The Diocese of Niagara connects with its inner gardener

Two churches have been awarded $45,000 in Trillium grants – donated by you, the generous taxpayer – for planting gardens. My wife is a keen gardener so, next year, she will be applying.

Sadly, both Anglican churches that applied received nothing but honourable mentions, notwithstanding the copious number of green tears emitted by its well-rehearsed clergy – who, it must be admitted, are generally overly lachrymose due to the excessive number of smudging ceremonies they are obliged to attend.

From here:

Two local groups are the recipients of a one-year, $45,000 seed grant from the Ontario Trillium Foundation.

The announcement was recently made during the Greening Sacred Spaces (GSS) Halton Peel chapter’s annual Green Awards Night and Networking Event.

The evening, held at the Church of the Incarnation, celebrates faith communities working together.

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The Green Awards Night and Networking Event also featured Terrylynn Brant who spoke on the ‘Spirit in Gardening’.

Brant is a member of the Mohawk Nation Turtle Clan from Six Nations and shared her learned skills from a long line of traditional knowledge holders. “She inspired the audience to connect with their inner gardener and their spirit,” stated the release.

The evening ended with an awards presentation.

Unitarian Congregation Church and Applewood United Church in Mississauga were this year’s two award winners.

Honourable mention went to St. Simon’s Anglican Church and Church of the Incarnation in Oakville.

Churches turning green

When I was growing up in Wales, a sacred space becoming green would mean that moss was thriving on the local church roof. Today, Greening Sacred Spaces is an invitation to, among other things, prevent draughts in church buildings – a tragic mistake for many parishes, since that is the only breath of fresh air the congregation will ever experience – in order to focus on the cliché du jour: mission. No-one seems to have noticed that the mission of most mainline denominations is the greening of their sacred space: promising a false gospel of eco-redemption to carbon addicted sinners.

From here:

Do you want to make your church building a safer and more hospitable space for worship and fellowship? Are drafty windows and leaking taps drawing time and money away from mission and outreach? Does your parish need support in reducing ecological footprints and improving sustainability? If you answered yes to any of the above, then Creation Matters has an affordable and effective program to help get you started.

Creation Matters, the environmental working group of the Anglican Church of Canada, is partnering with Greening Sacred Spaces, a service offered through Faith & the Common Good, to offer Green Building Audits.

If you are not yet convinced that you should take a green audit, there is a Greening Sacred Spaces youtube channel where you can listen to an imam – who sounds uncannily like a common or garden Anglican bishop – explain that mankind’s problems are all caused by our failing to live in harmony with nature; that, he tells us, is the central message of all “sacred” texts. He didn’t get around to singing “All you Need is Love”, but I know he wanted to.

If Anglicans won’t listen to an imam, who will they listen to?