February 18, 2026

Dear Friends in Christ,

In January 2005, the CBC named “Imagine” the greatest song in the past 100 years. This beautiful song explores many themes, including the hopes and dreams of the world: 

Imagine all the people, living for today. Imagine there's no countries, it isn't hard to do. Imagine all the people, living life in peace, you may say I'm a dreamer, but I'm not the only one. I hope someday you'll join us, and the world will be as one.

Lennon’s imagination can be a guide for this season of Lent. It can be a work of imagination that helps us focus on God’s call to us as a people of faith. 

Lent often begins in the ache, the questions, and the tension between love and loss. It does not always rush toward resolution or reconciliation. Still, it invites us to slow down, to turn with honesty, and to journey with Jesus through wilderness, wildness, confrontation, and the cross. Each Lenten season, we are called to make a “sacred turning” toward openness to the journey and to how Lent can transform our lives. 

Each year, I encourage our parish community to make every effort to attend Holy Week Services—I do the same this year. And as we do, along the way, we listen to voices from the margins, learn from stories of resistance and renewal, and remember that God meets us not always in strength, but in a relationship with Jesus.

This is the work of imagination: to envision a world remade by mercy, to trust that healing is possible even in the shadow of empire, and to practice love that outlasts despair. Lent calls us into this holy labour, this important work—not as a solitary act, but as a path toward transformation, and the revealing of God’s love to the world.

Faithfully yours in Christ,

The Rev. Dr. Kyle Wagner, Rector
Christ Church, Dartmouth
Diocese of Nova Scotia and PEI