Slow Horses and a Traditional Funeral?

 

Lord of All Hopefulness

1. Lord of all hopefulness, Lord of all joy,
Whose trust, ever child-like, no cares can destroy,
Be there at our waking, and give us, we pray,
Your bliss in our hearts, Lord, at the break of the day.

2. Lord of all eagerness, Lord of all faith,
Whose strong hands were skilled at the plane and the lathe,
Be there at our labors, and give us, we pray,
Your strength in our hearts, Lord, at the noon of the day.

3. Lord of all kindliness, Lord of all grace,
Your hands swift to welcome, your arms to embrace,
Be there at our homing, and give us, we pray,
Your love in our hearts, Lord, at the eve of the day.

4. Lord of all gentleness, Lord of all calm,
Whose voice is contentment, whose presence is balm,
Be there at our sleeping, and give us, we pray,
Your peace in our hearts, Lord, at the end of the day.

Traditional Irish Tune
Lyrics by Jan Struther, 1931

Summer streaming series' can be slim pickin's so we were delighted to see that first episodes of a new season of the thriller Slow Horses are available. This is season six of this series about a motley crew of British spies exiled to Slough House (hence the nickname for the Horses), essentially purgatory for misfits and failures. Jackson Lamb, the flatulent, slovenly boss of the bunch is played brilliantly by Gary Oldman who treats his underlings more like mules than horses.

The first episode of this season includes a funeral for a retired elderly spy. Even though these are people responsible for a fair amount of skullduggery and mayhem the custom is to have a Christian sendoff. Ecclesiastes 3, which tells us that there is a time and season for everything, is assumed as a scripture reading by the MI5 director. And the service begins with a hymn, Lord of All Hopefulness which turns out to be a great favourite in Britain, one I didn't know. We do sing the tune Slane for the wonderful Be Thou My Vision. The Jan Struther lyrics are poetic. 

The inclusion of the funeral with its traditional elements in a quaint old church is incongruous, part of the reason the series as a whole is so watchable. Apparently Mick Herron, author the Slow Horses book series makes a cameo in the congregation. 

 For everything there is a season and a time for every matter under heaven:

a time to be born and a time to die;
a time to plant and a time to pluck up what is planted;
 a time to kill and a time to heal;
a time to break down and a time to build up;
 a time to weep and a time to laugh;
a time to mourn and a time to dance;
 a time to throw away stones and a time to gather stones together;
a time to embrace and a time to refrain from embracing;

a time to seek and a time to lose;
a time to keep and a time to throw away;

a time to tear and a time to sew;
a time to keep silent and a time to speak;

a time to love and a time to hate;
a time for war and a time for peace.

                           Ecclesiastes 3:1-8 NRSVue

Caring for Our Common Home

 

Pope Leo XIV gestures as he celebrates Mass at the Borgo Laudato Si' center in Castel Gandolfo, Italy, Sept. 1, 2026, marking the World Day of Prayer for the Care of Creation. Credit: (OSV News photo/Guglielmo Mangiapane, Reuters)

Christians around the world are currently taking part in what is known as Creation Time/Season of Creation/Creationtide, depending on denomination. This is a liturgical development of the past 30 years which acknowledges and celebrates Creation, leading to action. These few weeks commence on September 1st, now called the Feast of Creation in Christ and conclude with the Feast of St. Francis on October 4th. 

Recently the Roman Catholic church released a timely document which is in many respects a sequel to the late Pope Francis' encyclical Laudato Si: On Care for our Common Home from 2015. The International Theological Commission (ITC)  published “Caring for Our Common Home — A Responsible and Fraternal Response to the Triune God” with the authorization of Pope Leo XIV, on Wednesday, 2 September This was one day after World Day of Prayer for Creation and is the fruit of reflections carried out between 2022 and 2025.

This is a text of more than 29,000 words, so a serious exploration of Creation Care with a number of important themes including "the sin against creation". In the United Church we aren't inclined to speak about sin or sinners a lot because of the emphasis in some traditions on individual wrongdoing as a form of manipulation that fosters guilt. Yet sin as transgression, a destructive turning away from God and others is an essential aspect of the path to redemption for humans and all living beings. 

This may seem a tad heady but what's happening in the Roman Catholic church is important theological stuff. 

2 Why are we attacking our common home so severely? The sin against creation .

2.1 Breach of the original mandate

84. [ Deception at the root ]. In the first chapters of Genesis, Scripture expresses in an exemplary way how from the beginning of humanity human freedom gives in to deception and claims to occupy the place of God (cf. Gen 38), distancing themselves from the Creator's original mandate. The deception is formulated by the serpent's forked tongue: "You will not die; for God knows that in the day you eat of it, then your eyes will be opened, and you will be like God, knowing good and evil" ( Gen 3:4-5). God has manifested His plan to human beings as rational and free beings. However, when they believe the serpent, they have already distrusted God and distanced themselves from Him. The promise of being like God, provoked by envy, leads to disobedience, typical of those who do not believe what God has said.

85. [ The dynamics of temptation ]. At the key moment, in the formulation of the temptation and in what induces the woman to follow it, three factors come together simultaneously that support and strengthen each other, plus a fourth that unifies everything.

1) The promise of knowledge that would make us like God "in knowing good and evil" ( Gen 3:5), taking God's place in judging good and evil.

2) Food that is truly satisfying and proportionate to human needs. Food, what can and cannot be eaten, is one of the fundamental threads of the plot ( Gen 1:29-30; 2:5, 7:9, 16-17; 3:2-3:5-6:11-14:17-19:22). The temptation consists in not respecting what God has established as good food for us.

3) The attraction that seduces desire and greed contains the false promise of the understanding of good and evil linked to food, providing the final impulse (cf. Gen 3:6). Action based on this radical deception has the paradoxical effect of revealing the essential vulnerability of human beings (cf. Gen 3:7). Human sin has introduced a cosmic disorder (cf. Gen 3:16-17): we no longer inhabit the garden of paradise, but a place where we must coexist with catastrophes and the struggle for life between different species.

4) Eve falls into the deceptive seduction that promises immortality through the forked tongue of the serpent: "You will not die" ( Gen 3:4). The gift of immortality is received from the One who is immortal and eternal. For this reason the Fathers of the Church already spoke of the Eucharist as a medicine of immortality: " phármakon athanasías ", [141] alluding to the gift of immortality in Christ conferred by eating it.

86. [ Breakdown of essential relationships ]. Transgression of God's original plan results in the breakdown of the three essential relationships in which human beings unfold their existence: with God, with other human beings, and with creation, which inevitably leads to deterioration on the personal, social, and cosmic levels. Creation remains wounded by human sin until the Savior, taking on the full weight of the misfortune caused by sin, redeems it with his redemptive suffering.

The Legacy of Daisy Peterson Sweeney

 

                                                 Daisy Peterson and brother Oscar (194?)

At the Toronto International Film Festival (TIFF) several Canadian film figures were asked who might be honoured with a Heritage Minute, a national institution. 

One of them suggested Daisy Peterson, sister of jazz icon Oscar Peterson. Daisy taught Oscar to play the piano. along with hundreds of others through a lengthy music career that unfolded alongside raising nine children and working at a variety of jobs. She also taught other jazz giants including Joe Sealy and Oliver Jones who died in July of this year.

Daisy, Oscar, and Oliver were involved in choirs and churches in Montreal when segregation was still prevalent and congregations were safe havens for faith and musical creativity. According to one biographical source Daisy was...

An accomplished organist as well, she played the organ for services at St. Jude’s Anglican Church, the Union United Church https://www.unionunitedchurchmtl.ca/ and at the Robert Campbell Presbyterian Church. It was at the Union United Church where she started a choir which she later turned over to Trevor Payne. The Black Community Youth Choir (1974–81) later became the Montreal Jubilation Gospel Choir in 1982.

Daisy Peterson Sweeney received accolades and honours through the years but I think adding a Heritage Minute is a brilliant idea. Thank God for Daisy!

                              Daisy Peterson Sweeney Mural, 1791 Rue Saint-Jacques, Montréal, QC.

A Hopeful Prayer for Unity

 

Through the decades I have participated, albeit sporadically, in what are termed Prayer Cycles. Basically this is following a discipline and direction for regular prayer that may include personal, local, and world concerns. I haven't done so for a few years but this prayer from the World Council of Churches for the week that began yesterday struck me because of its economy of words yet remarkable breadth. It calls us to repentance and encourages us to trust that the Holy Spirit will lead us into new ways of seeing and hearing. Amen!

Stitching for their Lives?

 

Back in July I wrote about the impending "invasion" of Britain by the Bayeux Tapestry, in fact a loan by the French for the first time since it was created 900 years ago.  It  isn't actually a tapestry but a 70-metre length of intricate embroidery depicting the Battle of Hastings as the decisive conflict in the Norman Conquest of England in 1066. One theory is that it was commissioned by a French bishop and brought to life by nuns in Canterbury, England, then immediately transported across the Channel. 

The exhibit at the British Museum has now been opened to great fanfare with re-enactors and line-ups for entry, although every ticket was sold within hours. There have been many articles, including one with the headline They were stitching for their lives’: why the Bayeux tapestry is a testament to terror. This piece suggests that some, perhaps many of the women who worked on the tapestry were women from Kent who fled the marauding invaders and took sanctuary in the convent, even as their families were being terrorized. Their survival was dependent on their ability to contribute to this depiction of Norman victory. If this theory is true, were these local women intermingled with the nuns, perhaps disguised in habits? Did they become part of the daily flow of worship which is part of monastic life and what might they have prayed when it seemed that God had forsaken them? How could they have focused on their intricate work in the midst of trauma? 

In the end this is part of the speculation, scholarly or otherwise, about the Bayeux Tapestry. It is amazing that in this age of virtual everything, there can be so much excitement over a work of art created stitch by stitch. 

President Emmanuel Macron of France, left, and King Charles III at a preview of the Bayeux Tapestry exhibition. Credit...Ludovic Marin/Agence France-Presse, via Pool/Afp Via Getty Images

A Monarch Butterfly Templum

Jesus bids us shine with a clear pure light

like a little candle burning in the night:

in this world of darkness so we must shine --

you in your small corner, and I in mine. 

templum an open space for augural observation; open, clear, broad space

a place of divine worship, sanctuary, shrine, temple 

 Good friends are part of a dedicated group of volunteers who help maintain and sustain the Samuel Wilmot Nature Area on the shore of Lake Ontario near Newcastle, Ontario. One of the annual projects is tagging Monarch butterflies staging on the shore before crossing this vast body of water. Yesterday we became part of the cheerful throng of citizen scientists who headed into the goldenrod to net Monarchs and return to the tagging stations. 

The science part involves carefully extricating the butterfly from the net, measuring the length, determining gender. applying the tiny tag, and recording this information along with the identification  number. The number means that if a butterfly is captured again enroute it can be tracked in a database. 

Yesterday was encouraging regarding the Monarchs. These living stained glass windows were everywhere and for the first time in a decade all 500 tags were applied. We managed to capture 15 of them for initial tagging along with two already marked. We have seen lots of Monarchs as we've paddled recently and even in our backyard. 

In the midst of overwhelmingly lousy environmental news is was encouraging that so many of these butterflies were embarking on their perilous journey to the mountains of Mexico for Winter roosting. And it was wonderful that scores of people showed up to take part in this important work. Approximately 250,000 tags are distributed across North America each year and we were doing our part. There were families with very young children, and enthusiastic teens, and earnest university students. There were a fair number of seniors as well and a variety of colours of skin. 

Because of a congregation of butterflies strangers became a pop-up congregation. There was lots of good natured conversation and "stranger danger" was given an amnesty by parents for a couple of hours. We were given the opportunity to release the butterflies we'd captured and a couple of them I put on the hands of children watching the procedure. 

Needless to say, we felt that the uplift of this experience was holy in this "templum" a sacred space. We certainly weren't worshipping the Monarchs but we felt the awe of both Creation and Creator. All of us were letting our light shine.