Our Capital Pride photo album presents a happy gathering of our St. John’s community and representatives of several Diocese of Ottawa parishes. Sadly, the parade began but was halted. Our Proud Anglicans group did not make it out of the staging area.

At first, we were confused, and then news began to travel backwards through the crowd that the parade had been cancelled by a protest by the group Queers4Palestine.The news was followed by spectators coming towards us saying that they were bringing the parade to us by walking the length of the staging area. We turned our parish signs outwards for the passing spectators and greeted them. I guess we were trying to make the best of events beyond our control. We were hot from waiting in the sun, and there was a sense of resignation when we also made our way to leave.

St. John’s put a lot of work into this. We took on organizing the Anglican presence on behalf of Diocese. We created signs, arranged the vehicle, produced new t-shirts, and we were excited to make the day memorable and meaningful.

If you followed the story, you may realize where things have been left. Capital Pride and Queers4Palestine each accuse the other of bad faith, with hardened positions and diverging accounts of what happened. On the one hand: “Why would protesters work against the progress other groups have made?”  On the other: Pride is “always a struggle for liberation — not just for us, but for oppressed people everywhere.” Queers4Palestine’s position was supported by a prominent editorial in the Ottawa Citizen [by Fae Johnstone], which said that Pride is hollow if it ignores the oppression in Palestine.

Pride is important to St. John’s as part of our story — and we are part of this larger story. In the coming year, let’s find ways to continue to tell our Pride story as we watch the unfolding of what will happen at the parade next year. I hope we keep our organizing role, but let’s also work on other ways to channel our passion for welcome and justice. I encourage you to follow along and understand both positions. Pray for the leaders in our community, pray for the Capital Pride organizers, pray for the people of Gaza.

Should this not be resolved in time for next year’s Capital Pride, let’s be thinking about what we might create in addition to the hoped-for parade. May God encourage our creativity as well as our longing for justice.

—The Rev. Canon Gary van der Meer

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This question has been a strand in all our phone chains, upgraded e-newsletters, livestreams and videos. Yes, it’s about care and affection, concern for anyone who is isolated, and even opportunity. In my experience, clergy are creative community-builders. We have been tied to buidings and in-person liturgies. I accepted that for the rest of my life, Sunday would be about welcoming those who come. I never expected there could be an interruption that would release so much creativity among my clergy colleagues and friends. 

I have been an early-adopter with some ways of connecting and slower with others. There are so many ways to connect. There isn’t enough time or “ram” in my brain to be on top of all of them. I enjoy seeing the different ways parishes have approached this. And I never expected to thrive and even enjoy the challenge of figuring out how best to keep people connected.

Now that we are back in the pews, I am also back to that strand of anxiety that has been there all along. Who is coming back? It may be that my vision is limited because I’m new – I don’t have a mental picture of what St John the Evangelist looked like before the pandemic. I don’t know who is missing. I want to admit my anxiety. In my 30 years of ordination, it looks to me like every Anglican diocese has been in a process of orderly retreat from sacred buildings with worship in every town and neighbourhood. Will the pandemic speed up the whole process of what we are becoming?

During the protest in downtown Ottawa, I walked regularly among the protesters. I wasn’t there to debate anyone and neither were they. It was more a walking meditation about hardened positions talking past each other. Much of what I saw was hard to bear. Fires, children, non-stop horns and fumes. And placards, including many bible quotes. These were not verses I would ever quote. I would not be surprised if someone read these and said, “If that’s what Christianity is about, I will never darken the door of a church!” 

How are we doing at presenting the version of Christianity we practice? And who needs to know? In addition to asking who will be back, I’m wondering about who will be visiting our churches for a first time. We live in a time of anxious questions and not just our own. These days, there are three people that I expect to see in church. 

First, there are the people we already know. Parishioners who are part of the ebb and flow of engagement. Some are drifting away; some are getting more involved. Second, there are people who have left a fundamentalist version of Christianity. It wasn’t working for them anymore, and even though they reject it, they are very much shaped (even unconsciously) by its assumptions and values. Third, there are people of no religious background. They are here because they married into the church community, because they discovered us through some overlapping community event, or because some crisis or trauma has prompted a time of searching. 

They won’t have the same questions about which version of Christianity this is. But now that we are back to in-person gatherings, I am longing to get people together. Their questions might be different, but we might help each other as we tell our stories. We might even create an orientation to the Christianity we practice here. 

I see coming back together as the best opportunity we have to say who we are. Let’s use it well.

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