The Progressive Reverend

I have been thinking a lot about community lately. Not the abstract kind. Not the polished kind we put in mission statements. The real kind. The kind that smells like fried fish and sea air. The kind where children play across the street, goats wander nearby, stray dogs circle hopefully, and people gather because this is just where people gather. While we were in St. Vincent, we visited a small local restaurant. The kind of place where people don’t really sit inside, so the inside becomes a mix of restaurant and storage. A couple of tables on the porch. A few picnic tables in the parking lot. The menu was simple: catch of the day or blackfish, served with provisions. And yet, there it was. Community. At one table sat about eight women of different ages. One of them asked me how I was and seemed to actually want to know. Not the polite kind of question. The kind where your answer matters. Nearby, another group gathered around a picnic table, drinking beer, talking, laughing, eating, enj...

I came home with salt still on my skin and something I can’t quite name sitting with me. For two weeks, life slowed down. Morning didn’t rush me. No schedule chasing me out the door. Just light coming through the window and the ocean, always there. I swam every day. In Indian Bay . The kind of water that makes you forget what time it is. The kind that holds you without asking anything in return. It felt… good. Simple in a way that makes you wonder what we’ve done to our lives back home. And it’s beautiful there. It really is. But there’s something else. Because there were no fish. Or almost none. I kept waiting for that flicker of movement, that quick flash of colour. But mostly it was just… quiet. The reef didn’t feel alive. It felt tired. Like something that had been through too much and didn’t have the strength to show it anymore. And I don’t know what to do with that. Part of me wants to explain it. To make sense of it quickly. There’s no recycling. Garbage...

It has been a long year already. And we are only three months in. There has been too much loss for such a short stretch of time. Too many goodbyes. Too many quiet moments where grief sits heavy in the room, like a guest who will not leave. Even the season has seemed to echo it, winter lingering, snow refusing to melt, the earth still held tight in cold hands when we are so ready for warmth. Some years feel like this. Like everything is holding its breath. And yet… here comes Easter. Not politely. Not timidly. But stubbornly. Hopeful in a way that almost feels defiant. The story of Jesus Christ does not pretend that death isn’t real. It does not rush past the sorrow or tie it up neatly. It lingers at the tomb. It allows the silence. It lets the grief speak its full truth. And then, without warning, without explanation that satisfies the mind, something shifts. Life. Not as a return to what was. But as something new. Something transformed. Something that says, quietly but un...