I see the answer to homelessness in embracing its complexity — and that means recognizing that gender-specific challenges require gender-specific solutions. When we fully understand how homelessness affects women and gender diverse people differently, we can build responses that truly work. When we embrace the complexity of homelessness, we also embrace the humanity of people living it.

This year for International Women’s Day, I think of all the women and gender diverse people at Cornerstone who need a safe, affirming place to land. I see the complex ways that they become homeless and remain in the shelter system. Every day, I see the courage it takes to start over after violence, displacement, or crisis. I see the barriers that stand in the way, particularly for women and gender diverse people.

There are some undeniable truths about our work. Women and gender diverse people who are racialized experience homelessness at higher rates compared to their white and cisgender sisters. They are more likely to experience systemic racism in all areas of life: housing, employment, healthcare. That is a piece of the complexity that we need to understand and address. There are many other layers of complexity and this is only one of them.

So, this International Women’s Day, I’m calling on our community to turn your compassion into commitment and action. Let’s embrace the complexity together. We can all do tangible things that make a difference.

Firstly, you can call on politicians to ensure organizations like Cornerstone have sustainable investment in order to address the complexity that is homelessness. Cutting funding and simplifying services is not the way out of this.

Secondly, we all have to have hard conversations with people in our life. We can create a big impact through small conversations. At a dinner party years ago, I called out a problematic comment from a guest. Six months later, I got a phone call from that guest’s partner asking my help to flee her violent relationship. She had no one else she could talk to, but she knew I would be a safe person. She never would have called if I hadn’t said anything.

And finally, get involved. When things are daunting and scary, we have a tendency to look inwards. To want to protect ourselves. To keep things small and simple. I promise you that it feels better to say or do something than it does to sit and wallow in the difficulty of solving homelessness. Volunteer, fundraise, or do a food drive in your workplace for organizations that spark your passion for supporting women.

This International Women’s Day, the theme is Balancing the Scales. Let’s be forceful in our commitment to ending homelessness, to having tough conversations, and for getting involved in our community. We don’t get out of this problem through disengagement.

For more information about Cornerstone or to donate.

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The webinar was in support of Let Light Shine, the Canadian campaign for St. George’s College, which is the Anglican centre for pilgrimage in the Holy Land. Chaired by the bishop, the campaign aims to raise $250,000 to help the college maintain its operations and support reduced salaries for its staff while the war has stopped all pilgrimages, the primary source of income for the college.

Dean Sewell explained that the college had already depleted its reserve resources when the pandemic stopped pilgrimages. People began to return again in 2022, and 2023 was a very good year until the war between Hamas and Israel ended pilgrimages completely in October of that year.

“Now to have dug deep into our reserves again through these 15 months, we are at that point where we would have to start to think about really extreme measures that I had never wanted to contemplate,” he said. Some staff have had to go to half-time, and thus have 50% of their full-time salary, but a prime concern has been avoiding laying anyone off completely. “We talk about being a family of college staff, and when things get really tough, you can’t simply shed people…. If I have to let any of our staff go, there is virtually nothing else for people to do…. The economy is tanking because of the war…. Our staff are dependent upon us for them to have an income on which to live,” the dean explained.

“So that’s why the Let Light Shine campaign is so important. And I’m very grateful to Bishop Shane for doing a Canadian initiative on top of the US initiative and other parts of the world are also pitching in as best they can. And of course, the need across the board here is immense. The need in Gaza is beyond words and beyond comprehension really and that has gained a lot of support and we’ll need that for many, many years to come.”

Both the archbishop and dean spoke of their hopes and prayers that the ceasefire between Israel and Hamas will hold.

Archbishop Naoum noted that violence in the West Bank continues to ravage communities there.

He also spoke about the endangered Christian presence in the region. “The Christian witness here in the Holy Land has been an important and integral part of the character of Jerusalem and the Holy Land. We cannot imagine the fabric of the Holy Land without the living stones, we call them, … witnessing Christians, who have been witnessing here for two millennia.”

He explained that there about 150,000 Christians within the state of Israel.

All are Arabic-speaking congregations, aside from 30,000 to 40,000 Russian Orthodox Christians. In the West Bank there’s about 60,000 Christians. “In both places, we are talking about less than 2% of the whole population…. In Gaza, before the war, there had been about 1,100 Christians, now there is exactly 650 Christians left, and if the borders would open, the fear is that … we will lose half, if not more, of who is left there because of the situation unfortunately. “

If the ceasefire holds, Archbishop Naoum said work must be done to rebuild trust and relationships between people of all faith groups. Going back far beyond October 2023, he said, “We need to come back to the day where the three religions lived side by side with one another. They fully trusted each other, fully had dignity among each other and mutual respect. I remember in my own village back in the north, … these communities of Jewish, Muslim, Christian, Druze lived together side by side and they celebrated everything within their lives, whether funerals or weddings.”

He added, “We can live together. There is so much to share as long as we respect each other, as long as we can have dignity and also most importantly have freedom and end the occupation of the Palestinian territories in order to pave the way for a just and lasting peace.”

Reconciliation is a focus at St. George’s College and in its pilgrimages. Even before this war erupted, Dean Sewell said, “It’s always been important for the college not simply [to take pilgrims] to visit the holy places but to engage with the diverse peoples of the land and to build bridges of understanding and to deal with the injustices that are at the heart of the suffering, so that people do not go away spiritually lifted by visiting the holy places but ignorant of the realities on the ground.”

Not only do people who come on pilgrimage encounter Christians of many different denominations, “the College has always tried to engage with the religious communities beyond the Christian community,” Sewell said. “For instance, when we go to Bethlehem, we will have lunch in the Aida refugee camp, and a group of Muslim ladies prepare a meal for all of us and talk about their project that cares for children with disabilities within Bethlehem in the refugee camp. That encounter breaks down all sorts of stereotypes of what Muslims are like and how Muslim women are treated within the Muslim community, within Israel-Palestine, and is so helpful to people to open their eyes to different realities.”

Pilgrims also hear talks from different parts of the Jewish community to hear their perspectives, he said. “It works both ways. By inviting people, they feel affirmed, they feel heard, and by our pilgrims listening, they are educated, and their eyes are open to all sorts of things.

“Then once a year we have a difficult, challenging, but hugely fruitful course we call Sharing Perspectives…. Jews, Muslims, and Christians come from around the world, usually America, Canada, and the UK, on a pilgrimage together to visit with one another each other’s holy places and to learn what those holy places mean. And that place of encounter here in a land which comprises Jews, Muslims, Christians, is such a profound experience, that it engages people in vulnerable places and takes them beyond maybe some of their set views. That has an impact both here in our communities, but of course, then when they go back to their home communities, they can testify to what they’ve seen and heard and experienced. And this is an essential part of the college’s ministry. And I think it will be even more so in the new reality when we’re able to reopen,” Sewell said.

Archbishop Naoum said that the diocesans institutions, including the Al Ahli Hospital and “are really beacons of hope in these communities because we offer services and ministry regardless of ethnicity, regardless of religion, regardless of the colour of the skin.” The hospital was the only one operating throughout the 15 months of the war. He said they had to rely on the gifts and the generosity of people around the world, both Muslims and Christians and even beyond. People of good will who have supported that humanitarian work in a place that was devastated by war.

The diocesan schools, he added, offer education that includes “teaching values of accepting the other who is different from me. And this is by itself is a huge contribution to the community that reduces extremism, it reduces fanaticism, and also it paves the way for an open society where everybody is valued.”

Archbishop Naoum added: “The idea is that no matter what, we are determined as a diocese, as people, as clergy, as heads of institutions, we are determined to continue with our ministry, to continue with our witness as disciples of Christ, to make difference in this world.”

A recording of the webinar can be seen on the Anglican Diocese of Ottawa website.

Learn more www.StGeorgesCollegeJerusalemNAC.org/canada

Donate now: www.CanadaHelps.org/en/dn/124044

Related story:

A Lenten journey to the land of the Holy One

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Organized by Kairos, an ecumenical social justice organization, the initiative “aims to be a pilgrimage of churches in Canada as [they] walk or wheel/roll in solidarity with Palestinians and Israelis on the road to justice and peace.”

Those who wish to participate will gather at Minto Park (near St. John the Evangelist Anglican Church at Elgin and Somerset streets) at 8 am with opening prayers at 8:30 am. They will walk to Parliament Hill for a vigil to take place at 10 am with prayers and reflections from church leaders. Bishop Andrew Asbil of the Anglican Diocese of Toronto will take part in the pilgrimage.

After the vigil, representatives of Kairos member churches will also meet with parliamentarians on the afternoon of May 22 and on May 23 “to amplify the collective calls of Palestinian and Israeli partners, their congregations, communities of faith and Canadians for a just peace in Palestine and Israel.”

The pilgrimage is a part of a global movement. Particularly during Lent this year, many churches, congregations and communities of faith made efforts to prayerfully walk part or the full length of the Gaza strip in solidarity with all those suffering through the war.

For more details and information:

Gaza Ceasefire Pilgrimage: Canadian Churches for Just Peace

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John 20:1-18 

The Empty Tomb

Early on the first day of the week, while it was still dark, Mary Magdalene went to the tomb and saw that the stone had been removed from the entrance. ² So she came running to Simon Peter and the other disciple, the one Jesus loved, and said, “They have taken the Lord out of the tomb, and we don’t know where they have put him!”

³ So Peter and the other disciple started for the tomb. ⁴ Both were running, but the other disciple outran Peter and reached the tomb first. ⁵ He bent over and looked in at the strips of linen lying there but did not go in. ⁶ Then Simon Peter came along behind him and went straight into the tomb. He saw the strips of linen lying there, ⁷ as well as the cloth that had been wrapped around Jesus’ head. The cloth was still lying in its place, separate from the linen. ⁸ Finally the other disciple, who had reached the tomb first, also went inside. He saw and believed. ⁹ (They still did not understand from Scripture that Jesus had to rise from the dead.) ¹⁰ Then the disciples went back to where they were staying.

Jesus Appears to Mary Magdalene

¹¹ Now Mary stood outside the tomb crying. As she wept, she bent over to look into the tomb ¹² and saw two angels in white, seated where Jesus’ body had been, one at the head and the other at the foot.

¹³ They asked her, “Woman, why are you crying?”

“They have taken my Lord away,” she said, “and I don’t know where they have put him.” ¹⁴ At this, she turned around and saw Jesus standing there, but she did not realize that it was Jesus.

¹⁵ He asked her, “Woman, why are you crying? Who is it you are looking for?”

Thinking he was the gardener, she said, “Sir, if you have carried him away, tell me where you have put him, and I will get him.”

¹⁶ Jesus said to her, “Mary.”

She turned toward him and cried out in Aramaic, “Rabboni!” (which means “Teacher”).

¹⁷ Jesus said, “Do not hold on to me, for I have not yet ascended to the Father. Go instead to my brothers and tell them, ‘I am ascending to my Father and your Father, to my God and your God.’”

¹⁸ Mary Magdalene went to the disciples with the news: “I have seen the Lord!” And she told them that he had said these things to her.

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