While it’s only June, I’d ask you to please mark your calendars for Nov. 24-25, when our diocese will be hosting celebrations to mark the 50th anniversary of the ordination of women to the priesthood in the Anglican Church of Canada. It’s an honor and privilege that our diocese is hosting this event and I am grateful to Jeannine Friesen, who stepped forward to put together the national committee to organise this event.
Registration for this event and more information, including the schedule and information about accommodation, is on our website. If you need financial assistance to attend, you can apply to the Education Trusts Committee.
Even if you’re not able to come to the whole event, I would very much encourage you to join in, in person or online, for the closing worship of the conference that will be held at 4 p.m. on Wednesday, Nov. 25. This eucharist service will have a coast-to-coast theme with Bishop Ann Martha Keenainak from Iqaluit serving as our celebrant and Kay Short, who serves at the cathedral in Corner Brook, Newfoundland, preaching.
We are having the service at 4 p.m. so that people from coast to coast to coast can join the livestream. I’ve already had messages from Sandra Fyfe, the bishop of Nova Scotia and PEI, about organising a watching party in her diocese. I hope that there might also be some watching parties in the outer edges of our diocese and some folk who travel to the cathedral to join us in person.
A quick google maps search suggests to me that if you were to draw a triangle from Victoria to Iqaluit to Corner Brook and then back across to Victoria that would be a total distance of about 10,000 km. The Anglican Church of Canada truly is vast and diverse, and it will be a privilege to host people from coast to coast to coast here in our diocese.
The format for the event will include four panels of four women, with each panel representing something of the diversity of women priests in our church. It will be a fascinating reflection on how the church has changed and continues to change and how God is always and everywhere doing a new thing in our midst.
I hope you will mark the dates and consider joining us in person for this milestone event.
