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First Advent: Woman With Child/God With Us

12/1/2015

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By Rosilee Sherwood

I thought for a long time that GOD was up here and WE were down here and everything up there was good and wonderful and holy and amazing and everything down here was bad and ugly and just the everyday crap you had to put up with.  I would come to church on a really good day or go on a retreat, or to a conference or something and I would (hands meet) MEET GOD.  I would have this wonderful experience where I got to FEEL God and I thought that’s what being a Christian was all about.  People said that God was always with me, but that was something I just had to believe, it didn’t really make much sense in my real life at the time.  What I thought was that everything holy, everything spiritual, everything meaningful and life-changing, was separate from the everyday things, the practical things, the hard things.

One year during advent I started to think and talk about this separation.  Someone pointed out to me that this might not be the most helpful way of understanding things.   During Advent, we anticipate Christmas, and we prepare to receive Jesus, or God, as a human being.  Advent has become my favourite time of year as I always look forward to hearing Vic share his passion for the Incarnation – God made flesh.  As I started thinking about this, I began to see that for me, God becoming a human, Mary becoming pregnant and Jesus being born, this means that there is no separation.  I began to discover that for me, thinking of all of these things as separate doesn’t give me a good picture of what life is really like. Us and God, of the holy things and the mundane things, beautiful things and boring things, life, and death.  The separation I had learned about, the idea of God being up here and us down here, wasn’t the most revealing way of understanding God for me.  I was beginning to see a different way of painting the picture of what God is like.  It occurred to me that perhaps when we consider Advent and Christmas, we can see that we are here, AND God is here.  The incarnation, God becoming human, shows us that the holy things, the good things, the beautiful and wonderful things, they are here too.  

This is not a new idea.  The Franciscan Monks, who have been around for centuries, believe that there is no clear distinction between the sacred and the “profane” or ordinary, because Christ existed in matter, from all eternity.  When the Bible talks about creation, it says in Colossians that in Jesus, all things were created.  Everything was created through him and for him.  Jesus, holds everything together.   For the Franciscans, God is everything – a rock, a tree, an animal, an angel, a human.  So that is what I want to share with you.  I want to share with you the idea that GOD IS WITH US.  Goodness and beauty.  They are with us.  The main way that I think of God, is as LOVE.  So, Jesus as a baby in a dirty manger means that LOVE is not something far away or separate from everyday life.  Love is with us!!


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The Homeless God

11/28/2015

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By Caleb Ratzlaff​

Westview Christian Fellowship is located in the Queenston neighbourhood, a district in St. Catharines that has abnormally high rates of poverty, homelessness, and illiteracy. Westview has become a strong community partner through sharing its resource and expertise with a women’s Centre, Westview Centre4Women. The Centre provides refuge, community, and a variety of services for women living in the Queenston neighbourhood. Although the Centre was initiated by the church as a response to a need in St. Catharines' downtown context, the Centre, in turn, responded to needs in the church when some of the participants became involved in leadership and support.  Last year a number of women from the Centre expressed interest in an introductory course on Christianity. After trying the Alpha program, an evangelistic program which seeks to introduce the basics of the Christian faith, we decided to create our own curriculum to better suit our situation.
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While considering this neighbourhood and the request for a course on Christianity, I was struck by one of the many compelling arguments found in Nik Ansell’s most recent book, The Annihilation of Hell: Universal Salvation and the Redemption of Time in the Eschatology of Jürgen Moltmann. Simply stated, Nik argues that Scripture is a story about the work of God and humanity making a home, a place in this world defined by care, respect, and love—something many struggle with in Queenston. This got my imagination turning: if creation is God’s domestic homemaking skills at work, was God homeless before he turned on the lights? Does God experience similar feelings and challenges as those associated with homelessness?* It’s a strange speculative thought, that creation emerges out of a God forsaken space, a space Moltmann argues is within God, akin to a woman’s womb.

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Session One: Wonder Wednesdays

11/22/2015

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By Caleb Ratzlaff

Last year Westview Centre4Women asked Westview to run an Alpha series, an introductory course on Christianity from an Evangelical perspective. Despite hosting a relatively successful series, a number of challenges with the material became apparent. The women found the Alpha videos very dry and the language difficult to understand. Nevertheless, as with many Alpha series, the real benefit came from the simple fact that we were gathering together as a group to learn about life, religion, and the Gospel. This year the Centre has again asked for an Alpha-like series, so a small group of us have taken up the task of improving on what was accomplished last year. If you're interested, here's a link to the new curriculum we developed


This year we’ve decided to do a few things differently, beginning by foregoing the Alpha videos altogether and renaming the group Wonder Wednesdays. We also decided to tinker a bit with the structure of the evening, adapting a liturgy from St. Gregory of Nyssa Episcopal Church in California. The evening begins with a welcoming ritual that helps us set aside the business and clutter of the day and prepare to listen and learn from each other. As participants arrive they are asked to form a circle around a bowl of rocks and a jug of water. Rocks and water serve to symbolize that each of us brings his or her own unique challenges and gifts to the group. All of us experience things that feel hard, or heavy, or rough sometimes… like rocks. Each member of the circle has an opportunity to take a rock in their hands, to close their eyes and, while taking a few deep breaths, notice what may have felt hard, or rough, or heavy for them in the last week. The rocks are then gently returned to the bowl. Water reminds us that love, life, goodness, and ultimately God, flow over and under and around and even sometimes right out of the hard and rough places of life. As water is carefully poured over the rocks, members are asked to take a few deep breaths and notice what has been a gift for them in the last week. As we pour water over the rocks we remember the gifts we bring and the things that bind us together. The end of the welcome ritual is signaled by the chime of a bell, the reading of the lord’s prayer, and the lighting of a candle.  

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Welcome

10/1/2015

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Thanks so much for visiting our website and for taking a browse. Our blog page is a place where we post interesting articles, sermon recordings or just fun things about the Westview family. The blog is maintained by a number of different authors and so you may find some different voices here and we welcome you to contribute your voice to the conversation. Please feel free to leave your comments below and we would love to hear what your thoughts are.

Thanks again for visiting our site and we look forward to hearing your thoughts. 

​Enjoy!
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    About

    This blog has multiple contributors. The beliefs and opinions expressed by each are one-sided and partial. We hope that by confronting and expressing our one-sidedness through dialogue this blog is able to reflect the life of Westview as we gather together and live in the Queenston Neighbourhood and beyond. If you are interested in contributing, please contact Caleb at calebratzlaff@gmail.com. 

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