The Progressive Reverend

There are moments when the world feels like it has split open. A school shooting in a small community. The kind of place where everyone knows the hallways, where teachers remember siblings, where grief travels faster than the news cycle. When something like this happens, it doesn’t stay contained. It moves through memory, through relationships, through the nervous system of anyone who has ever stood in a classroom and promised children they would be safe. There is no tidy theology for this. No sentence can make it make sense. There is only lament. And alongside the heartbreak, another reality is already surfacing. When the identity of the shooter intersects with queerness or transness, we know what often follows. Grief becomes weaponized. Entire communities are blamed. Fear hardens into rhetoric. Rhetoric spills into policy and playgrounds. Those who are already navigating a world that questions their dignity suddenly feel the ground shift again. This is where the church must be v...

 There’s been a quiet conversation happening in my heart this week. One about attitude. About how we carry the weight of our days. About how easily life can feel heavy without us even noticing when we picked up the load. Last year at this time, everything felt like too much. Christmas was busy in all the ways it always is, the lists, the gatherings, the expectations. My dad was sick. My mom was stretched thin and stressed. And somewhere in the middle of trying to hold everyone together, I forgot to hold myself. I kept going. Kept showing up. Kept caring for everyone else. And I didn’t rest. It’s something I talk about all the time in pastoral care. I sit with people and gently remind them to be kind to themselves. To breathe. To slow down. To take the afternoon off. To stop carrying what was never meant to be carried alone. I offer compassion so freely. And then I go home and don’t take my own advice. I think many of us do this. We can feel endless empathy for...

I took this photo in a lobby, one of those aesthetically pleasing places that makes you feel grounded. The words caught me off guard. Without community there would be suffering. Not less joy. Not more loneliness. But suffering. It stopped me because it names something we often try to explain away. We like to imagine ourselves as strong, self-sufficient, resilient. We tell ourselves we should be able to manage on our own. But the truth is more tender than that. Humans were never designed to carry life alone. Isolation does not just make life harder. It hurts us. Community is the web that holds us when our own strength gives out. It is the people who notice when we go quiet. The ones who bring soup or send a text at exactly the wrong-right moment. It is the friend who sits with us in grief without trying to fix it. The neighbour who shovels the walk. The therapist who offers language when our own has disappeared. And then there is church, when it is at its best. Church community ...

  I have been thinking about loneliness lately. Not in a dramatic way. More like the quiet kind that sneaks in between appointments. The kind that shows up even when your calendar is full. I wonder if you have noticed it too. We live in a strange moment in history. So many of us work from home now. We order groceries without speaking to a human. We text instead of knocking. We scroll instead of lingering. Our lives are efficient. But not always connected. We tell ourselves we are in touch because we see each other’s lives online. We know who got engaged. Who had a baby? Who went on vacation? We double-tap and leave heart emojis and call it checking in. But knowing about someone is not the same as being with someone. Community used to be something you stumbled into. Now it is something you schedule. And loneliness has a way of slipping through the cracks. I think about the single thirty-something who goes to weddings more than dinner parties. The teenager who feels invisible in...

  Neil gave me a book for Christmas called Morning Meditations. It’s arranged by seasons, which already feels right somehow, and it’s full of small, spacious wisdom. The kind you don’t rush past. The kind that lingers. One quote has stayed with me this week: As winter approaches, notice what didn't grow this year alongside what blossomed and flourished. Focus on the things that thrived and not what wilted. Release what didn't thrive and celebrate what transpired. This is a season to reflect, release, and make room for what is meant to grow in the spring. Celebrate what grew as well as what failed. What a gentle invitation for the New Year. I’ve found myself thinking about friendships lately. The ones that shaped me. The ones that faded. The ones that ended without a proper goodbye. I’ve had many friends come and go in my life, some of them people I once could not imagine living without. My best friend growing up went to my church. Our moms were close, and our lives were deeply ...

Maybe it’s the quiet after the Christmas whirl, or the way January light slants across snow and makes everything look a little wide-open. Still, I’ve been thinking a lot about New Year’s resolutions and goals, not just for myself, but for us as a community at Parkdale United Church. Over the past year, so much has taken root here. We launched Wednesday Night Jazz and watched strangers and church folks alike tap their toes and breathe a little easier. We opened our doors to the Calgary Toy Library. We welcomed new recovery groups and Girl Guides. Our Fit and Friendship group grew from five to almost twenty. The building hums these days. Hallways echo with laughter, music, coffee cups, and the soft murmur of people finding their way back to one another. One of our goals was to ensure our space was fully utilized, and we did. Truly. The place is bustling, and it is beautiful. But then the next question arrives, tugging at my sleeve like a curious child. Is this the church's goal? Some...