A Moment with your Mission Centre President Team

Written by Kat Goheen 
Canada West Mission Centre Co-President

Dear friends, thank you for sharing in our prayer service for Dar on Saturday. It was a blessing to see you all and share together in mutual concern. He is in ongoing need of our prayerful support.

​Somehow Dar got hold of his laptop in the hospital and sent our ministry team a reading he often uses in memorial services. He read it to us in our recent leadership retreat that Shannon wrote about last week in our column, and he remembered that we wanted a copy of it to meditate on. How wonderful!

Grief never ends... but it changes
It's a passage, not a place to stay.
Grief is not a sign of weakness, nor a lack of faith.
It is the price of love...

This week in the Mission Centre we lost our dear Seventy and former Recorder Linda Klughart suddenly to a fall. Here in Vancouver we lost three dear ones this month: Inez Thederahn and Joan and Dennis McKelvie. We also grieve when we sell church buildings and dissolve congregations. This poem feels timely, especially in a dark time of year when the sun makes fewer appearances.

What is the wisdom for us here? Maybe grief, even in its ruthless and terrible guise, can also be beautiful. Grief is not a multi-tasker; it takes all our attention and pins us to one spot. Isn’t this also what worship does? True communion? We would not shun love in order to avoid pain, so our grief is a celebration of the size of our hearts and the span of the life we have chosen to live. Grief is a passage, we travel through it together.

​If you are in need of compassion and listening, please reach out to our community. Let us hold one another lightly, knowing that we each face burdens seen and unseen. Let us support the flourishing of life in our corner of the Kin-dom of God.