Love, Again
This week opened with the wonderful news that a tumor in the lung of a much-loved friend and member of West Hill was benign. A week or so ago, as the medical diagnosis was still pending, that friend asked me to rewrite the song Amazing Grace. Since Scott has already adapted the original words for use […]
Clarington Answers Clarion Call
The council meeting in Clarington, Ontario, opened this past Monday with a time of reflection. It always does. This week, however, Regional Councillor Willie Woo, rather than invoking the god called God, read a reflective piece that made no mention of the town’s previously favoured deity. Mayor Adrian Foster, who felt no one would be harmed by the […]
The Church of Gleaned Practices
There is a group currently meeting in Houston that calls its members “spiritual naturalists”. They are, for the most part, people who do not believe in doctrinal claims of any religious sort, but who have noticed that the act of everyday living seems to demand something more from them. So they get together twice a […]
semantics sleight of hand
For the past many years, I’ve been struggling against the power of the Christian story within the traditional church and outside of it. Christianity, Islam, Buddhism, Baha’i, and so many other religious streams ply stories of a cosmology that includes either a deity residing in a supernatural realm or a life that is more (or […]
All Roads
For this Sunday, the service is looking at privilege. So my hymn writing challenge veered off in that direction. An abrupt shift in the first verse might be disconcerting but it evidences the kind of “scales falling from our eyes” reality that consciousness raising so often is. And I hope that the song ends with […]
abomination
Who really uses that word anymore? Really? Andy Oudman of Talk 1290 in London, Ontario, that’s who. A listener had alerted me to Oudman’s remarks about the United Church yesterday and said that the radio host planned to return to the topic today. So when he began to talk about the inappropriateness of my leading […]
on being an atheist minister
Had an opportunity to share some ideas with AM640’s Jeff McCarthur this afternoon. Here is the clip. Enjoy!
to the glory of good
On Sunday, March 15th, Eric Andrew-Gee of the Toronto Star joined us in our weekly gathering. It was a busy morning. We’d removed half the pews that Saturday in one of our first efforts at continuing our work toward creating a barrier-free community, this time focused on the challenges that traditional forms of gathering as […]
women rock
It might seem a bit cheeky, but I thought that since rewrite for this week’s traditional hymn should focus on women and we’ve had a Women Rock service at West Hill several times, that I’d use the tune Toplady to which Rock of Ages is most often sung so here it is! This year, in addition to focusing […]
’til all, in truth, are free
The nature of truth is a long conversation. We often, in the church, speak of it as though it is an exact thing that we can define or capture between the covers of a designated book. Outside of the church, it’s a philosophical tome or a microscopic film. We can’t capture truth. It is not […]
what is a theologically barrier-free church?
I am often asked questions about the work that I and the congregation I serve do. These quick answer videos are meant to help you understand that. If you’ve any question you’d like answered, don’t hesitate to ask me through the contact page. I’ll be happy to consider it for a quick answer video. Thanks […]
the moral of the story
Our final installation in the Academy Award series is Into the Woods, a film that didn’t get nominated for Best Picture Oscar. Still, it has much to say. I captured its relativistic approach in the new words to the old hymn tune Blaenwern – also singable to Hyfrydol – Nothing Once for All. The truth is […]
nothing once, for all
A new hymn written to the tune Blaenwern, one of the tunes most often used for Love Divine. Scott named it this morning as one he wanted new words for, so this is what came in the late afternoon. I’ve been preparing for Sunday’s reflection on Into the Woods, the first film I’ve ever picked for […]
bravery in the face of tyranny
a letter to gary paterson regarding paris
January 8, 2015 Gary Paterson Moderator The United Church of Canada 3250 Bloor St. West Toronto, ON Dear Gary, I write with deep concern for the world’s community as it reels following the religiously motivated attacks in Paris this week and as diverse groups respond with courage and a renewed commitment to ending acts of […]
in love, we all belong
I have totally fallen off my “hymn rewrite a week”, but here is one I had written a few weeks ago but didn’t introduce to West Hill until this past Sunday. Yeah, I know. It makes you want to swing a stein as you’re singing the chorus, but I didn’t write the music! The tune […]
we’d watched it come …
< p style=”text-align: center;”>I almost didn’t recognize it. The description was of something strange, yesterday’s materials, old clichés, and my little sister’s sorrows. Like a movie of your favourite book, all the characters transformed their faces not at all the ones you’d held so close. Or all the talking animals of your childhood books walking upright, disneyfied […]
sing a newer song
It’s hard to sing the old hymns anymore. The words and language are just too archaic or the doctrinal aspects of them are overwhelmingly inappropriate in a post-theistic community. As a result, from time to time, Scott or I tweak songs that are in the public domain or rewrite them altogether. We have published and […]
the atheist minister – a faithstreet feature
Thank you, Becky Garrison, FaithStreet journalist, for the wonderful feature article, The Atheist Minister, she wrote. Here are her opening words: “Gretta Vosper describes herself as both a minister and an atheist. That may sound like an oxymoron to some, but her work and witness offer a model that speaks to those who no longer believe […]
with or without god goes uk
It’s been two years in the making and the dates are drawing near but the question still needs to be asked. Are there enough people in the United Kingdom that care about religion or what’s becoming of Christianity for me to bother heading over there to speak about innovations in the practice of church? Even […]