Applications for the next round of bursaries are due May 30. Application forms have been sent to all incumbents and priests-in-charge in the area, so please contact them if you or someone you know is interested in applying.

Some of the 12 recipients from 2018 shared their stories with me. Grace Rockett of St. Aidan, Toronto is studying musical theatre at Sheridan College. She said the bursary helped her pay for the academic books required in her first year. “I am so thankful for this help, as it made first year a lot easier and way less stressful,” she said.

DeAndrea Yeates of St. Paul, Bloor Street, said that without the bursary she would have struggled to the buy textbooks required for the humanities program she is enrolled in at the University of Toronto. Charlotte Day of St. Saviour, Toronto, enrolled in the educational support program at Sheridan College. “Without the grant, I don’t think I would have been able to go to college this year,” she says. “It has been an incredible experience, and I am so thankful for the church I go to.”

To be eligible for the bursary, applicants must demonstrate an ongoing and active involvement in their home parish. They must be entering their first year of study at a recognized post-secondary institution. Lastly, they must be recommended by their incumbent or priest-in-charge, need financial assistance and satisfactorily complete the application.

Thank you to York-Scarborough’s area council for this opportunity to support our youth in the area.

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The Scarborough Steeplechase, as it’s called, will be held Sept. 21 and all the Anglican churches in Scarborough Deanery are invited to participate. The deanery, which comprises 15 parishes, stretches from Lake Ontario to Steeles Avenue, and from Victoria Park Avenue to the border of Pickering.

“Rather than battening down the hatches, this is a way for our churches to open their doors and say this is who we are, we like to have fun and to celebrate,” says Denise Byard, the child, youth and family outreach coordinator at Holy Trinity, Guildwood. Ms. Byard is organizing the event along with Alice Stewart, the pastor of outreach and mission at Grace Church, Scarborough.

Churches are being asked to send teams of two to four people, hopefully wearing t-shirts or something to identify which parish they’re from. The top three teams will win prizes, although everyone will be feted at a reception at the end. Bishop Kevin Robertson, the area bishop of York-Scarborough, will be on hand to give out the prizes.

The race will begin at Holy Trinity, Guildwood, where teams will be given a list of participating churches and their addresses. The objective is for each team to visit all the churches on the list, except their own, and finish at Grace Church. The first team to make it to Grace Church wins.

To avoid everyone going to the same church at the beginning, the teams will be told which church to visit first. After that, they’re on their own. They can go to whichever church they want, however they want.

When a team arrives at a church, they’ll be asked to participate in a simple activity. It could be anything from a hymn-sing to a short tour of the building – whatever the hosting church decides. Then the team is off to the next church on the list.

During the race, each team will be asked to create of short video of their experience. The clips will be put into a longer, deanery-wide promotional video. If no one on the team has the ability to make a video, the organizers will help.

The registration fee for each team is $25, which will be donated to the Primate’s World Relief and Development Fund.

Ms. Stewart says the race is a light-hearted way for Anglicans to get to know people from other parishes and the buildings where they worship. “The clergy in our deanery get along with each other and work well together, and we thought it would be fabulous if we can expand that out to congregants as well,” she says.

Ms. Byard and Ms. Stewart are hoping that at least 11 churches sign up to participate, and several have already expressed interest.

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While listening to their stories, Mr. Adams, 25, realized there was a lot about the history of LGBTQ people in the Anglican Church and Toronto that he didn’t know. He shared his thoughts with a friend and they came up with an idea.

“We thought it would be great to have some sort of talking night,” he recalls. “We could educate ourselves and other people like us about our history by listening to the stories of people who lived through those times.”

He shared the idea with the Rev. Joyce Barnett, the incumbent of St. Matthias, and others in the congregation. With their support, a new speaking series was born. It’s called “History Coming Out: Queer history from those who lived it.”

The first event will be held at St. Matthias on May 1 at 7:30 p.m. The speaker will be Paul Macdonald, a parishioner and a member of the Right to Privacy Committee, a gay rights group in Canada from 1979 to 1991. A second event will be held at the church on June 5 at 7:30 p.m., featuring Chris Ambidge, ODT, a member of Redeemer, Bloor Street and a long-time advocate for LGBTQ people in the Anglican Church. Each event will last about 90 minutes and light refreshments will be served. More speaking engagements will be held in the fall.

Mr. Adams, who will act as host, says the format of the evenings will be simple, with the speakers telling their stories and taking questions from the audience. The talks will be recorded for the Canadian Lesbian and Gay Archives, located in Toronto, and for the diocese’s Archives. The York-Credit Valley area council is providing a small grant to help the church buy recording equipment. Mr. Adams also plans to turn the talks into podcasts, making them available to a wider audience.

He says he’s excited by the possibilities. “I think it will be a great way to talk about our history and also about what’s going on right now in the Church,” he says.

The series is also a way to acknowledge the pioneers of the LGBTQ community, both in the Church and Toronto. “I’ve met a lot of people who have done the hard work to get where we are today, both in the Church and the city,” says Mr. Adams. “There’s a lot of history and they’ve had to fight to get to where we are.”

He adds: “For me personally, I’m very grateful and thankful that I live in a time where being gay is, for the most part, accepted, and that I didn’t have to go through some of these things that others had to.”

The Rev. Joyce Barnett says the speaking series is “utterly fantastic. I feel so privileged, after everything I’ve been through in the Church to be an out lesbian incumbent, to now have our young people come to us and say, ‘We’d love to hear your stories and we’d love to hear them right here in the church.’ That is very exciting and positive for me.”

All are invited to the talks. St. Matthias, Bellwoods is located at 45 Bellwoods Ave., Toronto.

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The SAYM (Scarborough Anglican Youth Movement) softball league begins its 58^th season on May 14. Eight teams made up of players from local churches will play 14 games over the summer, culminating in a tournament on Sept. 7.

“It’s for people who just want to play and have fun,” says Martin Walkes, co-organizer of the league and a parishioner of St. Bede, Toronto.

Games are held every Tuesday at 7 p.m. at baseball diamonds in Scarborough. The registration fee for each team for the season is $400, and teams need to supply their own bats and gloves. Adults and youth over the age of 13 can join.

“It doesn’t matter what skill level you have,” says Mr. Walkes. “It’s just about getting together to play some friendly games.”

Mr. Walkes has been playing in the league for 32 years. He started when he as a 17-year-old in St. Bede’s youth group. “It’s enjoyable playing with other Christians,” he says. “We all have the same beliefs and it’s all about having fun.”

Most of the players are lay people and clergy are welcome, too. A prayer is said before the beginning of every game.

Teams from four Anglican churches will be taking part this year, in addition to two Baptist churches and a Methodist church. There will also be a team made up of people from various other churches.

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Dozens of people braved Toronto’s icy February streets to offer support to the bereaved families of missing and murdered Indigenous women, girls and transgender and two-spirit persons (MMIWGT2S) at the opening of Shades of Our Sisters, held at St. James Cathedral from Feb. 15 to March 1.

The interactive multimedia exhibit honours lives lost to the violence Indigenous women are especially prey to. It reveals the victims as vibrant young women with strong hopes and bright futures through stories, writings, photos, personal artifacts, film and the voices of their surviving relatives.

The project began to take shape in 2015-2016 with the bereaved families of Sonya Cywink and Patricia Carpenter. Patricia, 14 years old and a new mother, was found murdered at a downtown Toronto construction site in 1992. “She went to a birthday party and never came back,” said her mother, Joyce Carpenter of Alderville First Nation, near Cobourg.

Like other bereaved mothers, Ms. Carpenter is committed to perpetuating the memory and spirit of her daughter. The exhibit makes the point that far from being rejected runaways or street dwellers, these girls had families, were well loved and are still greatly missed.

The multimedia aspect of project, created in 2017 by Ryerson University production students, features two short documentary films exploring the two victims’ lives and personalities. Among the touching personal items on display are Patricia’s collection of Cabbage Patch Kids and her Brownie uniform. Most touching of all is a tiny hooded yellow baby suit. “That’s what I brought her home in from Women’s College Hospital,” said Ms. Carpenter.

The exhibit’s interactive features include a ceremonial red dress on which attendees can pin messages penned on gold or silver paper. Pinches of natural tobacco and lengths of red wool symbolizing connectedness and empathy are on offer. Most striking of all is a dazzling memorial mobile, with coloured paper feathers bearing messages and prayers from visitors at other exhibit sites.

Speakers memorializing the deceased were preceded by traditional chanting and drumming led by Sue Croweagle, a Blackfoot from Piikani First Nation in Alberta, who identifies as a two-spirit person. Ms. Carpenter’s niece, Shauna Kechego-Nichols, offered to the gathering the powerful medicine of the healing jingle dance, wearing a ceremonial dress covered in rows of delicately tinkling metal cones.

Among the speakers was Patricia Carpenter’s brother James, who thanked the audience for sharing the beautiful cathedral space with the victims’ families and for showing their love and support. “It helps bring healing to the families and healing to the spirits. The spirits would be proud of us,” he said.

Mr. Carpenter acknowledged how hard it is for affected families across the land to speak of these losses. “It was 25 years before my mother would talk about what happened,” he said. “And far too often these stories bring hurt, but they also open our hearts to love.” He commended the families and their communities for their resilience.

The exhibit also reminds viewers of the racial disparities that exist in Canadian society and its justice system. Although only about 4.3 per cent of Canada’s female population identified as Indigenous in 2011, a disproportionate 11.3 per cent of missing women in 2013 were Indigenous, according to the RCMP.

The ceremony closed with interfaith prayers from members of Toronto’s Muslim and Jewish communities and from Bishop Mark MacDonald, national Indigenous bishop of the Anglican Church of Canada.

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The story behind Canadian Rajah is so bizarre that I always feel compelled to stress that it is also true. In 1884, a young man named Esca Brooke Daykin arrived in Madoc, in east-central Ontario. The adopted son of an Anglican clergyman named William Daykin, Esca had spent most of his young life being dragged from parish to parish in England and South Africa. All of a sudden, Reverend Daykin uprooted his family and moved across the ocean to Madoc, where he took over the parish of St. John’s.

Esca quickly adapted to life in the backwoods. He often filled in for his father as a lay-reader at the mission churches. He would run across rock-covered farms and through forests to these tiny outposts, doing his best to minister to the faithful. He later received a church scholarship to attend Trinity College School in Port Hope. He blossomed there, ending up as Head Boy.

Esca was unique for many reasons, starting with his parentage. His biological father was Charles Brooke, one of the legendary “White Rajahs of Sarawak.” The very English Brookes owned Sarawak (now part of Malaysia) and ruled it as self-styled rajahs for over a century. Esca was the biracial product of a marriage between Charles and a Malay princess, Dayang Mastiah.

Eventually, Rajah Charles ran out of money, and needed an infusion of cash to save his country. He went back to England and rustled up an English wife with a healthy dowry. Esca and his Malay mother became inconveniences. Esca was shunted off to England and, from there, to Canada.

This is where Canadian Rajah picks up Esca’s story. A few twists and turns later, he became a successful businessman at Hollinger Mines, with a loving family and a substantial house in Lawrence Park in Toronto. He was very active at St. Clement, Eglinton, serving as a churchwarden there. Esca should have been happy – but for the ever-gnawing desire to be recognized by his Brooke father and family.

The dramatic crux of Canadian Rajah revolves around Esca’s confrontation with Rajah Charles’ English widow. The Ranee of Sarawak was a fiery woman who had absolutely no intention of letting Esca gain recognition, lest it threaten the succession of her children and the very legitimacy of her own marriage. Let the battle begin!

I “discovered” Esca by accident – and it’s a good argument for reading old-fashioned hard copy newspapers. Nowadays I do the bulk of my newspaper reading on-line and – not to my credit – I tend to access articles on subjects that already interest me. With print newspapers, it is easier to browse and stumble across the unexpected. I was idling through The Globe and Mail book section when I found a small review of The White Rajahs of Sarawak by Australian historian Cassandra Pybus. The review mentioned that a young should-have-been-Rajah from the Far East had washed up in Madoc, Ontario. That startling little fact was enough to hook me.

My new play, premiering this summer in Ohio, is called The Shakespeare Club. It’s the true story of a club of women in Peterborough, Ontario. The Shakespeare Club there has been meeting monthly to discuss the work of The Bard and other authors for over 120 years, and it has had its own share of drama.

I was born and raised in Peterborough. I originally intended to go into law but veered off into journalism. On a whim, I entered a theatre company’s playwriting contest, because the prize was the same amount as my VISA debt (back then). Even better, they offered a production of the script. About five minutes into the first performance, I knew I had found my vocation.

I was raised in the Presbyterian Church but fell away in my teens. After a few decades, I decided to re-engage with questions of spirituality – first at a United Church and then at St. Paul’s on Bloor Street.

The latter was initially a choice of proximity; I live just around the corner. On my first visit to St. Paul’s, I was happily surprised when people approached me to say welcome. I felt very much at home and have made many friends there. Just as important, I find a great deal of intellectual and emotional fulfillment in the excellent teaching.

In an odd twist, I called up my mother and confessed, “OK Mom, brace yourself, I’ve gone over to the colourful side. I’m an Anglican now.” To my surprise, she didn’t seem too alarmed. She asked me which church I was attending. When I told her it was St. Paul’s, she deemed it a wise choice – as it turns out, my grandfather was baptized there and my great-grandfather had been a churchwarden. I’d had no idea.

I’m still becoming acquainted with the Bible. Each week I learn something new that surprises or stirs me. I do know the passage that meant the most to me growing up, one that still resonates deeply. It’s the brief story in Matthew 19, about a group of children hoping to meet Jesus, and the stern disciples who tried to send them away.

As we learned it in Sunday School, Jesus was relaxing in a garden, having his dinner after a long day of sermonizing. (Looking back on it now, I think I was getting an expanded edition geared for restless Sunday School children.) Jesus heard a ruckus down at the gates – a bunch of kids were clamouring to hear some parables. Before the disciples had a chance to shoo them off, Jesus invited them to gather ‘round for a story-time, much like we then had at the public library.

I know now that Jesus was not enjoying a refreshing ginger ale, as per my inventive teacher. Nor were the children necessarily going to hear stories – their parents had brought them to be blessed, a less interesting activity from a child’s point of view. But the essence of the message still penetrated my wee brain: although a mere kid, I was as welcome as any adult to meet with Jesus, and he was available to me 24/7.

Decades later, I still find that passage attractive, albeit for different reasons. We are instructed to approach God as a child. I take that to mean we should put aside our adult inhibitions and become as children with our faith, to approach it humbly and simply, with a sense of wonder, awe and anticipation. We deny that sense of wonder at our own peril. It’s both the charm of childhood and an adult’s armour.

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Yet it is the stories and testimonials shared among members of a congregation by individuals whose lives have been changed by their journey in faith that is often most powerful in moving us to action.

In my March article on the importance of saying thanks, I suggested that parishes begin to invite members of the congregation to come forward to share their personal faith stories as a way of honoring them and promoting the congregation’s good works. I want to give credit where credit is due. While the notion of giving a personal witness has been around for centuries, this format was introduced in our diocese by Andrew Duncanson at Grace Church on-the-Hill, Toronto.

The concept grew out of Growing Healthy Stewards, a year-round education program. Grace Church was one of the pilot parishes in 2013 and Andrew was chair of its parish stewardship committee. He introduced Faces of Grace to get people out of their comfort zone and into the habit of talking about their faith journey and why their parish was important to them. His effort has borne fruit: some five years later, more than 50 individuals, couples and families have come forward with their testimonies. You can even read a select number of them at www.gracechurchonthehill.ca.

Personal witnessing sends a strong message to church members about the giving of one’s self for what God has given to them. Christians throughout history have been raised to a new level of awareness by hearing how a deeper sense of spirituality has taken over the lives of people just like them.

The Faces of Grace model is now a mainstay of the Growing Healthy Stewards program. Two recent examples from parishes in our diocese demonstrate just how effective personal witnessing can be. At a recent meeting of Scarborough clergy, the Rev. Andrea Christiansen, incumbent of St. Timothy, Agincourt, explained that her parish used Faces of Grace during the four Sundays of Advent, and members of the congregation found the stories very powerful. At the same meeting, the Rev. Stephen Kirkegaard, incumbent at Holy Trinity, Guildwood, told the story of an agnostic man who comes to his church and really appreciates the personal stories. Stephen said that for this man, it is the most important part of the service.

Lay witnesses should be individuals who can relate well to other parishioners, feel comfortable speaking to a group about their personal experiences, and are enthusiastic about their mission.

The Bible is full of examples of people just like you and me whose personal witness impacts the actions of others. It can be used to promote a stewardship program; but perhaps most importantly, it gives people the opportunity to share why their faith is so important to them. Even though Anglicans are often reluctant to discuss their belief in public, Faces of Grace can be a simple and non-threatening way of exposing members of your congregation to the transformation that faith brings to people’s lives.

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God’s care for creation, and God’s call for humankind to participate in care for creation, is woven throughout scripture, from Genesis onward. Moreover, both Old and New Testaments present us with a vision of not only human life, but the life of all God’s creatures, as mutual and interdependent. This biblical emphasis on the interrelationship of the created order is echoed in traditional Indigenous understandings that describe land, water, plant and animal life as “all my relations.” The redemptive work of Christ’s death and resurrection is extended through and beyond humanity to encompass the whole of creation. The Biblical vision never considers humankind as separated from the rest of creation – whether in the original creation, in our life here on earth, or in the ultimate fulness of God’s kingdom.

Sadly, as a Church, we have largely lost this sense of connectedness and care for the wider creation.  We are disconnected from each other and from the land and its creatures. The Rev. Dr. Stephen Drakeford calls for a “theological reset” that recovers our place in creation, our understanding of what it is to be made in the image of God and realigns our consumption patterns and lifestyle choices in faithfulness to God, creation and our neighbour.

The world is at a strange and awesome tipping point, what Christians since ancient times have termed a kairos. On the one hand, with only 12 years to transition to a zero-emissions economy, the need for massive change could not be more urgent, as the IPCC report (the United Nations Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change) of October 2018 indicated. Climate change, pollution and habitat loss are all critical factors. Biodiversity is dropping precipitously, erosion of agricultural land has made feeding the world’s people less and less possible, and our social and political systems are wholly inadequate to resolve these problems. In this apocalyptic present, the Church cannot preach the Good News of Christ while ignoring the imminent end of the planet as our habitat. None of our activities can continue without mindfully considering our opportunity to model God’s commandment to care for creation.

On the other hand, there are voices rising to end conventional thinking and align our present with a viable future – voices of defiance and courage.

The Diocese of Toronto has an opportunity to speak with a voice of faith in this dark time. We have an opportunity to model a theology that recognizes our connectedness with creation, and to align ourselves with Indigenous peoples seeking to respect the land on which we all live. We must model a world in which consumption is minimized and relationships are nurtured, in which we stop burning carbon and spreading pesticides, in which we offer places for people to gather and organize structures of promise.

Anglicans in our diocese are already responding to the call to care for creation in a variety of ways. Yet, despite all that has been accomplished over the past decade, much of our progress has been piecemeal. Creation care is still all too often considered an “add-on” to the work of the Church instead of an integral part of God’s call to us. Nor do our current efforts match the urgency of the environmental situation facing us.

The Creation Matters committee has identified several priorities for action moving forward, some of which we can accomplish on our own. Others will need the collaboration of other departments of the diocese. They include:

• Building a network of “Green Anglicans” across the diocese for sharing information, activities and best practices, and creating volunteer congregational consultant teams to assist parishes.
• Improving awareness and accessibility of resources for parishes to reduce their environmental footprint, perhaps adopting a “Green Parish” accreditation program similar to that used in the Diocese of Niagara.
• Adopting a creation care lens for all decisions taken at the diocesan level, including decisions made on property, investment, event-planning, travel, and formation of clergy and laity.
• Encouraging and equipping Anglicans in the diocese to join with other dioceses, faith and community groups and Indigenous peoples in advocating for robust environmental policies at every level.

These entail significant changes cutting across all our activities as Church and as individuals. In adopting them, we have an opportunity to bring people together to respond to a situation of real urgency, and to make a real difference. The creation waits with eager longing for the revealing of the children of God.

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Local churches get involved by opening their doors – and ovens – to the festival’s participants, providing homemade meals for hungry competitors and spectators. In The Pas, Christ Church’s Anglican Church Women and Men in Aprons served stew, chili, authentic tourtière, pie, bannock and hot drinks. At Opaskwayak Cree Nation, members of Church of the Messiah hosted breakfasts and lunches; the Anglican Church Women at Church of the Redeemer offered the same, with traditional food donated by community members: fresh-fried pickerel, rabbit stew, moose meat, wild raspberries and saskatoons. Funds raised during the outreach effort will support church programming and community initiatives.

The Mustard Seed

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