The making of Brother Thankful

In mid-March last year, everything changed overnight. Words that had been abstract and distant suddenly became real and present: novel coronavirus; severe acute respiratory syndrome coronavirus 2, called SARS-CoV-2; a disease called COVID-19; exponential spread; global pandemic; lockdown. 

The buildings that house our parish and community ministries closed on March 15, and our service to one another and the world shifted and pivoted as we did our very best to respond faithfully. Suddenly, we were reaching out more than ever before, to stay connected, to worship together, and to serve those we once gathered in our sanctuaries, halls, day programs and offices. We went online, on phones and on the street—whatever it took to be the Church in pandemic times, whatever it took to be Christ-like.

I am deeply grateful for how clergy, executive directors, senior staff, staff in parish and community ministries, lay leaders, volunteers, committees, and all the people of our diocese have stayed so faithful during the last year. God is with us in this pandemic, teaching and revealing much to us as it runs its course, making us see things in new ways. 

On March 14 last year, I was elected to become the 10th Bishop of Ottawa, and the next day we were in the first lockdown. (My brother Michael wryly asked if God had shut down the church because I was elected.) As my transition into episcopal ministry took hold, I needed to get moving on acquiring some tools of the trade: vestments, a ring, a pectoral cross, and a crozier. I came to see the crozier as something I could make for myself.

In the three pictures accompanying this column you can see the quick sketch of what the crozier was to look like, the raw materials laid out on the floor of my shop, and the finished product. The scrawl on the sketch says “Brother Thankful” because that is my crozier’s name—and here is why.

The staff in the centre of the raw materials was cut in 1978 on the Carp Ridge, between the villages of Dunrobin and Carp. My brother Barry and I were hired to build a cedar log cabin, and a number of young ironwood trees on the site had to be cleared—and one of them became my walking staff. Barry and I lived in tents at the cabin site for many weeks, and the staff remained with me as a memento of those days.

The split log to the left in the photo is from a cherry tree felled by a beaver near Sawmill Creek by Brookfield Road in Ottawa, a familiar place for my brothers and me. Barry harvested a few limbs from the tree and offered a portion to me.

The three sections of steel tubing are from what my brothers and I call “the mall” (known to everyone else as garbage night). I was out for a run and saw these parts of an outdoor umbrella stand with threaded ends, so I picked them up in case they might come in handy one day. 

Pulling it all together, you can see how the cherry became the crook of the crozier, the ironwood the staff, and the threaded tubing the joints which hold it together and allow it to break down into sections for travelling.

It is called Brother Thankful because the parts of it are strongly associated with my brothers, and because I feel profoundly thankful to God for calling me to a ministry which allows me to offer all that I am and all that I have learned over six decades on a journey through many things—from the most harrowing to the most hopeful. 

I share the story of Brother Thankful to encourage you to see how the seemingly disjointed parts of our journey through this pandemic will likely become part of something new, something that will serve us well, something strong and durable and pleasing—because God constantly seeks to reconcile all things in Christ and make them new.