We Were Never Meant to Stand Outside the Garden

There is something wonderfully inconvenient about the Feast of St. Francis.

Just when we have spent a month talking earnestly about creation — admiring sunsets, considering climate change, blessing animals, contemplating trees, and perhaps feeling slightly guilty about the number of plastic containers presently conducting an archaeological expedition in the back of the kitchen cupboard — along comes Francis of Assisi.

And Francis does something rather unsettling.

He refuses to let us talk about creation as though we were standing outside it.

Francis famously spoke of Brother Sun, Sister Moon, Brother Wind, Sister Water, and even Sister Mother Earth. To modern ears this can sound charmingly poetic, perhaps the sort of language one expects from a medieval saint surrounded by birds who have apparently agreed to sit quietly during his sermons.

As a priest, I confess that I find this mildly irritating.

I have preached to human congregations for more than thirty years and have yet to experience an entire congregation sitting attentively in a tree waiting for the sermon to begin.

But beneath the poetry lies something profoundly theological.

Francis understood what Scripture has been telling us from the beginning:

We belong to creation.

We are not spectators.

We are not landlords.

We are not even owners.

We are creatures among creatures, living within a world that belongs ultimately to God.

That may be one of the most important things the Season of Creation can teach us.

The Trouble With “The Environment”

I sometimes wonder whether the word environment has accidentally encouraged us to imagine the natural world as something surrounding us.

The environment is “out there.”

Trees.

Lakes.

Oceans.

Forests.

Polar bears looking increasingly concerned about the whole arrangement.

Meanwhile, human beings occupy the centre of the photograph.

But Scripture paints a very different picture.

In Genesis, humanity is formed from the earth itself.

The Hebrew wordplay is beautiful: adam comes from adamah — the human from the soil.

Before we are anything else, we are earthlings.

Dust animated by the breath of God.

The biblical story therefore begins not with humanity standing above creation, but with humanity emerging from it.

We share the same Creator.

We inhabit the same earth.

We depend upon the same water, soil, air, sunlight, and intricate networks of life.

And one day, as the funeral liturgy reminds us with uncomfortable efficiency, we return to the earth from which we came.

Earth to earth.

Ashes to ashes.

Dust to dust.

There is remarkably little room for human arrogance once somebody mentions dust.

St. Francis Remembered Something We Forgot

Francis did not invent a sentimental Christianity involving animals and flowers.

He recovered something deeply biblical.

Creation is a community of praise.

The Psalms say it repeatedly.

The heavens declare the glory of God.

Mountains and hills rejoice.

Trees clap their hands.

Seas roar.

Creatures praise their Maker.

Modern readers sometimes dismiss this as poetic imagery.

Francis seems to have taken it rather more seriously.

He looked at creation and saw neighbours.

Not commodities.

Not scenery.

Neighbours.

Brother Sun.

Sister Moon.

Sister Water.

Brother Fire.

That language changes things.

Because you treat a neighbour differently from something you own.

You may extract resources from property.

You care for a neighbour.

You may calculate the usefulness of a commodity.

You love a neighbour.

And perhaps the ecological crisis confronting our world is partly the consequence of forgetting that creation is filled with neighbours.

Creation Is Not Disposable

The Christian Gospel makes this even more important.

At the heart of Christianity stands the astonishing claim that God entered creation.

The Word became flesh.

God did not rescue humanity by avoiding the material world.

God entered it.

Jesus ate food grown from the earth.

He drank water.

He walked dusty roads.

He sailed across lakes.

He noticed birds and seeds and vineyards and weather.

He died upon wood.

And Christians proclaim that he rose bodily from the grave.

Christianity is therefore not a religion about escaping creation.

It is the story of God redeeming it.

Paul tells the Romans that creation itself waits in hope for liberation.

And Revelation does not end with faithful Christians abandoning earth while God turns off the lights behind them.

It ends with heaven and earth renewed.

God dwelling among creation.

The Christian hope is not evacuation.

It is resurrection.

The Season Ends. The Calling Does Not.

And so we arrive at the Feast of St. Francis and the conclusion of another Season of Creation.

We could congratulate ourselves.

We have reflected.

We have prayed.

Perhaps we have planted something.

Perhaps we have recycled with unusual theological intensity.

Perhaps we have glared disapprovingly at somebody else’s garbage bin.

But the question now becomes the same question that confronts us after every season of the Church’s life:

What changes tomorrow?

Because creation does not cease being sacred when the Season of Creation ends.

The river remains our neighbour.

The forest remains our neighbour.

The soil remains our neighbour.

The atmosphere remains our neighbour.

The creatures with whom we share this planet remain our neighbours.

And loving our neighbour has never been seasonal Christian work.

Small Faithfulness Still Matters

Most of us will not solve the ecological crisis by Tuesday afternoon.

This is probably fortunate, because Tuesday afternoon is already rather crowded.

But Christianity has never required us to accomplish everything.

It asks us to become faithful.

We can waste less.

Consume more thoughtfully.

Repair instead of automatically replacing.

Plant trees.

Protect habitats.

Support farmers who care for soil.

Reduce unnecessary plastics.

Walk occasionally when we might otherwise drive.

Pay attention to where our food comes from.

Support public policies that protect the common good of creation.

And perhaps most importantly, we can learn again to notice.

Because care usually begins with attention.

It is difficult to love something we have trained ourselves not to see.

The Garden Was Never Somewhere Else

The biblical story begins in a garden.

It ends in a renewed creation.

And somewhere between those two gardens, God has placed us.

Not outside creation.

Inside it.

Not as owners.

As neighbours.

Not as masters.

As servants.

Not as spectators.

As participants in God’s continuing work of love.

Perhaps that is the gift St. Francis still offers the Church.

He reminds us that the world around us is not simply a collection of resources waiting to become useful.

It is a community of creatures already loved by God.

And perhaps Christian care for creation begins when we stop asking,

“What can we take from the earth?”

and begin asking,

“How shall we live faithfully within the family God has created?”

Brother Sun will rise tomorrow.

Sister Water will continue flowing.

The trees will continue their patient work.

The birds will probably continue ignoring the clergy entirely.

And God will still be there — delighting in a creation that God called good long before any of us arrived to offer our opinion.

The Season of Creation may be ending.

Our place within creation is not.

And neither is our calling to love it.

Follow along on Instagram @renewablespiritual for more daily reflections on faith, life, and the surprising places where God still loves to meet us.

Companion Prayer

Creator God,
teach us to remember that we are not owners of this earth, but members of your beloved creation.

Give us eyes to notice, hearts to care, and courage to live more gently among all that you have made.

May our gratitude become faithfulness, our faithfulness become action, and our action become love.

Through Christ, in whom all things hold together.

Amen.

Brother Sun, Sister Moon, and the Neighbourhood Squirrel

Season of Creation, Part Four: Learning to Belong to the World God Loves

There is something wonderfully inconvenient about St. Francis of Assisi.

Just when Christians have managed to organize the universe into sensible categories—people over here, animals over there, useful things in one cupboard, useless things in another—Francis wanders into the room calling the sun his brother and the moon his sister.

This is not how respectable people normally speak.

If I announced at a parish council meeting that I had been consulting with Brother Sun and Sister Moon about next year’s budget, I suspect someone would quietly suggest a sabbatical.

And yet, as the Church approaches the Feast of St. Francis on October 5, perhaps we need a little of his holy eccentricity.

Because Francis understood something that modern life has made remarkably easy to forget:

We do not merely live upon creation. We belong within it.

That may be the most important lesson of the Season of Creation.

Over these weeks, we have reflected upon the goodness of the world God has made. We have considered the spiritual discipline of noticing creation rather than simply passing through it. We have reminded ourselves that Christians care for the earth not because we believe creation is doomed, but because we believe creation is loved.

And now Francis pushes us one step further.

He asks us to remember that creation is not scenery.

It is family.

The World Is Not a Warehouse

Modern society has become remarkably skilled at turning creation into inventory.

Forests become lumber.

Rivers become water supplies.

Fields become acreage.

Animals become livestock.

Mountains become mineral deposits.

Even sunsets eventually become real-estate advertisements.

“Spectacular western exposure!”

Apparently the sun has been setting for billions of years merely to improve property values.

But Scripture offers us a very different vision.

The Bible begins not with a warehouse but with a garden.

God speaks, and light appears. Waters gather. Plants rise from the earth. Birds fill the sky. Creatures move through the seas. Animals wander across the land.

And again and again, before human beings have accomplished anything at all, God looks upon creation and calls it good.

Not useful.

Not profitable.

Not commercially viable.

Good.

Creation possesses value before we decide what it is worth.

That truth has enormous theological consequences.

Because if the world belongs first to God, then we are not its owners in any absolute sense.

We are its neighbours.

Its caretakers.

Its fellow creatures.

Or, to use Francis’s wonderfully affectionate language, its brothers and sisters.

The Gospel According to a Squirrel

I confess that my relationship with the animal kingdom occasionally falls short of Franciscan ideals.

Squirrels, for example.

I am prepared to recognize the theological significance of squirrels in principle.

In practice, however, a squirrel approaching a bird feeder appears to have attended a graduate school devoted entirely to organized crime.

They are astonishing creatures.

You may purchase a bird feeder advertised as ABSOLUTELY SQUIRREL PROOF, which is a phrase apparently written by someone who has never met a squirrel.

Within twenty minutes, one of them will be hanging upside down by a single toenail while another studies the locking mechanism.

There will almost certainly be a third squirrel nearby acting as lookout.

And yet even the neighbourhood squirrel belongs to the extraordinary community of creation.

The psalmist imagines the whole earth praising God:

rivers clapping their hands,

hills singing together for joy,

seas roaring,

trees rejoicing.

Scripture does not imagine humanity performing a solo while creation sits politely in the audience.

It imagines a choir.

We are simply one section.

Admittedly, we are the section that occasionally believes the entire concert was organized for our benefit.

Dominion Was Never Permission to Destroy

One of the saddest theological mistakes Christians have made is treating the biblical language of “dominion” as though God handed humanity the keys to creation and said,

“Do whatever you like. I wasn’t particularly attached to it.”

But biblical dominion is patterned after the reign of God.

And how does God reign?

With mercy.

With justice.

With faithfulness.

With generosity.

With concern for the vulnerable.

Human authority over creation, therefore, can never mean exploitation.

It means responsibility.

The gardener does not own the garden simply because the gardener carries the shovel.

The shepherd does not own the sheep simply because the shepherd holds the staff.

And humanity does not own the earth simply because we have developed remarkably efficient machinery for digging holes in it.

The earth remains God’s.

We are trusted with its care.

That is both an honour and a responsibility.

Perhaps Salvation Is Larger Than We Thought

Christians sometimes speak about salvation as though God’s entire redemptive project consists of rescuing individual human souls from a planet that will eventually be discarded.

But the biblical story is much larger.

St. Paul tells us that creation itself is groaning.

And creation is waiting.

Not for destruction.

For redemption.

The final Christian hope is not that God abandons creation.

It is that God renews it.

A new heaven.

A new earth.

Creation healed.

Creation reconciled.

Creation brought into the fullness God intended from the beginning.

The Gospel, therefore, is not God’s evacuation plan.

It is God’s restoration project.

And Christians are invited to begin living now as citizens of that restored creation.

Small Acts in a Very Large World

This is where environmental conversations can become overwhelming.

The problems are enormous.

Climate change.

Habitat destruction.

Pollution.

Species loss.

Waste.

And most of us are standing in the kitchen wondering whether the yogurt container belongs in recycling.

It can feel absurdly small.

But Christianity has always believed in the holiness of small things.

A mustard seed.

A cup of cold water.

Five loaves and two fish.

A widow’s coin.

Bread and wine.

The Kingdom of God has never been embarrassed by small beginnings.

So plant something.

Waste less.

Walk when you can.

Buy thoughtfully.

Repair something instead of replacing it.

Support farmers who care for their soil.

Leave part of the garden a little untidy for pollinators.

Learn the names of the birds outside your window.

Sit beside a lake without needing to accomplish anything.

Stand beneath a tree and remember that it has been quietly turning sunlight into life while you have been answering emails.

And perhaps occasionally allow yourself to be astonished.

Because astonishment may be one of the first forms of stewardship.

We tend to protect what we have learned to love.

And we tend to love what we have learned to notice.

The Spiritual Discipline of Belonging

Perhaps this is what Francis understood.

He did not love creation because creation was fashionable.

He loved creation because he loved God.

And the deeper he entered into the love of God, the more kinship he discovered around him.

Brother Sun.

Sister Moon.

Brother Wind.

Sister Water.

Brother Fire.

Mother Earth.

Francis did not diminish humanity by speaking this way.

He located humanity properly.

We are creatures among creatures.

Beloved among the beloved.

Dependent upon gifts we did not create.

Breathing air we did not manufacture.

Drinking water we did not invent.

Eating food grown from soil we did not design.

Living beneath a sun we did not ignite.

Every breath is borrowed.

Every meal is received.

Every sunrise arrives as grace.

And Perhaps That Changes Everything

The Season of Creation eventually ends.

The banners come down.

The special prayers disappear from the liturgy.

October arrives.

And the Church calendar moves along.

But creation does not stop being sacred when the Season of Creation ends.

The maple tree outside does not consult the liturgical calendar before changing colour.

The geese do not wait for permission from the Anglican Church of Canada before flying south.

The rivers continue running.

The earth continues turning.

The squirrels continue plotting.

And God continues loving the world.

Perhaps the real purpose of this season has never been to make us environmentally conscious for a few weeks.

Perhaps it has been to teach us how to see.

To walk through the world differently.

To recognize creation not merely as something surrounding our spiritual lives, but as one of the places where our spiritual lives are actually happening.

Because the world is not simply where we wait for heaven.

It is God’s beloved creation.

It is our common home.

It is the neighbourhood into which Christ was born.

And it is the creation God is still redeeming.

So as we come to the Feast of St. Francis, perhaps we might borrow his strange and beautiful vocabulary.

Brother Sun.

Sister Moon.

Sister Water.

Mother Earth.

And yes, even Brother Squirrel.

Though I reserve the right to keep him away from the bird feeder.

For if we can learn again that creation is not merely ours, but that somehow we are its, then stewardship becomes something deeper than obligation.

It becomes gratitude.

It becomes kinship.

It becomes worship.

And perhaps that is where the Season of Creation was trying to lead us all along:

not merely toward saving the earth,

but toward remembering that, by the grace of God,

we belong to it.

Follow along on Instagram @renewablespiritual for more daily reflections on faith, life, and the surprising places where God still loves to meet us.

Companion Prayer

Creator God,
teach us to see the world as gift rather than possession,
to recognize our kinship with all that you have made,
and to walk gently upon the earth you love.

Give us grateful hearts, attentive eyes, and willing hands,
that our care for creation may become an act of worship
and our daily choices a sign of hope.

Through Christ, in whom all things are being made new.
Amen.

The Neighbours Who Never Borrow the Lawn Mower

There is a maple tree not far from where I live that has never once asked me for anything.

It has never borrowed twenty dollars.

It has never asked me to help move a sofa.

It has never telephoned at 7:15 on a Saturday morning to say, “Since you’re up…”

As neighbours go, the maple tree is nearly perfect.

And yet, for most of my life, I am not sure I thought of a tree as a neighbour at all.

That may be one of the quiet invitations of this Season of Creation: to reconsider who—or perhaps what—belongs inside the circle of our neighbourliness.

Jesus famously tells us to love our neighbour as ourselves. Naturally, Christians have spent two thousand years discussing precisely who qualifies as a neighbour. This is what Christians do remarkably well. Give us one beautifully simple commandment and, within twenty minutes, someone will have formed a committee to define its jurisdiction.

But Scripture seems much less interested in separating humanity from creation than we sometimes are.

The Psalms speak of rivers clapping their hands and hills singing together for joy. Isaiah imagines mountains and hills bursting into song while the trees applaud. Jesus tells us to consider the lilies and watch the birds.

Apparently, God has been conducting a rather large choir while most of us have been standing in the parking lot discussing the music.

Creation, in Scripture, is not merely the stage upon which the important human drama takes place.

Creation participates.

Creation praises.

Creation groans.

Creation waits.

Creation belongs to God.

And perhaps that means our relationship with creation needs to become less about ownership and more about neighbourliness.

That is quite a shift.

Ownership asks, “What can I do with this?”

Neighbourliness asks, “How are you doing?”

Ownership looks at a forest and calculates lumber.

Neighbourliness notices habitat.

Ownership looks at a river and measures what can be extracted from it.

Neighbourliness wonders whether the water is healthy enough for the creatures downstream.

Ownership looks at soil and asks how much it can produce.

Neighbourliness remembers that even soil needs Sabbath.

None of this means human beings must stop farming, building, harvesting, eating, heating our homes, or occasionally engaging in vigorous negotiations with the raccoon who has declared the garbage bin an all-you-can-eat buffet.

Scripture does not call us to withdraw from creation.

It calls us to live responsibly within it.

That distinction matters.

Genesis does not describe humanity as tourists visiting creation for the weekend. We are made from the earth itself. The Hebrew wordplay is beautiful: adam comes from adamah—the human from the humus, the earth-creature from the earth.

Which means that whenever we imagine ourselves standing above creation, we have forgotten where we came from.

We are dust with opinions.

Dust with mortgages.

Dust with smartphones.

Dust which occasionally becomes very irritated when another piece of dust takes our parking space.

And yet into this earthiness God breathes life.

Our dignity does not come from escaping creation. It comes from receiving our place within it as gift and vocation.

Perhaps this is why the ecological crisis facing our world is not merely a scientific problem or a political problem.

For Christians, it is also a spiritual problem.

Because underneath questions about climate, forests, oceans, species, agriculture, consumption, and pollution lies an older question:

What kind of neighbours are we becoming?

Good neighbours pay attention to how their lives affect the people next door.

Good neighbours do not dump rubbish over the fence and then congratulate themselves on having a tidy backyard.

Good neighbours understand that what happens on one property eventually affects the whole neighbourhood.

Creation works much the same way.

There really is no “away” when we throw something away.

There is only somewhere else in the neighbourhood.

And Christianity has something profoundly hopeful to contribute here, because our faith begins not with despair but with love.

We care for creation not because we believe the world is doomed.

We care because we believe the world is loved.

Loved enough to be created.

Loved enough to be called good.

Loved enough for God to enter it in Jesus Christ—not hovering several feet above the ground in divine disapproval, but walking its dusty roads, drinking its water, eating its bread, sailing its lakes, sleeping beneath its stars.

And ultimately, loved enough to be redeemed.

The Season of Creation therefore invites us to enlarge our understanding of neighbour.

Perhaps the maple tree is not merely landscaping.

Perhaps the creek is not merely drainage.

Perhaps the birds gathering noisily outside the window are not interrupting our prayers.

Perhaps they are already praying.

And perhaps our task is not to become the saviours of creation.

Christ already occupies that position, and the job description is considerably above our pay grade.

Our task is simpler.

To notice.

To give thanks.

To consume a little more thoughtfully.

To waste a little less casually.

To protect what is vulnerable.

To leave room for things that do not exist merely for our convenience.

To become good neighbours in the enormous, beautiful, slightly unruly neighbourhood God calls creation.

Because one day, perhaps sooner than we imagine, we may discover something the saints and poets have been trying to tell us for centuries:

We were never standing outside creation looking in.

We were home all along.

Follow along on Instagram @renewablespiritual for more daily reflections on faith, life, and the surprising places where God still loves to meet us.

Companion Prayer

Creator God,
teach us to see the world around us not as property to possess, but as a community to cherish. Make us good neighbours to the trees, waters, creatures, and soil with whom we share this home. Give us grateful hearts, gentle hands, and the wisdom to live lightly upon the earth. Through Christ, in whom all creation is held together. Amen.

The Spiritual Discipline of Looking Out the Window

Season of Creation

There are few spiritual disciplines more accessible than looking out the window.

It requires no special equipment. There is no registration fee. You do not need a certificate, a retreat leader, or an app that will eventually begin charging you $11.99 a month after a suspiciously generous seven-day free trial.

You simply require a window.

And perhaps the willingness to stop doing something else long enough to look through it.

This may be more difficult than it sounds.

We live in an age of extraordinary attention and remarkably little noticing. We know what someone we went to high school with thirty-seven years ago had for lunch, but we may not know what kind of tree is growing outside our kitchen window.

We can tell you what is trending in California, what someone said in Washington, and what a celebrity wore somewhere in Europe, but we may have completely missed the monarch butterfly that landed ten feet from where we were sitting.

Creation has not stopped speaking.

We have simply become very good at interrupting it.

The Season of Creation invites the Church to recover the ancient spiritual discipline of paying attention.

The Scriptures repeatedly tell us that creation reveals something of God. The heavens declare the glory of God. The earth is the Lord’s. The trees clap their hands. The mountains and hills burst into song.

Biblical creation is remarkably noisy.

Jesus himself seems to have spent a considerable amount of time noticing things.

Consider the lilies.

Look at the birds.

Notice the mustard seed.

Watch the farmer scattering grain.

Observe the fig tree.

Jesus apparently believed that theology could be learned without leaving the neighbourhood.

This is inconvenient for those of us who have accumulated books.

I say this as someone who has accumulated books.

Many books.

Books which I remain convinced contain profound theological insights, provided I can remember which shelf they are on.

But Jesus keeps pointing out the window.

“Consider the lilies.”

In other words: Look.

Before creation becomes something we protect, it must become something we notice.

And that may be one of the great spiritual challenges of our time.

Because it is difficult to love something we never really see.

It is easy to speak abstractly about “the environment.” The environment is enormous. The environment includes glaciers, rainforests, oceans, deserts, polar bears, coral reefs and several creatures living at the bottom of the sea that look as though God designed them late on a Friday afternoon.

But creation is not merely “the environment.”

Creation is the maple tree at the end of the street.

Creation is the spider rebuilding its web after the rain.

Creation is the geese gathering overhead with the unmistakable confidence of creatures who have apparently never had to go through airport security.

Creation is tomatoes ripening in a garden.

Creation is the smell of earth after rain.

Creation is the first cool September morning when you step outside and suddenly realize that summer has begun quietly packing its suitcase.

And creation is also the soil beneath our feet—the soil we rarely think about because it has the unfortunate habit of being underneath everything interesting.

Yet Scripture begins humanity’s story there.

God forms the human creature from the dust of the earth.

The Hebrew words themselves remind us of the relationship: adam from adamah. Humanity from humus. Earth creature from earth.

Our first theological address is not heaven.

It is dirt.

This is wonderfully humbling.

We spend enormous amounts of energy trying to rise above our limitations, establish our importance and distinguish ourselves from everything around us.

And Scripture gently reminds us:

You are soil with opinions.

Beloved soil, certainly.

Spirit-filled soil.

Soil made in the image of God.

But soil nonetheless.

The Season of Creation therefore asks us to remember something Christianity should never have forgotten: we are not spectators standing outside creation.

We belong to it.

The air passing through our lungs was breathed by trees before it reached us.

The water in our bodies has travelled through clouds and rivers and oceans.

The food on our tables began in soil, sunlight, rain and the patient labour of living things.

We are profoundly connected to a world we often treat as scenery.

Perhaps this week our spiritual discipline could be very simple.

Look out the window.

Better still, go outside.

Leave the phone behind for ten minutes. This will initially feel reckless, but civilization will probably survive.

Notice five things.

Not five environmental problems.

Five gifts.

A tree.

A cloud.

A bird.

A flower stubbornly blooming where nobody planted it.

The peculiar smell of September leaves beginning to dry.

And then say something Christians have been saying since the earliest pages of Scripture:

It is good.

Not useful.

Not profitable.

Not convenient.

Good.

There is a profound difference.

For when we begin to see creation as good rather than merely useful, our relationship with it begins to change.

Gratitude grows.

Wonder returns.

Responsibility follows.

And perhaps that is where Christian creation care really begins.

Not first with guilt.

Not first with fear.

Not even first with activism.

But with wonder.

Because the world is not merely a problem God has assigned us to solve.

It is a gift God has invited us to receive.

So sometime today, look out the window.

You may discover that creation has been preaching there all along.

And unlike most preachers, it knows when to stop talking.

Follow along on Instagram @renewablespiritual for more daily reflections on faith, life, and the surprising places where God still loves to meet us.

Companion Prayer

Creator God,
teach us to notice the gifts around us,
to see creation not merely as useful, but as good.
Slow us enough to wonder,
open our eyes to beauty,
and make us faithful caretakers of all you have made.
Amen.

The World Was Never Just Scenery

The Season of Creation

There is something slightly suspicious about the way Christians sometimes talk about Creation.

We say that God made the heavens and the earth. We sing about all creatures of our God and King. We read that the heavens declare the glory of God.

Then we finish church, climb into the car, turn on the air conditioning, throw away the coffee cup, complain about the price of tomatoes, and drive home through Creation without giving Creation another thought.

Apparently, the heavens may declare the glory of God, but they are expected to keep the noise down while we are busy.

The Season of Creation invites us to notice again.

And noticing may be one of the most spiritual things we can do.

Genesis begins with God creating—not hurriedly, not accidentally, and certainly not because God needed somewhere convenient to put a Costco.

Light.

Water.

Land.

Plants.

Sun and moon.

Fish and birds.

Animals.

Human beings.

And after each movement of Creation, God looks upon what has been made and calls it good.

Not useful.

Not profitable.

Not developable.

Not good provided somebody can eventually put condominiums on it.

Good.

That little word matters.

Creation possesses value before human beings decide what it is worth.

A forest is good before we calculate the price of its lumber.

A river is good before we determine how much water can be taken from it.

A field is good before we measure its yield.

A bird is good even if it contributes absolutely nothing to the gross domestic product and spends most of Tuesday shouting from the maple tree outside your bedroom window.

Creation is good because God delights in it.

That changes the conversation.

The Christian response to Creation cannot begin simply with the question, “What are we allowed to do with it?”

It begins with the question, “Whose is it?”

Psalm 24 answers rather inconveniently:

“The earth is the Lord’s and all that is in it.”

Not some of it.

Not the particularly scenic bits.

Not just Algonquin Park, Georgian Bay, the Rockies, and those photographs of Newfoundland that make everyone in Ontario reconsider their life choices.

The earth is the Lord’s.

The ditch beside the highway.

The soil beneath the subdivision.

The wetland someone would rather drain.

The exhausted farmland.

The polluted river.

The backyard tomato plant presently producing seventeen tomatoes simultaneously after doing absolutely nothing for most of July.

All of it.

And so the Season of Creation is not really about introducing something new into Christian faith. It is about recovering something we somehow managed to misplace.

Christians have always believed in God the Creator.

We simply haven’t always behaved as though Creation belonged to God.

There is a difference.

We have sometimes treated the natural world as though God handed humanity the keys and said, “Do whatever you like. I wasn’t particularly attached to it.”

But Genesis says something rather different.

Human beings are placed within Creation.

We come from the earth itself—adamah, the soil—and are given the vocation of tending and keeping what God has made.

We are creatures entrusted with the care of fellow creatures.

That is a considerably humbler job description than “owners of the planet.”

And perhaps humility is exactly where we need to begin.

Because Creation has a remarkable ability to remind us that we are not actually in charge.

Anyone who has planted a garden knows this.

You prepare the soil.

You buy the seeds.

You carefully read the little packet containing instructions apparently written for someone with considerably greater agricultural competence than yourself.

You plant.

You water.

You wait.

And then twelve zucchini appear overnight.

Meanwhile, the expensive heirloom tomatoes you have lovingly nurtured since May develop some mysterious condition known only to horticulturalists and God.

Creation refuses to behave like a machine.

It is alive.

Wild.

Interdependent.

Beautiful.

Occasionally inconvenient.

And filled with a generosity we did not invent.

Jesus understood this.

When Jesus wanted people to understand the Kingdom of God, he continually pointed toward Creation.

Consider the lilies.

Look at the birds.

A farmer went out to sow.

The Kingdom is like a mustard seed.

A vine.

A fig tree.

A field.

Bread.

Wine.

Water.

Jesus apparently believed that Creation was already carrying theological textbooks everywhere we looked.

Perhaps our problem is that we stopped reading them.

So during these weeks of the Season of Creation, I want us to practise noticing again.

Noticing the trees beginning their autumn transformation.

Noticing where our food comes from.

Noticing the astonishing gift of clean water flowing from the tap.

Noticing what we consume.

Noticing what we waste.

Noticing the creatures with whom we share our neighbourhoods.

Noticing the ways climate change is already affecting communities, particularly those who have contributed least to the problem.

Noticing both the beauty of Creation and the wounds we have inflicted upon it.

There will be uncomfortable questions ahead.

There should be.

Repentance is part of Christian discipleship.

But guilt is a poor foundation for love.

Wonder is much better.

Before we ask what must change, perhaps we need to remember what we love.

Walk outside today.

You don’t need to climb a mountain.

You don’t need to paddle into the wilderness.

You don’t even need sensible footwear.

Stand beneath a tree.

Listen to a bird.

Look carefully at a leaf.

Put your hand into garden soil.

Watch clouds moving overhead.

Notice something you usually walk past.

And remember:

You are standing in something God loves.

You are breathing something God made.

You are surrounded by neighbours you did not create.

And somewhere beneath all our schedules, consumption, ambition, anxiety, leaf blowers, lawn fertilizers, reusable shopping bags that we repeatedly forget in the trunk of the car, and good intentions, the ancient song of Creation continues.

“The earth is the Lord’s and all that is in it.”

Perhaps the first act of environmental discipleship is not saving the world.

God has never actually asked us to be the Saviour.

That position has already been filled.

Perhaps our first task is much simpler.

Pay attention.

Look again.

Listen again.

Wonder again.

Because the world was never merely scenery surrounding the human story.

It is Creation.

It belongs to God.

And, astonishingly, God has invited us to help care for it.

Which means the maple tree outside your window is not just landscaping.

It is your neighbour.

And judging by the number of leaves it is preparing to deposit on your lawn, it apparently intends to introduce itself properly.

Follow along on Instagram @renewablespiritual for more daily reflections on faith, life, and the surprising places where God still loves to meet us.

Companion Prayer

Creator God,
open our eyes to the goodness surrounding us.
Teach us to wonder again,
to walk gently upon your earth,
and to care faithfully for all you have made.
May gratitude become attention,
and attention become love.
Amen.

When September Ends, What Will Remain?

There is something unsettling about the last day of September.

Calendars are wonderfully efficient things. They tell us when seasons begin, when meetings happen, when bills are due, and when one month has politely exhausted its allotted number of days and must surrender the kitchen to the next one.

But some things do not fit neatly inside a calendar.

Grief does not.

Truth does not.

Justice does not.

And reconciliation certainly does not.

Throughout these past days, we have been thinking together about truth and reconciliation with Indigenous peoples. We have considered repentance, relationship, listening, responsibility, cost, faithfulness, and the long work of healing.

And now September ends.

That creates a danger for the Church.

We may unconsciously begin to think that we have completed something.

We wore orange.

We remembered.

We prayed.

We listened.

We acknowledged painful truths.

Perhaps we attended an event, read an article, heard the testimony of a Survivor, learned something about the land on which we live, or spoke honestly about the Church’s involvement in the residential school system.

These things matter.

But none of them constitute completion.

Because reconciliation is not a season in the Church calendar.

It is a way of becoming the Church.

The Danger of Moving On

The Church is very good at seasons.

Advent becomes Christmas. Christmas becomes Epiphany. Lent becomes Easter. Easter becomes Pentecost. We know how to turn the page.

Sometimes that rhythm is a gift.

Sometimes it becomes an excuse.

There are truths from which Christians must refuse to move on.

The history of residential schools is one of them.

The suppression of Indigenous languages, cultures, ceremonies, spirituality, families, and communities is one of them.

The role played by Christian institutions is one of them.

The continuing consequences of colonialism are one of them.

And the remarkable courage, resilience, wisdom, spirituality, and generosity of Indigenous peoples are among them as well.

These cannot simply become subjects we visit once each September before returning to what we consider the Church’s “regular” business.

This is the Church’s regular business.

Because the Gospel is about reconciliation.

Saint Paul writes:

“All this is from God, who reconciled us to himself through Christ, and has given us the ministry of reconciliation.”
— 2 Corinthians 5:18

Notice the language.

God has given us a ministry of reconciliation.

Not an annual observance.

Not a committee assignment.

Not a themed Sunday.

A ministry.

And ministry means something we practise repeatedly until it becomes part of who we are.

What Will We Remember in February?

Perhaps that is the question churches should ask themselves.

Not what will we do on September 30?

What will we remember on February 12?

What will we be doing on an ordinary Tuesday in March?

What relationships will we still be nurturing next June?

What commitments will still appear in parish budgets five years from now?

Which Indigenous voices will have become part of our theological education, preaching, worship, reading, and decision-making?

Which friendships will have deepened?

Which uncomfortable truths will we still be willing to name when there is no national observance reminding us to name them?

Because transformation is revealed by what remains after the moment has passed.

Jesus understood this.

Again and again, he challenged people not merely to experience moments of spiritual awakening but to live differently because of them.

“Follow me.”

“Go and do likewise.”

“Love one another.”

“Take up your cross.”

“Feed my sheep.”

The Gospel continually moves from revelation to response.

We see.

Then we must decide what seeing requires of us.

Memory Is a Christian Discipline

One of the great words of Christian worship is:

Remember.

“Do this in remembrance of me.”

Christian remembrance is never simply nostalgia.

At the Eucharist, we do not remember Jesus as we might remember a childhood holiday or a beloved teacher.

We remember Christ in such a way that the remembered story becomes present among us and shapes how we live now.

Perhaps the Church needs to recover that understanding of memory in the work of reconciliation.

To remember residential schools is not merely to recall that they existed.

It is to allow that truth to shape the Church we are becoming.

To remember Survivors is not merely to honour their courage.

It is to ask whether our institutions are becoming safer, humbler, more accountable places because we have listened to them.

To remember Indigenous children who never returned home is not simply to mourn.

It is to ask what kind of Church we must become so that such violations of human dignity can never again be justified in the name of Christ.

That kind of remembering changes us.

Or at least it should.

The Church Must Build Memory Into Its Bones

Perhaps one of the most practical commitments we can make now is to stop depending upon individual enthusiasm.

Reconciliation cannot survive merely because one priest cares about it.

Or because one parishioner is passionate about it.

Or because one bishop makes it a priority.

People retire.

Clergy move.

Committees change.

Leadership turns over.

If reconciliation matters, then we must build it into the structures of our common life.

Into budgets.

Into parish education.

Into diocesan priorities.

Into theological formation.

Into children’s ministry.

Into preaching.

Into partnerships.

Into land acknowledgements that lead somewhere beyond the acknowledgement.

Into procurement decisions.

Into investments.

Into the ways we understand mission.

Into the stories we tell about ourselves.

Into the questions we ask when making decisions.

We should reach the point where reconciliation is not something the Church occasionally remembers to do.

It becomes one of the ways the Church has learned to be faithful.

And Relationship Cannot Be Institutionalized Entirely

Yet there is another danger.

We can create policies about reconciliation while avoiding actual relationships.

Christian institutions are capable of producing magnificent documents.

Relationships are considerably less tidy.

Relationships require time.

They require showing up.

They require remembering names.

They require accepting invitations.

They require listening when we would rather explain.

They require allowing someone else’s priorities to interrupt our own.

They require patience when trust develops more slowly than our strategic plan anticipated.

And healthy relationships with Indigenous peoples cannot exist simply so that churches may feel successful at reconciliation.

Friendship is not a project.

Relationship is not an achievement.

People are not evidence that our ministry strategy is working.

The goal is not for Indigenous communities to help the Church complete its reconciliation objectives.

The goal is for us to learn how to live together differently.

With truth.

With respect.

With humility.

With justice.

And eventually, perhaps, with trust.

We May Not Live to See the Finished Work

This may be one of the hardest truths.

The healing required is larger than any one generation.

Some wounds were created across generations.

Some consequences continue across generations.

It should not surprise us if healing also requires generations.

Christians are accustomed to wanting redemption stories with satisfying endings.

We like resurrection by Sunday morning.

But reconciliation may ask us to plant trees beneath whose shade we will never sit.

We may begin relationships whose deepest fruits will be enjoyed by people who come after us.

We may change institutions without ever knowing the full consequences.

We may apologize without receiving the response we hoped for.

We may work faithfully and still leave unfinished work behind.

That does not make the work meaningless.

It makes it an act of faith.

The Letter to the Hebrews speaks of faithful people who died without receiving everything that had been promised, but who nevertheless lived toward the promise.

There is holiness in beginning work we cannot finish.

There is humility in knowing that we are not the culmination of the story.

And there is hope in preparing a more truthful and just Church for generations we may never meet.

So Tomorrow Matters

Tomorrow will be October 1.

There will be other concerns.

Other sermons.

Other meetings.

Other headlines.

Other crises.

Other demands upon our attention.

And that is precisely why tomorrow matters.

The test of our commitment to reconciliation will not be how deeply we felt today.

It will be what we choose tomorrow.

And the day after that.

And six months from now.

And ten years from now.

Will we keep learning?

Will we keep listening?

Will we keep telling the truth?

Will we keep confronting the colonial assumptions that still linger within our institutions and within ourselves?

Will we support Indigenous leadership?

Will we build genuine relationships with Indigenous neighbours and communities?

Will we honour Indigenous voices without trying to control them?

Will we put resources behind our words?

Will we teach the next generation a more truthful history than many of us received?

Will we allow reconciliation to change not only what the Church says, but how the Church lives?

Those are harder questions than asking whether we wore orange today.

They are also more important.

The Last Post Cannot Be the Last Word

This is the final reflection in this particular series.

But it must not become the final word.

Truth must continue.

Listening must continue.

Relationships must continue.

Repentance must continue.

Learning must continue.

Justice must continue.

Prayer must continue.

And the patient work of reconciliation must continue.

Perhaps the Church’s renewed commitment can begin with something wonderfully simple:

We will not forget when September ends.

We will carry the truth with us.

We will allow it to shape our institutions.

We will nurture relationships that cannot be measured by annual reports.

We will remain present when attention moves elsewhere.

We will accept that healing may take longer than our lifetimes.

And we will trust that the God who has entrusted to us the ministry of reconciliation will continue forming us into people capable of practising it.

Not perfectly.

Not quickly.

Not without cost.

But faithfully.

September ends tonight.

The ministry of reconciliation does not.

Perhaps that is exactly where our real work begins.

Follow along on Instagram @renewablespiritual for more daily reflections on faith, life, and the surprising places where God still loves to meet us.

A Prayer When September Ends

God of truth and reconciliation,
do not let our commitment end with this day.
Keep us listening, learning, remembering, and acting.
Give your Church courage to seek justice, nurture relationships, and walk humbly with Indigenous peoples.
Make reconciliation not simply something we observe, but part of who we become.

Amen.

When Our Promises Become Practices

There is a particular danger that comes whenever the Church speaks about something important year after year.

The words can become familiar.

We learn the prayers. We recognize the language. We know when to wear orange. We know which acknowledgements belong at the beginning of gatherings. We know the history better than we once did. We have attended workshops, listened to speakers, read reports, passed resolutions, and perhaps even made solemn commitments about the kind of Church we hope to become.

All of these things matter.

But eventually a difficult question must be asked:

What has actually changed?

Not in our vocabulary.

Not in our intentions.

Not even in our awareness.

What has changed in the way we live?

For Christians, this is not an unreasonable question. Jesus asks versions of it throughout the Gospel. He seems remarkably uninterested in discipleship that remains safely confined to good intentions.

“By their fruits you will know them.”

Fruit is visible.

Fruit can be examined.

Fruit is what eventually reveals what kind of tree we have been tending.

That may be one of the questions the Church needs to carry into the work of reconciliation with Indigenous peoples.

What fruit is our commitment producing?

The Anglican Church has spent years speaking about reconciliation. We have acknowledged painful truths about our participation in residential schools and other systems that harmed Indigenous peoples, families, languages, cultures, communities, and spiritual traditions. We have apologized. We have listened. We have committed ourselves publicly to a different relationship.

Those commitments matter.

But promises made by the Church become credible only when they become practices of the Church.

That means reconciliation must eventually become visible in our budgets, calendars, partnerships, leadership, education, advocacy, worship, property decisions, community relationships, and priorities.

If reconciliation matters only when September arrives, then we have created an observance rather than a relationship.

If Indigenous voices are welcomed only when we are discussing Indigenous issues, we have not yet learned what partnership means.

If we acknowledge traditional territory while remaining uninterested in the Indigenous communities whose land we acknowledge, our words risk becoming detached from relationship.

If we speak passionately about reconciliation but never allow that commitment to influence how we spend money, use buildings, exercise power, choose leaders, or engage public issues, then reconciliation remains safely theoretical.

And the Gospel has never been particularly interested in theoretical love.

Jesus repeatedly moves love from sentiment into action.

Feed the hungry.

Welcome the stranger.

Visit the prisoner.

Care for the vulnerable.

Forgive.

Repair.

Restore.

Follow.

Christian love develops hands and feet.

So must reconciliation.

Perhaps one of the next stages in the Church’s journey is learning to practise accountability.

Accountability can be uncomfortable because it asks us to look honestly at the distance between what we say and what we do.

A parish might ask:

What relationships have we actually built with Indigenous neighbours?

Whose voices have shaped our understanding?

What have we learned this year that we did not know last year?

Where have Indigenous people influenced our decisions rather than simply been invited to participate in decisions already made?

What resources have we committed?

What relationships have continued beyond special Sundays and commemorative days?

What uncomfortable truth have we allowed to change us?

And perhaps most importantly:

What will we do differently next year because of what we have learned this year?

These are not questions designed to produce guilt.

They are questions designed to produce faithfulness.

The Church should not be afraid of accountability. Christians already believe that transformation is possible.

Indeed, transformation stands near the centre of our faith.

We believe that grace can change people.

We believe repentance can redirect lives.

We believe broken relationships can be healed.

We believe enemies can become neighbours.

We believe resurrection can emerge from places that once appeared hopeless.

But resurrection is not the restoration of the old arrangement.

The risen Christ does not simply return everyone to the way things were before Good Friday.

Something new begins.

That may be an important theological truth for reconciliation.

The goal cannot simply be better relations while leaving every old structure untouched.

Reconciliation asks whether something genuinely new can grow between Indigenous and non-Indigenous peoples — relationships marked by truth, mutual respect, justice, humility, friendship, and shared responsibility for the future.

And that will require the Church to become comfortable with being changed by relationship.

Real relationships always change us.

Friendship changes us.

Marriage changes us.

Parenthood changes us.

Community changes us.

Love changes us.

If our relationship with Indigenous peoples never changes the Church, then we should ask whether we have actually entered relationship at all.

Perhaps this is where a refreshed commitment to reconciliation must begin.

Not with another promise that we care.

But with a willingness to ask where caring has become action.

Not simply with another statement.

But with practices that can be seen.

Not simply with remembering the past.

But with decisions that reshape the future.

September 30 will soon arrive, and another National Day for Truth and Reconciliation will eventually pass.

The orange shirts will be folded.

Special services will conclude.

Public ceremonies will finish.

Social media will turn toward something else.

And that may be precisely when the Church’s commitment becomes most important.

Because reconciliation is not something we commemorate and then put away.

It is something we practise.

Week after week.

Month after month.

Year after year.

Relationship after relationship.

Until our actions begin to resemble our prayers.

Until our budgets begin to resemble our theology.

Until our partnerships begin to resemble our promises.

Until Indigenous neighbours do not simply hear the Church saying that reconciliation matters, but can point to the life of the Church and say:

Yes. We can see that it does.

Tomorrow, as this series comes to its conclusion, there will be one final question for us to consider.

But today, perhaps this question is enough:

If someone examined the life of our church without hearing any of our words, would they be able to tell that reconciliation matters to us?

That is a difficult question.

It may also be a holy one.

Follow along on Instagram @renewablespiritual for more daily reflections on faith, life, and the surprising places where God still loves to meet us.

Companion Prayer

God of truth and reconciliation,
save us from promises that never become practices.

Give us courage to examine our lives,
our churches, our priorities, and our relationships.
Where our words have outrun our actions, lead us to repentance.
Where we have listened without changing, disturb our comfort.
Where relationships have been wounded, teach us the patient work of rebuilding trust.

Help us to listen humbly to Indigenous voices,
to act justly, to share responsibility,
and to remain faithful when the commemorations have ended.

By your Spirit, transform our good intentions into faithful action,
until our lives bear visible fruit
of truth, justice, healing, and renewed relationship.

In the name of Jesus Christ,
who calls us not simply to speak of love, but to live it.

Amen.

Reconciliation Will Cost Us Something

There comes a moment in every serious commitment when good intentions are no longer enough.

At first, reconciliation can feel like learning. We listen to stories we were not taught. We confront histories we were encouraged to forget. We begin to understand the terrible legacy of residential schools, the Sixties Scoop, broken treaties, displaced communities, suppressed languages, and generations of policies designed to separate Indigenous peoples from land, culture, family, and identity.

That learning matters.

But eventually truth asks a more difficult question:

Now that we know, what are we prepared to change?

That may be one of the most important questions facing the Church in Canada.

Because reconciliation that costs us nothing will eventually become little more than another church programme.

And reconciliation is not a programme.

It is conversion.

The Gospel word for conversion is metanoia — a turning around, a changing of mind and direction. Jesus does not simply invite people to recognize that something has gone wrong. He calls them to walk differently because they have recognized it.

That distinction matters enormously.

The Church can acknowledge the harm done to Indigenous peoples while continuing to protect the very habits and assumptions that helped create that harm. We can apologize for colonialism while still expecting Indigenous people to encounter Christianity primarily on our terms. We can honour Indigenous spirituality at special services while remaining suspicious when Indigenous Christians ask the Church itself to change.

We can become remarkably comfortable with reconciliation provided reconciliation does not rearrange the furniture.

But genuine relationship always rearranges something.

It changes how we listen.

It changes how decisions are made.

It changes who has authority.

It changes where resources are directed.

It changes whose wisdom is considered essential rather than optional.

And sometimes it requires those who have traditionally occupied the centre to move aside enough for another voice to be heard.

This is where reconciliation becomes more than sentiment.

For generations, churches often entered Indigenous communities believing that we possessed something they needed. We arrived as teachers, missionaries, administrators, and authorities. Even when individuals acted with compassion, the larger system too often assumed that European Christianity and culture stood above Indigenous traditions.

Reconciliation asks us to abandon that posture.

Perhaps one of the most important spiritual disciplines the Church can practise now is learning how not to be in charge.

That is difficult for institutions.

It is also deeply Christian.

John the Baptist understood something about faithful ministry when he said of Christ, “He must increase, but I must decrease.”

There are moments when faithfulness requires becoming smaller so that something else may flourish.

For churches committed to reconciliation, that may mean supporting Indigenous leadership without attempting to control it. It may mean providing resources without attaching institutional strings. It may mean advocating publicly when Indigenous communities ask for allies. It may mean examining parish investments, land relationships, educational practices, worship, partnerships, and budgets.

And it certainly means asking Indigenous neighbours what meaningful relationship actually looks like rather than deciding the answer ourselves.

The question is no longer simply whether the Church regrets what happened.

The question is whether our repentance has become visible enough to affect the way we live.

Imagine if every parish in Canada asked one practical question this year:

What is one thing we can change because we are serious about reconciliation?

Not another statement.

Not another committee report.

Not another photograph for social media.

Something tangible.

Learn whose traditional territory your church occupies and understand the history of that land. Build a relationship with a nearby Indigenous community or organization without beginning with an agenda. Support Indigenous-led ministries financially. Invite Indigenous teachers and compensate them properly for their time and knowledge. Learn about the Calls to Action of the Truth and Reconciliation Commission and identify those that specifically address churches. Advocate when Indigenous communities continue to face injustice involving water, housing, health, education, land, or treaty rights.

Then, having done one thing, do another.

Relationships are built that way.

Slowly.

Faithfully.

Repeatedly.

The Church has spoken many words about reconciliation. Some have been important. Some have been necessary. Some have been long overdue.

But we are approaching the point where the credibility of those words will depend increasingly upon what follows them.

The prophet Micah did not tell God’s people merely to admire justice.

“Do justice, love kindness, and walk humbly with your God.”

Do. Love. Walk.

They are verbs.

Perhaps that is the invitation before the Church now.

To move from remembering reconciliation to practising it.

From speaking about relationship to building it.

From acknowledging history to changing the future.

And from asking Indigenous peoples to trust our intentions to becoming, slowly and patiently, people whose actions are worthy of trust.

Truth and reconciliation will cost the Church something.

It may cost us comfort.

It may cost us control.

It may cost us money.

It may cost us cherished assumptions about ourselves and our history.

But discipleship has never been about protecting ourselves from the cost of love.

Jesus called it taking up a cross.

And perhaps one of the crosses the Canadian Church must carry in this generation is the long, humble work of becoming trustworthy neighbours again.

Not for one Sunday.

Not for one week in September.

But for as long as healing requires.

Reconciliation will become credible when Indigenous peoples can see not only that the Church has changed its words, but that we have been willing to change ourselves.

Follow along on Instagram @renewablespiritual for more daily reflections on faith, life, and the surprising places where God still loves to meet us.

A Prayer for Costly Reconciliation

God of truth and mercy,
give us courage to move beyond words into action.
Teach us to listen humbly, surrender control freely,
and change what must be changed.
Make our repentance visible in the way we live,
and our reconciliation faithful enough to rebuild trust.
Help us become trustworthy neighbours,
for as long as healing requires.
Amen.

What We Carry From the Altar

Sunday morning has a rhythm familiar to many of us.

We gather. We listen to Scripture. We confess our sins. We exchange the peace. We come to the table. We receive bread and wine. We are blessed. And then we are sent into the world.

That final movement matters.

Because Christian worship was never intended to end at the church door.

This Sunday falls within a week when Canadians are being called again to confront the truth of our history with Indigenous peoples and to renew our commitment to reconciliation. Churches will pray. Some will acknowledge the traditional territory upon which they gather. Some will hear the stories of residential schools and Survivors. Some will wear orange.

All of these things can matter.

But the deeper question for the Church is what happens when the service is over.

What do we carry from the altar into the work of reconciliation?

The Eucharist makes a remarkable claim about us. We come to Christ’s table as people who have received mercy, and then we are sent into the world to become people through whom mercy, justice, peace, and healing may become visible.

We cannot receive reconciliation from God as a gift and then treat reconciliation with our neighbours as an optional ministry.

That is particularly challenging for the Church in Canada.

Our relationship with Indigenous peoples is not simply part of Canadian history. It is part of our Christian history. Churches participated in systems that harmed Indigenous children, families, languages, cultures, and communities. Christian language was sometimes used to justify assumptions of superiority. The name of Jesus became entangled with institutions and policies that caused wounds whose consequences continue today.

We cannot change that history.

But we are responsible for what kind of history we write next.

And that history will not be written primarily in statements issued by national church offices.

It will be written in relationships.

It will be written when congregations take the initiative to learn about the Indigenous peoples whose traditional territories they inhabit.

It will be written when churches listen to Indigenous voices without immediately trying to explain, defend, correct, or solve.

It will be written when Indigenous leadership is respected rather than merely consulted.

It will be written when church budgets reveal that reconciliation is important enough to receive more than our good intentions.

It will be written when we stand beside Indigenous communities seeking justice even when doing so is inconvenient, politically uncomfortable, or costly.

And it will be written when we remain committed long after September has disappeared from the calendar.

There is something deeply Eucharistic about this work.

At the altar, we bring what we have. Bread. Wine. Ourselves.

God receives those gifts and gives them back transformed.

Perhaps reconciliation asks the Church to place something else upon the altar as well.

Our defensiveness.

Our need to control the conversation.

Our desire to be quickly forgiven.

Our assumption that reconciliation should proceed according to a timetable comfortable for us.

Our temptation to declare the work finished because we have apologized.

These things may also need to be surrendered.

Because reconciliation cannot be built upon the Church’s desire to feel better about its past. It must be built upon our willingness to participate faithfully in a different future.

That requires humility.

Humility does not mean pretending that we have nothing to contribute. It means recognizing that we are not always the ones who should determine what our contribution ought to be.

For much of Canadian history, churches approached Indigenous peoples with answers already prepared.

Perhaps reconciliation begins differently.

Perhaps we arrive with a question:

What would it mean for us to become good neighbours?

And then we listen carefully enough to hear the answer.

That question should eventually reach every parish council, every diocesan synod, every church budget, every theological college, and every ministry planning meeting.

What would becoming good neighbours require of us here?

Not somewhere else.

Not at the national level.

Here.

Perhaps it means developing an ongoing relationship with a local Indigenous organization or community.

Perhaps it means financially supporting Indigenous-led ministries.

Perhaps it means studying the Truth and Reconciliation Commission’s Calls to Action and asking which ones require a response from our congregation.

Perhaps it means examining the history of the land and property our churches occupy.

Perhaps it means inviting Indigenous teachers to help us learn — and ensuring they are properly compensated rather than expecting them to educate us for free.

Perhaps it means using our institutional voice when Indigenous neighbours are confronting injustice.

The particular answer will differ from place to place.

The obligation to ask the question does not.

This is where reconciliation becomes discipleship.

Jesus never called the Church merely to regret injustice. He called us to participate in the coming of a Kingdom in which relationships are restored, the dignity of every person is honoured, truth is spoken, and those pushed to the margins are brought into the centre of our concern.

That Kingdom cannot remain something we proclaim at the altar.

It must become something we practise beyond it.

So today, as we gather around the table, perhaps we should listen carefully to the words with which we are sent back into the world.

We are not dismissed because worship is finished.

We are sent because worship must continue.

The Eucharist becomes visible in the lives we live after receiving it.

And perhaps one measure of the Church’s commitment to truth and reconciliation will be whether Indigenous neighbours can encounter in us something of the reconciliation we celebrate every Sunday.

Not simply a Church that has apologized.

Not simply a Church that remembers.

But a Church learning to listen, willing to change, prepared to act, and committed to becoming a trustworthy neighbour.

If reconciliation is truly part of our worship, then eventually it must become part of our way of life.

Follow along on Instagram @renewablespiritual for more daily reflections on faith, life, and the surprising places where God still loves to meet us.

A Prayer for Reconciliation

God of truth and healing,
teach us to listen with humility,
to repent through action,
and to become trustworthy neighbours.
Give us courage to surrender what must change
and grace to walk faithfully with Indigenous peoples
along the long road of reconciliation.
Amen.

When September Ends: The Work That Must Continue

There is something both valuable and dangerous about setting aside particular days and seasons for important things.

They help us remember.

They focus our attention.

They call us back to truths that we might otherwise neglect.

And then the calendar turns.

The orange shirts are folded and placed back in the drawer. The special prayers disappear from the liturgy. The educational resources are put away. The social media posts move on to something else. October arrives, Thanksgiving approaches, and the machinery of parish life continues its relentless journey toward Advent and Christmas.

And this is precisely where the Church must be careful.

Because reconciliation cannot become something we remember every September.

It must become part of who we are.

Over these past days, we have reflected upon truth, repentance, listening, relationship, justice, healing, and the long road of reconciliation between Indigenous and non-Indigenous peoples in Canada. We have acknowledged the Church’s participation in systems that caused enormous harm. We have considered the difference between apology and repentance, between good intentions and changed behaviour, between speaking about reconciliation and actually becoming reconciled people.

But perhaps the most important question comes now:

What will be different because we remembered?

That is the question the Church cannot avoid.

Jesus once told his disciples that if they brought their gift to the altar and remembered that their brother or sister had something against them, they should leave their gift there and first go and be reconciled.

That teaching should make Christians profoundly uncomfortable.

Jesus does not treat reconciliation as an optional addition to worship.

He places it at the very heart of worship.

The integrity of what happens at the altar is connected to the integrity of our relationships beyond it.

That means reconciliation with Indigenous peoples cannot remain safely contained within committees, commemorations, statements, or special services. It must eventually find its way into budgets, calendars, partnerships, property decisions, educational priorities, preaching, advocacy, and the everyday habits of congregational life.

Otherwise, we risk creating the appearance of reconciliation without accepting its cost.

And genuine reconciliation always costs something.

It costs us the comfort of believing that good intentions are enough.

It costs us the privilege of always setting the agenda.

It costs us the assumption that the Church must be the leader in every relationship.

It costs us the temptation to decide what healing should look like for someone else.

Perhaps most difficult of all, it requires the Church to learn a posture that historically we have not always practised very well:

We must learn how to receive.

For generations, churches approached Indigenous communities believing that we possessed something they needed. We came as teachers, missionaries, administrators, reformers, and authorities. Too often we failed to recognize that the people before us already possessed languages, traditions, wisdom, spirituality, community, and profound relationships with the land.

Reconciliation requires something different.

It asks whether the Church can enter relationships without needing to control them.

Can we listen without preparing our response?

Can we learn without immediately trying to teach?

Can we build friendships that do not exist primarily to accomplish a church programme?

Can we allow Indigenous voices to challenge our theology, our assumptions, our institutions, and even our understanding of ourselves?

Those are not small questions.

But they are necessary ones.

Healthy relationships are rarely built through grand gestures. They are built through consistency.

They are built when someone shows up again.

And again.

And again.

They are built when we remember names.

When we honour invitations.

When we keep promises.

When we listen to stories we have heard before because the person telling them still needs them to be heard.

When we remain at the table after the difficult conversation.

When we discover that friendship is not a strategy.

Perhaps this is where the Church’s renewed commitment to reconciliation must begin.

Not with another statement.

Not with another declaration.

But with the quiet discipline of becoming trustworthy.

Trust cannot be demanded.

It cannot be legislated.

It cannot be produced by a carefully worded apology.

Trust grows slowly when words and actions begin to resemble one another.

For churches, that means asking some practical questions.

Whose voices shape our decisions?

What Indigenous history do our congregations actually know about the land upon which we worship?

Which Indigenous communities are our neighbours?

Do we know them?

Have we listened to them?

Have we supported Indigenous-led ministries and organizations financially?

Do our children learn the history of the residential school system and the Church’s involvement in it?

Do we understand the Calls to Action of the Truth and Reconciliation Commission well enough to recognize which ones directly challenge the Church?

And perhaps most importantly:

If every orange shirt disappeared tomorrow, would anyone looking at the life of our congregation still know that reconciliation matters to us?

That question reaches deeper than symbolism.

Symbols matter. Orange shirts matter. Land acknowledgements matter. Memorials matter. Days of remembrance matter.

But symbols are meant to point toward something.

The danger comes when we begin mistaking the signpost for the destination.

Christian faith has always insisted that love eventually becomes visible.

Jesus does not merely tell us to believe in love.

He commands us to practise it.

Feed the hungry.

Welcome the stranger.

Visit the prisoner.

Forgive.

Seek justice.

Make peace.

Love your neighbour.

Follow me.

The verbs of the Gospel are remarkably active.

So must be our reconciliation.

The Church does not need to become perfect before entering this work. If perfection were required before Christians attempted anything worthwhile, very little would ever happen.

But we do need to become faithful.

Faithful enough to listen.

Faithful enough to learn.

Faithful enough to repent when we discover that our understanding was incomplete.

Faithful enough to repair what can still be repaired.

Faithful enough to advocate when Indigenous communities face injustice.

Faithful enough to invest our resources where our words say our priorities lie.

Faithful enough to remain in relationship when the conversation becomes uncomfortable.

And faithful enough to understand that reconciliation is not something one generation will complete.

We are planting trees beneath whose shade we may never sit.

That is not failure.

That is faithfulness.

Scripture is filled with people who worked toward promises they would never fully see. They built altars, planted vineyards, raised children, crossed wildernesses, rebuilt cities, and trusted that God’s purposes extended beyond the boundaries of their own lifetimes.

Perhaps reconciliation requires that same spiritual maturity.

We may not live to see everything healed.

But we can refuse to pass the wounds forward unchanged.

We can leave the next generation relationships stronger than we received them.

We can leave them institutions more honest than we inherited.

We can leave them churches less defensive about the past and more courageous about the future.

We can teach them that reconciliation is not an act of charity offered by one group to another.

It is part of the Christian vocation to become a people among whom broken relationships are taken seriously because we worship a God who reconciles.

September will end.

The orange shirts will eventually return to their drawers.

The calendar will turn.

But the work must continue.

Perhaps that should be our commitment as this series concludes:

Not simply that we will remember.

But that we will remain.

Remain in conversation.

Remain willing to learn.

Remain committed to justice.

Remain present in relationship.

Remain accountable to the truth.

Remain open to Indigenous voices and leadership.

Remain willing to discover what repentance may yet require of us.

Because reconciliation will not finally be measured by what the Church says during the last days of September.

It will be measured by the relationships we are still tending in November.

The commitments we are still honouring in February.

The partnerships we are still strengthening next June.

The justice we are still seeking years from now.

Truth must lead somewhere.

Repentance must change something.

And reconciliation must become a way of life.

May God give the Church the humility to listen, the courage to change, the patience to build trust, and the faithfulness to remain on this road long after the calendar tells us that September is over.

The work of reconciliation does not end when the season of remembering ends. That is when we discover whether we truly meant what we said.

Follow along on Instagram @renewablespiritual for more daily reflections on faith, life, and the surprising places where God still loves to meet us.

Companion Prayer

God of truth and reconciliation,
keep us from believing that remembering is enough.

Give us humility to listen,
courage to face the truth,
and faithfulness to remain in relationship
when the work becomes difficult.

Where trust has been broken,
teach us to become trustworthy.
Where harm has been done,
lead us beyond apology into repentance, repair, and justice.

Bless Indigenous peoples, communities, leaders, and Elders,
and teach your Church to walk alongside rather than ahead,
to receive as well as to give,
and to honour relationships with patience and integrity.

When September ends,
do not let our commitment end with it.

Make reconciliation not simply something we speak about,
but something we live.

Through Jesus Christ,
who calls us into the ministry of reconciliation.

Amen.