Perspectives with Rev. George Frey

 

How Does That Make You Feel?

Lately I have found myself talking to a lot people who are at crossroads in their lives. Everyone has told me that they are experiencing something akin to frustration, but that’s not exactly how they feel. They can’t describe it as sadness, either.

When we do approach a crossroad in our lives we generally plan how we are going to proceed. We seldom think about how or what we feel when these times in our lives happen.

Attempting to describe how we feel about something is one of the most difficult things for human beings to do. Often when I ask someone how they feel about something they just read or they just heard, that person will tell me what they saw or understood. 

Seldom will they immediately tell me how they feel. We do not like to talk about our feelings – it makes us vulnerable.

Have you ever been asked to share your feelings with another person? You know, sit together in a room and tell that other person how you feel inside?

It’s really hard to do. You don’t want to say the wrong thing. You don’t want them to take it personally. You don’t want to upset anyone. So instead of honouring our feelings, we do that famous “stiff upper lip” thing. 

I often wonder how Jesus felt when the disciples were sitting and listening to him teach and when all was said and done, they didn’t get it. Did he feel frustrated with them? Was he sad that they couldn’t grasp what he was telling them, no matter how clearly he told the story? How did he feel when they finally got it? Elated? Joyful?

Feelings are a gift from God. Joy, sadness, happiness, anger, frustration – all are feelings that we each experience in our lives, and so many more. 

The next time you read a passage from scripture, ask yourself, “how does this make me feel?” 

Don’t try to ignore them. Don’t try to sidestep around them. Face them squarely and you will find the stories in scripture pull you into them in a whole new way.

Rev. Sue McCullough

Anglican Parish, Morrisburg

Irouqois and Riverside Heights. 

 

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Answering the call to forgive

On Friday nights, I often watch the television program “Dateline”. Last week, I saw the story of a man who had killed one woman for no apparent reason. He also tried to end the life of someone else, but was not successful: his victim lived in spite of great odds. After may years, this violent and deceitful individual was tried in a courtroom and sent to prison.

What was remarkable about this story was that the girl he injured very badly decided to forgive him.

She hoped that he would forever remain in jail, but she looked him in the eye and said, “I forgive you”.

It is written in Matthew’s gospel,  “then Peter came up and said to him, ‘Lord how often shall my brother sin against me, and I forgive him? As many as seven times?’

Jesus said to him, ‘I do not say to you seven times, but seventy times seven.’”

Forgiving someone who has wronged you or hurt you is not easy. Dropping him or her from your life forever seems sometimes like a good idea. Yet Jesus calls us to forgive and to begin again.

All of us fail to do the right thing sometimes. Often we injure a neighbour unintentionally because we are not well and we say, do or write things that don’t turn out the way we meant them to.

All we can do is say we are sorry and hope the other person can wipe the slate clean.

Matthew’s gospel tells us to forgive our brother from the heart.

In this summer season, let us seek to draw closer to God and to one another.

May we reconcile with our sisters and brothers in Christ.

May we remember that everyone of God’s children is precious in His sight. He will never leave us desolate.

Today, may we offer a kind word or do something nice for a neighbour. May we pray for others. May we see the face of Christ in everyone we meet and may everyone we meet see the face of Christ in us.

Rev. Janet Evans, 

Iroquois United Church

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Just when I thought I had something to teach her….

By the beginning of this year we (as a family) received a very special gift; a baby girl we named Michelle. By all means, she is a God-sent beautiful present to all of us.

We already have two girls 10 and 13 years old. So, it has been a while since we’ve last been involved with tiny one-piece outfits, diapers, formulas…the whole nine yards. In the last three years we were more into books, sports equipment, fashion accessories and electronics. Lucky us, we have the two worlds under one roof now… 

Michelle is almost five months old today. It’s the time when she can sit upright for longer periods of time, try to roll over from her back to her tummy, make more voices and pull objects (or hair – not mine) closer and pick them up in the palm of her hand then move them from one hand to the other. But more importantly, she is more alert and interactive now. It’s an amazing thing to watch her grow every day.

As I did with her two older sisters, by this time I start to investigate some objects and behaviours that can encourage her sensual, mental & emotional development and help build her focus and attention span. Always believed that the earlier and more intentional parents are about their children’s growth, the better abilities they accumulate. In this time and age, they have lots to learn even before they are teenagers. 

Last evening, after a dear dark-skin friend paid us a visit, my oldest girl asked if Michelle is able to tell the difference between dark and light skin people.

I was quick and nervous with my answer: “she can tell the difference in color, but this is the only difference she makes.” 

Suddenly, it felt like she is advantaged with the many things she doesn’t know compared to adults. The question made me think if a little baby like mine has something to teach us. It made me consider how informative babies and little children’s ignorance can be to our culture. 

Babies could see color from birth. When they are five months old, babies can distinguish between similar bold colors, though they would have difficulty distinguishing similar tones, such as red and orange. Lots has been written about baby’s sensory development and we can always learn more about it from different sources. 

But, there is another set of questions about color that are not as easy to answer. For example: Why for decades we read into different skin color more than we’re supposed to read? How did we learn that? How come it stayed with us for a long time before it was challenged? 

In fact, the color issue triggered all kinds of things that we would have been better off had we not learned them.

As adults, money has a central place in our life. Babies don’t believe that life’s biggest issue is money or how much we have of it.

Babies don’t judge people by the way they dress, look or talk; how come we try to fit people in one of the categories we have in our minds seconds after we first meet them?

Little babies are dependant creatures (some people believe this is the very first thing babies are aware of). This is why it’s very soothing for a baby to touch his /her mother’s skin. Dependency is a very early experience in our life, and a late one as well (we are dependent again when we’re seniors. 

Who could convince us otherwise in between? How could we forget this early lesson?      

Thankfully, for babies, beauty has nothing to do with waist size. If not so, feeding time could have been even more difficult. And it has also nothing to do with the way our faces look.

Babies smile at their moms when they wake up in the middle of the night with no makeup and with tiered eyes. They love their smell without any deodorant or perfume. Why did we let commercial standards define beauty for us?      

As adults, we need to put different hats per day to achieve our tasks and duties. Sometimes we become so good at it that role playing can make us put on masks and not only hats. The end result can be that we will need a historian to rediscover the “original us”.

Transparency is innate to babies. They might not be able to tell you what they want, but they definitely depend on being who they are to let you know what they need so you can help them.

Why did environment conquer some of our innate qualities? Why do we still allow it to do so?

In fact, so many questions come to mind. At the end of the day you start to wonder if we need to teach new born babies and little children what we know, or we need to take a step in their direction and start the process of unlearning many things that we have picked up along our trip in this life.

I can’t help it at this point not to remember an old teacher who used to say to his disciples: “Truly I tell you, unless you change and become like little children, you will never enter the kingdom of heaven.” Matthew 18:3 (NIV) 

All this happened just when I thought I had something to teach her….

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