Celebration Minute: 2019 06 09
Good Morning. This is the third in a series of monthly Affirming Minutes in celebration of the 20th Anniversary of Sydenham Street United Church becoming an Affirming Congregation. We invite all our friends to share in the celebration by hearing some stories.
You may remember from Marylil’s Affirming minute in April that a committee from Sydenham Street attended a service at MCC (Metropolitan Community Church) held in the chapel one Sunday evening. For me, that was pretty scary! It’s like – really, do they want to see what we look like up close? Well, I’m here to tell you it went okay and we survived.
One of my jobs on Sunday evening was to make sure we had hymnals if there was a minister speaking from the United Church. So I would sneak in one of the side doors of the sanctuary to get books. At 7 o’clock in the evening, you never knew what it would look like in there . . . (there being here). So one evening, in I go. I turn around and look up toward the front of the church and all I could think to myself was “wow”. The lighting from the sun was over top of the choir pews. The rest was a great shadow. I stood there in awe thinking someday I would worship here in the big church.
It is hard to describe what this place means to me. Although it didn’t happen right away, we did get in the door. And the first person to greet us as we sat down was Winn McKnight.
For Rosemary and myself and other LGBT folks, this is a safe place – the Pride flag confirms that. Even bigger than that, we are accepted, no questions asked.
In closing, something remains very much in my memory. We were having an Affirm meeting and pot luck after church and one of the ladies came up to me and asked if she could come too. Of course, the answer was yes. The Affirm group consisted of about 9 and there were 25 at that pot luck . . . and every one after that.