For Lent this year, SJAG (the Cathedral’s Social Justice Action Group) proposes we select one of the 94 recommendations put forward by the Truth & Reconciliation Commission in their final report in 2015. They have winnowed these down to 10 possibilities… and invite you to vote on Sunday or to take part in this doodle poll to help choose one of them.

Whether you wish to learn more, to pray about this subject, or to attend public events in Montreal where this topic will be ‘front of mind,’ please do consider how you will act to be mindful of reconciliation this Lent.

You can read some of the background on the Anglican Church of Canada’s web site.

You can use these prayers for the Four Directions of Reconciliation, compiled from the prayer resources on that site.

You can attend one or more events in our community:

McGill’s Indigenous Studies program is offering a four-day series of events on Decolonialization,  February 9-12 including a public lecture at 9 am Friday Feb 12 on the McGill campus and other events in town and at Kahnewake. The visiting guest speaker/expert is Leanne Betasamosake Simpson. Here’s a link to her article http://decolonization.org/index.php/des/article/view/22170

On Saturday evening, Feb 27, a panel discussion on the Doctrine of Discovery (the notion that Europeans discovered this continent, and explored/settled an empty land) at St. John’s Estonian-Finnish Church  in NDG on Saturday February 27.  There is no fee or registration form. (Both the Lutheran and the Anglican churches have formally repudiated this doctrine, but others have not, and related work remains to be done.) The panelists will be Kenneth Deer, Secretary, Mohawk Nation at Kahnawake, Kanien’kehá:ka Raymond Aldred, head of the Indigenous Studies Program, Vancouver School of Theology, Cree; and Allen Jorgenson, Professor of Theology and Assistant Dean, Waterloo Lutheran Seminary, Kitchener-Waterloo, Settler.

On Saturday March 19 there’s an all day conference at McGill featuring many speakers, research, performance art, and a keynote by Leanne Betasamosake Simpson.