BREAD FOR THE JOURNEY

Posted on May 19, 2012 by

Greece is in crisis.  By the time you read this, the crisis may have passed, but it could get a whole lot worse!  Greece has a huge and almost unmanageable national debt.  If Greece defaults on its debt payments, it may be excluded from the European Union and lose the Euro as its national currency.  If the Greek economy crashes, there will be world-wide consequences.  What this means for the American economy isn’t clear right now, but more worrying is what might happen if those democratic countries in Europe, who are our friends, get thrown into political chaos.

The Greeks — being Greeks — might decide to go it alone.  Their economic options in or out of the European Union are bad, worse, and horrific, so they might opt for greater economic and political independence from Europe, go back to their former currency, endure decades of poverty, and suffer the consequences.

I’ll bet they’re worrying about more than just their economy.  Of all the peoples of the earth the Greeks may be thinking especially about their freedom. The Greeks invented democracy.  We’re still learning.  We should be watching the Greeks attentively — and praying.

Jesus quoted the Book of Deuteronomy (8:3) when He said that ‘one does not live by bread alone, but by every word that comes from the mouth of the LORD.’

Now, there’s nothing like an economic catastrophe to remind us that, if we do not eat, we do not live.  Most people in this world understand this very clearly, anyway, as they struggle throughout their entire lives just to survive.  When we, who are more fortunate, revisit these realities, we quickly learn that food is food; we just need to eat.  Likewise, it doesn’t make much difference what currency we use — Dollar, Euro, or Drachma — just as long as we survive.  God willing: we get through the day.

Lest I forget, however:  All things come of God.  All that I am and all that I have is given by God.  The food I eat and the air I breathe is given by God.  For most of us there is a lot more to life than basic survival.   When I realize that, I may ask: What do I do with the rest of my life?  What do I do with this life that God has bestowed upon me?  I wonder throughout my life what God wills for me, and I listen for God’s Word.  If I am not nourished by God’s Word, I am lifeless.

Once this inquiry into God’s Word begins, it is forever. At least, that’s how it is for me.  As often as not the answers are provisional at best.  All too often there are no answers at all.  I have to keep looking, keep inquiring, keep listening.  There’s a bunch of us out there who spend our lives waiting upon the Word of God — knowing in our trust of God that God’s Word will be revealed — face to face, when we are grown, and when the time is right.

Are we hiding from reality in a dream or fantasy?  Consider, for a moment, some of the ‘clear and straight-forward’ answers given to perplexing questions.  In the 1930s Europe and the United States experienced a terrible depression.  Hitler blamed it all on the European Jews.  People chose to believe him and ignore the more difficult answers and questions.  The rest is history.  Today the blame-game takes several forms.  Blame it (whatever “IT” is) on somebody else:  bankers, socialists, unions, Democrats, Republicans, Gays, Whites, Blacks, Hispanics, Arabs, Catholics, Jews, Protestants, Muslims, and the list just gets endless.  The answers are cheap and easy, superficial and dirty, and accomplish nothing but heartbreak and tragedy.

There IS another way.  The journey towards reality distances us from our own delusions which are both self-imposed and inflicted by others.  In the company of Jesus and each other we seek nourishment from God’s Word.  As we come to know God our life together is forever and cannot be taken from us.

We wait upon the Lord.  All too often our understandings are unclear and imperfect.  Repeatedly we disagree with each other.  There are those who seek our destruction. There are obstacles along the way.  Against the odds we continue, praying for strength and courage, seeking the presence of God in our lives, abiding in God’s Word.  As we accept the journey into our own lives, we appreciate it as the only viable hope — for life and for freedom — for ourselves and for God’s suffering Creation.

We are the Church.

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Spring Dawn

Posted on February 19, 2012 by

Praying With Julian

PDF of Spring Dawn   —   HTML Version

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TWELFTH NIGHT

Posted on January 7, 2012 by

The light shines in the darkness, and the darkness has not overcome it….

Just after Christmas Day I stopped by a small local store.  I hadn’t been there for a while.   As there were no other customers in the store at that moment, I chatted with one of the clerks and I asked him:  “How’s business?”

“Well, Christmas is over.  I guess we’ll be OK.”

He was speaking of reality and survival — survival of the store, survival of his finances.  Christmas makes the difference.

I was puzzled.   I thought his experience of Christmas and my experience of Christmas were different — and, of course, that mine was better.  I had just listened to the Service of Lessons and Carols from King’s College in Cambridge, England.  As I had listened to the music and the readings I remembered my own childhood when Christmas was full of mystery and quiet wonder and when I always woke up to a new hope.  That hope and wonder may have had more to do with all the new Christmas toys than with anything else, but it was real! and that hope and wonder is still alive.

It may be easy to dismiss the brightness of Christmas, but the adoration of the Christ Child at King’s College was lovely and brought back the memories and brought back the vision of the child within me.  I was renewed.  Life was better.  Light does shine in the darkness.

That light illuminates both the challenges ahead and their resolutions.  With each resolution I come upon the next challenge.  And so it goes all along the way.

What I see and where I go depend on who I meet, who I am, how I have grown, and where I want to go in the first place. As I grow, my thinking grows.  As I learn, I see differently.  I see different obstacles and different opportunities.  That Light lights up the world I live in.

I wonder, as I wander, why Jesus was born for to die…

That bright Light of Christmas survived darkness.  Wise Men, twelve days later, from outside that faith and culture, understood. Gold, of course, for The King.  Frankincense, yes: denoting holiness of time and place.  But, Myrrh?  For death?  This is supposed to be a festival — a Happy Birth — a jolly, jolly Christmas.  At the Epiphany, though, the roots of that joy already are known.

Survival on the journey, requires a dependable light.  I might well rage against the dying of the light, because without light I am nowhere and nothing.  But the Light of Christmas shines brightly still.  It can be recognized by a child and it shines from within.

And makes all things new.

Always.

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WE ARE THE CHURCH

Posted on June 21, 2011 by

I learned something important about Church at the recent Synod of the Diocese of Moosonee on June 2-5,  2011.  ‘Synod’ for a Canadian diocese is like our annual Diocesan Convention.  However, since the Diocese of Moosonee includes so much territory and because travel is so expensive in the North, Moosonee generally holds Synod only every three years.

This year we faced disturbing financial realities.  First, communities in Northeastern Ontario that had been entirely English-speaking are now 95% French-speaking.  Many of those who spoke English were Anglicans.  Those who speak French are not.  Also, Moosonee has always been a missionary diocese.  That is, it has lived on grants made from people and organizations from outside the Diocese.  Likewise, most parishes in Moosonee receive some kind of subsidy from the Diocese or their local First Nations Band Council or both.  One of the major contributors of grants to Moosonee has been the Anglican Church of Canada. This money, now, however, is diminishing rapidly and may disappear entirely.  Missionary Dioceses like Moosonee  simply cannot continue to operate as they have in the past.

What can be done?

Prior to Synod there were three concepts discussed extensively around the Diocese.  The first included an aggressive fundraising program that would replace that missing revenue.  However, everyone I talked with realized that this would never work on a sustained basis.  Maybe we’d get the money for a year or so, but the fund raising would become ever more difficult.  More importantly, it would change the character — indeed, the soul — of the Diocese.  There were questions:  ‘What is God trying to tell us?’  ‘What is God calling us to?’

The second concept was to close down the Diocese of Moosonee entirely.  Each parish would become affiliated with one of the nearby dioceses.  For instance, western parishes might join the Diocese of Keewaydin.  Southern parishes: the Diocese of Algoma.  Parishes east of James Bay: the Diocese of Quebec.

The third approach was a variation on the second.  The parishes in the James Bay Deanery are all First Nations parishes.  These parishes include communities on the coast of James Bay:  from Kashechewan on the West Coast around to Chisasibi on the East Coast.  Included, also, are some inland communities and congregations.  (St. John’s at Mistissini Lake is one of those inland congregations.)  The idea was that these parishes would prefer to stay together in the same network.  The option, then, was that these parishes would become the ‘new’ Diocese of Moosonee.  All of the judicatory resources would be accommodated by the parishes themselves.  The Bishop, for instance, would also be a Rector in a  local parish.  In fact, this ‘new’ Diocese generally would cover the same area, include the same parishes, and follow the same design as the original Diocese of Moosonee, when it was formally constituted at the beginning of the twentieth century.  The new (or original) Diocese of Moosonee would be predominantly Cree-speaking and could accommodate the language and cultural sensitivities of its Cree members.

Before Synod I had thought that this third option — or, some variation of it — would carry the day.  The James Bay Deanery is an extraordinary network of extraordinary parishes, and I didn’t see that network breaking apart any time soon.  But, at Synod, it became clear that none of these concepts would work.  People kept saying:  ‘We’re a family!  You don’t just disband a family, when the money gets tight.  You figure out what you have to do and then you do it.  And you do it as a family.”   Synod’s decision, then, was to request the Ecclesiastical Province of Ontario to include us all under their aegis as a mission district.  We would remain together, for the time being, anyway, as a network of parishes but without any of the structures usually associated with a diocese.  Episcopal oversight might come from afar, but the resources outside each parish will be simply other parishes or other community resources.  Some parishes might feel called to assist other parishes.  Some parishes would need assistance to survive — at least in their present form.

I think Synod got it right.  When the motion first surfaced, I was skeptical, because I thought it avoided the hard realities of fiscal insolvency.  But, on second thought, I believe Synod faced into what we are about as a Church.  It’s all about relationships, this Church of God.  Synod understood that.  Organizations may come and go.  The Body of Christ is always, and we’re part of it.

When Synod ended I knew we had made a bit of history.  The Church is alive and well.  We live in hope for the journey ahead.

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The Spring Goose Hunt

Posted on May 13, 2011 by

Every spring The Community takes a break for two weeks.  One week always is the first week of May.  The other week will be either just before or just after that week, depending on the weather.  This Spring has been cold, so the Break started on May 1, and it will end this weekend.

The folks at Moose Factory used to tell me that the spring hunt was better than the fall hunt.  The geese coming North just tasted better:  “All that American corn you guys got down there.”

Whether or not that’s true, I don’t know.  It all tastes good to me — the goose, the corn, whatever.  But, no doubt about it, the Spring Goose Hunt is a serious business.

Easter came late this year.  No matter.  We got snow.  There were 150 of us celebrating on Easter Sunday, and then the town emptied.  From dawn to dusk airplanes on skis shuttled hunters and families to camping grounds out in the bush. Mistissini is a quiet place now.   On the Sunday after Easter Sunday there were six of us in Church.  This last Sunday there were fifteen of us.  One lady explained why she opted to stay in town.  “If you go out to the bush camps, you’re expected to pluck geese.  I am NOT going to spend my spring break plucking geese.”  Perhaps she is one of the exceptions.  In a way, I could see her point.  We, of independent mind, must find our common ground.  The exception always proves the rule.

But The Hunt IS fun.  Camping together is good for the family.  There’s a common purpose; everyone has a responsibility.  New England families follow a similar path, when they go out in the Spring to gather that precious maple sap.  It’s fun.  It’s outdoors.  It’s healthy.  It reunites the generations.  Everyone has something to do.

There was a time when life simply depended on this kind of hunting and gathering.  Children learned the way of life early — as early as they could learn anything.  Each generation taught the next.  The traditional ways — honed over the centuries — simply worked.  And they worked well. Even today, generations later, these old ways are remembered with affection and respect.  Originally they were developed as survival skills.  Today they help us understand who we are.

Of course, there are elements of life in addition to the physical that we seek to preserve and, indeed, enhance.  We value deeply the life of ancient traditions and constructive attitudes.  We seek healthy relationships and nurture our families’ unity.  We look for a realistic and functional relationship with this good Earth.

The very word, ‘hunt’, means different things to different people.  We Americans may think of  ‘The Hunt’ as a sporting event, a rigorous but entertaining diversion.  The Mistissini Hunter, on the other hand, is not in the bush for sport in our sense of the word, at all.  He harvests those good things presented by the Earth.  The family that participates in The Hunt exercises a centuries-old routine in which thanksgiving is an act of piety.  We don’t take these gifts of nature.  We receive them — and with thanks.

The activities of The Hunt remind us of who we really are and of our place in this verdant world.  Anyone who has been in the bush for any length of time adopts a profound respect for this environment that can both sustain and destroy.  Respect and humility are those instruments of survival learned in the bush and perfected in the hunt.  They are required in the days ahead on  this journey we are called to in the shadow of an empty Cross.

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