the old bill

cross-prairie journal

day 1:

Heading halfway across the country today [June 30] with my daughter Alison , who has just returned from New Zealand, on a quest to connect with my other daughter Kristin at Lake Louise - after a couple of months in Vancouver and points west.  Left at 6:00 am. Best momentwas driving through Saskatchewan, heading West, on Highway 1 and looking over to the eastbound lanes where the RCMP had set up a bale of hay on the shoulder of the highway, then hidden their cruiser car behind it - they were just poking their heads out a wee bit with their radar gun.  Neither of us could stop laughing.  Only in Saskatchewan would folk assume that no one would notice a big bale of hay suddenly sitting on the shoulder of the road. 

day 2:  crossing canada on canada day

What could be better:  leaving Lake Louise just after dawn, driving through the rockies as the fog begins to burn off, sun blazing through at the tops of mountains, driving down through ranch country, picking up a case of nanton water, and then heading across the prairies. .   .    

Driving across this country makes one appreciate not only its beauty but its sheer volume, the volume of possibilities.  It also leads one to think about the politics of the place, and the politics of our neighbours who will be celebrating their national holiday in a few days,  how a nation that once stood so passionately for human rights and democracy, now readily accepts their leadership's position that one group of people, Muslims mostly,  have no human rights.  Not even the rights of POWs.  Basic rights exist by virtue of simply being human , therefore those in the camps are not human.   We've seen it before.  Jews are vermin.  Tutsi cockroaches.  It is characteristic of evil to deny the essential humanity of people.  Why is the American church so silent on this?  More frightening, they have become supporters .  Yet we know this too - Hitler’s anti-semitism had its roots in the church.  What will it be like on July 4 for the apparent minority who question all of this?

Nothing but blue sky and a few puffy white clouds, slightly rolling hills, as we enter Saskatchewan.  The remarkable sound of my daughters reconnecting.  In villages and towns folk are having picnics.  There’ll be fireworks tonight.  It’s so beautiful out here.

dancing bolsheviks

Went to see  Strike.   The strike was such an important part of our social history it's great to see it celebrated/honoured in some fashion.  One of my favourite bits of history was the arrest of the Rev. J.S. Woodsworth, on the charge of seditious libel for quoting these scripture passages in the strike newspaper: 

Woe to the legislators or unrighteous laws, to those who issue tyrannical decrees,  who refuse justice to the unfortunate and take away the rights of poor people and prey upon widows and rob orphans, [Isaiah 10:1-2] They [God's people]  shall build houses and inhabit them; and shall plant vineyards and eat their fruit. They shall not build for others to live in or plant so others can eat.  My people . . .  shall long enjoy the work of their hands.  [Isaiah 65:21-22]

A moment when the political powers of our age  recognized the Bible for being the seditious document that it is.  And it remains a very dangerous book.  The ideas of Jesus readily turn a person's thinking upside-down, and unless they are controlled somehow, can turn a social order upside down.  But even regular folk aren't so easily controlled after they encounter those ideas. 

Tommy & Kiefer: genetic decline?

With all thefuss about Kiefer Sutherland on the Walk of Fame, my mind drifted to his grandfather, Tommy Douglas  and wondered what he'd make of it all.  Tommy, the father of the Canadian medicare system,  premier of Saskatchewan, leader of the federal New Democratic Party, and a  Baptist preacher, was voted the Greatest Canadian of all time.  Here's a quote:

The measure of a nation's greatness does not lie in its conquests, or its Gross National Product, or the size of its gold reserve, or the height of its skyscrapers.  The real measureo f a nation is the quality of its national life, what it does for the least fortunate of its citizens and the opportunities it provides for youth to live useful and meaningful lives.  Equally important - what it does to share its affleunce with those people around the world who suffer from poverty and disease.

There was a time when Christians engaged in political change were seeking to reduce the distance between the rich and poor, a time in which the last shall be first and first shall be last, where in Mary's own words, God would fill the poor with good things while the rich are sent away empty-handed. What would Tommy say about Kiefer, about 24 Hours, its ready acceptance of torture, and  a nation that stood for freedom and human rights now justifying its own use of torture because, of course, the prisoners taken during the war are not prisoners of war.  They're bad guys.   Every so often a society reveals its true heart, though, and I think choosing Tommy as the greatest Canadian was such a moment.  Sometimes even in the shadowlands, the valuable stuff shines brighter than the tawdry.

to refuse to be a victim

A conversation this afternoon reminded me of words from long ago, by margaret atwood in surfacing:

this, above all else, to refuse to be a victim./I have to recant, give up the old belief  that I am powerless, and because of it cannot hurt anybody.

Italics added.  I may have slightly misquoted it [memory poor, getting worse] - but it was that wonderful turn at the end, that the illusion of our own powerlessness is that we are innocent and cannot hurt / be accountable for hurt. 

Would Focus on the Family correct Jesus?

For a long time I have been puzzled by the pro-family lobby, particularly when they start to talk about the Christian family - by which they mean the nuclear family.  It's not that I don't think family is a great thing.  I think it is, [most of the time anyways]. So great is it that I think everyone who is called to live in a family should be free to do so, and the laws should recognize them.  When family works it is astonishingly good.  I think as many Christian folk who want to can run around saying "We think the family is great, just peachy-keen, the greatest thing since not just slice bread but bread itself."  And they can add, "And we think God thinks so too"  It's just that we/they can't get there from Jesus.  The most you can say about Jesus is that he was ambivalent about family.  If he wasn't ambivalent then he was negative.  No matter how hard you try you can't make Jesus pro-family, not without lying to yourself and everyone else.   Take a look at the following:

1. With typical adolescent impertinence, perhaps, Jesus confronted by his parents for worrying them [by staying in Jerusalem] Jesus seems unconcerned and says “Why were you searching for me?  Didn’t you know I’d be about my Father’s business?’ [That’s gotta hurt poor old Joe, eh?] [Luke 2:47-49]
2. His family thought Jesus was ‘out of his mind’ and, accordingly, tried to control him [Mark3:20],
3. His own brothers didn’t believe in him [John 7:5]
4. Jesus says explicitly that he has not come to bring peace, but to bring family conflict at every level [Luke 12:51-53]
5. When someone expressed interest in following him but wanted first to say good-bye to his family, Jesus says doing this would make him ‘unfit for the kingdom of God’ [Luke 9:62]
6. He told his disciples that their own families would betray them, resulting directly in some of them getting killed. [Luke 21:15-17]
7. When told that his mother and brothers wanted to see him, but couldn’t because of the crowds, Jesus seems to almost disown his mother and brothers, saying his mother and brothers are those who hear God’s word and do it. [Mt. 12:46-48; Mark 3:31-34; Luke 8:18-21]
8. He promises those who have walked away from their own families to follow him, a multiplicity of [new] family members here on earth [Mt 19:28-29 and Mark 10:29-30]  In the similar Luke 18:28-30, Jesus says there is a clear reward for those who leave their wives, parents and children in order to follow him.
9. When a woman ecstatically shouts ‘Blessed is the mother who gave you birth and nursed you’ he retorts with ‘No! Blessed instead are those who do hear and do God’s will’ [Luke 11:26-28]
10. He tells us to not invite their family or friends to dinner, instead invite the poor [Luke 14:12]
11. Jesus teaches that we are not even supposed to call our fathers ‘father’, because God alone is our father.[Matthew 23:9]
12. Jesus specifically tells his followers that they must ‘hate’ their mothers, fathers, wives and children [Luke 14:26], stronger language than Matthew’s 'loving someone more than God' [Mt. 10:37]. 

I don't want to argue against family. Far from it, I believe in it. I am utterly committed to my call to be a husband/father/son.  I just get sick and tired of the so-called Christian Right doing all this talking about the so-called Christian family and totally leaving Jesus out of the picture.  He's got a lot to say about family, and we need to listen.  And one thing he is saying is don't idealize the thing, it's not for everyone.  Why even Paul, often cited by the pro-family lobby since they can't quote Jesus, says that the best thing is celibacy but since most people are too horny for that marriage/family is a good second best [I Cor 7].

What the pro-family groups are heralding is a cultural expression that they really, really like - and that's fine. I like it too. I just wish they'd stop putting Christian in the name, because it makes it sound like Jesus would agree with them.  And I can't find any evidence in the bible to support that.   

more [or less] on dominion

oh-oh. I'm already starting to question that last post.  At the time I wrote it I knew nothing about something called 'dominion theology' and its link to theocratic impulses in the usa.  Bob Moser's article is definitely chilling.  I remember when I was a very new Christian, 30 years ago, maybe more, hearing Corrie ten Boom [author of The Hiding Place] speak in Winnipeg.  During the Q&A at the end, someone asked her if she was afraid that Germany would ever drift back into fascism.  She said, no not Germany,  particularly, but she was afraid for America.  She saw so much in America that reminded her of pre-war Germany, a kind of arrogance of spirit, an overblown belief in themselves and their country - she was afraid that America might drift toward totalitarianism and fascism.  Her words have haunted me for decades.  Maybe with good reason.  Check out the Bush fish. 

reclaiming dominion

Dominion is an odd word. In Canada, it was a supermarket chain that went belly-up a few decades back.  But it's there in Genesis 1 along with subdue.  And these terms together have a pretty soiled history in terms of Western civilization's relationship with the environment.  Like many christians I suspect, I kinda wished it just wasn't there.  I've changed my mind, I think we need to reclaim these words, or at least the underlying concepts.

It started when I met with a friend, David, who asked me to help translate Genesis 1 into American Sign Language - and I realized how much more dynamic the first creation story is in ASL.  English relies heavily on nouns and often becomes passive, static.  For the concepts of 'dominion' and 'subdue', I used 'control' [sign comes from using the reins to control/steer a horse] together with the sign for 'boss':  God says 'ok, you are going to be boss now for this area. that means you're gonna be responsible'

God created 'hadam' [= male + female, humanity] and then said 'look at these ecosystems.  I'm gonna leave you in charge of them, okay?'  This is in keeping with the Jewish concept of election, of chosen-ness, which was to be given not a special privilege but a special responsibility.  So if God leaves hadam in charge for a while, then, at some point, God's gonna come back and say, 'Now, I left you in charge of those ecosystems that I love so much.  How'd you make out?. . .  I see. . . well, let's look at some specifics.  Let's start with the northern cod, I love those codfish, how'd you make out with them?  . . . I see  . . . Well, then how about the ozone, I worked hard on that ozone, how'd you do with the ozone?"  To be entrusted with management responsibilities is a trust, and at some point there comes an accounting, and the ones accountable are males and females. Us hadams.

Worship on Sunday morning centred around this theme, and the result was pretty powerful.  We compared it to being a parent, responsible for your children.  As a parent you simply make different choices, a multitude of small choices - to come home for dinner instead of staying longer at work, going to a recital or ball game instead of schmoozing at some opportuntity for self-advancement.  We do it because it's our responsibility to love those kids, to nurture them, help them grow.  And as parents we face the time of accounting, when our kids become adults, and we see how they engage the processes of living.  Our failures haunt us.  Our successes bring us peace.  It's not about the big stuff, so much as it is about a lifetime of small choices.  It's that way for us, as hadam, in our responsibilities for the ecosystems, our responsibilities to make sure they are getting what they need.  [Hadam's first call was to replenesh the earth] The hebrew word, kabash, translated 'subdue', comes from a term meaning to make paths [ie. to create order in the wilderness]. V'yirdu, translated 'dominion' has its origin in words meaning 'to descend'. Neither means 'lord over' or 'plunder'.

squatters church?

just  after I read Mark's rant on becoming increasingly bored by writings in blogs on emerging church and there being nothing new in them, I istened to an interesting interview with Robert Neuwirth on CBC Radio 1’s The Current – on squatters’ communities in the developing world. One billion squatters now. 3 billion by mid century. They are, he says, becoming a dominant force in urban politics in Rio and will increasingly become so in most of the cities in the developing world . They are the new cities. He described how these ‘cities’ are based on the concept of possession not property, and how, almost as soon as the squatters communities are created, immediately businesses develop within the communities, and an economy develops. Throughout the 70’s – 90’s the cities tried to get rid of squatters’ communities, but increasingly, they are working with them, seeing an important source of urban life & vitality in them.  The urban governments weren’t creating housing for the poor, commercial developers had no interest in them, so the people took control, took possession, and created their own communities. The buildings don’t conform to code, or even to the basic ideas of private property, with people living in groupings that don’t conform to the nuclear family, etc. And it struck me that the two movements/impulses, the squatters movement/impulse & the emerging worship or fresh expressions or whatever movement/impulse, share some fundamental qualities, like siblings. Maybe emergent Christian communities are the squatters communities of the church. Maybe where the established church is based on concepts of property [the basic unit of ‘parish’ is a geopolitical reality based on property, the building is ‘ours’, we want to ‘invite’ people to come to our church, open the doors of our church, etc.] the fundamental concepts underlying the emergent Christian communities is closer to that of possession – of small groups taking possession of an idea, a belief, and throwing together a construct to house it, but the constructs are always fragile, coalitional. If the underlying basis of the emergent church is possession not property, however, we’re gonna have some interesting times ahead. You can’t turn squatters communities into private property based communities, and so maybe you can’t use institutional constructs to structure emergent church communities. They just won’t work.

Anyway I’ve been playing with these ideas, when I should be working. I’d be interested if others have explored this . . . anybody know?

Language is always a problem, so I know folk have been struggling for the nomenclature: alternative worship, emerging/emergent worship, fresh expressions, missional, etc. [at kn/exion we use ‘loose worship’ since we don’t know what else to call it] – maybe ‘squatters church’? No, can’t be right? Because if it does share in that same spirit, then nomenclature itself, any name, will not work, names partake of property, the first step in the process by which we make something external become 'ours', we name it, our first claim on it.

Now, ironically, I’ve got to stop because I have a historical plaque to bless. honestly. as honestly as possible at least.

 

finding redemption in the seneca casino

Bizarre things seem to happen to me when I am traveling alone.  Seldom when I am with others. Regularly when I am alone.  It’s like God gets bored and needs a bit of a chuckle, and next thing it’s on me.

En route to Claggett Reloaded, I rented a car at the Hamilton airport to drive to Rochester. I had a bit of extra time so I stopped at Niagara Falls [Canadian side] where I had to pay $5 for a danish at  Starbucks.  Pouring rain/sleet, freezing cold, which caused the falls to create a lot of steam/vapour and so the view of the falls wasn’t entirely breathtaking.  But maybe I was just sore about the danish.  One disappointment, though,  no one kissed at the falls, not when I was there at least.  I looked all around for kissers, no one looked like they were even thinking of kissing.  The NF tourist authority should get a government grant and hire young attractive people to stand there and kiss – could be a great summer job.  Probably get a lot of applicants.

I’m still okay time-wise, I tell myself, as I hike back to the car.  I get in, cold and smelling of wet wool, and I set off to find the Rainbow Bridge that leads to the USA [a bridge not, I hunch, named in honour of gay folks].  But it’s road construction everywhere and muddy detours and reddish brown muck covers the rented Malibu so it looks like I’ve been doing an off-road rally [shoulda paid the extra $10 to get a jeep liberty].   Seems a disproportionate amount of the NF municipal taxes have gone to road construction and none to signage.  I start the process of zig-zagging my way to try to find the Rainbow Bridge [kind of a metaphor for life, eh?]  and keep missing it somehow [another metaphor for life].  I’m male and therefore apparently genetically incapable of asking for directions. I decide to drive back the other direction, away from the Land-of-Opportunity until I find some construction-free road big enough to maybe have a Rainbow Bride sign on it and sure enough there is one and I pick up the trail again,  a bit nervous because I used to be on a list of Canadians-we’re-not-sure-we-want-in-the-USA.  But it’s all cool and the border guy even points me in the direction of the road to Rochester.  Even with the delays, if I drive like I am from Toronto I can still get to Rochester in time, and because the Malibu has only km/hour and I forget how to translate kms to miles I figure I might have an excuse.

Just over the bridge into America I turn right and see a sign saying:: TOLL BOOTHS AHEAD.  And realize I don’t have even a nickel of American money.  I turn off toward some hotels and restaurants and park at Denny’s and run in, but Denny’s doesn't accept Canadian money.  Not 500 yards from the border but the Denny’s doesn’t accept our money. Probably did before the Iraq thing.   I ask where I might be able to change my money into American. He tells me to go to the Casino which is just down the street.  I am United Church.  Telling a  United Church person to go to a casino is kind of like telling a catholic to go to pro-choice clinic, or a Mennonite to an Army Surplus store.  I am half running toward the casino, but before I get there I see this sign.  A big yellow caution sign – the kind that tell you that deer or moose are crossing – but this sign warns: CHURCH.  Sure enough it’s right in front of a church, though I am not sure at first what the danger is. . . I think it’s got to be tied to the casino.  The I realized if you are on your way to a casino to blow your paycheque and you happen to notice a church without any warning, any prep time, you might think twice about what you are doing, about your kids needing clothes, etc. 

The warning sign is like the burning bush. I need to turn aside and see this strange sight. Then I look at the name of the church:  St. Mary of the Cataract.  Now that makes sense.  She’s got to have cataracts to be blind to the casino, otherwise she might say something or do something about it, raise her voice against the gawdy greed, etc. Then I see poor Mary.  Not only does she apparently have a problem with cataracts, she’s behind bars – while the casino guys run free. [I am not making any of this up].  And right there on the sidewalk to the casino,there’s a box to give alms to the poor [easier than raising systemic questions about gambling].  And I’d like to think about all this but I am pressed for time, so I keep running toward the casino, enter it, and ask where I could change my Canadian money.

“Then you’re looking for redemption.” the woman says.

“Pardon?”

“You gotta go to redemption.”

“There’s redemption in this casino?”

“Uh-huh. Yesser. Just around the corner to your right.”

It was astonishing. At first blush a casino is not the kind of place you expect to find redemption – now I find out redemption is right around the corner.  I went around the corner and walked, past all the zombie faces staring at their slot machines and looked and sure enough, there was the sign, right on the wall above a couple of cashier stalls:  REDEMPTION.  But there’s no light behind the redemption and there was no one in the stalls.  Again my hopes were dashed.  No redemption after all.  But there were other cashiers not far away, and they kindly gave me some American money and I ran out, determined that I’d come back and take some pictures on my return.

Which I did.  I bought a little disposable camera and took some wonderful shots of motel signs and other interesting things in Rochester, and I scurried off to take some pix of the caution sign, cataract Mary and above all the REDEMPTION sign.  I kinda missed the other signs, however, the ones that said no cameras allowed.  I snapped a picture of the redemption sign and the empty redemption booths and then turned to snap a picture of the slot machines right across from redemption when suddenly I felt a strong arm grab the camera from my hand and I was apprehended by the strong arm of a worthy Seneca Niagara Security Force official.  He asked me what I was doing.  “Photographing redemption.”  I answered, “I found redemption in the casino and I wanted to take a picture of it.”  Then I remembered that irony is a form of humour more popular in Canada than in the US, Alanis Morissette notwithstanding. He didn’t get the joke.

He said, ‘No you weren’t, I have official word that you were photographing the Wheel of Fortune slot machine.”

“You don’t understand I said, I am a Canadian pastor, the slot machine was just for contrast - it was opposite redemption.  I just want to snap a picture of redemption go back to Canada.”

He was not to be moved however.  “You can’t take pictures of that,” he told me.  I should have known.  Pictures mean you control something, capture something.  You can't control redemption. 

So I had to go buy another camera.  Tempting as it was to try to get one more picture of redemption and run back out of the casino I figured it wasn’t worth getting arrested in the Seneca Niagara casino, and end up with a criminal record in the USA  and get back on that list at the border again.  Sometimes redemption slips through your fingers.  Sometimes people grab it right out of your hands.  This was one of those times.

But I found the Rainbow Bridge with no problem and the guy at Canadian customs didn’t even ask to see my ID.  I must look tame now.