Beloved People of God,

This month the Anglican Church of Canada will join with other Christians around the world to celebrate the Season of Creation. The theme for 2025 is “Living Water”, based on Ezekiel 47: 1-12. This passage offers a vision of hope and healing. Set amid exile and loss, the image of living water flowing from God’s sanctuary reveals Divine healing that renews land, water, biodiversity and human responsibility towards the whole creation. The call is to transformation, that Christians would be immersed in the living water flowing from the throne of God, stepping in deeper and deeper, inspired by the Spirit of God, working together for the renewal of creation.

Churches worldwide are coming together to adopt a major new Christian festival: the Feast of Creation, also known as Creation Sunday. This new feast day is a powerful sign of unity amongst the global Christian family. It is also a prophetic gesture that the church is responding to the groaning of creation. With origins in the Eastern Orthodox Church, the Feast is being embraced by most major Christian traditions.

The season of Creation is a time when we remember our stewardship, our vocation to care for the world that God has gifted us with. It is a time to cultivate gratitude and to understand that the earth is a gift to be appreciated and used wisely, not plundered relentlessly for human consumption.  We are called to be part of a world where resources are not transactional but shared freely and wisely,

The Season of Creation begins with the Feast of the Creator this coming Sunday, September 6^th and concludes on October 4^th, the Feast Day of St. Francis when we will have our annual blessing of the animals. I look forward to celebrating this beautiful season with you at St. Matthias.

Blessings

Rev. Colleen

In the lovely Anglican way, we enjoy marking our various liturgical seasons throughout our worship and prayer life.  You may notice seasonal shifts in our worship service, perhaps welcoming the variety in the same way we fondly greet our cooler weather clothes.  Fond greetings ... we will take this opportunity to greet our Creator in a voice of familiarity and intimacy. 

The "thee and thou" forms sometimes meet criticism because they are old usage, but they remind us that the English language once had a way to acknowledge special closeness.  Thee and thou, like the French tu and toi, or the German du and dich, are our ways to speak directly and personally to God.  It's a way of being on a "first name basis" with the wonderful Creator of all.  

Enjoy greeting the Creator in the personal language of the Lord's prayer.  

Interested in learning a bit more about the themes and symbols for this Season of Creation?  Follow the link  https://seasonofcreation.org/resources/

As we mark the end of the Season of Creation, we typically like to remember the wonderful creatures who share our lives.  We've done this outdoors in past, and we thought it might be a great way to welcome our neighbours, too!  

Here's the idea:  

Bring your pets to worship, as you please.  (They needn't be Anglican.)  Then we'll move outdoors.  We'll bless the pets around the labyrinth area.  We'll be posting an invitation to our neighbours on our corner sign, on our Facebook page, and with your hard work to spread the word.  Rev. Colleen, Joan and Cory dream big:  our thought is to serve coffee, tea, juice boxes outdoors.  

Rev. Colleen, Joan and Cory would like to invite you to a special congregational conversation.  Why special?  We hope you will plan to spend a little time together with us to engage in some broad, creative discussion about ideas and priorities for the years ahead. No detailed, specific "pro's and con's," simply an invitation to think and share your creative thinking.  

Note that this is "discussion" not a forum for decisions.  At the same time, this is an important way for you to guide the leadership team, including Parish Council, as we start preparing for next year's Annual General / Vestry meeting.  

We are thinking about 3 broad conversational topics:  

1.  an update on our conversations with the leadership team of St. Philip's; 

2.  ways to encourage fuller use of our sanctuary space (e.g., inviting more music performance during the week); 

3.  a strategic approach to financial priorities over the coming year or two.  

A quick note about the mention of financial priorities.  You may know that we've recently received "Building Condition Assessments" for the church and hall.  These documents make it abundantly clear that the people of St. Matthias have, for decades, been wise and prudent stewards of these buildings.  There are no "red flags" before us.  Instead, the documents make it clear that members of the congregation have dreamed big, planned wisely, and embraced creative approaches.  So, during this Season of Creation, we are keen to have the joy of our collective creative thinking.  

Have we used the word creative enough?