New Vision Notes Wednesday November 22 2017

I had an interesting chat with legendary music producer and Hamilton native Daniel Lanois Saturday afternoon. I told Dan of our aspiration to have our sanctuary double as a live music venue. We see that aspiration as a part of our response to the plain fact that people don’t make use of the space in a religious way as they once did. We want the space to be an accessible social space for the renewing downtown. A music hall seems like a good beginning shot at this. But at the same time, it is sacred space.

Daniel Lanois responded by saying the space is a “Spirit House” and that congregations in these spaces come and go like monsoons. There can be people in them like great torrents. And then, nothing, for a time. For example the crowd he was going to play to that night was a congregation. But the congregations that once filled this space for services are not gone forever. He looked at me and said, “God is patient.”

This Sunday is the last Sunday of the year for Christians following the church seasons calendar. It’s reign of Christ Sunday. The band will be sitting in. Our Palestine Peace Box will have arrived, and Palestinian olive oil and other products will be on sale thanks to Trish, Dan and Diane. These are great Christmas gifts, not to mention staples in some of our kitchens.

New Vision is hosting the JR Digs Acoustic Christmas Concert this year as a charity contribution to Hamilton. It takes place on Saturday, December 23. Tickets go on sale tomorrow, November 23. I am told that they sell out very quickly, so if you want to go go to JR Dig’s website where you’ll find a button that takes you to the ticket purchasing site.

Blessings this Sunday; I am away on a study leave. But see you in two weeks — at the beginning of the new year – the First Sunday of Advent, December 3rd.

Rev. Ian

New Vision Notes Friday November 17 2017

The Inside/Out Art Show was a groundbreaking initiative for which we owe curator Alison Miculan incredible thanks.

These things always take longer, and inspire so much creativity, that one can feel an adrenalin rush and then a letdown.  Let’s work at keeping the momentum going on at least one path of development from this or another with Alison.

Dan Lanois plays The Music Hall tomorrow evening. Tickets are $40 at the door or about $35 on-line (inclusive of fees). I have heard sales are brisk and there will be a good crowd. If you are going, remember the tickets are general admission so it’s first come first serve. Doors open at 7 pm.

This Sunday we will be observing the Trans Day of Remembrance. The actual internationally recognized day is November 20. We want to take time in our worship however to ground our own faith experience in awareness of the struggle, and the hope.  It’s a part of what the New Vision is all about.

See you Sunday ~

Rev. Ian

New Vision Notes Thursday Nov 9 2017

Our Inside/Out Art Exhibition opens tomorrow evening, Friday, Nov 10 from 6-10 pm. Come spend some time in our upper hall (a.k.a. The Music Hall) reflecting on works produced by Dismas Fellowship, L’Arche, participants in the October Art Crawl, NGen Youth Centre, New Vision, and others inside and outside our unique community of faith.

I have come to appreciate (through our curator for the show, Alison Miculan) that New Vision has a modest, but lovely, collection of artworks ourselves. They will be on display too.

Come reflect on whatever it is that binds sacred space and social space together. Is it worship? When you are wandering among the artworks, are you at worship?

The exhibition will be up until Sunday, Nov 12, after which we’ll dismantle it to make room for the Dan Lanois concert on Saturday Nov 18. We are beginning to think about how we can develop the initiative.

Thanks to the United Church’s Embracing the Spirit for an Innovation Grant for us to make this happen.

Cater and I spent the weekend with our partners in the Syrian Refugee Sponsorship Project in Rockville Maryland, a suburb of Washington D.C.  On Sunday I brought greetings to Rockville United Church at their worship and invited them onto the road to Hamilton to visit us. Between now and the time that our sponsored family comes (16 months?) we may see a few of them drop by. Rob Vanderheyden and I joined Rockville United Church’s lead coordinator for the project, Denise Giacomozzi, in a lively and well-attended discussion group meeting before worship. We were gifted with coffee mugs. I gave them one of our “Living Water for All” water bottles.

This Sunday we join together in communion with each other and the One who recognizes and loves us all.

Rev. Ian

New Vision Notes Thursday Oct 12 2017

Tomorrow evening is October Art Crawl, and we’re participating in it for the first time with our “Inside/Out” art project. People on the street during Art Crawl tomorrow evening will be invited to paint a pew we are setting out in front of Evergreen City Works Community Storefront. Evergreen City Works is located just a few storefronts south of Barton St. on James N on the east side of the street at 294 James N. Join the New Vision volunteers and meet our “Inside/Out” exhibit curator, Alison Miculan.

Alison will be joining us for worship two Sundays from now (Sunday Oct 22) to introduce the idea of the exhibit to us and to invite us into a participatory activity during worship itself. That sort of participation in making is the idea of the exhibition.

The Sacred Geometry and the Mandela workshop associated with the exhibition takes place on Saturday October 21 from 1-4 pm. Register by replying to this email with your desire to be registered. The workshop is pay as you may.

See you Sunday, if not before ~

Rev. Ian

New Vision Notes Thanksgiving 2017 Edition

The sanctuary at the MacNab site is emptying. The pews on the main floor are all gone. The furniture that migrated to the sanctuary from other and various places in the building over the years has been moving out into the wider community. The sound booth that closed in the back of the open space in front of the balcony has been dismantled. There’s a sense of expectancy, a breadth of space to be felt: things are changing, but they are not fading away.

Put the date of Thursday October 26 from 5-7 in your datebooks to attend an open house call-to-action to the entire community of Hamilton in our sanctuary to discover a part for yourself in the future of this wonderful space.

New Vision presented something of its story to Hamilton Presbytery on Tuesday evening; then the Presbytery entertained a motion to approve the redevelopment agreement we have with Sedona Development Group for the Holton Ave. site. The Presbytery passed the motion. Our presenters were amazing.

A couple of Saturdays from now our Inside/Out Art Exhibition curator Alison has arranged for a workshop for people to explore sacred geometry and the mandela. You can register for the workshop by emailing the church office at officeadmin@newvisionunited.org. The event takes place on Saturday Oct 21, from 1-4 pm in the church hall. Space is limited, so if you are interested be sure to sign up early.

We could also use some more volunteers to person our “paint the pew” installation in front of Evergreen CityWorks storefront on James N during October art crawl, Friday October 13. To sign up or to learn more about how to help, you can email the church office officeadmin@newvisionunited.org.

Blessings this thanksgiving ~

Rev. Ian

New Vision Notes Thursday September 14 2017

In Season of Creation time…there’s a hum at New Vision. Next week our trustees present to the Presbytery Executive our proposed agreement to go 50-50 with a developer to turn the Holton Ave. site into market-rate apartments. From there it goes to the Presbytery meeting on Tuesday Oct 3 for approval. If you are interested in attending that Oct 3 meeting of the Presbytery to hear our presentation and watch the Presbytery make a decision you are most welcome.

A week this Sunday (Sept 24) we gather as Threshold Partners to receive and act on a recommendation from our Council to redevelop our MacNab site to increase our impact on the livability of downtown and of Hamilton more generally.

We continue with our partners at Rockville United in Rockville Maryland to raise funds and develop plans to welcome a Syrian refugee family into Hamilton. The family is now being processed by Canadian Immigration, though it will take as much as another 18 months before they arrive. We have all the funds we need in hand we are required to have to sponsor the family. Any excess we raise we have agreed with Rockville to give to Wesley Urban Ministries to support their work in settling Syrian refugees in Hamilton.

Our plans for an art exhibition upstairs at our MacNab site are developing and are being well received in the wider community. Exhibition curator Alison Miculan writes, “The show is called: “Inside/Out”.  The aim of the show is to explore who/what are religious insiders and outsiders.  Works may be related to concepts of God or Spirituality.  They may be related to church or anti-church. Works may represent any faith background. We are inviting professional (established) artists to show their work, as well as amateurs and marginalized people.  Some work will be displayed in the sanctuary – some outside.  We are taking pews from the St. Giles sanctuary and will be inviting the public to paint them with representations about religion during the October Art Crawl.  We are working towards a Nov. 10th opening (at the November Art Crawl).”

This Sunday’s theme is “wilderness.” Canada is full of wildernesses – from deserts, to tundra, from prairie to mountain forests. Come worship with the wilderness this Sunday at New Vision.

See you Sunday ~

Rev. Ian

 

New Vision Notes Friday July 27 2017

I am off to the Skylight Festival in a few minutes for the weekend. Here’s what the organizers of this Paris Ontario camping festival say about themselves:

“We are a small, ecumenical group of people passionate about arts, faith and justice. We each found ourselves longing to create an open space for people of diverse backgrounds to come together, exploring faith while engaging in art and being inspired by speakers and seekers of justice. So, we began to gather and dream. And the vision of Skylight emerged…

“The Skylight Vision… Nurturing a narrative of hope, joy and transformation, the Skylight Festival is a celebratory and creative space where diverse communities connect to explore arts, faith, peace and justice.”

I’m joining a group at the festival put together by our friends in the UCC EDGE network for ministry development who are involved as we are in new ministry initiatives. The group is made up of people who are taking an ordered ministry leadership role in these initiatives. We’ll meet before the festival begins and after it ends to share news and develop methods of supporting each other and our initiatives. As you know at New Vision, none of us can do these things alone.

Then I’m off to my cottage for four weeks. I’ll be kayaking, painting (it sure needs it) and doing not much of anything at all.

I’ll be back at New Vision on August 28, getting ready for our Season of Creation celebrations that begin on Sunday, September 3.

In the meantime, the Worship Committee has lined up a dynamic series of Sunday worship gatherings, so be sure to get out to New Vision in the next few weeks.

Enjoy the rest of the summer,
Ian

New Vision Notes Thursday July 20 2017

Summer slow. It’s great to see people out on Sunday mornings this time of year. The rhythm of our gathering is a little different.

The results across the United Church on the four questions all United Church pastoral charges were asked to vote on are in. The majority of us voted in favour of the changes. When the United Church’s next General Council ratifies the vote in 2018 the structure of the church changes, the way we fund the national level of the church changes, and the oversight and support of ministry vocations changes. Whew. That’s a lot of change. But we know at New Vision that’s the least of it. We are called into new ways of being in community as people of faith. That’s the new vision.

See you Sunday, if not some other time in the next week.

Rev. Ian

New Vision Notes Thursday July 6 2017

Someone remarked a little while ago that she found the connection I drew when breaking open the word during worship in Lent between spiritual thirst and physical water to be really powerful. The commandment to love one another has to involve sharing the water on this planet with equity and justice.

Others felt the same way, and coming at it from a slightly different perspective, have been working on bringing a “New Vision water bottle” to New Vision. I am hopeful that we have those bottles available to us come the Season of Creation, which we will begin to celebrate on Labour Day Sunday this year.

Probably our New Vision water bottle will have our logo in one colour on it and the tag line, “Living water for all.”

See you Sunday,

Rev. Ian

New Vision Notes Thursday June 29 2017

People say this is a more sober celebration of Canada coming up on July 1 than was the case 50 years ago in 1967. Certainly it is such for me. I remember 1967 for its centennial costumes, the beards “all the men” tried to – or did – grow, Expo 67. But for some peculiar reason I most recall my principle role on the family month-long camping trip to the east coast – human bellows to get the camp fire going wherever we were. I was pretty young then.

And that necessarily makes the party 50 years later more sober for me.

I wish you all a good Canada day. The country has grown more complex since those mid-60s days, and so too, it feels, has the world. And yet, I am pretty sure there are still 8 year olds around blowing on little fires to get them to become bigger and to keep going.

New Vision is not planning anything special for Canada Day weekend. It does seem noteworthy, however, to observe that the MacNab site of New Vision was under construction throughout 1867, the year of Confederation. The Centenary building opened in 1868.

150 years later, it feels like another construction project is going on; the New Vision congregation itself is under construction. Our fundamental thesis about ourselves as a community of faith is that new community is going to emerge from the margins, as a diverse set of marginalizations and privileges intersect in a fruitful and integrative way.

This speaks to our context in Hamilton’s downtown and is the basis for our unique participation in urban renewal in Hamilton.

Blessings.

See you Sunday ~

And again, Happy Canada Day.

Rev. Ian