When I am doing my morning run in the basement these days I watch YouTube and the last few days I have been watching readings of Books of the Bible. In my mind, I feel I have not been reading enough but I could not decide what to read as I do read all day long more or less but my mind was searching for what I wanted to read especially. I have read the Bible before and parts of it are known very well to me but this is a different sort of feeling. I feel the need to re-read the Bible in light of the changes in our world both environmental, political and social. These changes have occurred particularly in the last two decades. Thinking about it I believe this desire to read the Bible once again goes back to the Crimea being taken from Ukraine by Russia back in 2014. I have felt somewhat compelled to write about both Russia's war on Ukraine and the attack on Israel by Hamas over the past few years. They are happenings that have created the world we are now living in - it is like a world out of control seeking to find that steady spot that was there in the early 1990s but we need to make it a better world; a safer world and a world ready to face the future - I feel as if we are sinking into the past.
I believe the answer lies in the Bible which is the oldest collection of history of our world known to us. So yesterday I started reading Genesis with the experience of 80 plus years of living. Raised Anglican and I have worshiped Anglican most of my days (except for a brief period when I was a Volunteer Secretary and later other volunteer items like Adult Bible Studies at Edward's United Church). I did become distanced from my Anglican church during the conversations on the Residential Schools as I could see no value in the process that was being followed. When my Anglican Church accepted their responsibility with the problems in the Residential Schools which were under their care I found myself feeling once again a closeness to my Anglican Church. During the early part of our marriage we went to Edward's United Church and I went solo to early Communion at my childhood Anglican Church and joined my father who was a weekly attendant at the early service. Edward and I were both happy with my decision although we had always agreed that we would raise our children in the United Church and for a number of years we did attend the United Church as a family when we moved to where we are currently living. Edward was very involved singing in the Choir for about fifteen years and Treasurer for ten years. A chance mention in the bulletin of our local United Church took us to a lecture series during the regular service at Dominion Chalmers downtown and it was a time that Edward was feeling the loss of his only sibling (his older brother) and the rapidly declining health of his mother. His conversations after Church on Sunday with this learned Early Testament scholar who was also a United Church Minister helped him on his path. However this minister retired and a large change in the ministry resulted in Edward deciding to go to my Anglican Church since I had spent nearly twenty years at his Church.
As I reflect on my Bible reading, I find myself thinking that the answers to so many questions that persist and puzzle many of us in the world today are in the Bible. Hence I began as I did as a child many many years ago reading Genesis (my latest Bible is the Revised Standard Version Catholic Edition, 1971). Although initially I was raised with the Revised King James Version I moved to this new Bible in the 1970s. In a way my religious life was unchanged from childhood as I had attended the Anglican church with my parents and siblings and the United Church with my grandmother, uncle and aunt as a child when I was at their home.
I think the other incident that brought me to this was a storm the other day where lightning struck a tree next door and took it down. It stood right next to the wooden fence and yet it never touched it. The lightning cut it into two well down into the trunk (the tree was two stories high) but both sides fell the other way and yet it leaned towards the fence; its branches constantly touching it. It was weird but the storm was heavy and full of hail the size of peas. I looked at that tree and thought about that tree and finally it was cut off and moved away.
So part of my day will be reading the Bible instead of the Bible Verses that come to me through the email. I feel the need to do a Bible Study for me pursuing answers to what is happening in the world. They will be my own thoughts and I may or may not share them over the months it will take me to once again read from Genesis to Revelations.
Yesterday I reached the story of Noah in my reading and contemplated the role of Homo sapiens in our world as mentioned in these early Chapters of Genesis.
Today I will continue with my reading. These first chapters encapsulate eons of time and give us a picture of the Creator God of many if not all of the religions of the World (my knowledge of other than the Christian and Judaism is weak). My Anglicanism was learned mostly at home to be honest from my grandfather and father although the priest at my Church at that time was Father Abraham and his booming voice from the pulpit still comes back to me on occasion. I did go to Sunday School all of my childhood until I began to sing in the Church Choir when I was eleven but it was the sermons of our priest that provided my learning as a child. To me the early chapters of the Bible tells us the stories that were passed down by word of mouth over eons of time. The Anglican Church has a deep past in the British Isles although the Christian Church of England dates from before 314 AD and was preceded by the Celtic Church in England and back into the shadows of time immemorial.
The weather here is pretty normal for this time of year, still pleasant most of the time and rainy - June is like that and will continue like that to the end of the month and then July tends towards hot and dry. The more moisture the better and except for the hail, the crops are probably doing well. The tree still mystifies me as I glance at it lying waiting to be picked up in the front yard of the house next door. I wonder if they will pick it up unorganized as it is - we will see as this is a new company doing the recycling and usually one has to bag the small things and tie up the big lengths of branches.
I also realize that in my blogs I refer to First Nations but I am not entirely correct as my thinking includes both the Inuit and the Metis but in reality First Nations does only refer to the First Nations themselves who have been in the Western Hemisphere from time immemorial with the Inuit arriving about 5000 years ago I believe and the Metis are descendant of the first colonials and many of the First Nations. Just to clarify that and I will try to be more specific in the future. At nearly 81 though I will probably not entirely succeed but will try.
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