perhaps thousands of
people were asking for God’s help with our unborn child.

We were assured the surgery they’d perform was relatively common for the surgeons, and we had no doubt of their abilities. But heart surgery on an infant is scary no matter what, and the thought ran through our minds, “what if this is the last time we hold Zachary like this?” We gave him into the hands of his doctors, trusting that in doing so, Zachary’s broken heart could be mended.”

Finally, the day for Carolyn’s C-section arrived, and our son Zachary was born. The doctors at BC Children’s immediately hooked him up to all kinds of lines and whisked him off to the ICU, leaving us little time to actually meet our son. They prepared for surgery and watched all his stats carefully. But Zachary did much better than they were expecting. For days, they observed him, and ultimately decided that this first surgery wouldn’t be needed after all!

We took him home and enjoyed getting to know Zachary for the next three months, until he was admitted for a surgery that was unavoidable. Once again, multitudes of people prayed for us. We gave him to the doctors that morning with a load of emotions. We were assured the surgery they’d perform was relatively common for the surgeons, and we had no doubt of their abilities. But heart surgery on an infant is scary no matter what, and the thought ran through our minds, “what if this is the last time we hold Zachary like this?” We gave him into the hands of his doctors, trusting that in doing so, Zachary’s broken heart could be mended.

Two hours later, and two hours earlier than expected, our pager buzzed. We were sure that this meant the worst, that something tragic had occurred in the operating room. But the surgeon told us that he was finished, that Zachary was recovering!
Over the next couple of days, there were some tense moments in the ICU. At one point, I recall six or seven people rushing to Zachary’s bed because he was having trouble breathing. But he made it through and we brought him home that week with all kinds of stitches and scars over his small, fragile body.

Zachary has continued to grow and impress his doctors. What began as the scariest episode of our lives so far has given birth to all kinds of joy and gratitude. We are so thankful to the staff at BC Children’s, whose competence and care have meant so much to us. We are so thankful for many of our family, friends, and others who spent time praying for us. But most of all, we are thankful to God. Zachary’s name means “The Lord remembers”, and we experienced that first hand throughout the whole experience. The Lord remembered us, remembered Zachary. Carolyn would say she has rarely known God’s presence as clearly as she did on the walk to the waiting room after our pager buzzed one year ago.

A woman in the church I served previously told me that one night, before she even knew Carolyn was pregnant, she had a dream. In the dream, Carolyn and I were weeping, we were distraught about some unknown matter. This woman was confused about what this meant until she found out the news about Carolyn’s ultrasound. However, shortly after that, she was given another dream. In this dream, Carolyn and I were playing happily on the ground with a beautiful little boy and his train set (she didn’t even know our child was a boy at the time). I didn’t find out about these dreams until after Zachary was born and this woman gave us a train set with her explanation. But it confirmed what I knew, that God had carried us through.
Zachary continues to have a “broken” heart, and will need another surgery a few years from now. But as we entrust him to his doctors and their instructions, it is being mended, being made suitable for life in this world. And I can’t help but think this is similar to our situation as humans. As a Christian, I believe that God took on human flesh and was born a baby, small and fragile. Through this man, Jesus, there is healing for the brokenness in our hearts as we entrust ourselves to him through faith. His love for us is perfect and complete, even to the point of dying the death we deserve, in our place.

And so he is healing my broken heart, a heart corrupted by pride and selfishness and lust. He is killing that and replacing it with joy, with peace, with hope, with love (slowly but surely!). He is making me new as I follow him as my Lord. I pray that you would give yourself to Jesus the Healer as well, and that in doing so, your own broken heart would be mended.

 

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Faith emerged when the old faithful Volvo died

By Simon LeSieur

I remember the first Christmas Eve after my father left. It was a windy, cold, crisp night, as is typical in Quebec City at that time of year. “You can even bring Teddy Bear to church,” my mother said to hearten my younger brother who seemed skeptical that we could ever come to enjoy a ‘true’ Christmas again. The heavy look on my mother’s face was that of a woman longing to offer her two children as normal a Christmas as could be, all things considered.

I couldn’t fix things, and sometimes, we’re just not meant to. Sometimes sitting in the plain messiness of life is the best thing to do.

And so it was that we piled into our aging burgundy Volvo, Teddy Bear at hand, and drove down Rue Saint-Félix to the small parish church. The streets were empty as people piled into their homes to celebrate the traditional réveillon. Church had already begun. It was somewhere between that convenience store (you know, the one where young, underage misfits get their first smokes and beer) and the old municipal centre where I took violin lessons that our old faithful Volvo died—without fanfare, explanation, or apparent concern for the fragile cargo it had been entrusted with. Needless to say, Teddy Bear never did make it to church that Christmas.

I can’t remember how long we sat there, wind and snow howling around our car. I just remember looking at my mother, her hands still on the wheel, as she silently stared out into the vastness of the dark night ahead. In that delicate moment, I wish I could have fixed everything, taking away the sadness and feelings of inadequacy that seeped through the cracks in her confident composure. I wanted my mother to know that my brother and I were going to be ok.

But that’s just it. I couldn’t fix things, and sometimes, we’re just not meant to. Sometimes sitting in the plain messiness of life is the best thing to do. Sometimes it is in that chaos that we first catch glimmers of hope, glimmers of faith. Later that evening, a family friend invited the three of us for what turned into an awkward, quiet dinner, my father’s absence all too obvious.
In my own faith tradition, there’s a creed that begins and ends with “We are not alone”. While that Christmas of 1996 is not one I wish to revisit, I did learn a few things: I learned that my little family—my brother, mother and I—were more resilient than we thought. I learned that laughter is good medicine for the weary heart. And I learned that God isn’t just interested in my joy and dreams, but that Immanuel, “God with us,” walks alongside the brokenhearted, too. Indeed, we are not alone.

 

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Christmas in a coma, faith through my anger

By Marion Kirk

Last Christmas, I was certainly “seeing through a glass darkly”. My last memory of 2016 was December 24th in emergency. Two-and-a-half weeks later I woke up, unable to walk, move my hands or speak. My journey over the next weeks and months involved tests of love, hope and faith. I was in a very dark space, and although I had hope and faith (or thought I did), I didn’t have any idea how they would manifest.

I had assumed that my faith was rock solid, that I lived my life with grace and compassion and giving of my heart. My anger was huge. I started to ask myself…Who was I? Was the “me” who was known for giving generously of my time and energy to help others the real me? Was it just a façade?”

I was so confused that I became angry with everyone who was trying to help me. I started thinking about who I was and what I did in my day-to-day life. I started to question my faith big time. Hope? What was that. I could not see myself getting better. When you are in a coma all of your muscles atrophy so it takes a long time even to be able to use your fingers again. Given what I was having to deal with, the story I was beginning to tell myself…a tale of woe, pain, anxiety and fear. I couldn’t talk so my story got even worse. And this story I was telling myself was becoming a reality.

I had assumed that my faith was rock solid, that I lived my life with grace and compassion and giving of my heart. Now all I could think of was that I was not worthy of even being here on this earth. My anger was huge. I started to ask myself…Who was I? Was the “me” who was known for giving generously of my time and energy to help others the real me? Was it just a façade? Am I worthy of love if I can no longer do all the things for others that I am used to? What will I be if I have to be the one to receive instead of give? Will I be worthy of God’s love? I was living my reality that I chose to tell myself.

For the next week and a half, I wrestled with this. The turning point came when I was moved to a ward that was for patients that had medical issues as well as dementia. My journey got complicated but my faith was beginning to emerge. For the next two weeks, I came to terms with what my journey really was. Dealing with the peopleon this floor required patience and a whole lot of love. Not just from the nurses but also from people like me who are trying to get well but did not have to deal with dementia.

I watched God emerge in the love and patience that surrounded my fellow patients. I felt God’s love acting through my congregation, as people visited me in hospital, prayed for me and welcomed me back when I could return to worship.

My first day home, it cost me a tremendous effort to get up the single step to my home. Through my stubborn efforts, my condition improved enough for me to have hope of recovery. I was rewriting my story that was based in faith and hope. I can’t sing anymore but still go to choir and (at her request) tell my neighbour whether she is singing the right notes. I speak in a hoarse whisper but people listen.

At church meetings I often keep the bell that reminds others not to raise their voices when excited (something I can no longer do!). I feel that my faith really did get me thru this trauma. It is profound because it showed me that I was LIVING it. Even through my anger, my faith was by my side.

Although I am a church member, I took a course to reconfirm my membership vows. I reaffirmed to myself that God’s love is unconditional and I am truly not alone. And my minister was a tremendous support as well. Sometimes you have to hear that you are loved. So, it was “faith, hope and love” that got me through to where I am today. It has a familiar ring, doesn’t it?

 

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Faith and hope, yes. But the manger is just the start of the story

By Brenda Smit-James

They say that the first Christmas is always the hardest. That first Christmas after the death of a loved one is called a Blue Christmas. When the colours of the season are red and green and jolly, yours are dark and cold and blue.

As everyone scampers around with festive cheer and spirit, your confusion deepens and your loss feels more profound. Happiness and excitement are prolific and crisp in the winter air, but you, you are just hoping to survive—not only this season, but this week, this day, this moment.

At least, that is how it felt for me, the first Christmas after my mother died. That first Christmas coincided with the six-month anniversary of my mother’s death. It had been six months since I had watched her die. Six months since I had witnessed the neglect and poor treatment of my mother by hospital and medical staff. Six months since my world fell apart, since my heart broke. I didn’t realise that the death of a parent could be so hard. An experience made harder by the reality that little was done by the medical staff in Johannesburg, South Africa, to deal with my mother’s health and the tumour on her face in a professional manner. Rather, she was shunted around at the General Hospital for six months with little to no progress until, on the day of her scheduled operation, she had become too sick to survive surgery.

If how we live our life determines how we die, then my mother did not deserve her death—one of neglect by an apathetic hospital staff that was remiss in its care, and who treated her with little compassion

A pre-surgery blood test revealed what was plain for the untrained eye to see, my mother was desperately ill. Her white blood cell count had dipped dangerously low. Instead of surgery, my mother was put in isolation. Subsequent blood tests revealed that she had leukemia, and then acute
leukemia.

Four days later, my mother died. My heartbreak wasn’t just that my mother had died; it was that she had died in that way. All her life, my mother had been a quiet woman of Christian faith. She loved God and endeavoured to obey and please him. She was gentle and kind and she knew how to draw in the outsider. People were attracted to her compassionate heart. If how we live our life determines how we die, then my mother did not deserve her death—one of neglect by an apathetic hospital staff that was remiss in its care, and who treated her with little compassion.

Numerous times when my brothers and I were at her bedside, we had to advocate for my mother’s care, including requests that morphine be administered to relieve some of her pain. Each request had to be done carefully so as to not alienate the nurses. Not only was my mother gravely ill, she was dying, and still the doctor did not give us the whole picture. Each bit of bad news was accompanied by the encouragement to have hope. Hope in what? Were we to hope that my mother would get better, that she would be miraculously healed? Were we to hope that this was a nightmare and that we would wake soon? Or were we to hope that the end would come quickly? We never thought to ask.

The last four days of my mother’s life were confusing and emotionally exhausting. And when they ended on June 23, 2014, with my mother’s passing from this life into the next, my confusion and exhaustion didn’t end with them; quite the opposite, they intensified. I was grieved not just by her death and the circumstances around it, I was also grieved at God. How could he have let this happen to one of his faithful? How is it that a life of faithfulness and love could result in a neglectful death? Where was he in all of this? The questions raged in me and I started to doubt my Christian faith.

Was any of it true? Was Jesus for real? Could I trust his claims? Why bother to live for him when this could be the outcome – to die alone and forgotten by God? What hope was there in this particular circumstance, in life, in Jesus? These are the deep questions of the soul. Sorrow filled me.

My body ached from it. I struggled through each day. Where was I to turn? If not to Jesus, then what? If not to Jesus, then who? Where could I turn but to the same God I railed against? And rail I did. My mornings started with a time of Bible reading, writing in my journal, and questioning God.
We dialogued and we wrestled, God and I. And as we wrestled, God instructed me and he changed me. By the time of that first Christmas six months later, my grief was still profound, yet I was starting to learn to let grief and joy, sadness and gladness, coexist in me.

One set of emotions doesn’t necessarily mean the exclusion of the other. Grief isn’t about moving on. It isn’t about leaving your loved one and all that he or she has meant to you behind you.

It’s about moving forward, and taking all that your loved one has meant to you with you into the rest of your life. It’s not about getting better. It’s about being forever changed and deciding what purpose that change will serve in your life.

In my time of hopelessness, God planted this hope in me, that as traumatic as my mother’s death was for me, God would heal me and make it right, in his way, in his time. My part was to receive this hope, to accept it as true, by faith if not yet by sight, and the hardest part of all, to forgive the circumstances of my mother’s death.

In my emotional suffering, there was one thing I needed to know of God. I needed to know that he knows what it is to suffer. In the Bible, Matthew writes about how in the Garden of Gethsemane, ahead of his arrest and crucifixion, Jesus “began to be sorrowful and troubled… to the point of death”.

Jesus knows what it is to be in distress. Given his subsequent flogging and crucifixion, Jesus knows what it is to be at the mercy of others and to face death alone. While suffering on the cross, Jesus saw his mother and loved ones standing nearby, so he knows what it is to have your loved ones at your side, powerless to change the situation, powerless to alleviate your suffering. Finally, just before he died, Jesus cried, “My God, my God, why have you forsaken me?” He does know how it feels to have your heart break. Christmas symbolizes faith and hope. But the manger is just the start of the story.
Without the cross, it would merely be a heart-warming, possibly far-fetched, and rather scandalous story. Our hope lies in the fact that after the manger and Christmas come the cross and Easter. It is in the cross and Jesus’ resurrection that my Christian faith and hope are made real.

 

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You can’t go around grief

By Leslie Gibbons

Nine years ago my family faced a tragedy. My youngest son lost his life to drug addiction. He died quietly at home as the sun was setting on the most beautiful evening in May. He was 23 years old, loved and supported, beautiful and smart, depressed and self-medicated, an addict since he was 18.

Over those addicted years, our family rallied around him and supported his struggle to get clean. We believed that our love and help could keep him alive until he could win. We sent him to a rehab center and he ran away within hours. I detoxed him at home several times, but his dealers knew where he was and relentlessly phoned and drew him back.

Our family needed help. I needed help. And help came into my life through two doors that were opened first by my beloved Unitarian Community on the North Shore and then by an introduction to The Compassionate Friends, a support group for parents who have lost children.

He traveled to escape it, but failed and, finally, he put himself on methadone. Those of you who have experienced the terror of addiction of a loved one know that each morning and evening brought hope, prayer, desperation and fear. My faith in Matt’s courage and his will to overcome was unwavering, but my hope for his survival ebbed away slowly over the years.

Our family needed help. I needed help. And help came into my life through two doors that were opened first by my beloved Unitarian Community on the North Shore and then by an introduction to The Compassionate Friends, a support group for parents who have lost children.

It was started in 1969, in England, by two couples who met in the hospital where their sons were dying. They realized what a relief it was to talk to someone else who understood their grief journey. The North Shore Chapter found me soon after my son Matt died and they carried me on their shoulders until I found the strength to walk on my own and, finally, allowed me to add my shoulders as support to new parents as they joined each month.

I’ve learned that you can’t go around grief, can’t go over it, under it or ignore it. You have to go through it to find yourself again—your new self after the death of someone you love, the new self you have sewn, patched and glued together from ragged sad edges and glorious, precious memories. And everyone grieves differently. There is no right or wrong way to grieve, and it does take time to find one’s own life again in whatever new shape that takes.

The North Shore Unitarian Church, my faith community, embraced me and my family’s struggle with non-judgmental tenderness and compassion. Grieving is painful, and even more so if you have to grieve alone, and this is a time in your life when you feel very alone.
Our minister at the time had personal experience with addiction and helped me through many hours of discussion and anguish over the loss of my faith in the mystery of life. Life seemed so bleak. Prayer—to wherever and whoever I could direct it—had not worked.

My son lived and laughed, was brave, foolish and kind. I love to talk about him. Every Sunday, we begin our church service by lighting a candle and saying, “May the light of understanding illuminate our darkness and the warmth of sharing bring us peace.”

My faith in people was revived and a spark of hope that I could be happy again was rekindled by hearing these words spoken over and over in unison from the heart. I would never presume to say that I’m courageous; I’m not. But I am a survivor. I belong to a club no one wants to join and the membership fee is heart-shatteringly high. The loss of a child is beyond cost.

I had to find special ways to remember and acknowledge Matt. I have a place in my room where I keep some of his things. I have written him letters and driven up Cypress Mt. to burn them and let the wind carry my messages around the world to find him. I speak to him regularly. I long for him always, and, at times, I’m furious with him for making the terrible decisions.

I’ve learned that addiction can’t be cured by love and support, money, hope or faith. Only the addict can fight and overcome addiction. But love, support, hope and faith can keep a mother and a family alive through the tragedy and help them rebuild their new lives.

I don’t want to be defined by the death of my son. Nor do I ever want to find myself not missing him, because I always will. And I do hold on to this inexplicable, unreasonable thought that I might see him again. I refuse to let go of that thought because it comforts me, and I hold on to that thought as a small straw in the wind of grief. I hold on to that thought as a Unitarian who still believes in the ‘mystery’ of life and whatever death might bring.

The Compassionate Friends and the Unitarian community taught me that not only can I survive, but I can be of service. I can help other parents who are suffering an unimaginable loss. I can walk beside grief and be a friend.

And, I still believe in the inherent worth and dignity of all people; Matt wouldn’t want it any other way. Living with sadness and grief takes a strong will to survive and compassionate friends. It takes faith in a mysterious process I cannot understand. It takes time and acceptance and, for me, a little hope…

 

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The task of unpacking your faith

By Nicola Colhoun

If you celebrate Christmas in this part of the world, you probably have boxes. They spend most of the year in the basement or the attic or the cupboard, waiting for their annual re-birth in anticipation of the Holy Birth. Lights (a few burnt-out), tree ornaments (do we really have to put that one up again this year?), stockings, Christmas stories, leftover napkins, and decorations are all delivered into the cool light of December.

We have these boxes in our home, of course. But one box is special. One I open only when alone, and free of small helping hands. One I open with trepidation. For it contains the crèche, the Nativity set.

One year I lost Jesus. I had unpacked all the other figures and lined them up carefully on the mantel. Jesus was missing. I hunted about, edging rapidly toward panic. After 20 minutes or so I unpacked all the tissue paper out of the box again. And there he was.”

And this Nativity set was moulded out of ceramic and carefully painted by my in-laws before I was even born. For some reason, the task of unpacking it falls to me, and I perform this annual work fully aware of the ramifications of any potential accident. The Nativity set is a product of its time. The figures are large, ten or twelve inches high. They would not be out of place accompanied by a painting on velvet, with perhaps a hanging spider plant to suggest greenery. They are beautiful though, and they are certainly treasures. There are the shepherds, draped in drab colours with sheep tucked around them. The wise men are resplendent in ceramic robes of iridescent scarlets and purples, carrying metallic-painted gifts. By tradition, Caspar is African. By accident, he is missing a thumb. The camels of the wise men are truly magnificent, large and haughty beasts with tasseled saddles. There is a stable, made of wood with a straw roof. A cow and a soft-looking gray donkey curl up in a corner. Two small white doves balance in the hay loft.

Joseph is too tall to fit inside, and so I place him beside the stable, arm outstretched to show off the new arrival to his visitors. Mary kneels, adoring, behind the manger, in her pale blue robe, looking understandably tired. A disconcertingly blonde and feminine angel can be strung overhead on clear thread, but I usually stick her in the back of the stable to keep her quiet. And then there is Jesus. He is jubilantly naked, a chubby pink sausage of an infant, and anatomically correct at that. I have considered giving him a blanket, not so much for decency as for warmth, but have thus far refrained.

One year I lost Jesus. I had unpacked all the other figures and lined them up carefully on the mantel. Jesus was missing. I hunted about, edging rapidly toward panic. After 20 minutes or so I unpacked all the tissue paper out of the box again. And there he was, wrapped in a bit of old paper.

I had literally lost Jesus in the wrapping paper. It was so distressingly obvious, a real-life cliché of a metaphor.

Every year I unpack this unlikely cast of characters and place them in awe and certain fear onto the stage of our mantelpiece. It is a spiritual discipline. It is the beginning of the opening of the book of Advent. With the shepherds I creep in trembling wonder around the edges of the darkened stable, smelling the damp straw. The donkey’s fur is rough, and the cow grunts as it dozes. The light of the star overhead pierces gaps where the walls meet the ceiling. The wise men arrive, eager but suddenly awkward before this very human-looking miracle. Mary lifts Jesus out of the manger and lies carefully down with him, and Joseph tries to pile the straw behind them. Mary and Joseph’s dreams are coming true, but it’s not at all like what they had imagined.

Jesus is tiny and tired. He takes comfort from his mother, and sleeps, shutting out the overwhelming world. Peace swells and engulfs the stable. The angels, the shepherds, the wise men, the parents, the creatures and I settle down quietly to watch the sleeping baby, wondering what he will do next.

 

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The light of grace when the power goes out

By Hilary Clark

What constitutes a religious experience that enhances our lives, and supports our faith? I’m sure it varies from person to person, but for me unique experiences have brought home to me the wonder of faith, happenings that took place all over the world.

The most recent for me took place last year on Maundy Thursday at St. Christopher’s Anglican Church in West Vancouver. Maundy Thursday is the commemoration of the evening of the last supper with Christ and his disciples. This historic meal has resulted in the ceremony of the communion service in many Christian churches. The service on the Thursday is the day before the Crucifixion, Good Friday, and in many churches consists of a solemn stripping of the altar of its vestments.

Suddenly, the electricity went off, and we all stood there, silently, contemplatively, waiting, when we realized that there was a full moon shining down on this beautiful ancient temple, and we were seeing it, as the ancient Egyptian worshippers had seen it, all those thousands of years ago.

At this particular service just as the final psalm was to be read by the entire congregation, all the electricity went off. The organ groaned to a halt, and the church was plunged into blackness. Virtually simultaneously everyone reached for their cell phones and turned on lights. It was as if the sanctuary was a forest filled with fireflies! Together we read the psalm and then wordlessly exited the church. It was if we all had been touched by the Spirit.

There have also been places that have had a spiritual significance for me. Perhaps the most moving was the abbey of St. Columba on the Isle of Iona (Inner Hebrides, Scotland). St. Columba, in the Dark Ages, when he hid on Iona from the Viking attacks, kept the knowledge of Christianity alive, and ready to be reintroduced when the attacks of the Vikings were over. The abbey has been reconstructed to its original plan over many years by an army of volunteer workers. Its graveyard houses the resting places of the medieval kings of Scotland (Macbeth and Duncan, for example) but also most poignantly the graves of the seamen who washed ashore after the ongoing battle of the Atlantic during the Second World War.

Their nameless gravestones state “a seaman of the Second World War known only to God”. The island has an aura of peace and serenity that I have never experienced anywhere else. A local moment of being touched spiritually happened during our annual family summer holiday on Hornby Island.
It was close to the summer solstice, so the sun rose very early. I decided to get up before dawn in order to see the sun rise over the Coast Range just east of us. I settled down on the beach to look over the sea, and as the sun rose, I swear I heard music. It wasn’t someone’s transistor radio; it was too early for anyone to be up. ‘Music of the Spheres’ came to mind. It was an ethereal moment!

Another electricity outage created another otherworldly moment. I was involved in a night tour in the temple of Karnak, Luxor, Egypt. The columns of the temple are huge, and reminded me of the MacMillan sanctuary of old growth Douglas firs on Vancouver Island. During the temple tour there had been a recorded ‘son et lumiere’ presentation in several languages. It was very evocative. The music and the light show captured the mystery of the ancient Egyptians, and we were all transported to that ancient world. Suddenly, the electricity went off, and we all stood there, silently, contemplatively, waiting, when we realized that there was a full moon shining down on this beautiful ancient temple, and we were seeing it, as the ancient Egyptian worshippers had seen it, all those thousands of years ago. In our own way we also were worshipping.

In the Pyrenees one summer, I had stayed in a small inn well off the beaten track. In the morning I went to the window and threw open the shutters to check out the view since it had been dark when I arrived. I was greeted by brilliant sunshine, a backdrop of snow-tipped peaks, a stream just below the small path up the hillside, and on the path a shepherd leading with his crook a huge flock of sheep. The excerpt from Handel’s Messiah came immediately into my mind: “And He shall lead his flock, like a shepherd…” I understood the Biblical quotation for the first time. I was moved to whisper “Thank you”.

But of all, I think the most spiritual moments of my life were when after nine long months a new little soul popped out of me, and was placed on my chest for me to hold and hug and bless, with amazement that I had a child. “Thank you” has never meant so much!

 

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The happiness that came on an inconsequential errand

By Shauna Grinke

I don’t remember most of my adult life. Although I tried not to let on to people around me, there were few experiences in my 20s and 30s that I recall with positive emotion, much less happiness.

Everything felt like a chore, and I felt like I was coming up short on all expectations in my life. Even though I was blessed with a loving husband and two beautiful children, I continuously felt hopeless, and a victim of circumstances. I felt like everything was a struggle—my relationships, my health, my finances. Everything was difficult. I felt I was in a fog most days, and I know there are weeks, months, even years, I don’t remember at all.

I had been practicing yoga regularly for about two years, when I went for the first time to Lynn Valley United Church. In his welcoming words on a Sunday service in July 2011, the minister, Blair, said these words: ‘whoever you are, wherever you are at on your journey, you are welcome here.’

This experience of being an actor in my own life, but not really present to the experience, culminated in 2009, when my job was eliminated as a result of the global economic crash. I was out of work, with a family to support, with little chance of finding work in my field in the worst economic recession of my lifetime. Somehow, I just knew that I needed to turn inward to find strength, or I would descend into despair.

Despair was simply not an option. I decided to focus on the only thing that I felt I could control—my own actions, behaviours and mindset. I decided to start a regular yoga practice, as part of my way to build my strength and resilience. I know this first step onto my spiritual journey saved my life, and was the first step into the best years of my life. I began my yoga practice at a beautiful, heart-centred studio, Yogapod. Although it is no longer in business, I’m grateful for the teachers who supported me on the beginning steps of my spiritual journey.

At that time, I did not have a faith practice, and so had no real ‘true north’ in my life. I recall the classes early in my yoga journey. Teachers would ask us to ‘set an intention for the practice’, or to ‘thank yourself for committing to practice today’, or to contemplate ‘that for which you are grateful.’ All of those encouraging thoughts were foreign to me at that stage of my life. They didn’t even make sense, as I was in such a dark place, and I did not have a context around ‘gratitude’ or the energetic interconnectedness of all beings.

However, I believed that if I persevered, that I would benefit in some way. I couldn’t see what that was at the time, but I knew I needed to do ‘something’, and this felt like ‘something’ I could do.

My daily practice helped me experience the metaphors of a physical yoga practice—the asanas—to teach important spiritual lessons. Gradually, these lessons enabled me to begin to intellectually apply the learnings to my life: the teachings of struggling less, surrendering more, compassion, and gratitude all helped me begin to retrain my brain to a place where hope was possible, and deep sadness not part of my daily existence.

I had been practicing yoga regularly for about two years, when I went for the first time to Lynn Valley United Church. In his welcoming words on a Sunday service in July 2011, the minister, Blair, said these words: ‘whoever you are, wherever you are at on your journey, you are welcome here.’ Simple words. Heartfelt. Until that time, I had never thought about myself as ‘enough’ just as I was. I was always struggling, coming up short. Yoga had paved a path for me, and had taken me to the place where I could hear these words—the words that created the space for the next phase of my journey. So, in this community, I continued my spiritual journey, learning about the teaching of the counter-culture, courageous, compassionate and selfless ministry of Jesus, and experiencing being a beloved child of God. The messages and experiences of Sunday worship resonated with me, and provided hope. This practice supported the ‘blind faith’ I clung to beginning in 2009, that ‘all manner of things shall be well.’

On a fall day in 2013, I had the most remarkable experience. I was driving to go no where in particular, perhaps on an inconsequential errand, and I felt…happy. It was so remarkable, since it was such an unusual sensation, and the moment was so random—and significant. I know that experience of happiness came from a culmination of a practice of faith and hope. I could not have ‘forced’ that. I couldn’t ‘imagine’ it. It took my breath away. Now, I live with deep gratitude for my life. Every day. Every breath. I know that I benefited from my darkness, as it has helped me truly live with gratitude. My faith and hope have served me well. I have been formed by the teachers and lessons I have had along the way. All is well. My hope is that all beings know they are the beloved. May it be so.

 

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What’s the point in looking for an angel’s footprints

By Bruce Grierson

On the morning of the winter solstice, back in the early ‘90s, I packed everything I owned into a rusty Toyota Corolla and prepared to head west from Ottawa to Edmonton. A hinge point in my life, to be sure. My short-term government job had just ended and a different life beckoned on the coast.

Everything about this pivot was a Hail Mary. I was abandoning my economics training for one of those artsy careers that make no sense on paper, that set you up for long relationships with creditors, Ikea, and noodle-based cuisine. Plus, my dad had just died. I was a mess. But there was no way I wasn’t going to try to make it home for Christmas – even if that meant three days and nights of white-knuckle driving.

There is no rational defense for a belief in guardian angels. And yet I have escaped so many close scrapes, I find it impossible to at least entertain some non-evidence-based explanation.

The weather grew worse as I churned westward. By the time I hit the Rockies, on Christmas Eve, a full-on snowstorm was howling. To get up those mountain passes, the Corolla shunted all power to the engine and away from its extremities, like a hypothermia victim. The defroster basically stopped working. I steered through a hole the size of a Frisbee as darkness closed in, until finally neither adrenaline nor gas-station coffee could cut the fatigue and I pulled over to a rest stop. Popped the seat back. Watched the snow swirl in the light of the lone streetlamp of that empty parking lot. And fell asleep. Tap tap tap. Something was knocking on the window.

A man in a leather coat stood outside the car. The brim of his cowboy hat threw his face into shadow.
I rolled down the window.
“You know,” he said, in a Lorne Greene baritone, “people who go to sleep with the engine running end up not waking up.
I shook out the cobwebs.
“Carbon monoxide,” he said. “I’ve seen it happen.”
I figured maybe a ticket was coming. But the man just touched his hat. “Merry Christmas,” he said. And then he was gone.
So, that just happened, I thought, sitting up.
Or did it? Maybe I … just dreamed it.
There was a way to find out: dreams don’t leave footprints.
I started to open the driver’s door to check.

And then stopped. Did I want the answer? Did it matter? The important thing was that I was awake now. Alive as the night is long. I jerked the Corolla into gear and gunned it out of the rest stop, out of the merge lane and onto Highway 1, for the last straight shot home. Here’s a confession that’s a bit uncomfortable: I kind of believe in guardian angels. Uncomfortable because I have a science background. There is no rational defense for a belief in guardian angels. And yet I have escaped so many close scrapes, I find it impossible to at least entertain some non-evidence-based explanation. It’d be a stonehearted gambler indeed who threw ten heads in a row and did not feel a little existential shiver — whether he’s on the winning or losing end of that run of luck.

I won’t say that makes me a typical Unitarian Universalist, because I’m not sure such a thing exists. We are an expansion team pulled from a wide variety of liberal spiritual traditions — plus moral traditions that lie outside of religion entirely. Ask us to describe our spiritual practice and you’re as likely to hear (after Joseph Campbell) I underline books. But I will say this about UUs as a tribe: we do wonder very well. Like our forebears, Thoreau and Emerson, we do awe like champions. That we can’t get to the bottom of things doesn’t stop us from trying. That prayer sometimes seems like serving tennis balls into the ocean doesn’t stop us from appreciating prayer. (We have room for skeptics but not for cynics.)

That we bridle against the “single story” view of, well, pretty much anything, doesn’t mean we don’t find wisdom in the ancient religions. We steer by the great stories as we find them.

As the grandson of a Presbyterian medical missionary, I was raised a Christian and grew up in the United Church, where my father played the third Wise Man (the myrrh-bearer) in the Christmas pageant. I often wonder what he would think, or his dad would think, of my decision to go wider with my spiritual impulses. To try to ground them in moral principles rather than in dogma, and try to put them into action, and to encourage our girls to do the same. I hope he would have approved. I think he would have. He encouraged us kids to seek our own path. Be kind was his only real injunction to us. The Golden Rule was his only non-negotiable rule, and mine too. I believe it contains a kind of universal truth, since it falls out of all the major religions when you shake them.

Plus, we have cool, smart, funny people in our congregation in whom Dad would have delighted, as they would have delighted in him. Heck, we have a holiday pageant that sometimes even has a Baby Jesus and a myrrh-bearing Wise Man in it (though not this year — we’re doing a winter solstice theme). Many’s the Sunday, listening to the choir send familiar-sounding hymns into the rafters, that I find myself literally reaching out my hand. Only the angle of the reach has changed. Not up, anymore, but across.He is still here, somehow. Even though he leaves no footprints.

 

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Finding hope and faith in family and heritage

By Margaret Stedman

Hope and Faith are in your mind when you plant a little bulb in the fall and you are filled with Hope that it will be nourished over the winter and Faith that it will bloom in the spring with exuberant glory.

In my life, I think of my Mother’s ancestor (a Huguenot) who came from France in 1864 hoping to give all the settlers in New Upper Canada a Bible. He had enough Faith in his journey would he could succeed. Years later, among his descendants was my Grandpa Vessot who was a Presbyterian minister but in the 1920’s was happy to become a United Church minister when there was a unification of the protestant churches. He started the little French United Church, St. Mark’s, which still stands on Elgin Street in Ottawa near the Parliament Buildings. The church still stands some 80 years later as a testament to his Hope and Faith.

Having Hope and Faith is an easy positive approach to living a full life. We all have tests of Faith but we always have that courage to meet any hardship that we can overcome.

I remember going to church when I was very young with my Mother to evening service. I think she instilled in me all the great Christian values of forgiveness, love, truth, Hope and Faith. At University, I attended the little Anglican Church in the village of St. Anne de Bellevue where I studied at Macdonald College of McGill University.

I was introduced to the Anglican Church by my Anglican boyfriend and I loved the quiet contemplative nature of services. I came to Vancouver after graduation and married in the old St. Stephen’s church which was located where the hockey arena is now. It was a sweet, quiet, small traditional church with lovely stained-glass windows, some of which are installed in the Narthex of our church now as testaments of the Hope and Faith that prompted the early residents of West Vancouver to start an Anglican Church over 100 years ago.

Life changes, and instead of staying in West Vancouver, we promptly moved eventually to France. There I met my French cousins, children of my Mother’s sister who had married a theologian from McGill who had a church outside Metz. They had survived the Second World War. Five of the boys became ministers and the two daughters married ministers. They were quite an inspiration about survival during difficulties and having Hope and Faith. In my eyes, my aunt was a saint.

Eventually, we returned to North Vancouver and we attended St. Catherine’s Anglican Church. My middle daughter was baptised there and my husband and I taught Sunday School. We moved to Toronto and I was there 38 years before returning to St. Stephen’s. In Toronto, I could not have survived without the weekly services at St. John’s York Mills with Canon O’Neill. I had found a church that gave me peace, energy, values, Hope and Faith.

It was a foundation of security for a life that had become unsettled. I served as a reader, a Chalice bearer, a server and on the Altar Guild. How could we ever live without the Hope that is assured us in the glorious revelation that God is with us in all we do? Faith from experiences in the past have allowed us to survive in ways that we would never have expected. These positive outcomes in the past illustrate to us his goodness to us and gives us the strength of conviction of Hope and Faith.

At this time of Christmas, we might reflect on the little vulnerable family of Mary on a donkey led by Joseph to another country to pay taxes. They must have had the grand Hope that the delivery would go well and Faith that they would survive the critical week. Is this not an inspiration of Hope and Faith to us that even in our comfortable lives we would be worthy of belief in receiving Hope and Faith that began long ago in a different age.
Having Hope and Faith is an easy positive approach to living a full life. We all have tests of Faith but we always have that courage to meet any hardship that we can overcome. With the help we have in believing the Biblical story of Mary and Joseph who portrayed the ultimate trust and comfort that God was with them. May God be with you this Christmas to give you the ultimate gift of Hope and Faith.