Reflections, Sermons

The Rest Is Silence

Leave a comment

Sermon, Church of the Holy Trinity, Toronto, November 11, 2018

Readings: 1 Kings 17:8–16; Hebrews 9:24–28; Mark 12:38–44

Hear this sermon as it was delivered:

On November 11, 1918, at 11 AM, the Great War officially ended and the guns fell silent.

That’s not just a figure of speech. It’s not just lofty poetry. Guns kept firing right until 11 o’clock. Artillery kept blasting away. More than 10,000 people died that morning.

Nobody was tape recording the sound; they didn’t have tape recorders. No one was at the front with a wax cylinder to record the sound phonographically. But oil drums in several locations were rigged up to transmit the vibrations for visual recording on a strip of film. They were used for triangulating the positions of enemy guns. They were still in use on the morning of November 11th, and a filmstrip has survived. It looks like a multi-line seismograph. The Imperial War Museum commissioned a reconstruction of the sound. You can hear different kinds of artillery blasting holes in the air more than once a second for a half a minute. And then they stop like a battalion of troops ordered to halt.

The war to end all wars was over.

It didn’t end all wars. We keep shooting at each other. Continue reading The Rest Is Silence →

Reflections, Sermons

A Cloud of Witnesses (Homily for All Saints)

Leave a comment

Wisdom 3:1-9     Psalm 24     Revelation 21:1-6a     John 11:32-44

A Cloud of Witnesses

Sherman Hesselgrave

All Saints is when the universal Church remembers the Christian faithful throughout history who make up the great cloud of witnesses, the communion of saints who surround us and inhabit our memory across time. If I asked you to think of a person you consider to be a saint—someone who has inspired you by their courage or their convictions, someone you aspire to be like, someone who left their fingerprints on your life, I’m sure you could name them or see them with your mind’s eye. Even though they were touched by death, they live on in our hearts and in our memories.

Continue reading A Cloud of Witnesses (Homily for All Saints) →

Activities & Events, Fundraising, Justice Issues

Over $11 000 raised for the Refugee Committee!

Leave a comment

On Sunday Oct 21, 2018, members of the Refugee Committee, with some relatives and friends, formed a team and raised over $11,000 to support our work with Refugees.

With the amount already raised on the June book sale and what we hope to realize from the Marion Singers concert on November 10, we should come close to meeting our goal of $20,000 for 2019, when we expect to welcome three more families.

Coral Petzoldt, Jim and Merylie Houston, and their three granddaughters, Lucy, Charlotte and Penelope, accounted for $5,455, almost half the total. And a large part of that came from generous members of the congregation.

Art, Indigenous, Justice Issues, Reflections, Treaty People

discovery

The second Monday in October is marked as Thanksgiving in Canada, and Columbus Day in many states in the United States of America. In recognition of the brutal, on-going history of colonization across Turtle Island, parishioner Len Desroches offers this poem.  

by Len Desroches

Columbus, if only you had not been so afraid of discovery
Christopher, “Christ bearer,” if only you had discovered soul
discovered soul before rushing off
in gunboat for Spanish empire
stealing land
shedding rivers of blood
to mine shiny bits from Earth’s bleeding bowels

re-writing Gold with a capital “G”
made it easy to also leave out the “l”
Gold became God
Gold becomes God

Continue reading discovery →

Activities & Events, Fundraising

Join the Refugee Committee in the Scotiabank Charity Challenge!

On October 21st, our refugee committee will be participating in the Scotiabank Charity Challenge to raise funds for sponsoring refugees. Join us! It’s for a great cause, it’s a lot of fun AND it’s good for your health!

Participants can choose between a full marathon, a half or a 5-km walk, which is what most of our committee members will be doing.

For those unable to participate in person, we encourage you to sponsor Milka, a young Eritrean woman who arrived in Canada last November and now wants to give back and help raise funds for our future refugee sponsorships.

Please visit http://www.torontowaterfrontmarathon.com/stwm-charities/holy-trinity-refugee-committee/ to register as a participant or click here to sponsor Milka.

loving justice in the heart of our city