Introduction, from Weekly Email
Dear friends,
This Sunday, Ha Na will share their personal stories and their reflection on "impact". Impact is such a vague term: what is impact, and how is it different from results or outcomes?
Ha Na's reflection will start with a writer's analogy: "Knowing your ending is a north star." In this writer's practice, they start with the ending - thinking about the last scene, the last sentence, even the last word in the last sentence. That moves them, has an impact on them even as they imagine the ending, at first, only in their mind. When the writer is clear about what impact they would like to create for themself and for their readers when they close the book - its last chapter, its last page - then, like a circular motion, they would know how they will begin the book with the first scene, first paragraph, first sentence, from the first word they would type. The writer advises, "Figure out your beginning and end before you start."
That is also true for our faithful response to the world. When we initiate something - an act, an event, a workshop, even worship, trusting God's love and justice for all, we can apply the writer's advice - "Knowing your ending is your north star." We anticipate the impact we'll create, something that would flow like a river out of our shared experience. If we truly want to, we will create an impact. When we know what we want, -- impact as a profound something that would change us and strengthen us -- it will inspire how we will begin our story. Why are we here? Why have we gathered? Because we trust the impact, because we want to build an impact - in Rumi's words, to let the Beauty we love be what we do.
Impact story # 1 - Taste of Home
Impact Story # 2 - Affirm Team
This morning, we will go on an adventure to think about, and reflect on, "impact." I say it’s an adventure because "impact" is such a vague term, and its meaning can be altered depending on how we use the word, for example: "The impact of climate change.”
My own adventure with the “impact” question sparked when I met Ned Gallagher (they/them). Ned will facilitate the learning event, Exploring Gender Diversity: Let’s Talk about Everything Trans!, on May 11th, 10am to 12noon. I was refreshed and challenged by the way they were able to guide my thinking with their thought-provoking questions, especially when Ned asked me, “What impact would you want from this workshop that does not end with the learning event itself, but even after this event and because of the shared experience at the event, what impact would you want to inform, inspire and transform who we are individually and such a community as we are?”
I could not answer Ned’s “impact” question right away because I had never before really pondered ‘impact’. When Kath and I sat together and put our heads and hearts together to figure out this impact question, Kath quietly spoke up. "I think it would be 'learning collectively.’
If what we want is not just hosting an event and putting a check mark beside what we would like the congregation to know, if the desired impact is something that flows out of the shared experience, beyond SMART (measurable outcomes such as what you’ve learned and how many attended), just like how a river runs, with ripples and waves and unplanned paths and still small streams, the impact we would want from the workshop and even after the event is ‘learning collectively.’ Impactful learning happens when we are together in the adventure, all joining like beginners and life-long learners. For example, we will learn not just sharing pronouns, but learn to ask ourselves why we share pronouns. Have you asked yourself? Why do we say our name and pronouns? What would you say?
In this light, I invite you this morning’s adventure on “impact”.
Scripture: Matthew 6:25-29
Sermon: Where the Story Ends
My mom was an English teacher at a high school when she met my father, and after getting married, she became a full-time homemaker. The term ‘homemaker’ fits my mom perfectly. She devoted herself; it was her nature and love to ensure that my brother and I were well-fed and healthy. My mother is quiet, makes others feel at ease, and is an unobtrusive Enneagram 9 who does not assert herself. When I returned from school, my mom was usually in the kitchen cooking or on the veranda connected to it, where there was a washing machine, a sink for washing things like laundry or fruit, a small trash can, and shelves for storing items like onions and potatoes. Even in her quiet demeanour, there were remarkable things about her. She was deeply interested in our nutritious eating and food, but her concerns went beyond just ensuring we were well-fed. When I came home and called out “Mom,” I would head straight to our apartment’s small veranda, and often saw a scene unlike any other home - plastic bags of various colours from the supermarket, washed and dried, to use again, and the most precious of all, small food wrap like Saran Wrap, cut by scissors to cover bowls of kimchi or bean paste, all washed and hanging on the clothesline like laundry, to use again next time (and the next time, and the next.)
My mother was not particularly active in the environmental movement, but she enjoyed environment-friendly practices. No plastic easily ended up in the trash in my mom’s care. Even back then, when other mothers and children in Korea would casually throw snack wrappers on the grass right where they stood, my mom would say to us, “Don’t throw anything away. Give it all to mom.” Then, she would carry all the potential trash from our hands until a trash can was in sight or, if none were visible, taking it all the way home to dispose of it in our home trash can. What would I call this? If my mother’s concern had been solely for my brother and me to grow up healthy, it might have been simply considered parental love. Truly, it was her ethics towards the earth and the environment, quietly fuelled by her church’s environmental activism and her daily domestic practices, that created this quiet passion in her and its quiet impact on me. I remember I told my friends, “Don’t throw anything on the ground. Give it all to my hands.” And I carried all those wrappers until I found a trash can. If ethics towards the land and environment equate to love, then that was the kind of love my quiet, non-assertive mother had. And so, I grew up in a place of love.
Two Saturdays ago, in the evening, I attended the Mini Earth Day Film Fest, hosted by our BVU small group, Caring for Creation. Why did I go? It was a Saturday evening, and after feeding the kids, I just wanted to shower and lie down in bed. However, I really wanted to show that I support the Caring for Creation group, so I went, even though I was quite late. By the time I arrived, only a few films were left to show, but I was lucky enough to engage in small group conversations. Since the 2024 Earth Day theme was Plastic versus Planet, we discussed a number of plastic-related topics. My group started discussing “delivery culture," talking about services like Door Dash and Skip the Dishes, takeout, the containers used for leftovers at restaurants, the impact of delivery culture on our plastic consumption.
I recalled that when I was young, although food delivery existed in Korea, after people ordered from the menu and when they finished eating, the reusable bowls and dishes would be left outside the doors, and the restaurant would come back and collect them. Nowadays in Korea, decades later, you can order food anywhere - not just at your home or office, but at a riverside picnic table tagged by GPS. The store will find you, they will deliver your meal, but they will not come back. After you eat the food you ordered, you throw away the plastic containers.
There were many prompts during the small group conversation that reminded me of my mother’s environmental practices. I almost forgot about my mom’s “ecological mindfulness”. The warm memory of her veranda with various coloured plastic bags and food wrap hanging like laundry… What I learned from my mom was more than parental love; it was a place of love shaped by my mother's ethical practices. Impact is in the realm of the heart, relationships, and learning with the community. The impact our Caring for Creation Small Group’s Film Festival had on me was that I was able to remember my mom’s intergenerational impact. The impact came to me as a surprise, and I can still feel this warm impact in my heart-space, right now.
Impact Story # 3 - Susan: When I asked Susan, who offered a beautiful and excellent facilitation at the film fest, about the impact she would dream of with the event, she responded: “I believe humans have to fall in love with Earth again. Seeing the world through the eyes of my 2-year-old granddaughter reminds me that everything is a miracle. The bright yellow dandelions that turn into magical wishing wands, the wind tossing the cherry blossoms into the air, twirling petals of pink delight, and the return of birds to backyard gardens, gladdening our hearts with their songs. How can we help people rekindle those connections we all had at one time, and then live their lives in ways that heal and defend our Earth? For I know, and science and Indigenous wisdom confirm this truth, that if we take care of Earth, she will take care of us. Earth manages for abundance, not scarcity. We must do the same.”
We stand at a crossroads in our lives and in the changing world around us, even now, facing climate change, the opioid crisis, destruction in the open-air prison called Gaza. Many died, still die in this moment, but still there is no ceasefire, just more death as the situation worsens. So the rallies for Free Palestine continue, and at the hospitality table at the rally, BVU leaders hand out cookies to the marchers who appreciate the Christian church’s presence.
On the horizons of sky and sea, day and night, there are times when we need to make the moral choices, establish the right relationships, create justice initiatives, do things that pose the impact question right from the beginning. IF we truly want impact, the beginning is a question - How are we going to change ourselves, change the world?
The impact through quiet passion; the impact through perseverance even through feeling stretched thin. BVU has these inspiring leaders. Volunteers. Community members. Youth. Friends. Faithful companions. Elders. Every weekend, participants at the Gaza Ceasefire Rally are bolstered by cookies donated by our community. Our Evolving Church team invites you to learn together about the opioid crisis with Coffee in the Commons on May 15th. What do you know about the Opioid Crisis? Facts and Fiction. Come and join the leaders of Evolving Church, now a team of Broad View United. Impact abounds here.
To me, Joy Harjo’s poems are places of impact. I listen, and I am stunned by her visualization. In her poem, “Once the World was Perfect.” she says,
There we were
right back where we had started.
We were bumping into each other in the dark.
And now we had no place to live, since we didn’t know how to live each other.
Then one of the stumbling ones took pity on another and shared a blanket.
A spark of kindness made a light.
The light made an opening in the darkness.
Everyone worked together to make a ladder.
A wind clan person climbed out first into the next world,
And then the other clans, the children of those clans, their children, and their children,
All the way through time —
To now, into this morning light, to you
Where the poem ends, what impact does Joy Harjo have on me? On you?
I listen: We are in this together. We, you, impact-weaver leaders, impact-ladder climbers, we might not know each other and we might not possibly know everyone, but there are many of us in this same space. We are all engaged in the place of love. We sing the worth of the birds in the sky and the dignity of the lilies in the field, and how God cares for each of them… We face the same north star, guiding us to the place of love. It’s the place where everyone works together to make a ladder, for children and their children to climb to the morning light. In this heart-space, in the place of love, where story begins and story ends, there are many of us. Me on my mom’s veranda where she washes food wrap for its next use and hangs it like laundry. You in your personal memory, in your impact adventure. We climb to the next world, and we must climb it together. Where the story ends, we climb the impact.
Impact Story 4 - Janet
Impact Story 5 - Robin
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