This blog is my forum for venting, for congratulating, for questioning and for suggesting, especially on subjects of spirituality, the news, and whatever strikes me from day to day. I am also on Twitter at @epp_g
I recently heard an environmentalist say that the best thing we can do for the earth is to "stay at home." We travel a lot, move around a lot, burn up energy in both cases. Humans are restless, curious creatures and desire to see new landscapes, harbour an urge to nest in a new tree, long to engage with new people.
Friends just moved to town. At 70+, this is their second home location in a lifetime. Agnes and I have received mail in about 30 places in ours! I wonder if we qualify in the psycho-medical world for some kind of condition that may sometime have a name: "compulsive-obsessive dislocation syndrome" or something.
Thursday's our relocation day to a house that at this moment has no front porch . . . but will by then. Moving is anxiety-producing, of course, as is all relocation/disclocation. I imagine the decision to stay or move is always a balance between two impulses (rest in the old, venture into the new) that tips one way or the other from time to time.
There’s evidence that humankind as we now see it—on the streets, in the stands at football games, in the pews on a Sunday morning—is an evolving life form. Imagine trying to explain the workings of an Ipod to a Neanderthal or early Homo Sapien, watching him scratch his head with a hairy finger. Our average size and our brain capacity have been increasing gradually over the nearly 200,000 years of our [Homo Sapien] presence on earth.
Normally—when you can see where a phenomenon began and how it has progressed—you can make a tentative prediction on where it is headed. If we begin with a man in a cave with a club and spear, cowering against the cold under animal hides, and track the progression in sophistication to the moon landing of Neil Armstrong, what is the potential in humankind given another 100,000 years of evolution? (This assumes, of course, that there won’t be an extinction event meanwhile.) Will the moon rocket and the Ipod appear as primitive to future humans as club and spear do to us?
Whatever the nature and physical structure of humans in the future, it’s not a big leap to the assertion that he/she is currently being created. Obviously, then, we represent a stage in that creation, and not an end-point. We are, we would hope, co-creators of a better human, one who can finally grasp the futility of material accumulation and warfare, who lives the codependence of all of the Creator’s creatures, and with the skills necessary to manage the earth’s resources so that all are beneficiaries of her largesse. One who possesses a Creator consciousness, is imbued with the “Holy Spirit.”
We are either co-creators with The Creator, consumers simply feeding on what’s been provided, or vandals wrecking and wasting what has been achieved so far. And if we can’t grasp the big picture yet, we ought at least to recognize the creative role we play vis-à-vis our children . . . and their futures.
In grade school, our teacher would challenge us to be the first to bring in the news of what she called, “A Sign of Spring,” each new sighting dutifully added to a growing list on the side blackboard each April morning under a few florid, semi-birdlike drawings she had created there in coloured chalk. Although it’s getting late to start such a list here at Shekinah, Sunday’s sightings would have included the ice on the North Saskatchewan having been broken up overnight and now floating away, and the pileated woodpecker being back in town.
He’s really a magnificent bird, is the pileated woodpecker (Dryocopus pileatus). The pileated part of his name comes from the Latin pileatus meaning “capped.” He can measure half a metre in length, is known for pecking rectangular holes in old trees and for his raucous laugh.
His favourite food is the carpenter ant, and in the few days he’s been here, he’s hacked away half the frame around one of the large windows in the Timberlodge where he’s not likely to find many ants of any kind. Our pileated woodpecker is not very bright, you see; a few ants short of a lunch, you might say. He perches on the windowsill of the nature room and squawks at his reflection repeatedly. Either he thinks he’s being challenged for territory by another male woodpecker, or he’s fallen in love with himself—like Narcissus—and can’t understand why the beautiful bird in the window won’t come out to play. In any case, he takes out his frustration on the window frames.
The robins are back too, of course, and the ducks. It was a noisy walk home from the chalet yesterday; a highly agitated drake was complaining loudly (like the pileated woodpecker, mallards have not been granted a singing voice by the creator) as two other ducks chased him back and forth above the Deer Meadow. I assume it was a fight over a hen—it almost always is, whether with drakes or young men.
I pondered again the wonders of the natural world yesterday as I re-collected wet garbage scattered over half an acre by some marauding bear, coyote or sasquatch. I don’t think our woodpecker was responsible for upsetting the can, ripping off the lid and feeding on leftover margarine oozing from a tub discarded by winter picnickers. The interface area between us and the “natural world” isn’t always that pretty.
CBC Saskatchewan has a weekly 5-minute radio program called Provincial Affairs in which the political parties are given free time to say what’s on their minds. Yesterday, Laura Ross of the Saskatchewan Party lauded the achievements of the current government, particularly the injection of a billion dollars into infrastructure development (highways, schools, hospitals, etc.) inside a balanced budget.
My ears perked up—as they say—when she talked about energy initiatives because there’s been a great deal of talk about the refinement of uranium locally and, possibly, the generation of nuclear power in the province. The provincial government has appointed Dan Perrins to guide province-wide public consultations on “the findings and recommendations of the Uranium Development Partnership (UDP) report (http://www.gov.sk.ca/news?newsId=b55f0006-6b7d-41f5-a560-03584b7ae908)”, but Ms. Ross pointedly left the impression that it was to be a general exploration of the province’s energy future, and she also made it clear that hydro, wind, solar, nuclear, thermal, will all be on the table.
I hope individuals will seize this opportunity to educate themselves on the costs and the benefits of the various kinds of energy generation and make their wishes known. It makes a difference.
In all likelihood, our province (not to exclude others) will begin a major energy project. It may be tied in to a hope that the tar sands of mid-western Saskatchewan can be developed and we know that such a venture would require massive energy. We’ve been able to “go to school” on Alberta’s experience on that!
Whatever the long-term plans for that option turn out to be, aging energy facilities and the concern for climate change make a serious discussion on future energy needs critical. The next major energy development will be a far-reaching commitment, a signal to all and sundry that we are either driven by short-term economics or by environmental issues and sustainability. The expenditure will be so large—in all probability—that the final choice will exclude the others. Developing nuclear capability, for instance, would cost massive amounts of money, all of which would have to be recouped through future energy bills and taxes. Likewise, the carbon sequestration technology doesn’t come cheap.
If I attend a hearing, my vote will go toward two initiatives: reduction of energy use and development of a combination of solar, wind technologies so that our energy is gathered from thousands of small sources rather than from a few mega-projects.
Behind me in the HorseLakeMennoniteChurch last night (Maundy Thursday) sat a wonderful lady for whom this will be her 102nd Good Friday. Amazing. In a pew near the back of the little church, a baby would periodically complain loudly that although this was only his first or second Maundy Thursday, already he didn’t care for it much; he probably didn’t get the fact that only the grown-ups were allowed to eat the little bit of bread and drink the juice from those neat little cups.
He may still knit his brow over the mysteries of these symbolic observances when he’s 67 . . . or 102.
Jesus’ commandment to “do this as a memorial of me,” is probably a later addition to the Gospel account of the "Last Supper", likely influenced by Paul’s instructions to the CorinthianChurch regarding the observance of the Christian version of the Passover meal, which he called “The Lord’s Supper.” (I Corinthians 11: 19 – 24, NEB) It’s probably thanks to Paul’s influence that we have come to adopt the rather-rigid forms of the Lord’s Supper meal, and have attached to it some of the mystical quality that would have the Catholic faith arrive at transubstantiation doctrine, for instance. I remember how I worried as a young adult that I was “drinking judgment on myself” at Communion because I was “drinking the wine unworthily.”
The way we often eat the tiny bread, facing the altar of the church but not each other, increases our consciousness that this is in some measure an individual act with mystical powers of personal regeneration . . . or of personal judgment.
Food and drink are number one and two on the list of blessings provided by creation. The lack or abundance of these things distinguishes the rich from the poor, the destitute from the comfortable. Gluttons think of little beyond food and drink, while—ironically—the starving also think of nothing else. It’s when I sit down with friends to the abundance of a table that I am moved in a way that the ritual of communion fails to move me, now in my 67th year of its various repetitions.
I wonder if Jesus was hoping that we would “remember him” whenever we eat and drink; I wonder if he wouldn’t be more pleased with us if we took time to acknowledge the blessings of creation every time we eat and drink. I wonder if he wouldn’t favour our remembering—whenever we eat and drink—that we are consuming gifts of creation, often at the expense of the hungry.
Jesus was a martyr for the poor, the ill, the downtrodden, the starving and the lost. He asked us to continue his struggle to emancipate them, to liberalize religion so it would embrace them instead of judging and enslaving them again.
And for this, ritualized religion justified killing him.
Whenever we eat or drink alone, we ought to remember that there is a great struggle going on, and acknowledge again that we have committed ourselves personally to Christ's side in that struggle. Whenever we eat together as a community of Christ’s followers, we should acknowledge that there is a near-cosmic battle going on, and remind ourselves that, as a group, we have committed ourselves to the side to which Christ has called us and to which we have said, “Yes!”
It's another way to look at Maundy Thursday's "Lord's Supper," Good Friday and the Easter resurrection symbolism.
I don’t know all the details, but I do know that the CBC is suffering a deficit as a result of a loss of advertising revenue. The main reason—I’m told—is the recession and businesses’ need to cut costs. A request for a loan from the Canadian Government was turned down because—so a government spokesperson said—the CBC would then have loan payments to make on top of normal operating expenses and would therefore be hard-pressed to remain viable.
Chrysler and GM are suffering deficits because of lost sales resulting from their inability or unwillingness to compete with car manufacturers that produce better, more efficient and greener vehicles, plus the general malaise of the market. The government stands ready to extend money to them amounting to 21 times what the CBC was asking for—each.
If the car companies have to pay back the loans in future, does it stand to reason that these loan payments on top of their general expenses may make it difficult for them to remain viable?
Or is it that our government cares about the success of private corporations and does not care about the survival of a public corporation like the CBC? This would fit Conservative Party objectives, seems to me, except that the bailout of car companies falls so far short of another objective that it’s hard to see what conservative philosophy in this country is all about anymore. I think they used to call it “free enterprise,” a politic where government frees up entrepreneurship to act as the economic engine of the country, not interfering with the right to be profitable; not subsidizing it if it begins to fail.
I appreciate the CBC. For my money, it provides the best news and documentary coverage in the country and has the capability to act is a distinct national asset in many ways. It also provides commercial-free, informative radio, and I am one of those who will not listen to a radio station that bombards me with loud commercials, phone-in rant shows and country music. I appreciate intelligent radio: As it Happens, Ideas, Tapestry, etc. for which CBC is known.
Let your MP know that you want our government to support the continuation of a strong CBC.
Shekinah had two groups of guests this weekend. Down in the Chalet was a Cub Scout troop; in the Timberlodge were 45 or so women from a Baptist church in Saskatoon, retreating for a short time from the busyness of their lives. Agnes and I were their hosts.
Note 1: Before we served them lunch, the women’s group held a worship service in the great hall of the Lodge. They were singing off a screen just as I walked through the room with an armload of mattress covers, a song I didn’t know honouring the majesty and glory of God. Just as they concluded, the snow on the roof let go and avalanched onto the deck with a thunderous roar. The ones nearest the window dived for cover before they realized that the sky was not falling, or that the Lord was not particularly adding audio-visual effects to their song. They were silent for a few seconds until the relief of knowing that they were safe set in, when they burst into spontaneous laughter.
Note 2: From the Timberlodge, I went down to the Chalet to check on the cub scouts. A dozen or so 10 year-olds were seated in a circle on the floor with their leaders; they obediently sang out “Good morning, George,” when I walked in. They wore brown shirts with yellow bandanas tied around their necks. I had some work to do in the furnace room, but I heard their leader say, “We ought to start our day with ‘O Canada,’ I guess,” but they didn’t sing it. I think they forgot to bring a song leader.
Note 3: In some of our (Shekinah’s) literature, you’ll find a note that says people experience the presence of God in this place. This morning, walking along the path that leads from the Timberlodge, past the silent cabins nestled among the poplars to the Chalet, I experienced what I think they meant. The squirrels have decided that winter is over and their footprints are everywhere; I startled a pair of chickadees and one of them flew past my ear so close that I could feel the breath of her wing-beats; the wind whispered through the treetops above and I remembered how the spirit is described as a wind in scriptures.
It’s clear that the Spirit of God hasn’t taken up residence at Shekinah; that would be antithetical to our faith. But it is also clear that many people who have felt themselves starved of the spirit in the busyness of their lives have felt the breath of the spirit here whereas they have been missing it walking day after day on concrete streets and tiled floors.
From here, you can’t see a single habitation (well, one, actually, since last fall, across the river), a single town, a single factory. Cell phones don’t work here; your laptop won’t connect you with the internet unless you’re in the office building.
Note 4: A minister dropped in a few weeks ago. In the course of our conversation he asked me this: Why do you call this place Shə-KEE-na? It’s actually pronounced Shə-KY-na. I know he was trying to impress me with his erudition, particularly as regards the Hebrew language, but to be kind I said. “That’s interesting! I call it Shə-KEE-na because everyone calls it that, and has since it was established!” (Incidentally, the Oxford entry in Babylon pronounces it Shə-KEE-na, and the meaning is: “the glory of the divine presence, represented as light or interpreted (in Kabbalism) as a divine feminine aspect.”)
Note 5: I’m listening—as I write this—to Tapestry on CBC 1. It’s an interview with the author of a biography of the current Dalai Lama. The author says that the Dalai Lama would say, “We don’t need religion; what we need is basic human kindness.” I didn’t get whether he actually said this or whether it’s a condensation of some things he has said.
What does embryonic stem cell research have to do with me?
What is moral? What’s immoral? What’s amoral?
I remember a discussion in church a long time ago on the subject of sin. Specifically, it questioned why we never hear the word anymore and whether or not we’ve written the concept of sin out of our theology—or at least out of our dialogue about our theology.
Interesting word, sin. Oxford says it’s “the breaking of divine or moral law, esp. by a conscious act.”
“The soul that sinneth, it shall die (Ezekiel 18:4),” says the prophet Ezekiel. “But he that sinneth against me [the LORD] wrongeth his own soul (Proverbs 8:36.).” (References to KJV)
This is serious stuff.
It may have been in the backs of our minds the other day as we talked over lunch about President Obama’s move to end the restriction on embryonic stem cell research. On the one hand, such research may open the door for shysters to make a business of harvesting embryos (human offspring in the first eight or twelve weeks from conception – Oxford) like a cash crop. On the other hand, embryonic stem cells (undifferentiated cell[s] from which specialized cells develop – Oxford) offer hope for cures for debilitating diseases: Alzheimer’s and Parkinson’s, to name two. As I understand it, stem cells exist in everyone’s body in small amounts, can be found in umbilical blood and can be retrieved from aborted or miscarried embryos. But like the work of Einstein led to the creation of the nuclear bomb, this scientific development has potential for massive misuse.
So is it immoral (sinful) to research embryonic stem cell harvesting? Although a broad moral code regarding the sanctity of life could be applied here, we lack a specific “moral law” that could be applied. I assume it would be clearly immoral to kill a person in order to harvest his organs for sale, and so it would likely be clear as well if we deliberately destroyed a developing embryo for the sale of its stem cells. We have already settled the question of utilizing organs of consenting, deceased persons. We accept it as a moral act. A fetus that is miscarried, by this token, would be an eligible donor of stem cells. Probably not so if human embryos are cultured in a Petri dish solely for their stem cells, or if a person needing stem cells pays for a woman’s abortion in order to get them.
Are those who research the application of stem cells to medicine “breaking [a] divine or moral law, esp. by a conscious act?” I don’t believe so; they are more likely following the natural course of genetic research in the hope of finding cures for illnesses.
I support science’s search for knowledge, even when it leads into areas of discomfort. At the same time, since the people through their governments are ultimately responsible for deciding where the borders between immorality, morality and amorality lie with regard to embryonic stem cells, it is the people through the processes of democracy who must enunciate the moral code on this subject. Governments must find a way to lay the relevant information and a proper question before them.
Or, the point may end up being moot. There is, apparently, a promising line of research that “is developing techniques to convert skin cells into Induced Pluripotent Stem Cells(iPS cells) that emulate embryonic stem cells (http://www.religioustolerance.org/res_stem.htm). If this technique proves to be efficacious, there may be no need to visit the question of the embryo as a human life for this issue. We will, however, still experience the raging debate over the humanness of an embryo as regards abortion.
So is all this about sin? I don’t see people consciously breaking divine or moral codes in their search for ethical answers regarding the treatment of human embryos. Mind you, a lot could be happening out of my sight.
Healing people’s diseases is definitely a moral undertaking; that’s clear—philosophically and theologically. The principle of revering human life is implicit in the healing arts; it must also be implicit in the search for new cures.
GM and Chrysler are asking for a new number on the loan request to the Canadian government. Guess what, it's higher than the earlier one. Would you personally lend $900.00 to GM and Chrysler, given the fact that they're teetering on the brink of bankruptcy? If the number ends up being $9,000,000,000 (nine billion) and if there are 10,000,000 (ten million) serious income-tax payers in Canada (which I doubt) than the loan to the failed car companies would amount to $900.00 per taxpayer. If we include every man, woman and child in Canada in the count, it amounts to about $300.00 per person.
Now I know these are loans, but if they fail to stave off bankruptcy in the end, they will be repaid by us, not by the functionaries of the car companies. And there will be little to show for it, like paying for a wrecked automobile because we borrowed money to buy it.
Here's my plan: the government of Canada expropriates all the GM and Chrysler facilities in Canada, takes over their work force and pensions, puts the workers to work retooling these factories with the object of building energy-efficient vehicles especially designed for the Canada, Russia, Scandinavian markets . . . a real winter/summer car. I'm sure both companies would be happy to see them go; it would make the best plank in their restructuring platform to the American government. And if Canada paid them the 9,000,000,000 (nine billion) it would help them recover their profitability in the US.
Agnes and I would be happy to invest our $1,800.00 share in a venture like this, and we would buy one of those cars and wave an unregretful good bye to our Taurus.
A couple of anecdotes arrived almost simultaneously in the inbox of my consciousness this weekend. I was teaching an adult Sunday school lesson on the book of Esther, and I had the radio on as I drove the 30 Km. to church.
First: Xerxes I as portrayed in the book of Esther is a drunken sot of a king who—although powerful—is swayed this way and that by his advisers. When his wife Vashti defies him one day, he asks his advisers what he should do to respond to this impertinence. Basically, their advice is that he divorce her, replace her with a new queen and make sure this action is noised abroad, so that “each man might be master in his own house and control all his own womenfolk (Esther 1: 22, NEB). Now we need to remember that Xerxes’ chief adviser at the time was Haman, portrayed as an egotistical, self-serving tyrant who would later connive to initiate a pogrom against all the Jews in Persia. We need to remember also that these events were reported by Jewish storytellers, not Persian.
As I was driving to church with these thoughts roiling around in my head, the dialogue on CBC 1 was about gender equality in corporate board rooms and government. By some measure—and I didn’t quite get by whom and how the measuring was being done—Canada was ranked 85th of 160 or so countries on the matter of working toward gender equality, i.e. ensuring that the halls of power had equitable female representation. Haman would probably have been appalled at the suggestion that men folk should even consider giving up any authority to their womenfolk.
(Typing this just now, WORD informs me that there’s no such word as menfolk, but that womenfolk is quite all right. Now what do you make of that?!)
For the sake of modern readers of the Christian Bible, I wish that a part of Mordecai’s objection to Haman’s and Xerxes’ behaviour had been directed toward their suppression of women. Unfortunately, no such objection is noted there.
We still have a lot of Hamans in positions of power, men who see it not only easier, but also scripturally sanctioned, that “each man might be master in his own house and control all his own womenfolk.”
Fundamentalism is a way of looking at the world in a severely simplified form. Ordinarily we apply it (these days) to religious fanaticism, but that kind of thinking can exhibit itself anywhere. Take patriotism, probably one of the most pervasive and deadly forms of the disease. In Belleisle, New Brunswick, principal Erik Millett was ordered by the superintendent to reinstate the daily playing of O Canada after numerous complaints, threats and vitriol had been hurled at everyone who was seen to have authority in the situation.
Fundamentalism could be defined as a form of deductive reasoning, “the inference of particular instances by reference to a general law or principle (Oxford). In a patriot, the applicable law or principle in the Belleisle case might look like this: “People show their loyalty to their country by singing the national anthem; ergo, the non-singing of the national anthem obviously proves disloyalty.” Poor Erik Millett; the rage against his perceived disloyalty resulted in one parent coming to his office and threatening him with physical harm, or worse.
Deductive reasoners don’t hold with a lot of dialogue, and certainly not with the consideration of exceptions to the rule. If they did, then Erik Millett would have found himself in a much better situation; as it was, what he got was: “Don’t bother us with the explanations. You used to have O Canada every morning. You’ve reduced it to once a month in assemblies. That proves you’re un-Canadian. There’s nothing more to talk about. I should beat you to a pulp!”
Erik Millett was responding to a sound educational principle. Segregating young students from their peer activities should be avoided because it can lead to stigmatization and damage to self image. In his school were a few children whose parents believe that patriotic symbols are hypocritical in a people whose allegiance is—first and foremost—to God, not to a state. Millett didn’t want to make these kids stand in the hallway with their hands over their ears while the anthem was being played and everyone else stood at attention.
Millett’s actions were based on compassion for his students, not disloyalty to Canada. He saw some of the children caught between their parents’ (deductive) logic and the public’s (deductive) reasoning, and he sought to reach a compromise in the interest of the children. He was reasoning inductively:Logic characterized by the inference of general laws from particular instances (Oxford). Millett was showing the characteristics of a good educator; what he failed to do was to appease the fundamentalists before making the change. They’ll kill you for that. Millett may never go back to his job.
That’s the problem with deduction. It invariably sees compromise as a bad thing, a way down a slippery slope. In religion as well as in patriotism, liberal, inductive reasoners are at a disadvantage; they don’t have a Bible verse or a flag to nail their conclusions to because they are thinking from the notion that the principle is derived from the events, not the other way ‘round. What’s more, threats, vitriol and worse are typically fundamentalist tools. They have this built-in urge to clean up the environment, particularly of the deviance they see in their opposites.
Too bad. We probably lost a great teacher. I don’t know how the superintendent for the region can live with herself; she acquiesced to the fundamentalists when leadership was called for.
What opinions do we North American Christians hold with regard to the Israeli state today? Where do our opinions come from? Which arguments swirling around us do we credit and which do we dismiss . . . and why?
In “Does the Promise Still Hold?” in The Christian Century, January 13, 2009, Gary A. Anderson, Old Testament teacher at the University of Notre Dame, writes: “Some Christian fundamentalists have insisted that because we live on the cusp of the messianic era, anything Israel does in Palestine must be construed as part of its larger divine mandate. But even if we are witnesses to the beginning of the final messianic age—a possibility that can never be wholly dismissed—we should certainly expect that whatever God does with the Jews during this time will conform to the character of his relationship to this people as it is revealed in the Bible. A unilateral land-grab that takes no moral cognizance of the plight of Israel’s neighbors is not consistent with Israel’s foundational story (p. 24)”
(You can access this article and three responses—by Marlin Jeschke, Walter Brueggemann and Donald E. Wagner—at http://christiancentury.org/article.lasso?id=6095)
It’s clear that Anderson sees the reports of the Biblical relationship of the Jewish people to God as recorded in the Christian Old Testament as fundamental to understanding the relationship between God, the Jewish people and the rest of the world, and by extension, the current events in Gaza. Is the current assault on Gaza a “land-grab?” Or is it a move to increase Israeli security against a recalcitrant and belligerent Hamas? It makes a difference . . . except to the innocent citizenry of both Gaza and Israel, who pay in pain and immeasurable loss. Is Israel’s attack on Hamas moral? If it isn’t, Anderson would probably agree that invoking “manifest destiny” by God’s decree just won’t wash. God doesn’t condone immoral acts in order to secure land for his people, I hear Anderson say.
Well, then—I hear you say—what about Jericho and the slaughter of Canaanite inhabitants of Palestine in the time of Joshua? It’s hard for us to square an act of ethnic cleansing with Anderson’s assertion, unless the writers of the history of the exile got it wrong as follows: then—as now, possibly—the actions of God’s people were immoral and self serving, but the story was altered and augmented to make it appear to be an act of manifest destiny, bearing God’s approval and encouragement.
The actions of the State of Israel and Hamas must be judged by Christians on the ethics that Jesus taught, and they were clear: treat your neighbour as you wish to be treated; eschew violence; love your enemies; don’t fix your hopes on land and possessions; value and protect all life as sacred; etc. Seen in this way, understanding the events in Palestine is not that complicated.
P.S. A fundamental error that befogs all this may be the notion that the “Children of Israel” and the “State of Israel” are synonymous. Is it logical to assume that the current political leadership of the State of Israel is the vessel in which the Abrahamic promise of a peoplehood and a homeland is carried? I have doubts. What do you think?
Friends; I received a response to my recent post on Gaza (below) from Garry Janzen, Conference Minister at Mennonite Church British Colombia and my nephew. Hope you feel led to participate in this small but important effort for the people of Palestine, I plan to participate on Wednesday, January 14: Thank you Uncle George. There is a growing group of people fasting for peace in Gaza and the Holy Land. To join, email Jon Nofziger (peace@mccbc.com) and give him the day you choose to fast. Garry Janzen
A religious denomination built a hospital in a foreign country where it was having considerable success converting people to its brand of the Christian faith. It was a small hospital, but the need for medical care was enormous and so the beds filled very quickly. A policy was enacted that since the hospital couldn’t hope to deal with all the medical requirements of the area, preference would be given to converts.
Shortly thereafter, the hospital director was leaving the building after a particularly strenuous day when his attention was arrested by a commotion at the admitting counter. A woman was begging loudly and with many tears that her child be admitted. The director immediately identified her as an adherent of a rival mission, one he considered to be teaching questionable—if not false—doctrine.
“Ma’am,” he said to her, “we can’t help you. I want you to leave the building quietly.”
“But my child is really sick” she protested, “and I know you could help her!
Would you please, at least, look at her?”
“Ma’am,” the director said, “it’s not right to take the children’s food and toss it to the dogs.”
The woman was desperate. “But sir, the dogs still wander around the table, snatching up the scraps that fall!”
The director was moved by her persistence, and flattered by the confidence she had in his hospital’s ability to help her. He thought for a moment, and then directed the nurse at the counter to have a bed placed in the hallway for the child, and to tell the resident doctor to examine and treat the child.
“Excuse me for my impertinence,” said the nurse, “but you know that this will open the floodgates. What will we do then?”
The director turned back to the woman. “We’ll treat your child, but only on the condition that you tell no one about it, understand?”
The first time I heard this exact story was just now, as I wrote it.
But I have heard a version of it before, in Matthew 15: 21-28 and Mark 7: 24-30, to be specific. There, the director is Jesus—a Jew—and the supplicant is a Canaanite woman. I had occasion to revisit the story just a few days ago because it was the text for an adult Sunday school lesson and I had a contract to write teachers’ guide notes for it. At the same time, the state of Israel was bombing Hamas targets in Gaza and Palestinian militants were continuing to fire rockets into Israel. It’s no surprise that the story and the news would come to be related in my thoughts.
On its face, Jesus’ metaphor (if he, in fact, said it) is racist, and that’s troubling to anyone who has built his image of Jesus around, say, the Sermon on the Mount. As we end up doing so often, the Oxford Study Bible excuses it by attributing the words to Matthew’s pen, and saying that “The story revolves around a non-Jewish woman and the question of Jesus’ mission. Matthew thinks of a mission limited to Israel during Jesus’ human career but ultimately intended to reach out to all (p. 1285).” True, Jesus appears to say that his mission is to his people—the Jews—and then seems to “change his mind” for the sake of this one extraordinary Canaanite woman.
The Jew/Gentile consciousness haunts the world today like a canker that grows and wanes, then grows again. (It has its equivalent, of course, in North American black/white, Indian/white and in Germany—when I worked there in the ‘80s— German/Turk distinctions) Matthew’s story may have been intended to tell the people of the temple and the synagogue that the incarnation was for them—the fulfillment of their messianic hope. Unfortunately, most readers of the story are obliged to see themselves in the roles of the dogs—not the children.
That, at least, is one interpretation, and it’s troublesome.
There are plenty of references in Paul’s writing that hint at the end of these distinctions. Unfortunately, some of the Christian world has chosen a far-too legalistic approach to faith and has never fully embraced Paul’s admonition in Romans 10:12: “For there is no difference between Jew and Gentile—the same Lord is Lord of all and richly blesses all who call on him. . . .” In fairness to them, it has to be said that Paul himself was unable to free himself completely from the notion that there isa difference. In Romans 1:16, he uses the terms Jew and Gentile racially: “I am not ashamed of the gospel, because it is the power of God for the salvation of everyone who believes: first for the Jew, then for the Gentile.”
I suppose that when a group of people live in proximity to each other for generations, the development of a unique outlook, unique cultural markers, and a unique religious worldview is inevitable. The rest of the world will apply a name to them; that name will eventually become part of the world vocabulary, and even group members will begin to think of themselves as defined-by-their-label. And as all we recyclers know, it’s a lot easier to stick a label on a bottle than to soak/scrape it off.
Is the conflict in Gaza Jew-versus-Gentile? Is it Palestinians against Israelis? How shall we understand it? The word “Palestine” has its roots in “Philistine.” “Palestine” came to refer to the area of the world known variously as the “Levant,” or the “Holy Land,” etc. People of the area were called “Palestinians” for centuries, whether they were of Arab or Jewish descent. Are we seeing a reverse of the David and Goliath story where David is the giant (with jets and tanks) and tiny Goliath is slinging stones (rockets) into his territory with a sling, hoping he’ll eventually hit a vital organ? Or is it better described as a multi-generational feud like the Hadfields and McCoys, or the Star-bellied Sneetches?
There’s hardly any doubt about the conflict in Gaza being territorial, on top of anything else. Its rhetoric is most often about borders and land access, homelands and hinterlands and to whom this field rightfully belongs and who can say where a person can and can’t go, or work, or grow figs. It certainly hasn’t helped that the West has declared one side (on the basis of race, ethnicity) in the dispute to have a right to a certain territory and then poured in money and resources to back it up. I can’t think of a better way to create resentment, to start a feud.
Jesus’ encounter with the Canaanite woman and the metaphor of the dogs vs the children occurred early in his ministry, according to the gospel records. From then on, we see in his parables and later, in the early church, a shifting away from ethnic consciousness to the point where Paul can write: “For there is no difference between Jew and Gentile—the same Lord is Lord of all and richly blesses all who call on him. . . .”
George Bush summed up the current US policy toward the conflict when he said, “Israel has a right to defend itself.” At about that time, the death toll on the Israeli side was 4, and on the Gaza side, 500+. Since then, both numbers have risen considerably, but the proportions have remained the same. Defend itself, yes, but what about the “defend itself, how?” question. Even an inkling that there might be a prophetic destiny playing out is tremendously harmful to our commitment to a solution, and we have to exorcise that demon in North America if we’re ever going to contribute to peace in the Middle East.
God is NOT territorial; if he is at all interested in defining homelands, he is as concerned about a homeland for his “Muslim” children as he is for his “Jewish” children. Get that through your heads, Christians. I think Obama’s got that. I hope.
Jesus healed the Canaanite woman’s daughter. Take it from there.
It’s Christmas Eve eve. Cold. Really cold . . . I think; I haven’t stepped outside since yesterday.
I’ve been writing teachers’ guide commentaries for the Adult Bible Study series, a good job to be working at when winter grabs the countryside like it has this year. Today, I was working on a lesson for late December, 2009. The subject was the arrival of the wise men in Bethlehem and the flight into Egypt. A great deal of traveling going on.
Meanwhile, Canada’s airports are clogged, flights late or cancelled and a lot of people are sleeping on airplanes, benches, but not—to my knowledge—in a stable in Bethlehem. Donna Molnar got caught in a snowstorm in her car and was found alive after three days cradled under a snow bank in the Hamilton area, 200 metres from her car. Christmas and travel go together like zipper-skin oranges and Cracker Jacks.
Makes me nostalgic for some Christmases I can barely remember, say in 1950. We rehearsed in school and in church for concerts at which adults gave us bags of candy and peanuts, oranges and Cracker Jacks and we sang the drifting snow spread a robe of white on this beautiful Christmas Eve. And Christmas Eve—after the church concert usually—would be dark and cold and we’d light the candles on the tree in the parlour, eat peanuts and anticipate opening gifts on Christmas morning after the chores were done and breakfast eaten. I can still hear the sound of the poker as my dad banked the fire in the furnace downstairs, still smell the faint odor of coal dust and coal smoke, a promise that although the cold would creep in through the shrunken window sashes and door frames, we would not freeze tonight.
There was no thought of traveling past the Eigenheim Mennonite Church, one mile away.
The passing of the years struck me tonight as I loaded music onto the Mpeg player I gave Agnes for Christmas. It’s just big enough so you wouldn’t swallow it by mistake, but I loaded it with about 50 Christmas songs from our albums and it told me it had room for about 5,000 more. In the late 40’s, my brother bought a waist-high phonograph from a neighbour. We’d crank it up and play scratchy Wilf Carter records. One at a time. Each record weighed at least as much as 10 Mpeg players.
I have no idea what I’m trying to say here, except that I’m getting old enough to break into nostalgia at the drop of a hat.
I want to wish all of you a blessed Christmas season and a hopeful New Year. I finally decided—as I pondered what I might write about the Magi seeking the Christ—that the star is symbolic of our longing for a better world. In the story, they took up to two years to hunt down the child whom their astrological observations seemed to be predicting. Its like Jesus’ parable about a man who finds a treasure in a field, and sells everything he has to buy that field.
801 First Avenue, Rosthern. November 22, 2008 (The north unit of a Triplex)
State of the Union?
By George Epp
It’s a crisp, sunny day at Shekinah in the valley of the North Saskatchewan, and because the weekend is coming, we’re slowing down. I like the German word, Feierabend, which means the dusk of the work day or week, when tools are being put away and rest beckons. This weekend, a women’s group of 38 from a church in Osler is “retreating” in the Timberlodge, but since we’re ostensibly off for the weekend, I hope to do some writing and reflecting.
Writing what, you ask? I’ve accepted a second contract for writing the teachers’ guide to a quarter of Bible studies for adults. My job is to take the lessons prepared by others and write a companion guide for teaching them. It’s enjoyable, but demanding in time and energy. That’s one thing that’s on my mind.
This morning, the building committee of our church spent time with the contractor plotting out the location of the new structure we’re hoping to erect. That, too, has its demanding aspects; as committees, we often have to decide things as if a whole bunch of people were standing in our shoes with us. And sometimes, church members are not as forthcoming as they could be, and other times, committee members don’t listen as well as they should. Those who have served on any kind of building-planning committee with a lot of money at stake, various sentiments at play, and a lot of differing tastes being expressed, will know well what I’m talking about. That’s another thing on my mind.
At the same time, Agnes and I are in the middle of purchasing a home now under construction. The builders are friends, so much of this planning is pleasant and convivial, but at the same time, we have to whittle down our preferences and actually decide on a lot of details. Would you want a fridge with the freezer on top or on bottom? Is crown moulding significant enough to justify the extra cost? Stuff like that. It will be a small place; we’re well aware that this may be our last home purchase, and it’s the first one in which we’ve actually had a say in where a wall will go. That’s on my mind these days.
The news is telling us that the government may face defeat over its economic statement and the lack of projected economic stimuli. That would mean an election or a request from the governor general to the opposition parties to form a government. Strikes me as being so un-Canadian that I don’t give it much credence, but who knows? These are ground-breaking times. That’s on my mind as well.
And then there’s the news from Mumbai. I have to confess that I was just barely aware that there was a city in India by that name. What’s on my mind in that regard—besides the empathetic agony over the loss of innocent lives—is the matter of determining what soil is required for such hatred to take root.
