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.