Entries by Administrator (38)
Remembering our first love: Bishop Burton's sermon for the beginning of Lent (Audio)
Preached yesterday in the Parish of Birch Hills, Bishop Burton's sermon for the beginning of Lent can be listened to by clicking here. It takes less than 2 minutes to download. You can listen to it on your computer or download it to your iPod or Mp3 player. (11.6 MB)
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The Bishop of Saskatchewan's Christmas Message: Your Life is a Manger
The Christmas story is a Jewish story. When the writers of the Bible put pen to paper, they were writing the most recent chapter in the story of their people, the Jewish people, a people who knew better than ever to try to put God in a box. The Jews were both funny and rude about the religions of their neighbors who did just that by worshipping idols.
The Bishop of Saskatchewan's summer letter to his clergy, July 5, 2007
Having sat for eight days of impassioned speeches at the General Synod in Winnipeg, I was happy last week to get out into the quiet of the woods to pray. It was good to let the maelstrom of confused ideas and experiences settle and go silent like waxwings. The prairie crocuses and snow geese were gone but the Saskatchewan lilies were out, those faithful solitaries, improbable daubs of tropical color in the northern forest, appearing as if by appointment for their fifteen day visitation before retreating for another year. It was good to be home.
A brief memoir of Frank Sudol
(May 12, 2007). Frank Sudol, who died December 15, was not a proponent of organized religion and so chose to have a Memorial Celebration of his life in the Paddockwood School rather than a funeral. Bishop Burton was one of fifteen people who spoke this afternoon at the event. This is the text of his address.
The North is our soul
For Canadians, isolated northern communities have never been marginal or expendable. They mattered. In the high Arctic, in the vast forests of the Canadian Shield, in the solitude of Nootka Sound and the tiny aboriginal communities dotting James Bay and the Labrador coast, the dream of nationhood found its roots. What was Canada if not for its northern peoples, in the diversity of their cultures and landscape? The nation was much more than an alliance of southern cities squatting on territory that once belonged to peoples now displaced and forgotten. Canada belonged to every Canadian.
Easter Message
The resurrection of Jesus Christ occurred very quietly and very much in contrast to his death which was a spectacle. He was tried and executed in public, before crowds, as a condemned criminal among condemned criminals. When he gave up the ghost, the sky darkened, there was an earthquake and curtain hiding the Holy of Holies in the Temple ripped suddenly from top to bottom. After all that drama, there was suddenly silence. He was taken down from the Cross by his followers and he was laid to rest. Following all that drama, everything went quiet.
The resurrection would happen silently and in secret.
The Bishop of Saskatchewan urges his priests to be holy
Part of the proclamation of the Cross is that God’s hand is often hidden. The Kingdom of God advances in ways that we cannot always perceive. The Kingdom advances not by Valkyries, tremendous on winged stallions, descending from the sky, but by the still small voice, by the infant in swaddling clothes, by the mustard seed.
The Bishop of Saskatchewan's Christmas Message
This is much more than a promise for the future. We do not stand outside of this story like spectators in a theatre watching an inspirational movie or listening to a motivational speaker. The story we hear at Christmas is not only the truth being told about God. It is the truth being told about ourselves and what God is doing in our lives. It is the story of how he is recreating the world around us as a sign on earth of the world to come.
It's Not Easy Being Green
As a little boy growing up in the 1960s, I was thoroughly indoctrinated into the environmental movement which, even then, had become social orthodoxy.
Bishop Burton's Pastoral Letter of February 26, 2006
This is to invite you to participate in a simple, practical plan to help revitalize youth ministry in our diocese.
A Statement by the Bishop of Saskatchewan on the Closure of the Weyerhaeuser Pulp Mill
I was deeply saddened to learn this morning that the Weyerhaeuser pulp and paper mill, which employs 690 people here in Prince Albert, will close indefinitely.
The Wasps
"Maiden name?"I enquired of my eighty-two year old baptismal candidate. "Heap", she replied in her broad Lancashire accent, adding helpfully "like Uriah".
When Faith fell down drunk
Bible translators are an irreverent lot, at least the ones I know. The cherished translations of yesteryear are to them a treasury of the absurd.
Courage in the Storm
These are stormy days in the Anglican Church of Canada. Tossed to and fro, we have scarcely righted ourselves from one big wave before the next one overtakes us from another direction.
The Cross is a Mirror
One of the images in the Bible I find most haunting is one from the Epistle of James. Is of a person who looks at himself in a mirror and, as he turns away, immediately forgets what "manner of man he was" (see James 1:22-25).
Jehovah Slew the Epicure
"Freddie became so much nicer after he died," said his wife, "He was not nearly so boastful. He took an interest in other people." Ayer confessed that for the first time in his life he had begun to notice scenery. He died finally a year later in 1989.
The Emperor Pu Yi
The Forbidden City is not a city at all but a palace of the soul.
The Day of the Living Dead
When I was at college I had a Hindu girlfriend who accused me of cannibalism. After all, claiming to eat the body and blood of a dead God, what else could I be?
Seeing as she was an attractive eighteen year old, I found this kind of literal-mindedness thoroughly charming.
Spiritual Clutter
"If only one could discard the wardrobe of stale thoughts, concepts, habits, desires, fancies - bundle them off to the old-clothes man. Perhaps that is what Heaven is, to be rid of this accumulation."
George Grant
George Parkin Grant (1918-88) is widely thought to be the greatest philosopher and theologian Canada has ever produced. A student at Oxford following WWII, he was deeply influenced by Austin Farrer and C.S. Lewis at whose Socratic Club Grant first met his wife.
