Jubilee

"Consecrate the fiftieth year 

and proclaim liberty throughout the land to all its inhabitants.  

It shall be a jubilee to you."  

Leviticus 25:10

I'm having a significant birthday come Friday.  

It's not the year exactly, that makes this birthday stand out for me.  I'm turning 55 - -  which by the way, just by itself I think is kind of cool.  But it's the spiritual marking of it that's been making me want to approach this birthday, and this entire year, in a set-aside, consecrated kind of way.

This year will mark 50 years of following Jesus.  I was 5 when I made my first profession of faith.  And even though I believe it was just the beginning of an understanding of what it means to seek redemption and forgiveness, and come into a personal, intimate relationship with God through Christ, it is in my mind the beginning of what I know to be my spiritual journey.

So, 50 years.  According to Levitical Law, this is my spiritual "jubilee".

God's instructions to Moses and His newly liberated people, standing at the base of Mt Siani concerning the Year of Jubilee, were all about letting the land rest, restoring dignity to the oppressed and poor, and being reminded in concrete ways that we are utterly dependent on a full-of-grace God for everything we have.  It was  meant to be a kind of gigantic 're-set' button on the nation, where everything was set back to the way it was supposed to be.

Inspired by that fact, and also I'm sure by the fabulous celebrations around Queen Elizabeth's diamond jubilee, I've decided that I want to find ways to spiritually celebrate somehow.

I don't have it all figured out yet.  But I do know would like to take the whole year and mark it in significant ways.

I've chosen my Jubilee verse:

Psalm 71:17-18

Since my youth, O God, you have taught me,

and to this day I declare your marvelous deeds.

Even when I am old and gray,

do not forsake me, O God,

till I declare your power 

to the next generation,

your might to all who are to come.

Lots to keep me meditating on with that one for a while, the ponderings of which I will save for future Jubilee blogs :).

I'm looking forward to marking things with Highview's stellar Staff Team --  a little more than normal special lunch time this coming Friday, since our weekly meal together actually falls on my birthday.

And I've arranged for a special cake - yes, I do love cake! - to share with my family that evening.

And the day before I've asked for time with a trusted friend and counselor who's been a spiritual mentor to me through so much over a significant part of my adult life.  We will pray together and mark the beginning of the Year of Jubilee of my soul.

As for the rest of it?  I will soon be away for my annual summer Sabbath at the cottage where I will spend more time reading and journaling and pondering on this, finding more ways, I anticipate, to declare God's marvelous deeds, His power and might, to the next generation, and to proclaim liberty, whatever all of that looks like.  As I said, I don't have it all figured out yet.  Some of it will be out there, with family and friends and blogs.  But most of it, I'm thinking, might be quiet and hushed and holy, and really private.

It sounds simple to say it, but it's really, really deep in there.  I love Jesus.  He has been my best and most faithful friend, my Messiah, my source of peace and strength, my everything.....for just my whole life long.  And I want to celebrate Him, honour Him, declare Him, worship Him.

Because my soul is excruciatingly grateful in the deepest  most private places that I call me. 

Open Letter to Highview Community Church on our 15th Anniversary

June 3, 2012 

Dear Beautiful Friends,

This morning we marked 15 years together as a church.   Hardly seems possible, but by God's grace, here we are.  And I know I said it this morning, but I want to be sure to say it again.

I love you.

I love serving with you, doing life with you, reaching out to regions beyond with you, worshiping with you, and having you to walk with during the joys and agonies.  I love your creativity and tenacity and honesty.  I love your loyalty, to me, to one another and to God.

I love the joy, the depth, the generosity and integrity of your spirit.  I love watching you share your faith with gentleness and respect.  I love watching you love each other.  I love watching you grow more and more deeply in love with Jesus.  I am astonished by how I am known and loved by you.

It truly has been a privilege to have been in this with you for the entire 15 year run, not all of those as your pastor, but all of them as your friend. 


Highview's growing up.  For all of our beginnings and boldness, successes and blunders, there's a new and humble movement toward greater maturity and depth among us now.  There's a sense that we're coming into a season of deeper roots and stronger foundations, foundations laid with the faithful, sacrificial service of every single person who has called Highview home.

Today, with a young sugar maple sapling and bright ribbons, we marked 14 decisions for Christ in this season alone.  "For our inheritance, give us the lost" we sing, and God has been so generous!  I can't wait to see how big that little tree will have grown in the next 15 years!  I can't wait to see what God will do with a church on the roundabout at the bottom end of Kitchener, excited and strong and fully surrendered to Him.

Happy Birthday Highview!

Profoundly grateful,

Ruth Anne

A Good and Quiet Choice

There's always this crunch time between coming home from Thailand and going away for my summer Sabbath.

Both are incredible gifts, so I hope it doesn't sound like I'm complaining. Hardly!  The community that is Highview is beautiful and generous to her pastor, allowing me to be away each year in March to visit our Thai family at Hot Springs AND to be away each year in July to sit by still waters in Cognashene where our family has a cottage.  Amazing.  And everything goes along just fine without me both times, which I'm pretty sure wouldn't surprise you, and long ago has stopped surprising me too :).

But this in between time can get intense.  Catching up from everything that was happening while I was in Thailand, and preparing for everything to be in order so I can leave for the cottage.  And that last part isn't just so things will be good over the summer only.  This is the time of year when the bigger plans for the whole of next season, September to June, are talked over and prayed over and calendar'd over and schedules are set and people are contacted; all of it being continuously offered as an open book upon which the Holy Spirit is invited to write.  It's the time of year for appreciations and thank yous and wrapping up in significant, honouring ways.  It's the time of year we celebrate our church's anniversary - this year is number 15! - and that always includes new members and baptisms, and all the wonderful conversations around all of that.

I've felt that intensity over the past two weeks, especially.  It's a dangerous place for a workaholic.  So much to do, so little time (it always seems), all of it's important, and the rush of tending to it, feeling the wind in my hair, seeing good things being accomplished.  A professor once told a class I was in that he didn't know the difference between work and fun because his work was fun.  For me, much of the work of pastoring is fun.  Not the conflict resolution or walking people through pain or the weight of leading, not that part.  But lots of it is.  And when the push is on and you're seeing it happen, and you've got good and honest people to labour with, well, it can get intense.

So I opened my journal this morning in the early sun of the quiet room where my husband still slept, and just sat for a moment and felt it.  The nothing.  And goodness was in the nothing.  And for a few moments I just felt good.  And quiet.  And out of those nothing quiet moments nothing particularly spectacular happened in my soul, except to be reminded that sitting in the sun in the quiet is good. 

It was bit of a strange day anyways.  An interruption in the rhythms of the work week.  A Tuesday trip to Lakefield to see Mom on a day that was originally scheduled to be a 'care counsel' meeting with the team that's looking after he in her new residence.  It was cancelled, but we went on Tuesday anyway, instead of the normal Sunday/Monday thing.  An interruption in the intensity.  A pause.  The whole day.

Fish and chips with Mom in the restaurant, and Hey Jude was playing and Mom said, "This is a pleasant tune."  And I teased her because she didn't realize it was the Beatles.  Growing up we weren't allowed to listen to that nasty rock and roll music. And she laughed at herself, and it was a good and quiet moment.

And later in the afternoon, talking quietly and openly about Mom's funeral service, which she had asked that we do together.  And the goodness in her faith, expressed by a confident longing for what is to come.  And her reassurances of her love for me, and appreciation for me, in the face of some hard family dynamics.

And just having those unspoken moments with Ken in the car, my faithful hero driver, because the drive back and forth has become too much with all the other responsibilities of my life, so he drives instead.  And oh how I need the good and quite of being passenger instead.


I'm still a workaholic, I know.  But I'm more mellow these days.  At least in these kinds of pockets of sunshine and pause and interruptions like today, I am.  I think maybe I'm finally learning, on these kinds of days, to watch for what God thought was so important that He would actually take me away from my 'work' to show me.

And driving home I was glad for choosing it.  And I was looking forward to engaging in the fun again tomorrow.

Mai Nit Noy

Thim is my own sponsored child.

There are 17 amazing Sponsors at Highview, who have committed to providing a monthly life altering contribution to the lives of 17 corresponding and equally amazing children who live at Hot Springs.

Thim's my girl.

She's beautiful. Tall, graceful and smiling always. I've watched her grow more and more into a young woman these past four years. She's 16 now. And beautiful. I mentioned that, I know. But obviously you can see that.

Her temperament is very even. In the six times I've been to visit, she's always been so gentle and pleasant and smiling. She seems to be a stabilizing factor for the other girls a lot of the time. Just quiet and confident and nurturing.

She's expressed her affections freely with me, but always with that quiet reserve. Until this time.

On the Sunday before we left just as we were waiting for church to begin, she found me waiting just outside where it was (relatively) a little cooler. I was looking over the garden, trying to take in my last moments, making them count, trying not to think about how hard the goodbyes will be. Thim came up behind me.

She had a bracelet she had made for me. This is a common symbol of affection and friendship in Thailand. In fact, this wasn't the first I'd received from her. But this time she is speaking to me in Thai and she is choking on her words.

'I give you so little. You give me so much.' She is crying.

I take the hands that had just finished tying the bracelet around my wrist, and draw us to face each other, close. I muster my brain around the rising emotion and speak the best Thai I could manage.

'Mai nit noy,' I say. 'Not little. Thim growing up beautiful young woman, not little. You loving God, worshiping God, not little. Thim grow up beautiful woman become teacher (she had told me once that this was her goal). I will come and see you teaching. If Thim has husband and have babies, I will come hold your babies.'

We're both crying now. And we're hugging, and I'm saying over and again words I now know well, "Ruk mahk, Thim." I love you so much, Thim. "Kit-teung makh." I will miss you so much.

I call Thim 'my girl' but she is in fact very much her own girl. She calls me 'mother' in her letters. Imagine that. Another gift that is anything but little. Mai nit noy.

In fact everything about Thim is mai nit noy.

And who am I that these things should be offered me?

Mountain Sunset Proclamations

How lovely on the mountains
are the feet of those who
bring good news,
who proclaim peace,
who bring good tidings,
who proclaim salvation,
who say to Zion,
"Your God reigns!"
Isaiah 52:7

Dear Suradet and Yupa,

Your feet are lovely.

Respectfully,

Ruth Anne

Breathing Heaven

Who can breathe
in a moment like this?

Hot sun
Cool water
Hearts burning in worship passion

Decided to follow Jesu they did
Wanting to make it public
Wanting to obey what He said to do

Mark it
Here
Now
With this community of wonder

They waited for me to come for this
Unworthily given this gentle honour
To baptize beautifully new believers
To stand knee deep with my brother/friend/fellow warrior
And bear witness to spiritual rebirth

Oh my soul!
How much of heaven can you handle?

Pictures by Megan Ogilvie

Waiting for My Soul to Catch Up

Deep calls to deep
in the roar of your waterfalls; all your waves and breakers
have swept over me.
Psalm 42:7

Jet lag is an odd sort of place to be. It's almost as if your body, mind and soul travel in different dimensions of time.

Your body gets home first, along with your luggage. And it's your body that has the first hot water shower and scrubs the red dirt stains off the bottom of your feet and starts the laundry and has a first non rice meal. And to be real honest, it's your body that kisses your husband hello and receives the enthusiastic hugs of grandchildren.

I think maybe your mind arrives a day or so later. Starts to answer a few emails, checks in with co-workers about items needing attention, puts your purse back together and gathers the papers you'll need to take into the office for 'just the morning' (I promise) tomorrow. It's your mind that responds to requests for reconnection with friends for coffee or a phone call. It's your mind that writes a blog.

But your soul? I'm honestly not sure exactly when my soul even leaves Thailand. Or if it's not still there right now, sitting quietly with Nut, letting the excruciating beauty of the waterfall wash over the deep that calls to Deep.

This sensation, of waiting for a while until my soul is ready to leave the intense and exotic spirituality of Thailand, and rejoin my abundant and satisfying life in Canada, is exaggerated this year. We went as a Team of 11, and with a significant task to accomplish in Day Camp. I celebrate with huge joy the work God has done in us, and the ways in which He was evident throughout the camp time. But the leadership and pastoral requirements were the priority, and my soul was respectfully but most definitely asked to wait its turn. Perhaps as we gain more experience in bigger team/task focused trips I will learn ways to inject my own soul time into the mix. But not this trip.

So if I seem vacant in the next few days, I am. Please forgive me, it's nothing personal. It's just me, waiting for my soul to get home.

My thanks to Megan Ogilvie for these incredible photos.