Anglican Parish of Seaforth

06/03/2026

Tuesday (delayed) Contemplation: There is a certain kind of joy that comes from finding unexpected treasure. You check your pockets and find a hundred-dollar bill that you forgot about and does not have to be used for anything in particular. You check the clock and realize that you still have two hours before you have to leave. Yet, despite this joy it is easy to misuse these sorts of gifts. They were discovered and not earned. You have no obligation to use them for anything, so will you use them well? At this point, one might ask if something so free can be misused? There is a blind spot in this question though. Our heart can often be found in how we use our gifts rather than how we respond to our obligations. Maybe we use them well, maybe not, but either way part of our heart is revealed. Temptation lurks in our gifts in a different way than in our obligations and it is in this that we tend to find out to whom or to what we truly belong. So, how do you use the free gifts in your life? And what does that reveal about what you belong to? (Mark 12: 13 – 17)

05/26/2026

Tuesday Contemplation: We do not create the world; we receive the world. It seems a rather mundane thing to say and yet it is worth saying because we often indulge in our own ability to create and interpret. I did not create my emotions. My “self” is not entirely under my control, and I do not so much create myself as received it and work with it. The world, for its part, develops all sorts of impressions in me and I am not the author of those impressions, nor do I own them since the world shares them with everyone. A sunset is often beautiful, whether I want it to be so or not. Really, the closest I can get to controlling any of this is deciding what I will receive. Deciding what I will look upon and what I will not. Yet today it seems constantly like somebody else wants to control my eyes and they don’t have my best interest in mind. It makes me ask, how often do I let them? How often do I close my eyes to the good vision I could have? How often do I stifle the good yeast? If so, why? Am I scared to lose the illusion of control that I never had? (2 Cor 10: 7 - 18, Matt 13: 31 - 33)

05/19/2026

Tuesday Contemplation: Most all of us have at least one lesson that we wish we could have taught our younger self. Many of us have at least one lesson that we would like to pass on to the younger generation. Of course, none of us have a way to make a person listen, and often we struggle enough with opening our own ears, never mind another’s ears. It is easy to hear what we want to hear and think that we have heard what was meant. Beyond this, it is hard to have the wisdom to hear wisdom. I do not have the medical training to always properly know and understand what my doctor tells me, and at some point, I have to trust them. I do not have the wisdom to always know and understand what I am being offered every day from God and from those around me, but at some point, I have to trust in Him. Which makes me wonder, how often do I put what I want to learn as being more important than what I could and should learn? (Sirach 44: 1 – 7, Matthew 7: 24 – 29)

05/12/2026

Tuesday Contemplation: Kindness can seem a pretty humble thing next to all of the possible aspirations of life. Parents of course want their children to be kind, but maybe also to have enough ambition to seek greater things than kindness. We tend to look towards fame, wealth, excellence and other types of greatness as more worthy. If those things cost kindness, is that a great cost? If we are honest, do we not want more than mere kindness? Or is this a thought that is only possible in our comfort and health? What of the days when the only thing we really desire is kindness from another? All of us are vulnerable. Fame, excellence, greatness, even wealth can not actually protect you from this truth. Maybe kindness is humble next to ambition, but maybe it is also more honest. Humility is generally related to honesty, and kindness announces an important confession; I too can be hurt. Should our ambitions then be more honest? Are gentleness and kindness as humble an aspiration as they seem? (Micah 6: 6 - 8 )

05/06/2026

It is with gentleness and a heavy heart that we say farewell to Ken Munro who passed away on May 1st. His funeral will be at All Apostles by the Sea, on May 16th at 11am. Reception to follow in the church hall.

After 87 full years, Kenneth Alasdair Munro left us peacefully on May 1, 2026, surrounded by family. We will miss the laughter, the support, the relentless wit, the competitiveness at the card table, and the way he could take over a room with nothing more than a laugh or a look. He was born to the l...

05/05/2026

Tuesday Contemplation: It has been said that the individual is smart, but the crowd is stupid. I agree to an extent, often the crowd can be called foolish, while the individual at least has the prospect of being wise, or it should be said, cunning. Importantly there is no reason to assume that the individual will be moral even if they are smart. Indeed, and a smart individual who has no hope in their neighbours has no reason to be moral but can be quite malicious. A crowd however often does harm from foolishness rather than evil. This is not to say that crowds don’t harm or that they can’t be immoral, but we should moderate this. A crowd can stone or crucify the innocent, but they can also save their neighbours from disaster and work to protect a shared future. Sometimes we have to rely precisely on the crowd for our future, and this does not have to be a scary prospect. If it does scare you, then what hope can we have for a positive future? We are not alone in our journey, and we must have some relationship with our community. Do we trust our future then to individuals without hope for the larger community? Or is there some sense in which we can get up with Paul and still hope for a future together? (Acts 14: 19 – 27)

05/04/2026

After Sermon for May 3rd
John 14: 1 – 14, 1 Peter 2: 2 – 10
Idolatry is very rarely a problem caused by the idol itself. Most of our idols are actually very important sources of goodness in our life. For example, any artwork can easily be treated as more important than the realities to which it points. Yet, artwork remains useful as a window into something greater. John of Damascus makes this point about icons, they are indeed art and they have their value in something beyond themselves. Much of life is filled with analogues to this. Homes are much the same thing because a home is not a place. If I ask you where your home is, you are going to give me a place. If I correct myself and so, no, what is your spiritual home? You are still likely to give me a place. Yet, a home is not a place; it is more of an adjective and has more to do with relationship than location. If I tell you that I am going to Truro, you know where that is, but if I am going home, you still need to be told where that is. When Jesus says not to let our hearts be troubled because he is going to his Father’s house to prepare a place for us. He is talking about our home. Our home with him and this home is not a place. He is not talking about moving into the Temple, he is talking about the life where we truly belong. At their best, our literal homes can be windows into what is meant here. The “place” where we truly belong as adopted children of God and, belonging in fact comes up in 1 Peter as well. He is talking about building the Temple with living stones. Now, if you have never built a dry stack wall then this metaphor may need some help. It is a superstitious thing to build a dry stack wall and at times the stones seem literally alive. You find that stones want to be in a particular spot in the wall, and it feels like you find their homes. In the case of the spiritual home we are building, it is instead ourselves that find the place where we fit. At this point we should observe that home has gone from place to participation. It should be obvious, when a person is absent from our “home,” it doesn’t feel like home in the same way anymore. The home Jesus prepares for us isn’t simply a place but a place that needs us. At which point we should probably ask, where is the Lord’s House where we are needed? Where does God belong? This is not a trick question; God is at home in all of creation. The Lord’s house is indeed both temporal and eternity. He belongs everywhere, and if he does, then so do you. You may not feel at home in your life or in this time or in whatever place you happen to be. However, the place is prepared for you by God and so you belong. You belong wherever you are as a living stone bonded with the other living stones of God’s creation to make this world not merely into a place, but into a home.

04/28/2026

Tuesday Contemplation: Many video games rehearse the history of technological progress as a way of building progress in the game. This happens across several genres of games and sometimes includes significant cultural developments as well, though the line between culture and technology is not always clear. One could observe that many religious rituals involve the rehearsing of a shared history to understand where we come from and where we are going. Regardless of context though, any attempt to rehearse progress assumes that we are building on what came before; that we remember ourselves. Obsolescence does not mean there is any progress happening. It can simply mean we’ve forgotten something important. At times rituals are just this, a rehearsal of what is important so that gratitude can lead our hearts and our future by building on our past. Change however, does not mean growth. Are we growing today? Are we grateful for the cost paid to get here? Or are we merely changing from an unknown past to an unknown future? (Deut 26)

04/28/2026

After Sermon for April 26 and the Baptism of Alex
John 10: 1 - 10
That we, the sheep, will follow the voice of our shepherd and run from the stranger can be read in a prophetic or a magical way. As if at our baptism we are given some innate ability to hear the voice of Christ such that when he comes to us, we can recognize him. I promise you, this is not how baptism works. I don’t literally know what Christ sounds like, nor can I understand Aramaic. It is also a crude way to treat the Word of God, as if it is merely and literally words. The word of God is not found in human languages. It is not Aramiac, Latin, Greek, Arabic, English or even mathematics. It is not a grammar or a book or even Scripture. Jesus Christ is the Word made flesh and the Word of God is at the heart of creation. He spoke and through his Words we came to be. It is the literal breath in your lungs, the air on your skin and the ground under your feet. Such a voice surpasses all typical communication, but such a voice is also in all of the thieves and bandits, just as it is in us. This is the Grace of God, and He makes His light to shine on the just and on the wicked. So, these verses do not give us an easy out to construct an exclusive community nor a reasonable way to know when it is our shepherd or the thieves at work. Indeed, Christ may even work through the thieves. We may want to think that God is here telling us that he won’t let us be deceived and we should trust the workings of the Spirit in our hearts. However, we should always be careful about what we want to believe and our assumptions about our heart. Instead, it is more helpful to remember that Jesus is using this story to illustrate something about trust and authority. His sheep recognize His authority and trust him. Do we recognize what our baptism means for our understanding of authority? Authority is not in typical words, no matter how compelling or what voice they come from. Authority is not in eloquence, experience, expertise or power. Wealth can buy the appearance of authority, law can justify authority and bombs can enforce authority, but these are simply tools. It is not because God is all powerful that we recognize His authority. It is not because God is all knowing that we recognize His authority. It is because He cares for us, that he loves us and Jesus lays down His life for us. Jesus came that we may have life and have it abundantly. Indeed, it is only ever love that establishes authority and is in love that we hear our shepherd. It is not magic that sheep listen and trust their shepherd it is because they know they are cared for and loved.

04/21/2026

Tuesday Contemplation: Echo chambers by nature are an individual experience. Closet religion by nature is an individual and isolating experience. Self work, identity, introspection, these are all things that by nature tend to be an individual experience. Video games, algorithms and our digital life tends to be isolating and reinforces our own perspectives. None of these things have to be this way. Nothing has to be isolating, but if this is how we live, it also becomes how we read, think and what we expect from life. Yet, regardless of who you are, there are people that want deeply what is best for you. People will offer their time and their effort on your behalf. Faithful people want to pray for you, and priests are likely praying for you today as they pray for your whole community. Indeed, and life is not an individual journey, every time you eat, it is only by the grace of community. So, how often are you isolating yourself? How often are you making the conscious decision to recognize and participate in the community of your life? (Deut 9: 11 – End, Act 9: 32 – End)