The concept is remarkably straightforward. What might happen if our parish churches were open more often – not simply for worship or scheduled events, but during the week as places of prayer, reflection, hospitality and welcome?

In the Church of England, this question emerged partly from a practical reality. Many churches had gradually become locked outside worship because of concerns about vandalism, insurance, theft and declining volunteer capacity. But church leaders began to ask whether a locked church might unintentionally communicate something quite different from what the Church intends to proclaim: that faith is private, guarded or inaccessible.

Theologically, the question is even more significant. The parish church is not simply a building for those who attend on Sunday. It is a visible sign of God’s presence in the community and exists for the whole parish – believers and doubters, the faithful and the curious, the grieving and the lonely.

Jesus says, “Whoever comes to me I will never drive away” (John 6:37). There is something wonderfully Anglican about taking those words literally.

An open church offers something that a Sunday service cannot always provide. Someone who would never think of walking into a worship service may nevertheless enter a quiet church to sit, pray, or simply collect their thoughts. A person carrying grief may find a place of peace. A tourist may discover the beauty and history of a sacred space. Someone who has drifted away from the Church may encounter a reminder that the Church is still there.

During our travels, we saw examples of churches that had embraced this approach in different ways. Volunteers welcomed visitors, prayer stations provided opportunities for reflection, and church buildings became places where people could pause amid the demands of everyday life. At St. Michael-le-Belfrey parish in York, the parish (near York Minster) intentionally expanded its weekday opening hours and hospitality ministry, discovering that many visitors who initially entered as tourists later returned for worship, joined Alpha courses, requested prayer or sought pastoral support.

At St. Digain’s Church in Llangernyw, North Wales, visitors walking the Pilgrim’s Way often stop to admire the architecture of this 13th-century church. They can use the facilities, enjoy a complimentary drink and, quite often, leave a donation using the church’s tap-to-give technology.

Of course, “Doors Open” does not mean opening the doors without thought. Concerns about security, safeguarding, insurance and volunteer capacity are real. The experience in England and Wales suggests, however, that openness and responsible stewardship need not be opposites. Churches have developed practical measures – including volunteer stewards, appropriate security systems, risk assessments, and the careful safeguarding of valuables –to make greater accessibility possible.

So, what might this mean for the Diocese of Toronto?

Perhaps we should begin modestly. Rather than expecting every parish to adopt the same model, we could consider a pilot involving a small number of urban, suburban and rural churches. Each could explore what opening its doors during the week might look like in its own community.

The goal would not simply be to have unlocked buildings. The goal would be to ask a more important question: How can our churches become more visibly present in the everyday lives of the communities we serve?

We often speak about the Church needing to reach out to the community. Sometimes the first step is simply to open the door.

In an age when many people experience loneliness, uncertainty, grief and spiritual searching, there is something powerful about knowing that there is a church nearby where one can enter, sit quietly, pray and know that one is welcome.

An open church says something without requiring a visitor to say anything at all: You are welcome here. There is a place for you. God is here.

The experience of our brothers and sisters in England and Wales has given us something worth considering. In some of our communities, the next expression of Christian mission may begin not with a new program or initiative, but with something much simpler – the turning of a key, the opening of a door and the willingness to welcome whoever walks through it.

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In May 2026, I travelled across the United Kingdom alongside my good friend and colleague Peter Misiaszek, director of stewardship for the diocese.

Over nine days, I visited eight communities and met with 20 people across 15 different organizations: the Church Housing Association, the Church Development Agency, the Office of the Bishop for Housing, the Churches Conservation Trust, Revitalize Trust, the dioceses of York, Birmingham and Gloucester, Canterbury Cathedral, Scotland’s Churches Trust and more.

I came with a list of questions, and I was blessed by how willingly my counterparts answered them. I wanted to know how the Church decides what land to keep and what to let go of. I wanted to understand what goes into financing a housing project on church land, and how they think about affordability in a way that holds up over multiple generations. I asked what happens to a church once it closes; who decides its next life, how long that process usually takes and how big the backlog of unresolved buildings really is. I pushed on heritage, too: when does a building’s historic status help it find a future, and when does it just get in the way?

And underneath all of it, I kept asking a more personal question: if you were advising a diocese back home that’s iterating and living this kind of strategy, where do you tell them to begin, and where do these efforts usually stall?

The first thing I learned is that we in the Diocese of Toronto are not alone. The tensions we wrestle with here are the same tensions being worked through in Edinburgh, Birmingham and York. Geography changes the details, but it does not change the grief…or the opportunity.

What struck me most was posture. Across every conversation, whether we were talking about land and property strategy, housing or the future of a closed building, there was a consistent instinct toward being proactive rather than reactive – thinking several years ahead, rather than waiting for a crisis to force a decision. This approach sees real value in a diocese having a clear-eyed strategy before it’s needed, not after.

Heritage came up often, too, and in a way I didn’t expect. I’d assumed a building’s historic designation would be the deciding factor in its future. Instead, I heard again and again that social value (i.e., what a building means to the people who live around it) often mattered just as much as its architectural pedigree. It’s a question worth sitting with: what does a building mean to its community?

Housing was where I learned the most. The Church of England treats housing development as mission, organized around a simple idea: housing should be safe, stable, sociable, satisfying and sustainable. They’ve built a whole ecosystem to support that work ( the Church Development Agency and the Church Housing Association) and resource their property and housing teams accordingly.

There’s one detail I haven’t stopped thinking about: it’s become a universal policy across the Church of England to leave churches unlocked to the public on a daily basis, inviting passersby to step in and bear witness to our faith. I asked about the obvious worry of theft, vandalism and other reasons we tend to keep our own doors locked outside of service hours. What we learned was the opposite had happened: giving increased and risk decreased.

While there is so much more I could share, their approach to land and property strategy comes down to this: curiosity, a forward-looking posture and a willingness to ask hard questions before circumstances force the answer.

And then there was Peter

If you’ll indulge me: Peter Misiaszek is one of the best travel companions a person could ask for. He should also never again be trusted behind the wheel of a car driving on the wrong side of the road. Somewhere on a narrow road in Radlett (about 25 km outside London), his driving prompted two extremely British strangers into an extremely British argument: one informing the other that she was “thicker than two bricks,” the other replying, with devastating politeness, “thank you, have a nice day.” We laughed about it for the rest of the trip. We may laugh about it for the rest of our lives.

Between meetings, we talked theology, history and our shared, slightly embarrassing admiration for all things related to this part of the world.

Nine days of long drives, meetings, site visits, learning and intriguing discussion with fascinating folks evolved into a friendship I don’t take for granted. Peter is a gift as a colleague, and now, unmistakably, as a friend.

Coming home

I came home with a notebook full of ideas that I still haven’t finished processing, and I suspect I’ll be pulling from this trip for years to come. But if I’m honest, the thing I keep returning to isn’t a policy, or strategy or framework, it’s standing in York Minster, undone by a building I’d never set foot in before. It’s evensong at Canterbury and afternoon service at Westminster. It’s long drives deep in discussion with one of my closest friends, still laughing at the same joke by the time we reached Dover.

I ventured to the UK to study their proverbial bricks. I came home having reinforced my understanding that the buildings only ever mattered because of what they held, and who they held it for.

Beyond the bricks, indeed.

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I could talk about many aspects of this, about churches facing harassment through by-laws, about threats of lawsuits, about “neighbourhood associations” with very limited ideas of what constitutes as neighbour. But I want especially to address, because I think it is profoundly theologically important, some of the words that are coming into use.

Specifically, I am seeing commentators more and more often referring to people using drugs on the street as “zombies,” from an appalling and very poorly researched article in The Atlantic claiming that harms reduction has created a “zombie apocalypse,” to a Toronto lobby group releasing videos identifying the street corner near my house as a “zombie wasteland.” Usually, this language – evoking, as it does, the image of a no-longer-human threat, lacking either rationality or relationship – is closely linked to calls for “mandatory treatment.”

There is no question that there are many people on the street who are suffering hugely from the toxic drug crisis, which has been made worse by a series of political decisions, notably the Ford government’s closure of nearly all of Ontario’s safe consumption sites, which has meant that the crisis is now much more obviously public. I rarely manage to cover the small distance from home to church, or through my local park, without stopping to check someone’s breathing. And the question of how we, as a society, have created such levels of despair is one which we should all be considering deeply.

Experts in the field have identified the many problems with the “mandatory treatment” idea, beginning with the fact that there is a huge lack of voluntary treatment for people who want it, unless they are able to pay for it privately. Mandatory treatment, even with good therapeutic models, has a poor success rate, and a high death rate when people begin to use again immediately upon release; but it is also clear to anyone who thinks about it for even a moment that mandatory “treatment” at the scale which is being proposed would not be treatment in any meaningful sense at all – at that scale, it could only be long-term incarceration.

There has been an attempt to present calls for involuntary “treatment” as some form of compassion. But it is a reasonable assumption that someone who calls another human being a “zombie” does not wish them well. It is a word designed to exclude certain people from the category of humanity at all, and to position them as beings with neither rights nor inherent dignity. It is, to use the language of our faith, an attempt to remove them from the Body of Christ.

The people in my community who are using drugs on the street are not mindless, dangerous, predatory or any of the other connotations which the word “zombie” carries. They are, among other things, people who are invariably polite when I wake them up to ensure they’re all right, and always thank me for my concern. They are people with dreams and hopes, traumas and griefs, people who make art and tell jokes and dress giant teddy bears in elaborate costumes. They are people with children and siblings and parents, people who know love and loss and longing. And for us, they are, each one of them, bearers of the ineradicable image of God. They are – like everyone else we encounter – a fragment, for us, of the divine life.

As long ago as the fourth century, Gregory of Nyssa preached against those who wanted to see the unwell and unhoused people of his time sent off to “some place far away from our life,” and told his congregation, in the strongest terms he could, that they needed to understand that each one of us is deeply ill, especially those of us who think we are well, and it is only our relationships with the most vulnerable among us that can bring us healing. We cannot cast anyone out of the category of our shared humanity without injuring us all.

It is hard, as Gregory himself also grants. It is hard to be open to the depths of pain, easier to be angry, or to reject the reality on our doorsteps entirely. It is hard to get past fears and prejudices which surround us like air. It is hard – maybe hardest of all – to admit that things are terribly wrong, and that there is only a very little that we can do to make anything better.

But the little that we can do, we must do. And if it is only to look at a human person and to understand that they are not a monster, but a plain being like each of us, as much a child of God as anyone else, and to speak and be kind, this is a place to start, and it is a way for all of us to begin to be healed.

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In June 2020, I moved to Canada on an empty flight from Singapore. Canada, and more specifically Scarborough, was not new to me, as I had made several visits since childhood to visit my extended family. However, moving on a permanent basis made me nervous, especially at the thought of where and how I would fit in.

Navigating place and identity has always been a part of my life as a Tamil woman growing up in war-torn Sri Lanka. I was born in Jaffna, the northern part of Sri Lanka, during the height of the civil war. By the age of 5, I had lived in 15 different places due to repeated internal displacements. I grew up in the context of ethnic conflict, violence, systemic discrimination and oppression. Growing up in cosmopolitan Colombo, I silently endured implicit and overt racism, I swallowed my anger as I watched civilians being bombed on cable TV because the local channels seldom covered the civil war, and I hung my head in shame when the end of the war was broadcast with celebrations and pride in the Anglican school I attended. Simply speaking out about the injustices was sufficient to be branded as a terrorist sympathizer, and so I spent my adolescent years attempting to “fit in,” while also wrestling with the injustice my people were facing.

As I discerned my career path, I felt God’s call to use my strengths to further justice, truth and accountability. I worked for over five years as a researcher on post-war justice and reconciliation. My work took me into homes of mothers who were searching for their missing children for decades, communities protesting for the release of occupied land and spaces of deep grief and undying resilience. There were times my work felt meaningful, and there were even more times when it felt futile, as the state mechanism repeatedly denied attempts towards truth-telling and accountability. So, when my partner decided to move to Canada, I felt confused as to what my future work would entail.

It was not until I was a master’s student in Singapore, taking an elective on the interaction of Christianity with other spiritual beliefs, that I began to uncover the dark history of Canada’s relationship with Indigenous peoples. Learning about residential schools shocked me. As I learned about the policies behind these institutions, it was difficult for me to comprehend how the Church partnered with the state to “kill the Indian in the child.” It was the beginning of my ongoing journey to learn about the injustices that the Indigenous people have faced and continue to face in Canada.

While acknowledging the nuanced experiences of settler colonialism in Canada, I also see parallels between the experiences of the Tamils in Sri Lanka and the Indigenous peoples in Canada. I resonate with the feeling of being alienated, othered and erased from our own lands and homes. I understand what it is to have to work with the same powers that explicitly tried to eradicate nations of people with no regard for human life or dignity. And I continue to deal with intergenerational trauma and social issues that stem from years of oppression, violence and discrimination.

My calling here is different. It is a calling of allyship, which includes proactively learning from Indigenous peoples, listening to their stories and their calls for justice and reparations. Where possible, to support and create space for Indigenous voices to be heard. To be courageous enough to walk alongside Indigenous Nations when they stand up to systemic oppression, ongoing colonialism and denial of truths. And finally, to humbly steward the land and waters which we are grateful to call home.

I share my own journey with you, dear reader, to encourage you to participate in reconciliation. Whether you are an immigrant, settler or a sojourner, you are called to participate in this journey of reconciliation.

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While I’m looking forward to the next phase of life when I’m rooted once again in a particular community, this season hasn’t been without its charms. And of course, as with all things, I’ve gained a few insights along the way.

1. Visiting new churches is life-giving. This has been the biggest blessing of the past many months. It didn’t surprise me, but it was nice to be reminded again of the many gifts congregations can offer – and we barely scratched the surface!

It’s a joy to belong to a community, and it’s a joy to see how other Anglicans worship. During this churchless year, my family has returned to congregations familiar to us where we were sure of a warm welcome, but we’ve also stepped through new doors, not always knowing what to expect. Rooted in a familiar liturgy, we’ve observed the different ways communities live out their call to worship God and serve the world.

Not everything was to our personal tastes; nor should it be. The congregation with unfamiliar music had the warmest welcome. The one with very few kids had the best activity bag. No congregation was perfect, no congregation was the same, and yet in every one we found a community of faithful people praising God.

Familiarity is good. It’s comfortable and comforting. It provides a safe space to ask questions, and companions with whom to learn to follow Jesus. But it’s also valuable beyond measure to get out of that bubble every now and then, to remind ourselves that our way is not the only way, and that we are part of something much more vast than our little corner of God’s kingdom.

2. It can be a gift to stay home. There are weeks in all our lives that are packed with activity, when we arrive at the weekend breathless and exhausted. And for families with kids, weekends can be just as busy, with swimming lessons, birthday parties, dance recitals and family gatherings. And then there’s a subway shutdown.

For several years, my daughter and I would walk down the street to church in-person every Sunday, come rain or shine or snowpocalypse, my husband having left home hours before to lead the early service. Interruptions to the pattern, usually caused by illness, were less breaks than long hours of pure survival mode.

So this past year we decided, on occasion, to give ourselves a real break. Often we tuned into livestreamed worship, a wonderful outcome of the pandemic that many congregations have continued to invest in. And sometimes we didn’t. Some weeks, we gave ourselves a slow morning to simply enjoy time at home with each other. We knew church would be there next Sunday.

The weekly rhythm of worship is important, and faith grows stronger in the context of a community. But the freedom to choose not to go to church, when exercised judiciously, is no bad thing.

3. Giving doesn’t have to stop. Despite not attending the same church every week, we’ve still been able to give to ministry we feel called to support. Tools like pre-authorized remittance and CanadaHelps make it easy to give even when we’re not physically in church, and to give to more than one congregation. Electronic giving also lets us support the communities we’re visiting when we don’t think to bring cash, which is almost always.

No doubt the amount and direction of our gifts will shift with the changes in our lives, but it’s a comfort to know that we can find easy and predictable ways to give no matter where we are.

4. Faith formation needs to happen at home. This also wasn’t a new thought, but it did become more real. During our churchless year, my daughter morphed from a kindergartener with rounded edges to a gangly first-grader, all sharp knees and elbows. Her curiosity and critical thinking have taken off, and she has started to appreciate that her Christian faith is something that most of her friends don’t share.

Relying solely on Sunday School to teach my daughter about God and Jesus was never the plan, still less so when we’re not visiting the same place every week. She’s at an age when she wants to learn from her parents and share her thoughts. For now, at least, we are the most important people in her life. And her faith won’t deepen if we don’t take the trouble to help deepen it. Just as we need to help her practice reading and writing, math and problem-solving, we need to help her practice her faith.

It’s not always comfortable, and there’s still part of me that feels unqualified to disciple anybody, but it’s much too important to neglect. We shouldn’t leave our faith behind at the church door on Sunday. It should follow us home, shape how we grow, the choices we make, the ways we live our lives. There’s no way to predict what decisions my daughter will make about faith as she grows up, but I can hope that providing a space where we ask questions, have tricky conversations and grow together will help nurture in her a faith that is curious and active.

This nomadic year wasn’t something I had planned, and I didn’t necessarily welcome it. And yet, there have been valuable experiences that I can’t regret having, and valuable insights that I can’t regret knowing. I may not have another year like this again in my life, but I hope to remember that faith is formed not only where we put down roots, but also whenever God invites us to look beyond them.

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The seafarers who work on cruise ships are very underserved. They work incredibly hard while on board – passenger service is 24/7, so someone is always on duty. Because their shore leave time is counted in minutes, not hours, any welfare centre has to be located as close to the ship as possible so seafarers don’t have to waste valuable time just getting to the centre. The space available to us, under a four-storey staircase, is in a bright, sunny spot located 25 seconds’ walk from the gangway. The seafarers are thrilled!

Their favourite things: the huge leather-covered sectional sofa, squishy and comfortable (donated from the Furniture Bank); the jar of tiny chocolate bars on top of the shelf unit; hot, freshly made microwave popcorn; and free Wi-Fi. But their favourite is the baskets of knitwear lovingly made by a battalion of amazing people in this diocese who spend all year knitting for them.

The Viking Polaris is an expedition class cruise ship, with a passenger complement of about 378, as opposed to the huge Caribbean cruise ships with 5,000 to 6,000 passengers. This class of ship can sail into the tiny bays and harbours in places like the Arctic, the Antarctic and South America, as well as some of the more inaccessible places on the Great Lakes. On July 5, Polaris, her passengers and crew set sail for Greenland. And the crew was in a flat panic! Most of them were from countries like the Philippines, Malaysia, Ecuador and India, with only a few of the officers being Norwegian and used to the cold.

When the young crew members told me their concerns, I pulled out the baskets from our shelf unit to show them the hats and scarves, and they went nuts. “Is this for us?” they kept asking. When I explained that it was, and also free, gifted to them by people who don’t know them but have been knitting for them all year, their next question was, “How can we meet a knitter?” In most of their cultures, only people who know you and love you would make you something by hand. That someone would devote their time and energy to making something for someone they don’t know is a huge gesture of love for them. They wanted to meet and thank one of the knitters directly.

So on Polaris’s next visit, I asked one of the battalion of knitters if she was able to visit with them. She was thrilled, as were the seafarers. It’s not often you get those full circle moments, where you can see God’s grace like a shining rope, wrapping itself around these young seafarers so far from home, and a woman who has devoted perhaps thousands of hours in more than 30 years to knitting for seafarers.

As the Viking Octantis, sister ship to the Polaris, was preparing to leave on July 13, one of the pursers gave us her thanks and said, “Now we have a home away from home in Toronto!” All that we hoped this centre would be is being realized: a safe, comfortable, quiet place, steps from their vessel. Your gifts of knitting are wrapping themselves around the necks of many seafarers, and your hats are keeping their heads warm in Arctic seas. We have been called the “ministry of small gestures,” and this tiny space under the stairs has confirmed that for me.

If anyone is interested in volunteering at the new station, email me at glutenfreepriest@me.com. Check out the cruise ship arrival schedule on the Toronto Port Authority website (under cruise ships). Come and join us under the stairs!

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Wherever the river goes, every living creature that swarms will live, and there will be very many fish, once these waters reach there. It will become fresh; and everything will live where the river goes. 

On the banks, on both sides of the river, there will grow all kinds of trees for food. Their leaves will not wither nor their fruit fail, but they will bear fresh fruit every month, because the water for them flows from the sanctuary. Their fruit will be for food, and their leaves for healing.

Ezekiel is given this vision 25 years after the destruction of the temple and the city of Jerusalem. The land is ravaged by war, the people now in exile in Babylon. The water flows out of the ruined temple, God’s presence flowing over the broken land, bringing healing. At first, it is a trickle, then ankle deep and finally deep and wide enough to swim in.

As disciples, we hear this vision fulfilled in Christ, the living water that becomes in us a spring of water gushing up to eternal life (John 4:10-14) and who offers us the living water that slakes our thirst for healing and justice in a broken world (John 7:37-39).

“The river grows deeper and deeper, restoring land, reviving waters and sustaining flourishing ecosystems,” says this year’s call to the Season of Creation. “The vision invites human responsibility: recognizing ecological damage, embracing interconnectedness, we are called to immerse ourselves in the water, actively safeguarding and working for the renewal of creation so that environmental healing and human well-being may flourish together.” The symbol for this year is staying immersed in the water that flows from the throne of God, stepping deeper and deeper, working together for the renewal of creation.

From his vantage point in the river, Ezekiel sees that along the banks are trees bearing fruit in all seasons, and whose leaves do not wither. This is divine blessing; creation is healed where the river flows and Ezekiel is restored to hope. John reprises this vision in his Revelation, where the river of the water of life flows from the throne of God through the astonishing tree of life whose leaves are for the healing of the nations (Revelation 22:1-3).

Images of the riparian edge where river meets forest are common in scripture. People gather there for worship and lament. Think of the exiles weeping by the rivers, their harps hung up in the poplars, unable to sing (Psalm 137). Paul and Silas, released from prison, head to the riverbank where there is a place of prayer and meeting with the women there (Acts 16:13). The righteous are like trees planted by water, bearing fruit (Psalm 1:1-3; Jeremiah 17:7-8).

Walk along a riverbank or better yet, explore in a kayak from the water, and it is easy to see why. The so-called riparian zone between the river and the forest is a place of abundant life.  The roots of trees hold soil together and stabilize the bank. The rich soil nourished by the constant flow of water supports a greater diversity of plants, which feed and shelter amphibian and mammal life. Fish thrive in the cooler, shaded waters and turtles rest on fallen logs. The riverbank is a study in the interconnectedness of a healthy ecology.

The northern flank of our diocese lies within “the land between,” an ecologically significant transition zone between the Canadian Shield to the north and the flat, arable land of southern Ontario. It includes communities from Orillia all the way east to Campbellford and Havelock and has a high density of wetlands, lakes and rivers, rock barrens, alvars (rare limestone grasslands) and savannahs. The endangered five-lined skink, Ontario’s only lizard, and other rare reptiles and amphibians, all rely on the riparian edge. Climate change and human intervention deplete habitats at an alarming rate. Where there are cribbed and hardened shorelines, these creatures cannot survive; fish can no longer spawn and shorebirds cannot nest. It is encouraging to see municipalities promoting the restoration of riparian zones.

There is an urgent need for rewilding in a world where corporate logos are more familiar to children than the names of trees. Over the past 50 years, the decline in wildlife populations and the rate of species extinction are catastrophic. We know that where Indigenous and local communities have control of land, biodiversity increases.

The Rev. Laurel Dykstra, who leads the Salal and Cedar community in the Diocese of New Westminster, advocates for the rewilding of our church lands. “On a modest scale,” Laurel writes, “churches are local communities with control of land. And for the most part, the land that our churches control is a rectangle of grass, a patch of monoculture ­­­ready for rewilding.” A church with a creek flowing through can restore the riparian zone by introducing native plants and creating habitat. Churches in our diocese, including St. Hilary, Cooksville in Mississauga, are creating rain gardens and introducing native species and pollinator gardens.

But facing the ecological crisis means rewilding ourselves. Our environmental crisis is actually a human crisis, says theologian and fly fisher Derek Taylor in a recent article in Comment magazine. We need healing, which begins by recovering our creatureliness. “We treat the world as something other than creation, and we imagine ourselves to be something more than creatures. We have forgotten where we are and who we are.”

Remembering who we are begins with being immersed in creation as Ezekiel was. We are rewilded when we enter into communion with our Creator, with our kin in creation, with the suffering body of the earth. We find this communion in liturgy, in the garden, in wandering and wading together, knowing and tending the places where we live and serve and worship. Archbishop of Canterbury Sarah Mullally says, “In the season of creation we turn again to Christ… As we follow Christ, we are called to share in his reconciling work, seeking justice, healing and hope for the earth and for all who dwell within it.”

In our diocese, the Bishop’s Committee for Creation Care supports this creation-informed, Christ-centred discipleship with resources to help Anglicans “rewild” in celebrations of the Season of Creation and participation in the Communion Forest, a global movement for the restoration of habitat and planting trees. Where the river flows and the trees grow, creation flourishes.

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The Season of Creation is a global ecumenical movement that invites Christians to engage intentionally in action and prayer for God’s creation from Sept. 1, the Orthodox Day of Prayer for Creation, to Oct. 4, the feast of St. Francis of Assisi. Our diocese has officially observed the Season of Creation since it was adopted by General Synod in 2019, though individual parishes had begun celebrating it even earlier. The global Season of Creation website provides a scripture-based theme and related resources every year, but local churches are also encouraged to develop their own.

The Bishop’s Committee on Creation Care has produced several resources in keeping with this year’s theme of “Living Water.” The Rev. Adrienne Clements has offered a liturgy used at St. Hilary, Cooksville last fall for the dedication of a rain garden. The Rev. Andrew Kuhl, of the parish of Craighurst and Midhurst, has created a watershed mapping exercise that invites parishioners into a deeper understanding of their local watershed and its challenges. The Rev. Dr. Alison Kemper has gathered prayer resources on the theme of water, while I have collected advocacy and action ideas for parishes and individuals to help protect water in our communities and beyond. The Rev. Canon Susan Spicer, co-chair of the committee, offers a theological reflection tying together the theme of “Living Water” and the flourishing of creation, which is the goal of the Anglican Communion Forest. All these resources can be found on our diocesan website.

In March 2024, church leaders from around the globe met in Assisi, Italy to explore establishing a new feast in the Western Church calendar to celebrate God’s original and ongoing acts of creation. In 2025, General Synod, along with other church bodies around the world, adopted the Feast of the Creator to be held on Sept. 1 or another date during the Season of Creation. This spring, Council of General Synod approved a trial use liturgy to be used for this feast. Readings for the feast have also been added to the Revised Common Lectionary.

As the Rev. Dr. Rachel Mash, coordinator of the Anglican Communion Environmental Network, explains, the Feast of the Creator (or Feast of Creation in Christ, as it is also known) is not simply a “Christian Earth Day.” Rather, it has deep roots in the theological understanding of the Triune God as Creator, and specifically of Christ’s role as the one “through whom all things were made” and in whom “all things are held together.” The Feast of the Creator thus takes its place among the other Christological feasts of the church year, lifting up the role of Christ in creation.

The Feast of the Creator reminds us, in the words of Wendell Berry, that “our destruction of nature is not just bad stewardship, or stupid economics, or a betrayal of family responsibility; it is the most horrid blasphemy.” As we observe it, and the Season of Creation, this year, may we be drawn deeper into God’s love and care for all his creatures, including the waters which give us life.

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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.

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Communicating that call to stewardship takes many forms. It happens in everyday conversations, in our collaboration with clergy and lay leaders, and in the preaching that shapes the life of our parishes. These personal and relational avenues are indispensable. Yet they are not sufficient on their own. The Church must also proclaim this message more broadly and intentionally. Without a clear and committed voice, the work of stewardship risks being hidden – like a lamp placed under a bushel.

This is where our diocese’s Communications department plays a vital role. Through websites, newspapers, direct mail and video production, communications teams extend the reach of the Church’s mission far beyond what any single ministry could accomplish. They ensure that the story of God’s work, lived out through His people, is told clearly, faithfully and widely.

Since joining our diocese in 2003, my principal partner in this work has been Canon Stuart Mann, director of Communications. Stuart and his team have not only supported but actively strengthened our stewardship efforts. They have helped shape our communications strategy, promoted stewardship education initiatives, and brought visibility to annual appeals and major giving campaigns.

Year after year, Stuart has attended the Bishop’s Company Dinner – not as a guest, but as its careful interpreter. He has consistently distilled keynote addresses, captured the spirit of the evening, and reported on its outcomes with clarity and grace. In all my years, he has never missed one.

His commitment extends further. Stuart has ensured that the good news of stewardship has been shared across our diocese, regularly making space in The Anglican to report on the progress and results of FaithWorks. He has also provided invaluable guidance on major communications initiatives, including video production for the Our Faith-Our Hope capital campaign (2010–2012), the John Strachan Trust campaign for the Anglican Diocese of Toronto Foundation (2018–2019), and milestone efforts for FaithWorks.

On a personal note, I am especially grateful for the opportunity to write “The Steward,” a monthly column in The Anglican. This platform has become an important means of forming and educating readers about the essential role stewardship plays in the life and ministry of the Church.

On June 1, Stuart retires from his vocation as director of Communications – a retirement that is well earned. If I were to summarize Stuart’s ministry in three words, they would be these: diligence, faithfulness and reliability. His steady hand has made much of this work possible, and his witness has strengthened the Church in ways that will endure well beyond his tenure. For that, I am deeply grateful.

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