The Rev. Gary van der Meer was appointed by Bishop Shane Parker as the Diocese of Ottawa’s new interfaith officer, following the retirement of the Rev. Canon John Wilker-Blakely.
As a part of his effort to get to know the community around St. John the Evangelist in downtown Ottawa, he has been reaching out to neighbours of all sorts.
“I really think that the pandemic, in this way, has given us gifts, and that is that is allows us to go outside of our building and engage people who might never be inside our building,” he said.
After the re-opening of in-person worship in September, van der Meer continued to do videos to complement weekly worship services. In each video, he interviews someone from the community. Some of his interviews in the fall included the minister from the nearby Presbyterian Church, and the local MPP Joel Harden. He asks them to read the scripture for that Sunday and then they discuss how the text might relate to our current time and place.
“That allows me to go to the mosque, or any other group, and say ‘Could we do a talk on video about what we share?’ And that person might not never ever want to come into a church,” said van der Meer.
As the diocesan interfaith officer, he is a member of the Capital Region Interfaith Committee. Aside from the work of the committee, van der Meer says he would like to get to know the people on the committee individually.
“For example, I would like to meet with the representative of the Sikh community. Sikh temples always have a kitchen, they always feed people for free. This would be the perfect person to talk to about hospitality. To hear about hospitality from a Sikh perspective might actually get us rethinking what do we mean, what are our core texts for doing hospitality at its best? “
Another example might be having a conversation with an Indigenous person prior to Earth Day, asking about the Creator and what that means to them, he suggested.
“Each tradition has its own emphasis, and each of these emphases are present in our religion. We may not think of them often, but these other traditions prompt us to rethink things we have just taken for granted about ourselves.”
Qu’est-ce que le bonheur?