Welcome to According to George - our seasonal newsletter to update you on parish life at St. George's!

-- Inside this Issue --

Lenten Message from Rev. Canon Jeannine Friesen

Meet our Interim Priest: Who's Jeannine?

Ash Wednesday Zoom Service

Lenten Prayer Walk

Wonderful Wednesdays

Prayer for Lent

Dear Friends,  

It is a delight to connect with you via “According to George”. Let me start by thanking you for the warm welcome I have received since being named as your Interim Priest-in-Charge. I need to thank your leadership team; particularly Gary, Joy, Lawrence and Vicky, for their patience and assistance as I find my way. I wish I could meet all of you in person but of utmost importance is that we keep each other safe during this pandemic.   I have already attended a meeting of the Prayer Shawl Group and one of the Cottage Groups. I started doing some pastoral visiting.

I have attended and chaired two Parish Council Meetings. Of course, all of this has been happening courtesy of Zoom. While Zoom is not perfect and certainly not preferable to meeting in person, it is, I think, a wonderful tool. We are gradually figuring out how to use the tool effectively. But all of this takes time. If you are someone who is struggling with Zoom, please reach out to the parish leadership and we will look for ways to help you make it a positive experience.  

17 February is Ash Wednesday this year, the beginning of the Season of Lent. Under the directive of our Bishop, Anna Greenwood-Lee, issued following the new COVID directive from Dr Bonnie Henry, we will not meet for public worship until at least 12 April. Knowing that, we need to be thinking of ways to make Lent meaningful and a time of growth while being distanced from one another and using Zoom for our communal worship. Bishop Anna writes:

“I know that it is deeply disappointing to once again be contemplating Easter apart from one another. We so long to be together in the Eucharistic feast. Instead, we are unwillingly united by our Eucharistic fast. It is an uncomfortable place to be. However, I feel that God is calling us to learn something about the importance of Eucharist and sacrament apophatically. I believe God is calling us, as the church, to spend this season being sacrament to one another by living out our baptismal promise to seek and serve Christ in all persons, loving our neighbours as ourselves.”

I invite you to think and pray about how you can” spend this season living out our baptismal promise to seek and serve Christ in all persons, loving our neighbours as ourselves.” What will that look like for you?

Throughout Lent, there will be a number of programs offered to help this time be one of growth and transformation. A book study, a Wonderful Wednesday series and a Prayer Walk practice (jointly with St Paul’s, Nanaimo) will be undertaken. There will be a service of the Word on Ash Wednesday and opportunities for worship during Holy Week. Please watch “Setting Sail” for more details.

I pray that we will have a holy Lent as we journey through this strange time together. Grace and Peace to you.  

The daughter of an air frame technician and homemaker, I was born in Saskatoon, SK but I spent most of my youth in the south eastern area of Ontario. My family lived predominantly in small towns and in rural areas when I was growing up. Early religious influences include a parish priest who was open to the questions and searching that I was doing as a teenager. He encouraged me to ask questions about my faith. I began to discern a calling to ordained ministry when I was only fifteen years old. At the time, women were just beginning to be ordained in the ACC and there were no ordained women in my home diocese. It never occurred to me that seeking ordination might be something that was not open to me. I have no doubt that the Women’s Liberation Movement, very active in my teen years, had a role to play in this. While my diocesan bishop at the time indicated he could not endorse me on as a postulant for the diocese, by the time I had finished my BA and was planning to apply for an MDiv program, a new bishop was elected, and he had already ordained women in another diocese. I became a postulant and was subsequently ordained both deacon and priest by him.

I graduated with a BA from Queen’s University in Kingston, ON and a Master of Divinity degree from Trinity College, The University of Toronto. While in Toronto, I met another Divinity student, Doug Friesen, who, unbeknownst to me at the time, would figure prominently in my life!

After completing my MDiv, I was ordained Deacon in June of 1985. For the next three years, I was Curate at St Peter’s Anglican Church in Brockville, ON. It was during this period of time that Doug, who had joined the Canadian Armed Forces as a Chaplain, and I met up in Ottawa for dinner and the rest, as the saying goes, is history. We were married in September of 1988.

As the spouse of a military member, I relocated often. As someone once commented, “your CV doesn’t look like that of a typical priest.” I have had Canonical residency in four dioceses; Ontario, Calgary, Edmonton and British Columbia. I worked as Interim Priest in parishes in Medicine Hat, AB, Cold Lake, AB and here in View Royal. From 2009-19 I was a Canadian Armed Forces Chaplain. I worked predominantly with the Royal Canadian Navy here in Esquimalt. I sailed with HMCS PROTECTEUR, OTTAWA, and CALGARY on exercises and missions. Following the engine room fire on PROTECTEUR in 2014, I flew to Honolulu to meet the ship when she was tugged back into Pearl Harbor to support the embarked chaplain and the crew. It was an intense and challenging time. I released from the military at the rank of Lieutenant Commander.  

After many years of moving, Doug and I are enjoying settling into our home in Victoria and establishing ourselves as Honorary Assistants and parishioners at Christ Church Cathedral. We are planning to travel extensively once we are able to do such things again. We have two children in their twenties who are studying at the University of Toronto and continue to bring us a lot of joy. I look forward to seeing where God might call me at this stage of my life and I am delighted that I am able to spend some of that time with St George’s.    

Join us for our online Ash Wednesday service. It will be a Service of the Word style service at 7pm on February 17. 

Preacher: Rev. Canon Peter Parker

Presider: Rev. Canon Jeannine Friesen

Click here for the Order of Worship

Click here for the Ash Wednesday Zoom link 

To join by telephone....

1. Call 1 (778) 907-2071

2. It will ask for the Meeting ID: 973 9970 0798

3. If it asks for participant ID: enter #

4. You will be connected to the worship service via your phone! 

Beginning on Ash Wednesday until Palm Sunday, you are invited to start a daily spiritual practice of walking while you pray.  This can be done individually or with another person (while maintaining safe distancing of course!).  Each day choose a route and an amount of time that you are able and willing to walk.

Journal/Reflection Guide

A few options will be offered to use this guide. There will be a full work booklet available for pick up at the parish office, or you can choose to download/print a smaller version that you can use along side a notebook or journal you have at home. The booklet/guide is available to download at the red button link below!

Wonderful Wednesdays

An online educational forum open to all.

Wednesday, February 24 at 10am

Any monetary donation that you provide helps go towards honoraria for our valued speakers throughout the WW series. To make a donation towards Wonderful Wednesdays, you can do so by dropping off/mailing a cheque or cash to St. George's, or you can donate online with a credit card by clicking here (there will be a drop down option called "Wonderful Wednesdays" to choose from). Contact the Church Office with any questions.

Registration

Registration is required for this event in order to be sent the Zoom link. If you are planning to call into the Zoom session to listen to the speaker, please call the Church Office at: 250-472-2090.

Registration deadline for this event is 9am the morning of the event.

To register for Maryse Neilson, click here.

To register for Rev. Canon Dr. Martin Brokenleg, click here.

To register for Mary-Clare Carder, click here.

To register for Bishop Anna Greenwood-Lee, click here. 

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Photo by Terry Vlisidis on Unsplash

If you would like to contact us about anything you saw in this issue, please call or email:

admin@stgeorgecadborobay.ca

250-472-2090