Around Town: Women’s Memorial March, Festival Prayer, Smoking Rock . . .

The Women’s Memorial March begins at noon February 14.

Anglicans – and probably many Christians of all stripes – will participate in the 27th annual Women’s Memorial March next Tuesday (March 14). Writing on the Diocese of New Westminster website, Rev. Laurel Dykstra invited fellow Anglicans to join the march:

For years many Anglicans have prayed, organized and acted as part of this grassroots-led gathering of mourning and resistance. This year many of us will join together and walk as a group. Anglicans will gather on the steps at St. James at 11:50 am and walk to Main and Hastings together. March starts at noon from Carnegie (Main and Hastings).

She quoted from the Women’s Memorial March website:

The first women’s memorial march was held in 1991 in response to the murder of a Coast Salish woman on Powell Street in Vancouver. Her name is not spoken today out of respect for the wishes of her family. Out of this sense of hopelessness and anger came an annual march on Valentine’s Day to express compassion, community and caring for all women in Vancouver’s Downtown Eastside, unceded Coast Salish Territories.

Twenty seven years later, the women’s memorial march continues to honour the lives of missing and murdered women and all women’s lives lost in the Downtown Eastside. Increasing deaths of many vulnerable women from the DTES still leave family, friends, loved ones and community members with an overwhelming sense of grief and loss. Indigenous women disproportionately continue to go missing or be murdered with minimal to no action to address these tragedies or the systemic nature of gendered violence, poverty, racism or colonialism. . . .

This event is organized and led by women in the DTES because women – especially Indigenous women – face physical, mental, emotional and spiritual violence on a daily basis. The February 14th Women’s Memorial March is an opportunity to come together to grieve the loss of our beloved sisters, remember the women who are still missing, and to dedicate ourselves to justice.

Go here for the full comment.

Prayer for Festival of Hope

There will be Prayer Walks leaving from Gate 10 of Rogers Arena on each of the next three Saturday mornings.

We are in the midst of 33 Days of Prayer for the Greater Vancouver Festival of Hope. The process began February 1 and will continue throughout the three-day finale March 3 – 5 at Rogers Arena.

Festival of Hope prayer team co-leaders Dave Carson and Bayo Adediran encourage people to follow the 33-day Prayer Guide. They say:

This 33-day Prayer Guide is a call to make February and early March 2017 a period of intercession for a mighty move of God throughout the Greater Vancouver area.

Carson and Adediran also welcome everyone to Prayer Walks on each of the next three Saturday mornings (February 11, 18, 25, 9:30 am) at Gate 10 of Rogers Arena.

There are also two final Christian Life & Witness Courses in preparation for the Festival of Hope, February 11 at Peoples Church in Surrey and February 15 at Kingsway Church in Burnaby.

Smoking Rock and Reading Scripture

Jacqueline Dewar of Jacob’s Well wrote Smoking Rock and Reading Scripture for Christ & Cascadia (posted February 2). Following is the introduction:

Drug addict. Homeless. Prostitute. Criminal. Have you ever used these terms to label someone? We often use these sorts of words to objectify and disenfranchise those already marginalized within our society. We inadvertently define them by their circumstance, taking the focus off the complexity of their personhood.

I work at Jacob’s Well, a parachurch organization in Vancouver’s Downtown Eastside. We engage in relational ministry and community development in a neighbourhood of so-called outcasts and misfits. We don’t offer programs or hand out sandwiches – there are plenty of other service providers in the neighbourhood doing that good work. Instead, we offer a chair at our meal table. We offer a knife and a cutting board in the kitchen while we work together to prepare dinner. We offer a community of belonging where people are welcomed and accepted as they are, warts and all. . . .

Go here for the full article.

Briefly noted

Ezra Kwizera was profiled in The Province recently. The article referred to his upcoming concert at Blue Frog Studios and his Urwego Arts and Music School, which he created in his native Rwanda.

Jason Byassee and Ross Lockhart, who both teach at Vancouver School of Theology, wrote Seminaries find homes in congregations for Christian Century: “Central to each of these experiments in theological education is the connection to a large – even enormous – congregation that has the resources and confidence to provide ministerial training.”

Herbert Tsang is a man of many talents. He is an associate professor of computing science at Trinity Western University and a professional conductor and president of Church Music Ministry of Canada, for starters. But he will also be leading a day-long seminar on Technology Through the Eyes of Faith at Carey Centre February 18. Should be interesting.

Faith Today has just posted a useful piece by John Pellowe, chief executive officer of the Canadian Council of Christian Charities: How a Canadian church can easily stay in the good books of the CRA.