Calling, Community, and Confession | Trinity Talks Podcast

Thank you for joining me.

Well thank you, I feel very welcome.

Yes, you're just going from one thing to the next,

to the next here.

Never a dull moment at Trinity.

You actually joined us last year

for one Sunday in the summer.

We were just at one service at that point.

And then now you get to do two.

So that's right.

It's a real pleasure to be here.

Rob and I worked together briefly at a previous parish.

So it's always a good day when he reaches out

and says, is there any chance you could come

when I'm away?

I'm happy to do that.

It was a pleasure to have you for the sermon

and to lead the service.

Certainly if you missed the sermon

that Sandra shared with us,

make sure to find it on YouTube

or even just stay tuned for our next live stream service

where you're going to hear it again.

Cause it was a wonderful, very insightful message.

Now Sandra, as you know,

we have been working through a sermon series

all summer long about the book of Psalms,

which we are really trying to uphold as the Bible's songbook.

So yeah, we're calling the sermon series

actually summer playlist.

So I wanted to start the questions off

with a tough one for you.

What is on your summer playlist this summer?

Well, that's a fun question to start with.

It is.

I'm going to tell you what I listened to on my way here

and then maybe a couple others.

I was listening to an album called Deep Magic

by John Mark McMillan.

The album was released last fall.

A couple of other albums though that are on my list this summer.

There was a Bruce Coburn one released not too long ago,

Oh Sun, Oh Moon,

or might have that backwards, maybe Oh Moon, Oh Sun,

but that one.

And then there's Mike Janssen's Volume Three,

which was also released in the last year.

So all three of those kind of cycle in depending on

how contemplative I am

or how much I need a bit of energy to get the one.

Excellent. All right, perfect.

Make sure to check those out

and listen to those on your Spotify, everyone.

But for those of us who don't know you that well,

we are only here really once a year at this rate.

Could you just tell us a little bit about yourself?

Sure.

Well, I live in Toronto, as you mentioned.

I live with my husband and we've been married 26 years

and we have what we call an open nest in our house at this time.

Our two kids are ones going into university

and ones in third year.

So they kind of come in and out a little bit of our house.

They're not completely gone.

Certain semesters they're home, that sort of thing.

So and we really enjoy the city that we live in.

We've been here now,

lived in different places through our lives.

We moved back to the Toronto area in about 2016.

Okay.

And what else do you probably want to know about me?

I'm ordained Anglican minister.

I'm also trained in social work.

So my current occupation is actually to work at a nonprofit

using those blended skills

of both social work administration and ordained leadership.

And then other kind of fun things.

I still like to play ice hockey.

I'm in a over 35 women's league and I love tea.

Okay. Wonderful.

All right.

So you mentioned that you lived in different places.

So where are some of those places?

In our 26 years together,

my husband and I have lived in a couple of different places.

About 15 years in the States in a couple of different spots.

I actually did my seminary down there.

We lived in New York city

or the outskirts of that about 10 years.

We spent two years in Chennai, India.

And I think that's sort of the quick summary of it.

Wow. Wonderful. All right. And here you are.

Well, so you did mention you're an ordained minister.

What led you?

I'm wondering to that calling because it is a calling.

It is a calling.

And you know, I could probably spend several hours

talking through the nuances of that.

But I guess I want to start by saying,

if someone's watching this and wondering,

then it's good to listen to those nudgings.

So I'm a person who God speaks to in different ways.

But when God speaks through my gut,

then I listen really carefully because I sense it

and then I need to sort it out.

So that's what happened back in 2001,

which is quite a long time ago now.

But it actually took eight years

from that first sensing to ordination.

So that's why it's quite a long story.

OK.

I was already in a church community.

I was already connected into a rescue mission at the time.

We were living in New York City.

So I began to explore what that might mean

by trying different ministries at the church.

Took about a year, almost a year and a half

before I even talked to my pastor.

Because before that I tried things.

I took a course.

I sort of went into my head a little bit

to try to talk myself out of it.

But it just didn't go away.

And so I began those conversations in prayer.

So if someone's watching this and they're like,

I wonder if I'm supposed to do something more in ministry.

Yes, step into something.

Talk to people who are doing the something

that you're wondering about.

And then have accountability and start praying with folks.

In the process I went through, there was actually a committee,

like a whole group set up in the parish that

walked with me through a whole year

to ask all kinds of questions before we even

went to the diocese.

So it was quite a slow process, which is good.

Because I think for the first five years of it,

I thought maybe God just wanted me to do the process.

That it wasn't actually about the ordination,

but actually just about getting closer to God.

And it is that.

And it still stays that.

But the end result of being ordained was in his plan.

And so that's how I'm here today.

It'll be 15 years this fall.

That's a wonderful story.

Thank you for that.

Thank you for that.

I hear so much patience and the importance of community

and prayer, and then just being faithful to those nudging.

Yeah, I mean, ordination isn't something

you do in isolation, right?

If God's calling you, God's calling you

to serve with others and in community with others

and for the world itself.

So it's something that should be discerned collectively.

Which I think those things that you just mentioned

are also present in the nonprofit work that you do, right?

I believe it's the Young Street Mission that you work at right now.

So could you tell us a little bit about what that role is?

And maybe even a little bit about the Young Street Mission

itself.

Yeah, the Young Street Mission has been in Toronto

and serving the city for over 125 years.

Started in the late 1800s.

It was started by Baptist pastor.

And it's a place that's always been about blending hope

and bread.

So there's always physical sustenance

and the believing in people until they believe in themselves.

The focus is to both alleviate poverty and eradicate poverty.

So our programming and services run the gamut from daycare,

food bank, all the way to some system change work,

some community work, working with the city

on some of their poverty alleviation strategies.

It's quite a range.

OK.

We've got a couple of locations.

One in the east side of Toronto, one used to be on Young Street,

but it's moved over to Spadina, hence the name.

OK.

That center is focused more on youth.

So there we have employment programs, health.

We actually have a free dental clinic, health clinic.

So shout out to anybody whose medical provider wants

to volunteer, always looking for volunteers.

OK.

We even have a church that meets for those who feel they can't.

We're welcome in other communities,

meets on Sunday afternoon.

So quite a range of things that happen there at Young Street

Mission, all with this hope to help people move from surviving

to thriving in the full sense of that word

as we were made it by God and created in God's image

so that we can live into that goodness that God has for us.

What a great mission.

That's wonderful.

One thing that we love here at Trinity is stories.

We really appreciate the power of storytelling.

Do you have any stories from the Young Street Mission

that you've seen as maybe stories of success

or as stories of thriving that you've seen?

Yeah.

I mean, I'll give you sort of little anecdotes.

The long stories where there's a dramatic change are ones

that usually take a couple of years.

But for example, on Friday, we had a carnival celebrating

our camp, just like you have a camp here.

We have a camp that runs in the summertime.

And it was open to the members of that camp, to the food bank,

to whoever was part of our community to bring their children.

And there was one woman who came brought by a friend.

And she found me because I was wearing my lanyard

and almost everyone else had matching t-shirts.

So I didn't have the matching t-shirt.

So I wore the lanyard.

Get Sandra a t-shirt.

Yeah.

I don't need a summer camp t-shirt.

But anyway, I wore the lanyard.

She came to me because she saw, oh, this person works here.

And she said, this is good.

I want my child to start the classes.

And so that small event, which was intended for fun,

created enough safety and broke down social isolation

so that she now trusts us with her child.

Even just that gives you the kind of sense

of how we look at success, which

means that her child will get that extra computer literacy

training if that child happens to be in grade four or five

and completes the courses.

They'll get a computer so that they are better equipped

for their elementary education.

Because she came to a carnival and saw what was happening.

So there's just a story from Friday.

We have stories like that that come out of our health center

and stories that come out of our counseling.

But that's a snippet from just this week.

That's a great story.

That's a great story.

And I'm sure just one small glimmer

of all the work that's done there.

So I'm just going to shift gears a little bit to what we were

really doing today here at Trinity, which was reading

and then reflecting on the Psalms.

And you reflected on Psalm 51.

But I'm wondering if you personally

have any favorite Psalms, or how do you experience them,

or how have you experienced the Psalms in the past?

Yeah, I mean, so I'll try to answer that in a couple of ways.

Like formally, as someone who is trained in the Anglican

Church, our daily office, which maybe you kind of turn most

people not familiar with, it's sort of the daily readings

that are scheduled for you if you want to participate in them.

So if you're not sure how to read the Bible,

there's actually a plan.

Like you don't have to make it up.

You don't have to click on an app and be like, ah,

which one looks good to me today?

No, there's a plan that'll get you through the scripture

in about three years.

That office has Psalms embedded in it.

So if you're reading that regularly,

you're hearing the Psalms.

That's one way I've interacted with it kind of just devotionally.

But I would say from a personal point of view,

my husband and I engraved Psalm 343 on our wedding bands.

And so that I would have to probably pick.

Can't pick a different one.

That is got to be written.

It's right there on the ring.

Let us exalt the Lord together.

Come, let us exalt the Lord together.

But it's not just a Psalm about being together

and kind of keeping our focus on God.

If you read that rest of that Psalm,

there's a whole section in there about God

hearing the cry of the poor.

There's a section about how in response to that,

we are called to seek peace and pursue it.

So it's quite a rich Psalm.

It's not just about what happens on a Sunday.

And both my husband and I have our lives and our callings

are in service.

So he works internationally.

And I've always been working domestically.

So it resonates with both of us, both in terms

of how we want to be together, but also how we want to be

in the world.

OK.

And how God hears the world.

Like, we do that work knowing that God's in front of us.

Excellent.

I love that.

Thank you.

I did not expect you to have it written right there

in your ring.

So what a great answer.

Yeah, you know what?

I thought about trying to take it off,

but it doesn't come off so easily.

I'm sitting like, it's like, it's like, it's a bit stong.

It might also not show up well on the camera.

Yeah, yeah, yeah.

So it's like, yeah, it's engraved inside.

I love that.

That's wonderful.

And now we're going to talk about another topic, which

I must say is probably not a hot topic that

comes up in daily conversation.

That's a conversation of confession.

We don't usually just start talking about confession.

However, it is an important part of our belief,

an important part of our faith.

So I'm wondering if you could just

share with us a little bit more about maybe

your personal belief on the importance

of the practice of confession.

Yeah, well, when Rob asked me to come this morning

and take a service, it wasn't until a little bit later

that I found out what the topic was.

He roped you in first.

Yeah, he roped me in first and then said, by the way,

we're looking at Psalm 51.

And I was like, oh, great.

Confession isn't something we do talk about too much.

I think in our society, we see apology maybe as exactly

the same as confession.

So hopefully one of the things that

can come out if you listen to that sermon

is how kind of relational apologies aren't

the same thing as confession.

Not to say we shouldn't be apologizing and continuing

to try to be in right relationship with one another.

But biblical confession is really about keeping

our relationship right with God and recognizing where we may

have gotten it wrong with ourselves, with our neighbors,

and the world.

But it is fundamentally not just a transactional experience.

It's a relational one that leads into other steps

that allows us to live into the grace that God gives us.

So the why is really that it's kind of like a foundational block

of truth and honesty.

And it's the way we express that to God.

The how is where people get a little bit, I think, caught up.

So I mean, I wouldn't mind talking.

I didn't get into that in the sermon

because we're really looking at that scripture.

But there are maybe a couple of things

to help people see on the how.

Sure.

It's a good time to talk about it.

Absolutely.

OK, we do.

So just kind of from a practical way,

if you are already someone who prays,

then the Lord's Prayer, which is the sort of most famous prayer

of Jesus, has a line in it that actually says,

forgive us our sins or trespasses,

depending on which or debts, depending on which translation

you have.

So right there, there's a chance.

So right there, if that's something that's

already part of your practice, you can just pause.

Instead of just kind of rushing through it,

just pause at that line and reflect on,

since the last time you said that prayer,

is there anything specific that God might bring to mind?

So that's something we can do on a daily.

On the weekly, if you're coming to church,

then it's usually embedded in a service,

whether it's this church or others,

confession is usually embedded in that actual liturgical

practice.

On a more monthly basis, so I typically

encourage people to be in some kind of accountability group.

It's a Bible study.

Maybe you're going to be in banter or something

somewhere where you can have people that you can talk to truthfully.

And so there it's not quite as formal,

but even in that Psalm we heard today, the beginning of it,

it's like it's a public acknowledgement.

So just telling God sometimes doesn't

root it in the same way as you're

able to when you have someone you can trust to say, listen,

I've said this to God.

I'm saying it to you because I need you to help me not

keep the pattern up.

So that accountability, some kind of accountability,

Bible study, that kind of thing.

And then on a yearly basis, there's like Lent.

So in this church tradition, usually the 40 days before Easter,

there's a space to really do that collectively as a community.

And if all of that, you're like, gosh, I'm still holding a lot.

Our church, this one and others actually

have liturgical services that's called reconciliation.

And you can ask for that.

You can call someone at the church office

and say, you know what, I actually

feel I need to talk about something specific.

I'd like to have a service of reconciliation.

And it's a sort of formal way of doing it.

And for those of us who are ordained, at least in my diocese

when I went through, it was required

to do a whole life confession before you got ordained

with this thought that it's a new beginning, a new start.

And so it used that format that's in everybody's prayer book

if you're Anglican.

But then we just adjusted a little part of it.

So there's lots of ways embedded in how we already

live our lives that we can just kind of pause or add to incorporate

this just a little bit more so that we're not just like,

you get to the end of the day and can't

remember what happened in the morning.

Yep, that happens.

It can happen, right?

So, so busy.

So, so I love that.

Those practices can help.

A daily, a weekly, monthly, and yearly.

There you go.

And then the practice of reconciliation.

As needed.

As needed.

Yeah, thank you very much.

I think that's something that helps all personally.

And I think probably for many of us who are listening as well.

So that's, that's great.

Very wise and very practical as well.

So before we wrap up, I'm just wondering what the rest of your

summer is going to look like.

We still have a couple of weeks left.

Do you have any summer plans, Sandra?

Well, you know, this is a time of transition

if you're a university student.

So the next couple of weeks is all about us supporting our kids.

Yes.

Our daughter heads off a little bit early.

Her school starts in mid-August.

So next week we're off to drop her off there.

And then my son, who's been studying abroad this summer,

comes back.

So we welcome him back into the household.

So I think that for me, the peace is going to come,

or the pause that some people put in their summers.

That's going to come for me in September once

their cell back in its green.

Going back to that open nest.

That open nesting that in and out.

So the next couple of weeks are just about those transitions.

Well, best of luck to them and best of luck to you

through those transitions.

Thank you.

And thank you again just for this conversation.

And we'll see you just in a few moments

when we begin our 11-15 service.

Thanks, Andrews, to be there.