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This is a translated excerpt from a letter written in German to Ingrid's friends in Germany. The Reverend Scott Gould, rector of St. Helen's was kind enough to share it with the Diocese.

We blessed the bees after Palm Sunday Service in the garden - we had cocoons, which Dick and Jillian Scarth, the bee-tending couple, with their earth-lived-in hands marked by sun and soul, had bred and tended over the winter in the big church-fridge “not to mistake for rice crispies”, he had added with a smile when he set the cocoon eggs into the milk cartons behind paper rolls which the youth and children had rolled.

All of the cartons were put together into the wooden shelves and installed ceremonially into a shelf-made bees nest above our church flowers. The blessing we prayed made me think of Anam Cara, of Creation Spirituality, of Celtic Life of all things good in God's eyes and I wept before the sacred moment. We sang. The children glowed in pride over their new bees'tribe, a tribe without a queen as to bypass the aggressive instinct to sting, the beekeeper said. A learning and metaphor itself about less hierarchical structures breeding less aggression and therefore making ways for peace while fostering cross- pollination for the flowering and sweetness of the world. So much from the now bee-inhabited garden at St Helen’s Anglican Church, Vancouver! This whole business about bees is so key too, for they are a dying breed, the bees, and the effect that has on the planet is very sad, unthinkable in a way - so this felt like a cosmic event, even on a smaller scale. The kids eyes were bigger than the world when we put up milk carton after milk carton with clapping and singing.

Love and Easter Blessings in and for your own bee garden in your family, your house, your heart.

Ingrid Hauss
April 2014

The Blessing of Bees:
Bless these Mason bees and this nest O Lord and preserve them from all ills. Let your blessing descend upon bee and blossom, O Lord, that flower, tree, and shrub may be fruitful and multiply so that in beauty and abundance your whole creation blooms in praise of Father, Son, and Holy Spirit. Amen