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Hello everyone, 

Here is the Christmas Worship Schedule:

Christmas Eve Service: December 24th at 7:00 p.m

Christmas Day Service:  Regional Service at St. Martin’s Anglican church at 10:30.

Address is 195 E. Windsor Road, North Vancouver  

This Sunday we will bring the Christmas tree into the church and decorate it after the service.  The children are invited to come to a sing a long with Sonia.

 Poinsettias: We are taking donations of money or poinsettias to decorate the church for Christmas.  Please place the money in the offering plate or bring the poinsettia to church next week.

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Upcoming events:

Blue Christmas service:

A Service of Hope presented by St. Andrew’s United Church and the Anglican and Lutheran Churches of North Vancouver

Are you missing or grieving loved ones, dealing with health challenges, feeling sorrow for the state of the world? Join us for Blue Christmas, a time to acknowledge and release grief and sorrow, and begin the journey into hope.

WEDNESDAY, DECEMBER 19, 2018 AT 7 PM

St. Andrew’s United Church

1044 St. George’s Avenue in North Vancouver  604-985-0408 

 

SAVE THE DATE ANNOUNCEMENT:

Dear Friends, 

Here is an initial 'save the date' announcement about our synod-wide conversations coming up in February & March, 2019.  There will be much more detail in January but we hope you might send this out on your distribution lists so people can get it into their calendars. 

The Vancouver conversation is on Saturday February 23rd at First Lutheran. 

Who are we? What are we about? What does the future hold for us as a synod? Come, Share, Listen, Dream, Reflect, Engage!

We will hold gatherings in each of the Regions in 2019.

For now, simply mark your calendar.

You’ll hear a lot more about this in January! 

Blessed Advent,

Bishop Greg Mohr & Synod Council       

 

From Richard Rohr: 

My friend and fellow Franciscan, Sister Ilia Delio, unpacks what the Christ mystery means and how we might practice seeing Christ everywhere.

So does everyone have to become Christian to know the Christ? Absolutely not; Christ is more than Jesus. Christ is the communion of divine personal love expressed in every created form of reality—every star, leaf, bird, fish, tree, rabbit and every human person. Everything is christified because everything expresses divine love incarnate. However, Jesus Christ is the “thisness” of God (“God is like this and this is God”) so what Jesus is by nature everything else is by grace (divine love). We are not God but every single person is born out of the love of God, expresses this love in [their] unique personal form and has the capacity to be united with God. . . .

Because Jesus is the Christ, every human is already reconciled with every other human in the mystery of divine [love] so that Christ is more than Jesus alone; Christ is the whole reality bound in a union of love.We cannot know this mystery of Christ as a doctrine or an idea; it is the root reality of all existence. Hence we must travel inward, into the interior depth of the soul where the field of divine love is expressed in the “thisness” of our own, particular lives.

Each of us is a little word of the Word of God, a mini-incarnation of divine love. The journey inward requires surrender to this mystery in our lives and this means letting go of our control buttons. It means dying to the untethered selves that occupy us daily; it means embracing the sufferings of our lives, from the little sufferings to the big ones; it means allowing God’s grace to heal us, hold us and empower us for life. It means entering into darkness, the unknowns of our lives, and learning to trust the darkness, for the tenderness of divine love is already there. It means [being] willing to sacrifice all that we have for all that we can become in the power of God’s love; and finally it means to let God’s love heal us of the opposing tensions within us.

No one can see God and live and thus we must surrender our partial lives to become whole in the love of God. When we can say with full voice, “you are the God of my heart, my God and my portion forever” [Psalm 73:26] then we can open our eyes to see that the Christ in me is the Christ in you. We are indeed One in love. 

Ilia Delio, “A Reply to Richard Rohr on the Cosmic Christ,” October 16, 2017,   

 

Peace, 

Lin Parkinson