On Maintenance and Mission

Twelve years ago,  I had just moved to a new parish,  and so both my former parish and my new one were involved in the Lay side of the Fresh Start program.  The question was asked of the laity, "If something happened and your parish ceased to exist tomorrow morning, would anyone miss it,  and if so, who?"  The parish to which I was moving answered among themselves, "Well, apart from the fact that the people who come to worship wouldn't have a place to go,  likely no one would really notice,  and the worshippers would find someplace else."  The place I had just left answered very differently.  They said, "Oh My God,  of course we would be missed!  Who would run the breakfast program in the Southwood Community centre before school?  Who would do the Christmas dinner for the poor?  Who would send the neighbourhood children to Huron Church Camp and Who would cover the support that we have always give to Primate's World Relief and Council of the North?"  The two parishes were neighbouring. They were both a part of the same Deanery.  The difference was that one had an attitude of Maintenance, and the other had their focus set on Mission. One put their time and energy into "keeping the doors open and the bills paid."  The other one put their time and energy into serving the world that God so loves, and somehow, as they did that, the doors stayed open, and the bills got paid.
This morning, I, like many others across the Diocese of Ontario, got an e-mail from the Bishop outlining the Strategic Plan for the Diocese that we will be fleshing out at Synod next week.  It also spoke of the need for the church here in the Diocese to move our faith from maintenance to mission.  It isn't an easy transition to make,  but it is the key to having a living, exciting and enlivening church. The truth though,  is that it cannot be something that we talk about at Diocesan Synod, and then all nod our heads and say that yes, we believe that it is a good thing, and then sit back and wait for the Diocese to do it.  Moving from maintenance to mission cannot begin from the Diocesan level.  It is a transformation in the attitudes of every baptized individual that makes up our church.  Every one of us must individually adjust our focus to considering first, "how does my ministry in the church help others to believe? How do I help to spread the gospel?"  Only then can the parish begin to adjust its focus,  and only when the parishes of this Diocese have changed focus,  can this move from maintenance to mission be accomplished across the Diocese.
I remember Bishop Morse Robinson speaking at my first parish, and challenging them that everything that we do as a parish should have some aspect of helping others to believe attached to it.  Those faithful people,  already convinced of the need to be a mission focused church began to take that question seriously.  Soon,  things started to change.  At the parish bazaar,  food and baked goods that were for sale, came with a little card attached with the words of a grace at meal time.  Knitting and children's clothing were sold with another little card that held a prayer for the child that would wear it.  Soon every little bit of the parish life had some way of declaring that it was from a Christian church, except one.  The parish council made a significant amount of its budget from outside users who came in and used the excellent parish hall facility.  How could that be made to declare the Good News as well.  Eventually,  the parish council hired a local artist to come and paint one of the walls of the hall with a huge mural of the Resurrection, so that every time an outside group came within the walls,  they were reminded that they had come in to a church, and they were faced with the Good News of the life, death and resurrection of Jesus Christ. That little parish never had more than it needed,  and in fact,  I often would quip that they were "going broke for all the right reasons,"  but there was always enough.
And as years in that parish went by,  we were constantly having to stop and look at ourselves,  and challenge ourselves with the question, "How is this activity going to help others believe."  We had to be pushing ourselves to look beyond the walls and see the needs of the community outside our lovely comfortable gathering.
Loren Meade, in the book The Once and Future Church,  points out that in the Apostolic Church,  the mission field was a reality that the church met the moment that they left their worship gatherings. The mission field was ambivalent to them, and at times even openly violent to them.  But they were a church focused on spreading the Good news.
And then Constantine won the battle of Milvan bridge,  and the world changed.  The Emperor converted to Christianity, and suddenly everyone in the Empire was a Christian, and the Mission field moved to far off shores. Mission became the work of Missionaries,  and the average Christian and the average Christian parish had no need to really proclaim the Gospel.
Let's face it though,  The world has changed once again,  and we no longer live in an age of Christendom.  The mission field is once again there when we step out of our worship spaces,  and like our ancient predecessors, that mission field is often ambivalent or openly violent to the message that we bear.  If the church is to live and grow in such a world,  we must stop focusing on "how are we going to pay the bills?" We must stop fixating on bricks and mortar.  We must change our focus, and in so doing, change the world.
Twelve years after that meeting of Fresh start where my former parish felt that they would not be missed,  I have to tell you,  if they closed today,  the entire city of Kitchener would be devastated.  They left behind their Maintenance mindset.  They moved out in mission, and they are so involved in their community that they are indispensable. They are alive and they are growing.
One interesting observation I would make about their transformation though, is this.  One year,  it was decided that we would build a house with Habitat for Humanity.  That project was going to add an additional $70,000 to the parish outreach budget.  When we first began to discuss it, many people sat wringing their hands, and asking if we could really raise that much extra money without negatively effecting our operating budget. Well,  not only did we raise the needed money and still meet our budget,  but I will add that we had higher attendance in that church that year than there had been in over ten years,  and at the end of the year we had a surplus in givings to the operating budget.
I hold that when the Church operates out of a sense of mission, rather than out of fear and a focus on maintenance,  the people are energized, the community is inspired,  and the church experiences growth.
So I'm with Bishop Michael!  It's time to step out of Maintenance, and get serious about our Mission to go and change that world that God so dearly loves.

After I first posted this blog this morning,  I came upon this article called, "3 common sentences you hear at dying churches."  It is speaking of the opposite side of the Maintenance and Mission discussion,  and does it very well.  It is well worth a read.

http://ministrytodaymag.com/leadership/adversity/23194-3-common-sentences-you-hear-at-dying-churches

Celebration!

It will come as a surprise to no one, that I am very much involved in preparing for a huge celebration.  This Sunday afternoon, the Installation service will go forward according to weeks and weeks of planning, and will celebrate the beginning of something new in terms of my ministry, the ministry of the Cathedral, and the ministry of the Diocese.  Friends and family from all over will be present to join in this celebration.  Former parishioners will arrive by the bus load on Sunday afternoon.  Others will be staying in local hotels and enjoying a week on the waterfront as part of the celebration.  It is a celebration that I will remember for the rest of my life, I am sure.  (I remember my inductions at St. Thomas the Apostle and St. David's in Cambridge and St. George's of Forest Hill in Kitchener with great joy to this day.)

Glorious hymns will raise the roof on the Cathedral and beautiful anthems of praise will inspire the congregation.  (The numbers of the cathedral choir will be swelled for the celebration, and all my friends and family tend to really love to sing).  A dear friend will challenge me, and the entire congregation with the message of the Gospel. Symbolic gifts of the ministry to which this Cathedral has been called will be given, and we will renew the vows of our baptism.

As the last couple days have ticked down,  I also have stopped to think about several other celebrations.  I remember birthdays, and graduations; Ordinations and family days.  I remember the honour of celebrating my parents' 40th anniversary by renewing their wedding vows, and of performing my sister's wedding. Celebrations are designed to help us to create and sustain memories. They are days that draw us together in community, and remind us of what connects us.

Which has brought me to contemplate a different sort of Celebration.  Each time that we as a community gather at the Altar, it is a celebration.  It is so much so,  that the person that leads it is called the celebrant.  Each time the family of God comes to the table, it is to celebrate.  And the celebration is a celebration of anamnesis (Greek: remembering). The gathering is precisely about creating and sustaining memories.  And it is a Eucharistic (Greek: Thanksgiving) celebration. It is an opportunity to remember with THANKSGIVING.

So what is it that we remember.  Well,  the primary anamnesis, is of the death of our Lord.  We gather and remember through bread and wine, the sacrifice of Jesus' own body and blood; an act of incredible love; an act of self-sacrifice.  It is not a joyful memory on the face,  and yet the love that it so clearly communicates to us is an occasion for great joy.  And so as we gather, it is Eucharistic; it is an act of great Thanksgiving.

But the anamnesis of our liturgy is more than simply a bare memorial.  We gather at the table to do much more than to simply remember.  We believe in the real presence of our Lord in the sacrament.  We believe that as we remember, Jesus comes and is present in our community.  In our remembering,  we make that sacrifice real once again.  We make it real in that we receive Christ and his loving sacrifice for ourselves, but also we make it real because in that meal, and in the cross,  Jesus is modelling for us how we must live if we are to change this world into a place where God can reign,  and each time we gather in that meal, we are called to get out into the world and live the self-sacrifice and love that we have experienced in our interactions with the world we meet at the door.

I look forward to the huge celebration that comes with the beginning of this new ministry.  Ultimately, that celebration will build to its ultimate point when we gather at the table with our bishop in that great meal.  But every bit as much as I look forward to that celebration,  I am also called forward by it.  The memories that will be created that day are the memories that sustain me in a calling to get out there and make it so.

I hope I will see you there. I hope I will see you in the Cathedral this Sunday,  and I hope I will see you out in the community following the call of your baptism renewed in that meal, and challenging and changing this world as our Lord has modelled and continues to model for us.

To view the celebration, click here.

On Giving Thanks

In my former parish,  there was a Thanksgiving Newsletter that was mailed out to the entire parish mailing list.  The parish newsletter was a very slick publication that required first that submissions go to the editor.  Once the editor was finished with it,  the parish Communication Director, a professional graphic artist,  would format it and make an extremely eye-catching presentation.  It then made its way to the printer, and from there went to the DC class at Forest Heights Collegiate,  who would fold it,  place it in envelopes, and attach the mailing labels, and finally Canada Post would deliver the newsletter to every household in the parish.   The number of steps in the process, and the number of hands it needed to pass through, meant that submissions for the Thanksgiving Newsletter needed to be completed by mid-August.

I remember well one August when my mind was rebelling against this idea of getting my mind wrapped around Thanksgiving in the middle of my summer vacation.  There were so many things that seemed more appropriate for me to think about on a warm August day. Why Thanksgiving?

On that particular day,  I had visited the farmers' market at St. Jacobs, and come home with a car loaded with all the necessary ingredients to make the old family recipe for Chili Sauce. It isn't a terribly involved recipe, apart from preparing all the vegetables,  but it is one that needs to simmer and be stirred all day long.  And so I found myself fairly tied to the house.  At the same time, next door at the church,  our regular Summer Day Camp was running in week 5, and I would regularly drop in and talk to the children.   All the while, my rebellious mind kept asking,  "What am I to say about Thanksgiving in the middle of August?  It isn't time for Thanksgiving yet."

And so it was that I left the chili sauce simmering in the kitchen and went next door to the church to enjoy some play time with the children at the camp.  I had no sooner walked through the door,  than a little girl named Stephanie ran up and gave me a big hug.  I was overjoyed to see her,  as she had been registered for camp all summer,  but had missed many days as she went to Chemotherapy.  On this day,  her colour was good,  and her energy was high,  and her smile just radiated joy.  I joined in the planned games of the camp, and then walked home to my house, where the simmering food had filled the entire space with glorious smells.

Suddenly, from out of nowhere,  Thanksgiving dawned on me.  Little Stephanie was at camp today.  She was well enough today to participate in the whole day's activities.  Thank God!  I was blessed with a wonderful parish that worked very hard to operate that Summer Day camp for eight weeks each summer so that 30 children each week could come and learn about faith, and experience the love of God in our space.  Thank God!  I had been to one of the greatest farmers Markets in the country,  and had been able to come home with my car laden with all manner of food.  Thank God!  I was a part of a family filled with traditions like the making of that "secret" chill sauce recipe,  passed on one generation to another, a family that had loved and formed me into the person I am.  Thank God! Once those flood gates had opened,  at every turn, I saw things there in an August Day, that were every bit as important to thank God for as the harvest that, as a farm boy, was usually the focus of our Thanksgiving.

Thanksgiving is not a day that we mark on the calendar, although we have a day to draw it into focus.  Thanksgiving is way of looking at all of life; it is an attitude that can change our entire perspective on the day to day experiences of life.  When we approach all of life with Thanksgiving,  we can find incredible joy in the things that are easy to take for granted.

Several years ago, just after my sister and her husband adopted Alice and Owen,  I found myself walking on he trail in the woods on their property with these two small children in tow.  At first, I found myself getting frustrated that the kids were going so incredibly slowly.  They stopped practically at every step.  "Uncle Don,  look at this bug." "Uncle Don, see this rock."  Suddenly, I realized that through Alice and Owen,  I was getting a chance to see the world for the first time, all over again.  Their little eyes were doing precisely that.  They were seeing things for the first time,  that I had seen so many times,  that I had sadly ceased to be filled with wonder about them.  This was a "God moment" for me.  I slowed my usual break-neck pace through life,  and took time with those two small children to explore the path I walked very regularly.  The walk I took so regularly became an adventure. In walking along with two small children,  I got the opportunity to once again experience a walk around Orrs Lake as a magical walk in a world filled with beauty.

My prayer for all of you as we come to the day that we have set aside to focus on giving thanks for all the goodness in our lives,  is that first of all,  we might be given that opportunity to see the world "for the first time all over again."  I pray that we might all see and truly understand some of the blessings that fill our lives, that we so often walk past without a thought.  And I pray that we might come to Thanksgiving,  and to every day with an attitude of Thanksgiving.  I pray that we could all take the time on that day that we set aside to focus on giving thanks, to really take stock of all that we truly have to give thanks for,  and that we might carry that thankfulness into the other 364 days of the year.

I won't close this by saying "May God richly bless you all" because my sense is that if we truly use Thanksgiving as an opportunity to take stock,  we will realize that God already has blessed us all.

On Holy Hospitality

One of the things that is really great about a new ministry, is that since you are not used to "the way things are done" here,  you spend an awful lot of time observing.  You see things in ways that the people who have been there for a long time might not have noticed as they developed over the long arch of God's leading of that congregation.  I find myself doing just that sort of observation.

This past Sunday,  from the vantage point of the presider's chair,  I was offered the opportunity to look out across the Cathedral congregation and observe a bit of the life of the congregation.  First, because I make a point of being at the entrance to greet God's people as they arrive for worship, (A lesson I learned in Youth ministry: you need to greet youth as they arrive so that they feel welcomed, appreciated and loved) i have the chance to find out a little about the people who come to worship, and to hear a little of their story.  St. George's has a great variety of people who form the worship community, and because of it's age, its beauty, and its status as a Cathedral,  it almost never fails to have visitors arrive for worship.  St. George's has a strong contingent of University faculty and teachers as one would expect from a major church in a University town,  but owing to its position in the core of the city,  it also has people coming in off the streets, who have connected through programs like Lunch by George.  I am impressed and pleased to say that All get a warm welcome.

The thing that surprised me in my observation this week though,  has more to do with the constant run of tourists who come to the Cathedral.  Our Cathedral tour guides at most times are there answering questions,  filling in information, and giving the gift of hospitality,  but what I saw were tourists that wandered in in the midst of worship.  Seemingly unaware of the fact that the Christian church might be busy at worship at 10:30 in the morning on a Sunday,  they came in they wandered, they looked around,  and often they left only a few moments later.  In one case,  even as I preached the sermon,  one group came down the side aisle, to a spot right beside the pulpit, and proceeded to light candles there.

It would be easy to simply term this group that come through the doors as "nuisance visitors."  It would be easy to get annoyed at their intrusion into our holy time with God, but that is not what I observed from my seat in the presider's chair.  What I saw was that every person who entered through the doors,  whether they came in before, during, or after worship; whether they stayed and prayed, or just looked around and left again, each one was treated with respect and hospitality.  Every person through those doors was seen as someone worthy of respect; worthy of a welcome.

It very much put me in mind of words from the letter to the Hebrews.  "Do not neglect to show hospitality to strangers, for by doing that some have entertained angels without knowing it."  I would have to say that my first impression of the ministry of Holy Hospitality at St. George's is very positive.  We are not called to judge those that come through the doors.  None of us knows for what reason God has brought them to this place today.  It is only our call to do the best we can to offer them a chance to encounter our risen Lord in whatever time they manage to spend with us.  May God continue to challenge us with the gift of visitors, and may we not neglect to show hospitality, that perhaps we might entertain angels without knowing it.

On Healing

Throughout my life in ministry, the sacrament of unction and prayers for healing has been a very important part of parish ministry.  At St. David's and St. Thomas the Apostle in Cambridge,  there was a very small mid-week gathering for anointing that grew up early in my ministry.  It was very small and often struggled just to keep going. At times, I would begin to feel disheartened, but someone suddenly came to Parish Council, having just heard of this service, and asked why it was not being carried on at the regular Sunday worship.  We soon began to include anointing in the Sunday liturgy at least once each month. I was amazed to find that almost all the congregation came forward to be anointed.

Upon arriving at St. George's of Forest Hill,  I began to work on a Wednesday morning,  which meant that my first responsibility was to celebrate the Eucharist for a very small gathering that come out to Eucharist in the Chapel of the Transfiguration there.  That first Wednesday,  it was me and two of the faithful. One was a retired executive administrative assistant for the Waterloo Region District School Board, and Directress of the Altar Guild,  and the other a Nigerian woman named Bisi who lived in the neighbourhood and called the Wednesday Eucharist her worshipping community.  When the service was ended,  Bisi came to me.  She was a woman who always came to worship dressed in her traditional Nigerian dress, and I came to realize over the years, she had a faith larger than life.  We came to call he Bishop Bisi,  because like most Nigerians that I have known in life,  she was almost always late,  and yet we always held up the service until she was there,  because "you can't begin without the Bishop."

On that very first day of my incumbency,  Bisi said to me, "I have a sense that you have the gift of healing, and this parish really needs healing.  Do you suppose that we could change this service into a healing service.  The very next Wednesday,  the ministry of healing began.  Twelve years later we had a regular congregation of 25 on Wednesday morning., and at times that 25 would go up as high as 35.   Bisi had long since returned to her Lord,  but the ministry of healing that she so wanted to see happening in her congregation continued and thrived.

Again, in that place, when we would offer anointing at a side chapel on a Sunday morning on occasion,  it was overwhelming to see how many people would come forward to be anointed,  and how very important the sacrament of unction was to the life of that community.A year ago,  the congregation that gathered for healing in the chapel of the Transfiguration had a special aumbry for the oils commissioned and installed in the chapel as a gift from that entire community back to the parish in thanksgiving for this ministry

It was interesting just how right Bisi was about the needs of that parish though.  The church itself was recovering from a difficult chapter with a former incumbent, and at the same time,  several parishioners were moving into health challenges, either for themselves or for parents,  and this ministry of healing was incredibly important for them. At each of these weekly gatherings, we would pray for the needs for healing among those who had gathered,  we would pray for the healing needs of those whom we loved.  We would pray for the healing of our parish,  and we would pray for those who worked for healing in the world around us,  for Doctors and nurses, care-givers and other professions that supported our healthcare system.

Speaking personally, I vividly remember when my mom suffered the major stroke that took away her ability to speak, how that little congregation on Wednesday morning gathered around me and around my family,  and prayed for her.  Again, when my dad suffered the stroke that ended up with both mom and dad moving to the Village of Winston Park,  not only did we lean on God's healing power,  but that small congregation that was committed to the work of healing, supported and upheld my parents and myself. As a community,  they ministered healing, even as we gathered to call for God's healing for the situations for which we were concerned.

Now as I transition into the ministry of St. George's Cathedral,  I am overjoyed to find that there is a regular Healing Eucharist that forms a part of the regular pattern of weekly worship in this place also.  I am happy that I am able to celebrate at that worship whenever I like, but I am far happier to find that Archdeacon Michael Caswell is happy to continue on to lead this worship. It is certainly not an accident that I have set the celebration of the new relationship of ministry that we are entering into here at St. George's for the Feast of St. Luke the Physician and Evangelist.  The ministry of anointing and prayers for healing has grown to be an incredibly important part of priestly ministry for me.  I cannot imagine not taking time in each week to consider the need for healing,  and praying for God to take action in those needs.

On Taking Stock of the stuff...

It would seem that major changes in my life never really go quite according to plan.  I have had months to plan the move from Kitchener to Kingston,  but still there have been all manner of bumps along the way.  Perhaps the biggest has been trying to arrange for my stuff to join me here in Kingston.

I had booked the move to happen on September 7th, so that my things would arrive here about a week behind me,  but I figured that I had enough things here with me that I could "camp out" for a week without much difficulty.  What I hadn't seen was that to secure that date with the movers I needed to sign back the estimate.  I had sent numerous emails to them stating that date,  but when I contacted them to work out logistics,  they told me that since I had not signed the estimate,  they gave my time and date to another customer.

So now,  my "stuff" will not join me until September 14th.    My first thought was that this was going to be terrible. Yesterday,  my sister and I, David and Kathy, and Becky had worked very hard getting everything ready for the truck to arrive.  It seemed like it would all go ahead according to plan.  Now, how would I live without all that stuff?

I hadn't sat fuming about this for very long before I realized that I have been very happy there in the house with just the bare bones of necessities.  The "Camping" experience has been really quite enjoyable.  Without all the stuff, I have been able to spend lots of time working on projects around the house, and have accomplished lots of things.

It put me back in mind of the message that I had preached on Sunday, (full audio of the sermon is available here. https://dl.dropboxusercontent.com/u/258986237/20160904%200800%20Sermon%20Don%20Davidson.mp3 ) on the Gospel in Luke where Jesus tells the crowds that are following him that they cannot be his disciples unless they can leave behind father and mother, sister and brother, wives and children,  and where he cautions them that they cannot be his disciples unless they can renounce all their possessions.  He never calls any of those "Things" or people bad,  he simply tells them that Discipleship cannot be an add-on to life.  It must always be the very core.  All other things must take a back seat to our discipleship.

All my stuff -- and believe me,  when it was all piled up in one place,  it truly was a frightening pile -- (or even the lack of it) has not really impacted on the joy of this new ministry.  With or without "stuff" I have been called, and I have answered that call,  and it has led me down an exciting path.  The Gospel is right, in that we can at times get so focused on our "Stuff" that we lose sight of what is truly important.  What a joy to be reminded that no matter where I may be, or whether or not things move along smoothly, I have everything I need right here with me.

On home...

We sometimes take the blessings of home and family for granted.  It's easy to forget how wonderful it is to be grounded and have a place where we can relax and be ourselves, with people who know us and love us.  As I get closer and closer to the move to Kingston,  the beauty and importance of home is being regularly driven home for me.

My realtor has been incredibly helpful, and has found a huge number of possible new "Homes" for me,  and every one of them has both positives and negatives for how they will suit my needs, but that speaks only of the physical nature of a home.  There is so much more to home than simply the layout of a house or the amenities that it may or may not have.  Over the course of my life,  I have been blessed by the fact that I have usually stayed a long time in any place that I have lived, and as such, managed to lay down deep roots among the people there.

Home was first, the town of Tilbury.  My first home was in a house that my father built on the family farm.  The family had lived there in that area and in that small town for generations, and this house sat next door to the home of my grandfather.  It was amazing to grow up in a place where so much family was there in easy walking distance.  That was only enhanced by the connection with the small Anglican Church in town where the entire extended family all gathered for worship.  Home went far beyond the four walls of the house.  Home was a community.  It was a company of disciples.

The farmhouse in Tilbury where I grew up.

During university years,  I lived in university residences and apartments around the cities of Sudbury and London,  and there was always that touchstone that while I was here,  there was still that place in Tilbury that was "Home."  But still aspects of home grew up during those university years, particularly during the years living in London and studying at Western.  It was a different sort of family, and a different sort of community that grew up there,  but as with so much of the home life back in Tilbury,  it was so often grown up around the meal table.

The apartment building at 700 Horizon Dr. where I lived with Bryan Smith, Bishop Bill Cliff, and latterly Greg Williamson

In my first year at Huron, I lived in the Yellow Cottage at the back of the College property with a couple of other Theology students.  We had the meal plan, and so on top of our interactions at the house, no matter how busy with assignments we became,  we always went together to the refectory and sat down for dinner,  and usually over several cups of tea and a dish of ice cream, we discussed our day.

The following year, I moved out to an apartment on Horizon Drive with Bryan Smith and Bishop Bill Cliff.  The community of the previous year continued on as a part of life at Huron College, and the fellowship continued.  After three years at Huron,  I had reached the point where I felt as though I had two homes. There was the one in Tilbury, and the one in London.

And then came ministry in the church.  One warm July day, Bishop Townshend asked me to meet him in a Tim Horton's in Cambridge.  We had a moment to talk before he took me to be interviewed by the people of a two-point parish in the part of Cambridge formerly known as Galt.  I was offered the parish the following day,  and I began making preparations to make the move into uncharted territory, both professionally and in terms of home.

This small townhouse on Glamis Road (unit 34) in Cambridge acted as temporary lodging,  but it never really felt like a home. 

For the short term, I rented a townhouse on Glamis Rd., but as it was temporary lodging,  it really never gained the status of home.  It was simply a place to hang my hat after a day's work.  But it wasn't long before I bought a tiny house on Blair Lane.  It was a nightmare in terms of the repairs that house needed, but my dad assured me it was a good solid house,  and so the renovations began.  They would continue throughout the nearly 11 years that I lived in that house.  It was a tiny house, built on an alley,  which had originally been the servants' quarters for the huge old homes on Blenheim Road in front of it.  It seemed somehow appropriate for the priest to live in a place made for servants.

My sister Jane moved in "just for a couple years while she went to University in Waterloo" while I was living in that house, and many fun memories grew out of those days.  Families of St. Thomas and St. David's became part of what had become a huge extended family,  and that feeling of being at "home" grew up around that tiny little house on the alley.  Jane graduated,  but stayed on grooming her little flock of vocal students. And as much as that house was a huge amount of work,  when the day came to move to St. George's of Forest Hill,  it was difficult to even consider a move, because it was "home."

The wonderful little house at 2 Blair Lane where I lived for ten years in Galt.

At St. George's, I moved into a beautiful 4 bedroom Rectory, and had more space than I could possibly imagine.  But over the coming years,  that space would turn out to be an incredible blessing. Shortly after my arrival here,  my mom had a serious stroke,  and so Jane and I moved my parents into one of the spare bedrooms of the Rectory, where they lived for many years, until my dad had a severe stroke, and they moved together into The Village of Winston Park here in the neighbourhood. Jane and her new husband Derek moved in for a time because their house on Orrs Lake was presenting serious troubles in the building phase. What a blessing it was to be able to take my family into my home,  and even though the stroke took my mom's ability to speak,  we still enjoyed many great family meals in this place.

My dad gave me instructions to sell the farm in Tilbury,  and a great touchstone of "home" for me; a place that figured prominently in so many of the wonderful memories of my early years, passed into history, and passed into the hands of someone new.  During the same time,  Jane and Derek moved to a home of their own. Both my parents died,  and Jane and her husband Derek adopted two siblings, before being blessed with a set of twins, and the home just seemed to expand to make room for these new additions to the family. I guess that's just something about home: no matter how large or small,  it is always just the right size to hold the important things like family and friends.


A new flock of young people came through the living room at the Rectory on Fischer-Hallman Rd., as Jane continued to teach singing lessons to what were at first young children.  But as is so often the case with young children,  they grew up.  Many were quickly adopted into my family,  and I look on their accomplishments with pride as they have become adults.  And children of the Sunday School and youth group of St. George's also became part of this ever-expanding family circle.

Now, as I prepare to move from St. George's to a new St. George's in Kingston, I know that it will only be a very short time before that sense of home has transferred itself from that place on Fischer-Hallman to a new place in Kingston area.  All those previous homes are still very important to me,  and whenever I am in their areas, I always drive by, and let my mind wander over some of the great memories that were made in those places.  I drive by because the places can serve to draw those memories back to mind, but the memories do not belong in the static places. They are mine.  Even without those buildings,  the memories of home travel with me.

But honestly,  home is not held inside of four walls.  It is something far deeper.  Home isn't even the collection of memories that we develop in a place.  Home is a far bigger thing, that although it includes those earlier things, is so much more.

On Pilgrimages

I have been in the process of receiving a Grant of Arms from the Queen's Herald in Canada,  and in that process, have had to spend some time considering images and symbols that speak of my life, while connecting with my ancestry.  From the outset,  Canon David Bowyer designed a beautiful coat of arms that drew forward the ancient symbols of the Davidson clan, and answered the motto of the clan chief,  while coupling those historic things with my current story.

The arms tell the story of my family.  The Davidsons were granted the Stag as a symbol of their family centuries ago,  but on my arms it has been changed to a white-tailed deer, a species that inhabited the farm where I grew up.  The Pheons (arrowheads) are an ancient symbol that hail back to the special relationship between the Davidsons and the crown.  And the red hand was originally the Red Hand of Ulster, which spoke of our time spent as Plantation Scots in Ireland. David drew down two fingers on the hand into the hand of a priest in blessing,  connecting the ancient symbol to my vocation as a priest.

The hat at the top is the mark of a priest, and following the tradition of Anglican heraldry,  it has three crimson tassels and two purple cords, which mark a Cathedral Dean.

Finally,  my motto, in latin, reads "Sapientia cum Sinceritate" which means by wisdom and with sincerity.  This answers the ancient Davidson motto of Sapienter si sincere" meaning wisely if sincerely.

But the process was not done with this beautiful design that David did.  There was still a symbol that needed to be included,  and one which speaks to a very important aspect of my life.  The crest that will accompany the coat of arms will feature a scalloped shell; the mark of a pilgrim.

Through the last 23 years in ministry,  I have had the opportunity to make several very significant religious pilgrimages to sights that have long been held to be holy ones.  As well,  I have had the opportunity to make several others, which although they were not to necessarily "holy" places,  they were made holy by the people that I met, and the relationships that grew out of them.

The pilgrimage bug first bit me in 1997, when I made my first trip to the Holy Land.  Walking the Via Dolorosa, following the steps of Jesus from the place where he was condemned, to the place he died, and finally to the place where he was buried, and ultimately rose from the dead was a life-changing experience.  To go the following day,  and to climb down into the grotto of the Nativity, and to see and touch the stone manger only served to amplify that experience for me. And to explore the caves in Bethlehem where St. Jerome translated the Greek and Hebrew Scriptures into the Latin Vulgate Bible was also very moving.

Church of the Holy Sepulchre, Jerusalem

It was such a profound experience, that 2 years later, I led others on a pilgrimage to the Holy Land, and this time extended into Egypt,  so that we could walk the way of St. Joseph to St. Sargius Church and see the place where the Holy Family hid out while escaping Herod. A few years later,  I had the chance to walk through Rome with friends and end up at the place where St. Peter is buried, and then on to Turkey to walk through Ephesus to the home where St. John took the Blessed Virgin Mary after being instructed by Jesus to care for his mother.

While on sabbatical this past summer,  I took a different sort of Pilgrimage. In Colombia, I simply walked with the people there, and allowed them to show me the beauty of their faith, and the wonders of their home.  And in Amazonia,  I had the chance to work and pray and worship with the people of the Amazon, and come to see their incredible faith and love.  Although not traditional pilgrimage sights,  there was a very special holiness that came of both these experiences. They were life-changing experiences for my faith.

It brings me to think of yet another pilgrimage that God has set me on during the same 23 year period.  It has also been a walk with the saints.  It has also been a life-changing experience for my faith.  23 years ago,  when I said yes to those vows and entered into the ministry of the church as a clergy person, I began a walk with God's people that, while sometimes frustrating, has enriched and enhanced my life in too many ways to name.

St. David's Cambridge

St. Thomas the Apostle, Cambridge

At St. David's Church, Cambridge, (Now closed and deconsecrated) I learned the beautiful hospitality of the Newfoundland people.  I learned that a good laugh is perhaps one of God's greatest gifts.  At. St. Thomas the Apostle in Cambridge, with a generation of British immigrants who had survived and worked through the depression and the second world war, I learned about the holy gift of perseverance. And as that pilgrimage took me on to St. George's of Forest Hill,  my heart was touched by an active outreach ministry that put the focus on the world outside the walls of the church.  Although this pilgrimage didn't involve a flight to some far away place,  just as I walked in the footsteps of Jesus to the cross, or the footsteps of Peter to Rome,  or St. John to Ephesus, this pilgrimage at home has brought my walking down the path of faith with more recent saints; saints that were still very much alive.

St. George's of Forest Hill, Kitchener

Now that Pilgrimage has taken a new turn and set me in a fresh direction.  As I make preparations for walking with the people of St. George's Cathedral in Kingston beginning in September,  I do so with a sense of excitement about what new lessons God has in store for me as the path in front of me gains new footprints to follow in.

St. George's Cathedral , Kingston

Each time I see that scalloped shell in my new crest,  I pray that it will remind me of more than simply the pilgrimages I have taken walking in the paths of ancient saints.  May it remind me of that great pilgrimage that God set me on so many years ago, walking the path with his saints today.

And watch the blog over the coming year, as I begin to make plans for a pilgrimage to walk in the footsteps of St. James on the Camino de Santiago de Compostela.