New Vision Notes Fri Aug 12 2022

Fri Aug 12 2022

  1. This Sunday as I take leave for my month-long annual vacation we begin more than the regular vacation time apart. At the end of my vacation I begin a sabbatical leave from regular duties at New Vision.
  2. The sabbatical leave will end January 8, 2023. I will be back for Sunday worship January 15.
  3. It has been now just over six years since I came back from my last sabbatical leave. In that leave I visited many new church or renewed church start-ups in Southern Ontario, and spent about a month visiting cutting-edge progressive church start-ups along the Atlantic seaboard of the US, from Washington DC to Boston.
  4. This year I am heading into books and journal articles and conversations with theologians. I will be centred in Toronto. The focus will be the theological and faith practice themes that we have been occupied with here at New Vision since we began New Vision.
  5. I am not planning to travel much this leave.
  6. The Regional Council has appointed Rev. Diane Blanchard to be pastoral charge supervisor during my leave. She will attend Council meetings and be available to the New Vision leadership to address any emergent issues during my leave.
  7. New Vision Notes will continue in some form on a regular (if not weekly basis) during my leave. I will look forward to receiving them!
  8. Tomorrow, Saturday August 13 at 12pm, Hamilton’s 2nd Annual Indigenous Unity Rally will take place at City Hall.  Last year’s Indigenous Unity Rally was called in response to the decision at City Hall not to remove the statue of John A MacDonald, Canada’s first Prime Minister and architect of the residential school system, from Gore Park.  This decision was taken even as many Canadians were finally facing the reality of the hundreds upon hundreds of unmarked graves at Residential School sites across the country; a reality Indigenous communities have been naming and contending with for decades. Given the inaction of elected officials, some participants at last year’s rally took things into their own hands and pulled the statue down themselves.  Everyone is welcome at this year’s rally: “Bring your good minds and your good hearts.”
  9. The pandemic-begun Gore Park Outreach Program on Saturdays continues. They are looking for 2 or 3 volunteers to join them in the New Vision kitchen Saturday mornings to help prepare the hot meal they serve at noon in The Gore.
  10. L’Arche Hamilton is looking for volunteers: They write: Would you or anyone you know be interested in engaging with us by volunteering with Inclusion Coffeehouse? We are looking for volunteers who would be willing to volunteer alongside adults with developmental disabilities in serving baked goods, pouring coffee, taking orders and cleaning the coffeehouse space. We would love to have volunteers who are committed to volunteering with us weekly on Mondays, Tuesdays or Wednesdays in the mornings. We are a Social Enterprise where people with and without intellectual disabilities volunteer together to serve coffee and share our gifts with the neighborhood. located at the Bernie Morelli Recreation Centre and operated through L’Arche Hamilton Please email dave@larchehamilton.orgif you are able to support us!
  11. The Micah House https://www.micahhouse.ca/ Fundraising Brunch – August 20 th 10:30 AM. Come and support this local ministry to refugees and enjoy a delicious, catered brunch. You will hear from former Micah House clients and our Executive Director, Scott Jones. There is no cost to register but seating is limited at this beautiful venue, the Hamilton Steam & Technology Museum at 900 Woodward Ave. To register please email heidi@micahhouse.ca or call 905-296-4387.
  12. Another opportunity this fall: This fall, Good Shepherd will be launching a council that will engage with new projects, policies, and directives to hear how we can better serve everyone in our community. We are inviting people with living/lived experience in areas such as living without a fixed address, living with mental illness, living with a disability, and/or living through challenges related to substance use, racism, colonialism, discrimination, and other forms of exclusion from resources and equity. The Lived Experience Advisory Council will advise Good Shepherd and create a new dynamic of community involvement in social service delivery. For more info: Teresa Caterini, Lived Experience Advisory coordinator tcaterini@gsch.ca.
  13. With a very contagious new COVID sub-variant spreading in Hamilton, we encourage you to get the fourth vaccination now available to all adults. We will continue our current in-person gathering approach: i) we will form the circle again in the lower hall, distancing the seats by a metre for the time being. ii) people may join the circle if they are willing to wear a mask.
  14. The reason for the masks is that we will allow ourselves to sing, and masking reduces the distance air we expel travels with the increased effort singing.
  15. 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.
  16. You can also call in to the gathering on the telephone. Call 1 647 374 4685, 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