Our Stories
Loving our outdoor spaces
During the pandemic, we used a full-grown Linden as a prayer tree. (Neighbours adding prayer ribbons).
We still use her (yes, we call her Linden, she/her)!
We created a labyrinth on the north lawn in front of the church. It has been used by neighbours, acts as a calm gathering spot before and after funerals. We held outdoor worship on it during the pandemic, when we were not permitted to be inside.
We’d been growing vegetables, and annual pollinator plants in two raised beds, since 2015. In 2023 we converted this space to partner with the local Food Bank to become a crop-grower for organic fresh produce for the food bank (lettuce, arugula, kale, squash, tomatoes, peppers, peas, beans). This partnership brings together volunteers from within the congregation, a professional garden team, and volunteers from the neighbourhood.
A rockery had become unsafe and unsightly, and one of the lawns would constantly cause flooding in our basement during Quebec thunderstorms. Both areas were re-landscaped, creating a rain garden (which has stopped the flooding by taking the water away from the building, replacing the lawn with creeping thyme. And in 2022 we began our “Healing Garden”, in which we are mixing indigenous-to-the-region plantings, and plants known for their healing or nourishing properties, including three sisterscorn/squash beans.
Linden began holding our prayers in the summer of 2020.
Our community—and the world—was several months into the COVID-19 pandemic, and the isolation and separation was becoming difficult. During a meeting on Zoom, the staff wrestled with how to create a sense of belonging, and how to enable people to connect and express their prayers, in a COVID-safe way.
The Community Prayer Tree idea emerged from that conversation.
By July 2020, we’d hung cut strips of ribbons from a large ribbon wrapped around the trunk of the towering linden tree on the front lawn of our church grounds. A clipboard explained the premise to anyone from the neighbourhood who might choose to stop by, and a pen hung from another ribbon. We shared this new development with our neighbourhood by social media and during worship livestream.
What would the neighbourhood response be? This was our question.
As it turns out, the Community Prayer Tree become a beacon of hope and resilience during what was a very difficult and isolation time. Over the weeks and months that followed, the branches held more and ribbons and the supply had to be replaced again and again. When the wind blew and caught the ribbons, the tree seemed to dance. It was beautiful.
We only gave Linden a name when we began our Vacation Creation Camp this summer (2023). As part of this metaphor on summer camp, the campers are Creation and the counsellors are the humans. For this summer, then, it made sense to name the Community Prayer Tree, Linden. And it has stuck.
