Maybe you would start with your church building, then think about the other gathering points in your neighbourhood. Maybe you would think about where people eat or drink, or where they work and live. Maybe you would think about where they shop or access services, or where they go for recreation and fun. Maybe you would even think about the transportation networks or hubs.

The gift of thinking about the parish as a fundamental unit in Anglicanism is that we have a particular place that focuses our ministry, How we live, work, love and worship can be shaped around the needs of that neighbourhood. Those realities of our neighbourhood of course connect beyond our parish to our deaneries, diocese and beyond, and they allow a tangible point of ministry for one another as Anglicans.

But what happens if you think beyond the human frame of reference and consider an ecological view? What is the story of the landscape and ecosystem in your parish? What are its defining characteristics? What would you put on a map as key features for the plants and wildlife? Or for the rivers and hills?

One good starting point is to use a watershed approach to understanding your local ecological neighbourhood. A watershed is simply a geographic area where all water in that area flows through a shared body of water. It might be a creek or a river, it could be a lake or a marsh, it might be bigger than your parish or you might find a particular sub-watershed that you are connected to.

For example, I live in a community that has two sub-watersheds, the Willow Creek and Mattheson Creek sub-watersheds. These creeks shape our village and provide wonderful places for walking and hiking. They eventually connect with the Nottawasaga River through the Minesing Wetlands, and the Nottawasaga River continues to Lake Huron at Wasaga Beach. The Great Lakes watershed connects us together as a diocese eventually to the St. Lawrence River and the rest of the waters of the world.

From there you can discover the network of neighbours that live, work, love and worship within your ecological neighbourhood. The waters that you share connect you together, the way the waterbodies gather the water shapes a great web of connection.

Just imagine for a second what happens to water if you were able to follow it along its journey in your watershed – where your wastewater goes and is managed, to what happens from your garden, lawns or fields, even where the water from the baptismal font is emptied, is all gathered into your local watershed. Think about where your drinking water comes from. If you live with a well, you are probably more aware of the ground water around you.

When we consider that way of looking at our parish, it invites us to attend and care for the relationships that we have or forget that we have. It invites us to envision the active presence of God sustaining and renewing creation. As Psalm 104:30 says, “When you send forth your spirit, they are renewed.” And it asks us how we participate in life with and care for all the beings (human and non-human) in the bounds of our parish.

This Season of Creation with the theme of “Living Waters,” you are invited to map your watershed and discover what you and your parish know about your ecological parish. The resource is a simple set of questions to discover week after week and create a growing map that you could use as a station near the entrance to worship, or over coffee hour. All it takes is a map of your community, a few simple supplies and a willingness to play and create together. You could run it as a workshop all in one day or add a walk or an exploration into your plans. Hopefully it will inspire you to think about those relationships in your watershed and discover again where God is at work in your parish and in creation. And then ask yourselves what you want to do to care for your community.

The post Discovering your ecological parish appeared first on The Toronto Anglican.

A messenger comes to Mary, a strange greeting: hail, favoured one, the Lord is with you. And then invites her to participate in the process of bringing God into the world.

The creator of all taking on human flesh, the incarnate Son of God. The creator of everything – the stars, the seas, the earth – enters history as a little infant, born of Mary. The one who will bring about redemption and reconciliation of all things enters a relationship of interdependence, vulnerability and humanness. Starting from that place of dependence where all human relationships begin, carried by Mary during her pregnancy, born dependent – needing family and relationships to care for all his needs.

Christ is born in Bethlehem.

When we consider just the incarnation and Jesus’s infant birth, it’s wild to think about the need for these relationships, in a human sense, and it should draw our awe and wonder. And I wonder what happens if we expand our frame to see the broader web of relationships that are needed for Jesus, this babe in Bethlehem, to be fully alive, fully human.

Just imagine, for a second, the microscopic level, the formation of the gut biome. It begins from birth and is essential for the wellbeing of a human being. The gut biome is that community of bacteria, viruses, fungi and other microbes (a thousand different types, trillions of microorganisms) that live in our intestines. This ecosystem is at work hidden inside us, breaking down food, supporting our immune system, and even affecting our mental health. It’s a key part of our body that is also not our body. The gut biome is an ecological system contained in our own organs, shaped and formed by our relationship with the world around us, our family, our ecosystem and our diet. Just imagine Jesus’s gut biome shaped by that manger, by Mary and Joseph, and the family and the air of Bethlehem, all shaping this invisible microscopic eco-community within an infant.

Or imagine the broader geography and ecological system that sustains all of life. Just think about what Jesus ate and how it connected him to animals and grains, vegetables and fruits, wine and water, and even the economic relationships between humans. All of those relationships shaped by the geography and watershed, seasons and weather. Starting from Bethlehem to his time as a refugee in Egypt, back to Nazareth, and throughout his ministry journeys, the Incarnate One lived in places that shaped his reality. Jesus was always integrated into a broader ecosystem, a network of relationships of interdependence. Human, animal, plant, mineral and even the waters all intimately connected through the ordinary actions of life.

St. Athanasius of Alexandria wrote, “He became what we are that he might make us what he is.” (On the Incarnation, 54:3) Which is to say that Christ takes on the fullness of human experience, and all the same dependencies and interrelated relationships, and then shows us, invites us and transforms us into a more excellent way. St. Basil, in one of his prayers, asks, “O God, enlarge within us the sense of fellowship with all living things, our [siblings] the animals to whom you gave the earth as their home in common with us.” And we might even go beyond that as we consider the incarnation and its relationship with all creation, as St. Francis’s canticle evokes the relationship we have with all creatures.

It’s here in the person of Jesus that we see God’s action enfleshed. And yes, it is in the stories of the gospels, in the cross and resurrection, but also in and through the incarnation in its ordinary and its extraordinary ways that we are invited to contemplate and be transformed. The physical reality, the matter of the world, is not in opposition to this revelation but is the very place where we encounter God’s love at work. Anglican eco-theologian Norman Wirzba writes, “The incarnation is God’s affirmation that creaturely life is good, that the world is not an obstacle to God’s purposes but the very place where God’s love is made manifest.” (Food and Faith, pg. 106)

As we see this reality of God’s love present in the incarnation, it reminds us that the incarnation shows us that God can work through the whole of creation. It reminds us of the importance of all these complex relationships and interdependencies that are at the heart of our human experience and our creaturely experience.

At a more profound level, the incarnation, God taking on human flesh, is not just about God becoming human, but God becoming part of creation. In Jesus, we see God’s declaration, God’s love enacted, and we can see that matter matters. God’s saving work in the incarnation is not just for humans but is about all of creation.

As we dwell with this mystery, it invites us to consider how we are connected, as well, to all of creation, to see in our own lives and experiences how we are related and interconnected. And it should ask us questions about how the love of God calls us to care, love and protect creation in all of our lives.

In this season of Advent and Christmas, we look back at the expectant waiting, the longing and hope for this incarnation. We celebrate the mystery of the incarnation, that the Word became flesh and dwelt among us. In our lives, we also look at our world with the same longing and hope for Christ’s return that will set all things right.

And while many of us think about salvation in the frame of our humanity, maybe this Advent and Christmas we might expand our view. What happens if we consider the mystery of the incarnation as a pattern of relationship, one that invites us to live more deeply in that hope of reconciliation, not just with ourselves and God, and other humans, but with all of creation? Perhaps we will see how our faith draws us to love more deeply, and encounter God’s presence meeting us in and through creation as well.

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