Dear People, Neighbours, and Friends of St. Thomas’s,

Does anyone have a sombrero I can borrow? Or maybe I should invest in my own. Where can a guy get an inexpensive yet quality sombrero in Canada?

A traditional full sombrero is made out of felt and often intricately embroidered.

Cinco de Mayo is coming up soon, after all. (Purely coincidentally, Cinco de Mayo this year falls on May 5th.) And I’m particularly excited about it, not only because it lands on a “Taco Tuesday,” but also because of two festive meetings I’m looking forward to attending that day (three, if you count our weekly staff meeting, which is always a party; just ask Christine or Elizabeth or Eli or Fr. Micah).

The first special meeting on Cinco de Mayo is with diocesan staff to discuss what we need to do to get ready to go before the Risk & Governance Committee, which sounds like a group that would appreciate a good sombrero. (Or is that too risky?) R&G works with the Finance Committee to advise Synod Council on proposals that come before it. In this instance, council will soon be presented with the case for a diocesan line of credit that will ensure that St. T’s can pay our construction invoices without delay as they are presented in 2027. We will be spending millions of dollars on the Cornerstone Project in 2027, after all, and we already know that while we will have a few million dollars in the bank by then, many of our generous supporters have made multi-year pledges, so even after the entire project has been funded on paper, it will still require some sort of bridge financing to complete the project on time. We can’t wait until we get all the cash in hand first, because construction costs rise every year we delay. And we don’t want to go to a commercial lender, which is why this meeting on Cinco de Mayo with diocesan representatives is so important.

The second meeting that day (third if you count the staff meeting) is our monthly Corporation meeting, namely, the Rector, Churchwardens, and Treasurer, who constitute the official governing body of the parish in between sessions of the Vestry, which consists of all voting members of the parish. Vestry normally only meets once a year, unless there’s something special to decide in between annual meetings that Corporation is not authorized to decide on its own.

As a member of Corporation, I’m in charge of spiritual matters while the wardens are in charge of temporal matters, and our treasurer, Tim, keeps track of how our faithful stewardship impacts both.

Wouldn’t it be great if our treasurer and churchwardens wore sombreros to Corporation that day, as well? Not that we need to look like a Mariachi band—though that would be super cool (obviously)—but so that we can remember that our job is to keep St. Thomas’s going as a perpetual fiesta, which is not only a party, but a feast: a feast of Our Lord.

Corporation 2026. Pictured from left to right: Rector’s Warden, Matt Aggus, Deputy People’s Warden, Andrew Smith, People’s Warden, Kevin Blagrave, and yours truly. (Not pictured: photographer Jessica Nee, Deputy Rector’s Warden.)

When representatives from Corporation and our Cornerstone leadership team met with the Bishop and his team last year, I brought along a pair of castanets with the diocese’s “Cast the Net” logo on them. I should pull those out when I don my sombrero on Cinco de Mayo.

You may want to invest in a sombrero yourself for the occasion. Wear it in prayerful solidarity with your leadership team as we sing our way through the festive atmospheres of the Risk & Governance Committee, Finance Committee, and Synod Council. Our next stop on this circuit party—this moveable fiesta—will be a Special Vestry meeting that’s yet to be scheduled, at which we will be asked to give final approval to the Cornerstone Project as we go to tender. That fiesta of governance probably won’t take place until after we return from our cottages and summer vacation travel. God willing, for those of us sticking close to home this summer, it will be the last July and August we’re forced to spend in our brick oven of a church without any relief, so that by the time the summer of 2027 rolls around, we will have a much cooler church to enjoy. And that will be something worth partying about.

Yours in Christ’s service,

I Need a Sombrero

For Phylicia: So Long, Farewell…