Alumna and Visiting Scholar Produces Lenten Reflection

 The Rev. Alexa Gilmour Emm 1T1, a minister at Windermere United Church in Toronto, recently met with Shawn Kazubowski-Houston from the Centre for Religion and Its Contexts to discuss her Lenten reflection podcast, Contagious Hope.

“I wanted to inspire people, as we moved into the second wave [of the pandemic], to think creatively about how they might be called to lean into new ways of supporting each other. How do we use our gifts to make sure that no one is left behind? To make sure that we love our neighbour as ourselves?

As a church minister, I’ve seen how so many people felt a loss of control as well as the grief around the relationships that had been cut off from them; and the work that they were no longer able to do; and the physical places that they were no longer able to be in. There was a loss of control and a sense of not being able to do something about this that really grieved a lot of people.

My hope is that as we listen to the stories of the front lines, we can put our own lives into perspective. And we can hear once more the calling of our neighbour, and in that calling, the calling of God to us to become more than we thought we could."

Contagious Hope was created with assistance from the McGeachy Senior Scholarship, administered by the United Church of Canada Foundation. You can listen–and subscribe–to Gilmour’s Lenten reflections on Shining Waters Regional Council’s | do justice. the podcast website.

Watch the full interview with Gilmour: