Good day,

A few things to tell you about:

Saturday, Feb.11 Breakfast at the Trinity Centre: The Guild of St. Joseph invites all church men to enjoy a hearty breakfast on the 2nd Saturday of each month (except for July and August).  The “sit down” time is 8:30am. Individuals are asked to pay $10 or other donation toward the cost of the food.   

Christ Church is having another delicious dinner! Friday, February 17th at 5:30 PM.  As with their other dinners, a reservation is required.  Cost of a reservation/ticket is $25.00 and can be purchased from Bonnie Lyons at  lyons.bonnie@gmail.com or phone 705-779-2858. 

The menu for the dinner includes:

Appetizer–Crackers with cream cheese & red pepper jelly (add a shrimp optional)

Salad–Macaroni

Entree—Chicken Cordon Bleu, Roasted Potatoes, Broccoli & Cauliflower with cheese sauce

Homemade rolls

Dessert—No bake Cherry Cheesecake

It’s getting close to Pancake Supper time…St. George’s in Echo Bay has an all-you-can-eat buffet of salads, pancakes, sausages, baked beans, dessert, coffee, tea… $12 (adult); $6 (10 and under); toddlers free.  Tuesday, Feb.21, 4pm – 6:30pm.  

The Coldest Night of the Year Walk to end homelessness is Saturday, February 25. If your congregation does not have a team, perhaps you would like to join the Archbishop’s team or donate. You can follow this link to do either or both: https://secure.e2rm.com/registrant/TeamFundraisingPage.aspx?teamID=993793

I’m beginning what seems like it will be a great book called Re-Membering God: Human Hope & Divine Desire, by Tobias Stanislas Haller, so my Liturgical Note For You is a quotation from this book:

“While some fuzzy and even erroneous theology can emerge and has emerged from a careless or casual study of liturgy, the has also produced some equally erring academic theology, and this often has happened in those traditions that strayed furthest from the historic shape of the liturgy, caught in a tangle of texts and exhortations and confessions – all of them “about” God, some of the even “preaching Christ,” but few of them making present the divine reality reality with the reticent eloquence of water, oil, bread, and wine. As the Puritan divine Richared Baxter noted of his own traditions, ‘Professors run from sermon to sermon and are never weary of hearing or reading and yet have such languished and starved souls: I know no truer or greater cause than their ignorance and unconscionable neglect of contemplation'” (p.10-11).

His point is that we have grown fearful of allowing our beautiful liturgies to speak for themselves. We fill them up with words, words, words…we feel that we have to explain everything so that people will “get it.”  Our liturgies are full of sign, and symbol, silence, and movement that draw us into relationship with God who is present with us. We are particularly fearful of silence. We fill up our liturgies with hymns (some with very questionable theology) during the silent bits – the Gospel procession, the preparation of the gifts, the distribution of communion – so people have their faces turned toward words on a page (or screen) instead of seeing and immersing themselves in the liturgical action surrounding them, offering deeper knowledge of and relationship with God. Music throughout the liturgy is beautiful and can enhance worship. We must ask ourselves if we have, instead, begun to use music in a way that impedes our worship. This is something for you to think about, at any rate.  

For Your Devotions:

Thursday, February 9th is the commemoration of Hannah Grier Coome, Founder of the Sisterhood of Saint John the Divine, died in 1921. When her husband died, Hannah thought of returning to England to join an already established sisterhood but some people who knew her had other plans…They thought Canada could use a sisterhood of its own and convinced Hannah to stay. The new sisterhood started off in a former stable in Toronto and the rest is history, as they say. Here’s a sample of their work: “Shortly after, they acquired the house next door, on the corner of Euclid Avenue and Robinson Street, where they opened the first surgical hospital for women in Toronto. Since that time, our community has pioneered in training nurses, in convalescent care, and in rehabilitation; we have administered schools and an orphanage; worked with the mentally handicapped; ministered to the elderly; and worked with the poor in large cities and depressed rural areas.” Check out the website for more: https://ssjd.ca/history.html

In the hope of Christ,

Susan