From the edges of sustainability rise the stories that keep us going when fear and despair threaten to defeat us. Listen to a Suzuki Elder listen to and dialogue with youth to find shared sources of resilience. Suzuki Elders, like Diana Ellis, have for three years mentored youth engaged in environmental work and learned of the fine balance between hope and fear and of facing the future together.
Three Beacon connections, Rebecca Burns, Leo Bae, and Arlette Stewart, who have moved to Canada from another country will reflect on what a home country means to them. How did they choose Canada? What advantages did they look for? What are the difficulties in changing cultures? What do they want to keep from the previous culture? Has the change been reflected in their spiritual life?
Beacon’s ‘Sharing the Plate’ recipient for 2015-16 is the New Westminster program I’s on the Street. Today we will hear how this award winning outreach/support program engages homeless or at-risk-of-homeless persons into supervised employment. Throughout this year Beacon will save one half of the open collection each Sunday for I’s on the Street as part of our social justice outreach.
The first service of the new church year is traditionally a time to reconnect after the summer hiatus through the gathering of the waters. This summer we have all been aware of the preciousness of water, as the drought deepens. Please bring a sample of water that represents your summer and be prepared to share what water means to you.
Thank you is the only necessary prayer, said Meister Eckhart. Gratitude expressed directly transforms our closed heart to open, our closed mind to open, and our closed world to an open and inclusive world. On this our final Sunday service of the regular 2014-15 church year, we celebrate our connections and share our gratitude for all that we have.
The Beacon Youth Group shares their thoughts on life and growth and justice in a changing world. This is also our biannual Pet blessing service: you are invited to bring with you your beloved four legged critters (and no leggeds!).
There is available to each of us a uniquely human beauty, deeper than skin beauty. It is the beauty which fills us when our actions come from a sense of deep goodness, deep respect, and deep reverence for all life. This is ‘moral beauty’. It is rooted in our values and in our Unitarian Principles. It is rooted in our idealism and our vision. The beauty we feel, that infuses our bodies with warmth, is a direct result of moral action, the direct result of ‘practicing our faith’.
Is your word simplicity? Truth? Love? Or did you choose something different? How do these words deepen the meaning of beauty? Marilyn Medén will explore words, ideas, and inspiration that focus individual action and have the potential to affect the larger world.
Beaconites love their music! This service will feature Peggy Lunderville and several other Beaconites who share their favourite hymns and what makes them special.
Half a century ago Professor Higgs had a vision while out for a walk in the Scottish moors: that there was a single particle that held the whole universe together. One hundred and thirteen nations, three thousand scientists, twelve thousand support positions, the largest machine in the world, (a 27 mile proton smasher under the Swiss Alps), have finally proved his beautiful theory right!