Until you hear the stories. The abundant harvests have been disrupted by Israeli settlers bulldozing the apricot trees, burning 1,500 olive trees and destroying grape vines. The cisterns are underground because Israeli settlers have repeatedly destroyed above-ground water storage tanks. The composting toilets and solar panels are necessary because Israel has cut off water and electricity to the farm. The artwork is in caves that, unlike buildings, the settlers cannot destroy, and the colourful paintings are a form of creative resistance against violence. Moreover, the Israeli state has been trying to seize this land for 35 years, embroiling the Nassar family in endless legal battles in spite of documents that demonstrate their ownership.

The view is disrupted by Israeli settler homes, not only on the surrounding hills, but also built against the fence line of the farm. The road to town has been blocked, cutting the farm off from neighbours. And looking in the direction of the Mediterranean, Daoud says quietly: “We could see the bombs falling on Gaza from here.” And we realize that it is all of a piece; the violent attempt to exterminate this farm is part of the larger systemic plan to destroy the Palestinian people and their connection to this land.

And yet the motto of Tent of Nations is: “We refuse to be enemies.” Many of the trees that were destroyed were replanted by Jewish groups from the U.K. and the Centre for Jewish Non-Violence from the United States. Many international volunteers are welcomed here, for when visitors arrive the violence pauses.

Like Naboth in 1 Kings 24, Daoud has been encouraged to sell the land; he just has to name his price. But like Naboth, he can’t imagine living apart from the land that has grounded his family for generations. “This is our inheritance,” he says. “This is the place we call home.” Daoud is committed to staying on this land in spite of the challenges, so that Tent of Nations might continue to be a place of reconciliation for diverse peoples and a place of ecological renewal for the land.

Such an emphasis on reconciliation is also at the heart of Wi’am: The Palestinian Conflict Transformation Center, where we ended our day. With special programs for women, youth and those dealing with trauma, Zoughbi Alzoughbi, the founder and director, provided insight into the difficulties of reconciliation in the midst of a traumatized population. “There is no trauma healing, only trauma coping,” he says, “because there is no post-traumatic stress disorder here; the trauma is ongoing.” Wi’am seeks to engage community-based mediation as a pathway to transformation in the midst of violence. Zoughbi does this work at great personal cost: he is married to an American whom Israel will not allow to live in Palestine with him. The separation wall that casts its shadow over the Wi’am building represents how the state of Israel extends its reach into the personal and familial lives of so many Palestinians.

Between Tent of Nations and Wi’am, we experienced two moments of juxtaposition. The first was one of the amazing meals that punctuated our trip, reminding us that even in the midst of violence, Palestinian life continues with moments of deep joy and nourishment.

The other was the Church of the Nativity – the visually rich, large church complex built over the place where Jesus was supposedly born. Like at Tent of Nations, we descended into a cave, but this one was richly lit with lamps and beautiful artwork commemorating the birth of Jesus.

At the end of the day, I pondered where we had truly seen evidence of the incarnation. Was it in the sumptuously decorated church? Or did we see God become flesh in a centre for conflict transformation in the shadow of the Separation Wall? Perhaps. And perhaps God has come to live among us on the land of a farm that is planting literal seeds of hope and reconciliation in the rich red loam of Palestine.

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​Unless, of course, one listened a little more closely to some of the songs. The marsh wren, for instance, was not singing a song so much as calling out a warning, crying out in alarm. I had stopped too close to her nest and she was afraid of the damage that I might do, crying out because of my presence. The voice of creation is sometimes a voice of alarm.

​Sometimes that alarm has been silenced. The far end of the marsh is owned by an aggregate company. There, the water no longer teems with life: it lies dank and still. The nearby plants droop with dust, unable to breathe. Insect life is quiet, and birdsong is absent. How do we listen to the voice of creation when it has been silenced?

​Scripture describes this silence as creation mourning, lamenting the loss of song and life (see Hosea 4.1-3). So how do we listen to this mourning, how do we listen to the silence? And what does it tell us when we listen? What do we do when the one we love is too broken to give praise, too traumatized to sing?

​Perhaps we do for creation exactly what we would do for a child whose cries we have heard, or who is too traumatized to speak. Perhaps hold creation tenderly, provide it with loving attention, carefully seek out and nurture its gifts, use all of our cunning and imagination to coax it back to health. And perhaps we cry as well, in mourning for all the innocence and beauty that has been lost.

​Weeping, tender holding, loving attention, caring nurture, careful coaxing back to health – all of this, so that once again when we listen to creation, we will be truly hearing a chorus of praise. ​

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The curriculum seeks to draw on that ancient wisdom and re-engage participants’ love for God’s creation and all of God’s creatures, not by providing a to-do list, but rather by providing a series of nurturing activities that can grow hope and help participants give voice to our collective grief and anxiety.

“Many of us are carrying grief and anxiety,” says Sylvia Keesmaat, one of the co-chairs of the Bishop’s Committee on Creation Care. “We experience a deep grief for the loss of the creation that we love, and a deeper sense of anxiety for ourselves, our children, and the creatures that surround us, especially as the predictions around the climate crisis become more and more dire. It is exhausting and paralyzing to carry such a heavy burden of grief and anxiety.”

Written by Dr. Keesmaat, who is a biblical scholar, the curriculum, entitled “From Ecological Grief to Biblical Hope: A Lent Curriculum for all Ages,” will take in the whole sweep of the biblical narrative. Each week will focus on one part of the biblical story: Psalm 104 and cultivating love for our creational home; Noah and the first climate crisis; Jeremiah and creation’s undoing during times of war and conquest; Zacchaeus, colonialism, race and climate justice; Paul and learning to grieve faithfully; Revelation and learning to live with possibility.

Each week has a short reflection on the biblical text; questions to guide discussion or personal reflection; activities that are suitable for groups and individuals of all ages; suggestions for action; and further resources, such as books and videos, for those who wish to dig deeper. Options for both in-person and virtual activities are provided.

While there are actions that address individual lifestyles and consumption choices, there is also an acknowledgement that it is our larger infrastructure that must change. To that end, engaging wider-community actions that can change our systems are included, along with an emphasis on creating community-wide transformation in our churches and neighbourhoods. 

“Lent is a time when we join Jesus in his walk to Jerusalem,” says Dr. Keesmaat. “That walk ended on the cross, but it also ended in new life. The hope of resurrection, of a world restored and renewed, animated all that Jesus did. That is the hope that permeates this curriculum as well.”

The curriculum will be available on the Creation Care web page at www.toronto.anglican.ca/creationcare from Feb. 1.

Sylvia Keesmaat is also offering a six-week Zoom course entitled “Eco-Anxiety and Biblical Wisdom: Torn Between Grief and Hope” for those who wish to delve even deeper into this topic. Go to www.bibleremixed.ca for more information. 

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The gardeners in question can be found in various Anglican churches throughout the diocese. Their gardens are as unique as the communities where they’re found. St. Mary, Richmond Hill has had fairly extensive pollinator gardens for a number of years. This year, the seven volunteers who maintain the gardens decided to clear out an area overgrown with evergreens and put in a memorial garden for those who have died from COVID-19. The garden has been planted with native perennials and shrubs and, according to Lyne Webb, one of the garden volunteers, a bench will eventually be added to create a place for reflection. 

A labyrinth space to remember those who have died during the pandemic has also been dedicated at St. Joseph of Nazareth, Bramalea. The labyrinth will undergo further planting in future years. This summer, the 11 members of the gardening committee focused on creating more welcome pollinator gardens at the front entrance of the church. They expanded older, narrow beds and planted native grasses and perennial flowers. The need to remove a couple of old and diseased trees also created two large piles of mulch that were used to create paths around and under the trees on the street side of the church. Sylvie Thériault, one of the volunteers, says this park area is welcoming for the surrounding community. “You don’t need to be a part of the church to use this space,” she says. “It can be a shady place to sit on a very hot day.” The church hopes to install some benches under the trees as well. 

Beyond the pollinator beds, St. Joseph’s is also hoping to create vegetable beds in a big space in front of the parking lot. The volunteers hope to tap into a City of Brampton grant for that work, but in the meantime, the area will be planted with wildflowers this fall. 

For two churches, St. George, Pickering Village and All Saints, Whitby, vegetable gardens are already a reality. Both churches began their vegetable gardens this year (see the related article on St. George’s).  With the help of Claire Bramma, a seminary intern who was at the church for 14 weeks, All Saints installed six raised beds for vegetables, a 100-foot border for more vegetables and pollinators, a Three Sisters mound and a shady children’s corner. 

Not only does the garden supply the food bank that operates out of the church, Ms. Bramma says it’s also “a sacred space where people can gather and learn.” Such learning has occurred through a creation care Bible study that Ms. Bramma led in June, which related their garden work to the reconciliation of creation. 

With the help of congregation members Marnee Lacy, who is Chapleau-Cree, and Cecile Wagar, who is senator of the Oshawa and Durham Region Metis Council, the garden has provided an opportunity to learn from and honour Indigenous traditions. In this way, says Ms. Bramma, the Three Sisters garden is “a tangible way to be physically and visibly involved with raising awareness about Indigenous peoples in the area, along with a chance to reach out to community partnerships.”

All Saints used the community garden toolkit provided by the Bishop’s Committee on Creation Care as a template for organizing and getting started. Its committee of eight people, with 10 additional volunteers, was able to engage in an accelerated process to get the garden in. 

People from the wider community have noticed the activity at the church, and their enquiries about the gardens have provided an opportunity for the gardeners to share information about the work the church has been doing in the community.

These kinds of conversations have also arisen as the result of a pollinator garden recently planted at St. Margaret, New Toronto. Originally just a grassy area by the church entrance, the garden committee, spearheaded by Chanelle McLeod, has transformed the hard clay and rocky soil into the home of many pollinator plants. According to Ms. McLeod, the garden project “was almost like a face-lift, making the entrance to the church much more inviting.” It has also become a teaching space. “When I explain that it is a pollinator garden, people have asked to learn more about it,” she says.

Ms. McLeod says she’s glad they started with a small project, since it provided a good basis for thinking about larger projects going forward.

Even though each church has created a garden that uniquely fits its land and the needs of its community, all the gardeners commented on one common outcome: how the gardens create community. For many, working in the garden is where that community began. Sylvie Thériault says it was a welcome opportunity to be physically in the presence of other people once again. Lyne Webb echoes that thought. “People were glad to get out. We always had a social time when we gardened. With social distancing, we probably got more work done,” she says. “The garden allowed people to meet who didn’t know each other before,” says Ms. Bramma. “It brought a diverse group of people together.”

The gardens also create a space of connection for those from the wider community. St. Mary’s has a pantry box at its Yonge Street entrance. People who use the box often come into the garden to sit, sometimes sitting on the chapel steps next to the lilies and roses. St. Joseph’s is hoping not only that the park under the trees will find a similar use, but that the vegetable garden that’s eventually planted will be a place where the community can come to learn about growing food. 

“I feel that this is where the Holy Spirit is at work in inspiring people to consider how the church can be a wider blessing,” says Ms. Bramma. “The Holy Spirit is using people’s gifts and skills. All these conversations and projects are starting up. When this kind of synergy is happening around the garden, then we know the Holy Spirit is at work.”

As all these gardens show, the Spirit has surely been working through many of our church communities to create new life throughout the diocese this summer. If your parish has started a community garden this summer, email us at creation.care@toronto.anglican.ca so we can track new gardening initiatives in the diocese. 

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Perhaps you are watching the sunset and imagining God’s care moving across the sky day by day. As night falls, you reflect on the animals that will emerge in the darkness: the coyotes and wolves, the raccoons and skunks. You marvel at how God has provided not only a place but a time to be at home for all creatures. And you give thanks that everything is upheld by the life-giving Spirit of the creator God. 

This is the kind of reflection we find in Psalm 104, written over 2,000 years ago. It is the kind of reflection the Indigenous peoples of Turtle Island engaged in for thousands of years. And it is the kind of reflection that is increasingly difficult for many of us in our day and age. We don’t know the names of the trees that are fed by the streams, nor the birds that nest in them. We have also covered those streams over, dammed them up and silenced their voices. Not only do we not know the habits of the animals that are at home in the dark; we have blurred the line between night and day, disrupting the lifeways of the insects, turtles and frogs that depend on the darkness. 

We have not only embraced a lifestyle that is largely unaware of the workings of the land, plants, trees and other creatures; our theological traditions have reinforced this disconnection with the earth. Emphasizing a heavenly afterlife and privileging an inner spirituality, we have largely forgotten that we are adam – that is, earth-creature, created from adamah, the earth (Genesis 2:7). We have forgotten that we were called to serve and observe the creation (Genesis 2:15). We have forgotten that the biblical story ends not with a vision of heaven, light years away, but with God coming to dwell with us on a renewed earth, a vision of resurrection hope.

Such forgetfulness, we are reminded again and again in the Bible, can only lead to disaster. When we forget that the land is a gift from the Creator (Leviticus 25:23), we begin to treat it as a commodity that can be exploited and consumed. When we forget that the trees praise God (Isaiah 55:12), we are casual about destroying our forests. When we forget that each animal has been given a home in mountains, trees or rivers (Psalm 104.10-18; Job 38-39), we mine the mountains and dam the rivers, leaving them homeless.

But creation won’t let us forget. Creation responds with heat, fire, drought, flood. When we forget that we are earth-creature from the earth, disaster is the result.

The Season of Creation is an opportunity for us to remember our calling and identity as earth-creatures. This worldwide ecumenical movement is observed by Anglican, Orthodox, Catholic and Protestant Christians around the world. It begins on Sept. 1 and extends until Oct. 4, the Feast of St. Francis. It is a season to renew our relationship with creation through celebration, conversation and commitment.

Given that September is a busy time for parishes in the diocese, some churches begin the celebration of Season of Creation on the Feast of St. Francis. In this way, our traditional Thanksgiving services become part of this season as well.

What does the Season of Creation look like in churches in our diocese?

1. Liturgy: Many churches celebrate this season with a special focus on creation in one or more of their worship services. Those that use the Revised Common Lectionary readings for the day will often follow the theme that has been chosen by the ecumenical church. Focusing on the urgent need to heal our relationship with creation, this year’s theme emphasizes how the earth is a home for all. The website www.seasonofcreation.org has more information on the theme, including homily notes and a Sunday liturgy that includes prayers influenced by Indigenous traditions, with the input of Archbishop Mark MacDonald, the National Indigenous Anglican Archbishop.

Some churches create their own liturgical themes for the four weeks and choose biblical readings that resonate with those themes. Some of these liturgies can be found at www.toronto.anglican.ca/creationcare, along with other intercessory prayers, collects and lectionary readings for Sunday use. 

2. Delight: The Season of Creation is a good time to intentionally delight in the beauty of creation as a community by taking a hike together, engaging in an intergenerational outing to a nearby river or shoreline, watch a salmon run, do a bit of forest bathing or have a church picnic at a conservation area or local park. 

3. Education: Learning about the wonderful diversity of creation is another way parishes can celebrate this season. If you’re in the GTA, you might consider taking the audio walking tour of the six positivity gardens at Evergreen Brickworks. Or ask someone from a local horticultural or field naturalist society to take you on a tour of the wetlands, forests or birds in your neighbourhood. Plan an event to learn more about Indigenous views of creation, or about the Indigenous history of your parish.

4. Action: During the Season of Creation, some parishes have started processes to assess their use of plastic, planted trees and engaged in advocacy for local wetlands threatened by development. Appropriate action is often spurred on by specific need.

One action rooted in the Season of Creation that can bear fruit throughout the year is to begin the planning and first steps for a community garden or pollinator garden on your church grounds. Planning and preparing beds in the fall, and maybe even sowing some seeds or putting in perennials, will give these gardens a head start in the spring. Check out the community garden toolkit on the Creation Care page of the diocese’s website for more guidance. 

However your parish decides to celebrate the Season of Creation, remembering that our Creator formed us from the earth and called us to care for it provides us with a vision for reconciliation with our creational home. 

Sylvia Keesmaat is a member of the Bishop’s Committee on Creation Care. 

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This sounds like Alice in Wonderland, doesn’t it? Or Harry Potter entering the wizarding world, rather than the way we usually think of our lives. And yet, we do live in the story of God’s relationship with ourselves and all of creation. Each week, we hear bits of the story at church, in our own devotional reading, and ideally, we are pulled into the story, carried along by it in our own daily lives.

The Bishop’s Committee on Creation Care (BCCC) has been working since last July to help Anglicans, parishes, and the diocese as a whole to better imagine how we might live out this story in relation to creation. Our world continues to grapple with the climate crisis, and the Church is realizing the many ways that we have neglected our calling to live in peace with the diversity of plants, insects, animals, and people that God created in that first garden community or community garden.

In that context, the BCCC is asking parishes to spend some time thinking about the land, and the actual earth that surrounds their churches. What other creatures live in the soil and in the foliage? How could these creatures be cared for? What needs to be done to ensure that plants, animals, insects and birds continue to flourish around your church? What has been lost, and what needs to be restored? What can grow there? Is there a way that you can tend the earth around your church and also meet the needs of the surrounding community?

Perhaps your church has enough space to create beds that provide gardening opportunities for those who no other access to land. Perhaps your church has enough space to grow vegetables for those in your community who are food insecure. Perhaps making a pollinator garden for your community is the most appropriate choice. Or perhaps you have a vision for both vegetables and pollinators.

Does your busy context mean that a meditation garden would be appropriate? Is it possible to tuck a few currant or raspberry bushes in the shady spots around the perimeter? Is there room for a dwarf apple or peach tree or two? Or maybe your church only has space for a small bed of native plants or some pollinator annuals in a planter.

Of course, imagining what is possible on the land around your church is one thing. Turning that vision into reality can be more challenging. Where to start? This is where the Bishop’s Committee on Creation Care hopes to help in a number of ways:

• Members of the BCCC are available to discuss your project both in terms of vision and in terms of practical steps.
• Numerous parishioners from churches with established community gardens have volunteered to act as a resource for those with questions about gardens. They are also willing to provide tours of their gardens.
• The committee has created a toolkit that outlines the steps to starting a garden, including assembling a team, plant selection, allocating a budget, pruning and planting tips, and COVID-19 consideration. In addition, there are links to external resources providing detailed instructions on starting a community garden and suggestions for plants. This can be found at toronto.anglican.ca/creationcare.

We don’t know what this summer will bring in terms of worship and communal life in our churches. Beginning a garden project is one way that we can gather as a community, imagine our life together in a new way, and enter into the story of healing for creation that God calls us to. Please, join us.

Sylvia Keesmaat and Chanelle McLeod are members of the Bishop’s Committee on Creation Care. If you would like more information on starting a garden on your church property, go to www.toronto.anglican.ca/creationcare or send an email to creation.care@toronto.anglican.ca.

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