Fri Apr 16 2021
- Happy Easter!
- Christ is risen.
- Indeed.
- Follow this link to hear the choir sing the Hallelujah Chorus of Handel again (or for the first time).
- We have been engaged by the wider community of Hamilton in complex ways over our redevelopment plans at 85 Holton Ave. S.
- On behalf of Church Council and at the encouragement of our chair Dixon Challoner I thank all of you who wrote to your ward councilor as a part of New Vision responding to this engagement in the last week. You can follow this link to read the letters from among New Vision folks that were submitted in time to be included in the agenda as correspondence for the meeting.
- Others who wrote can be assured that your councilor received your letter, even though your letter did not make the deadline for inclusion as received correspondence.
- Our rough estimate is somewhere between 20-25 letters from New Vision and its friends came to the Councillors between Sunday afternoon and Tuesday evening.
- Councillor Nann’s motion to refer the intention to designate motion back to the Planning Committee for staff input and the opportunity for us to present the various scenarios of what the redevelopment might look like to the Planning Committee was passed 13-1 by the Council.
- This was our hoped-for outcome as it provides us with an opportunity to engage new residents to the former St. Giles neighbourhood who are not aware of our deep connections to the neighbourhood, the history of the project, nor how our plans for the property are in fact an evolution of the identity of the former St. Giles as it ended and New Vision began: a clear social justice vision and concern for the well-being of the neighbourhood.
- For a fair report on the Council meeting decision and the current views of various parties interested in it, the Spec published on the story here.
- This Sunday we are joined in our worship gathering by our Rockville United partners in Maryland with whom we are bringing the Al Zahar family from Syria to Canada as refugees. Since the United Church of Christ in the USA (of which they are a part) is a full communion partner of The United Church of Canada, we are able to mark the occasion of our partnership with communion. Please have your beverage and food of choice available to you when you come to the worship gathering on Sunday.
- Our theme on Sunday will be the theme of provision of sanctuary to refugees and our commitments and the conditions under which we seek to live out those commitments as Christians as part of the global community.
- In other news…one of the first fruits of our Intercultural Relationship Currency Design Project is our celebration of Asian Heritage Month throughout the upcoming month of May. A planning group assisted by the Worship Committee is moving plans forward.
- And in still more other news…the New Vision Affirming committee recently met to review our PIE Day recipes and to plan how to bake them into the year ahead (apologies for the bad pun). We will be hearing more from the Affirming Committee soon. Look forward with me to the New Vision UCC national Pride Sunday celebration on Sunday June 6.
- One technology note: those of you who are on our Threshold Partnership e-list were sent some reports of actions your Church Council was taking with respect to the redevelopment plan at 85 Holton Ave. S. earlier this week. We’ve learned that some of those emails went into the spam/junk/promotions folders of more than one or two. If you are receiving this New Vision Note, and believe you should be on the Threshold Partnership e-list, please check in those various folders for email from this address officeadmin@newvisionunited.org. If you can’t find the emails, please contact New Vision by responding to this edition of New Vision Notes and let us know.
- Hamilton is back into the Province of Ontario’s “grey zone”. I am sad to say this means that New Vision folks without access to Zoom will have to wait for a while more to participate in person at 24 Main W in our Zoom worship gathering on Sundays. I know those gathering on Zoom keenly miss those who have been gathering in person. I am looking forward to the day we can meet again in person, and I am sad that this is the second Easter we will not be able to gather in person as a Christian faith community.
- New Vision Virtual Worship is experiential, participatory, image-rich and collective, just like worship in person at New Vision! Join us on Sunday mornings 10:30 am week to week during the Covid-19 emergency by clicking here. If you want to put the link someplace easy to find each week, here it is: https://us02web.zoom.us/j/782292511. Please share it with others and invite them to a “different” kind of time on Zoom from the usual.
- You can also call in to the gathering on the telephone toll free. Call 1 855 703 8985, then, when prompted, input the Meeting ID 782 292 511 followed by the # sign. Ignore the prompts for Participant ID and Password. You are in when the recorded voice says, “You are in the meeting.” If you can only connect by video on your computer with no audio, you can use the phone connection for audio and the computer connection for visual.
Hope to see you Sunday ~ again, or for the first time ~
Rev Ian