This is going on at the end of my street, at the corner of Dublin and North Street.
St. Theresa’s Church is being demolished.
It is quite a spectacle. It went down very fast. These are some pictures from this week.
News reports say that the Archdiocese of Halifax and Yarmouth plans to turn the site into an affordable housing complex, pending municipal approval.
I think I was only in the building once or twice. But I know it has been a huge presence in the community – at Oxford School, where my kids all attended, and in my immediate neighbourhood for nearly a hundred years. I would watch people file by our house on Saturday afternoons for five o’clock mass. And countless funerals.
Now, I have never been one who has been attached to buildings, even in the houses I have lived in. And I have learned to live with change, however painful. And I’m not a big fan of the Roman Catholic church as an insititution. But I do know many faithful folks for whom that is their faith, and I worked closely with sisters and lay people in that tradition when I was a Chaplain at the MSVU. And I married into a faithful Roman Catholic family.
And for those folks, I can imagine that it is very painful to see part of the community’s history being literally obliterated. It is a stark symbol of the non permanence of life. And perhaps even a symbol of what is happening to the church around the world.
I speak often of the authors that keep me grounded and even hopeful in these challenging times. Anne Lamott has grounded me and given me hope for over 30 years. Following are excerpts from a column she wrote on substack on Nadia Bolz Weber’s page. You can read the whole things at:
Anne Lamott - Trust and Surrender
“Brothers and sisters, here we are, clueless about what the future holds but knowing who holds the future. I wonder if it would be so much skin off Their divine nose to let us know how everything is going to shake down, so that we can make advantageous plans.
But noooo, this is not the system.
The system is that one some days God’s will unspools in in the ways of a surrealist, non-linear movie director, with PMS.
Other days, we feel hilariously abundant love and grace, grace as spiritual W-D 40 that against all odds, and I mean ALL odds, pokes its thin red straw into our darkest and most clenched spaces, and offers release. (Cold dead hands, in my case.) (I heard in early recovery that everything we let go of has claw marks on it.) …
…Trust and surrender. Hmmm. Left to my own devices, I am more about praying for God’s will, but then adding in a number of my always-excellent thoughts on how things should shake down. I know God rolls Their eyes gently and smiles. God’s name for me is Beloved. So, just for today, I pray trust and surrender, I pray not to be such an asshole, I pray gratitude, I pray thankyouthankyouthankyou sweet gentle shepherd; and I pray Make me ever caring and available to the needs of the poor. Amen.”
This week is the last Sunday of the liturgical year, and then Advent starts. In some churches, it is called Reign of Christ Sunday. I call it Kin-dom of God Sunday, and we hear from the prophet Jeremiah that yes, as Anne Lamott says, there is a plan. But you don’t need to know what it is. In the meantime, do what you can to bring about the kin-dom of God.
There. That’s the sermon. You don’t need to come on Sunday. But we would love to see you anyway … and, there’s LOTS of other things going on that are way more important than my sermon.
Oh yeah … It’s Black Friday on November 28, where there are lots of sales on big items … or … as a counter protest, it’s also Buy Nothing Day. A small protest perhaps, but a statement to do things a bit differently … you can check it out online and find out more at
BUY NOTHING DAY - November 28, 2025 - National Today
And my experience is … the sales last into December.
Hope to see many of you at the Jingle Brunch tomorrow!
