The Church of St Mark & St Peter has been quite active in the first half of this year.
We have had a couple book groups meeting by Zoom; one group reading Our Home and Treaty Land, by Matt Anderson and Ray Aldred, the other reading Am I Just My Brain?, by Christian neuroscientist Sharon Dirckx. Dr Dirckx joined us from her home in Oxford, England, for the final session.
Liturgically, we have recently made some changes to reflect the multilingual nature of our congregation and of our location in St Laurent. Our opening greeting on Sunday mornings is now in French, English, and Arabic.
The other change we have implemented is that, every Sunday, the Psalm is now led in one of the mother-tongues of our congregation members (on a rotating basis, ranging from Mandarin to Malagasy).
The way this works is the text of the Psalm appears in English (on the front video screens, since we project our liturgy using PowerPoint), but the Psalm leader reads the initial, then alternate, verses of the Psalm in their mother-tongue. Everyone understands what is being said because they read the English on the screen; then, when the reader stops, everyone responds together with the next verse; and so on, alternating between mother-tongue and English, for the duration of the Psalm. It sounds awkward, but it actually works well and people find it quite a moving representation of God’s inclusiveness of all nations (ethne in Greek) in worship.
Following the ice storm, CMP had electricity for Easter Sunday, but not for Maundy Thursday or Good Friday, so these services were cancelled and replaced with a Good Friday service by Zoom. Easter Sunday was a wonderful joy-filled service.
After Easter, for the second year in a row, we are offering a series of evening Zoom meetings called “Monday Discussions.” These are on a variety of topics – most – though not all, led by members of CMP.
Topics include Understanding Homelessness, My work with Afghan Refugees in Albania, Mennonite Peacemaking Theology, What it Means to be Cree, and Meeting with Residential School Survivors, among others.
The last two topics are part of a process in which CMP and St Barnabas Anglican Church of Waswanapi Cree Nation, QC, are exploring the possibility of a relationship together. (Waswanapi is about a nine-hour drive north of Montreal). Diocesan College has also had connections with this community in the past.
Other recent events included a group of CMP members building vegetable-garden boxes on our property and a bowling fundraiser for the CMP youth group. Remarkably, over 50 parishioners came out for the bowling–we had no idea the event would generate so much support from the congregation!
The last Sunday of April, CMP joined with other churches in St Laurent for a spaghetti lunch at St Sixte Roman Catholic Church—it was a fun opportunity for local church communities to get know each other, in both English and French.
