Holy Listening

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I believe God loves the languages
of those struggling to speak
the words embedded in our flesh
of every shape and hue.

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And I believe God blesses
every space where we are welcomed
to speak with tongues of fire
and hear with hearts aflame.

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-Jan L. Richardson, In Wisdom’s Path

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As we enter the quieter days of summer, we are inviting you to take up the task of Holy Listening--to intentionally attune your ears to the many disparate voices that are speaking the truths of their lives in these days—to learn to love the languages of those struggling to speak.

Our world has been thrown into an open-ended and unsettling moment of challenge, change and potential transformation. The systemic injustices of our settled arrangements in most every area of our common life have been thrown into high relief. As a church, even as we find ourselves in the midst of pandemic, we continue to hear the sacred invitation to Listen!  And so, we continue our exploration of what it means to be a truly affirming ministry, not only with our LGBTQ2S+ Community, but also with black people and people of colour. We continue to keep before us the work of reconciliation with Canada’s Indigenous peoples, and build awareness for those who bear a disproportionate measure of hardship, pain, deprivation and exclusion in our society, in our world… and also in our church.

Our invitation to you in this season is simply to take up the task of Holy Listening.  Listen… as if with the ear of God. Listen to the voices of the marginalized; to the voices of those you know best and those you know least; to poets, philosophers, and politicians… and perhaps most especially, listen to those whom you find it hardest to listen to. And in the midst of all of your listening, attune your ear for the voice of God speaking in the spaces between phrases and sounding from the depths of your own souls.

-Rev. Debra Schneider

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Listen, God is calling, through the Word inviting,
offering forgiveness, comfort and joy! 

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-Words and Music, Traditional Tanzania trans, Howard S Olsen