Pride and Acceptance

Initially, I was going to entitle this edition, ‘Pride and Prejudice’, however, I thought that might lead down a rabbit hole I’m not prepared to deal with.  On reflection, I believe that ‘Pride and Acceptance’ is more on point. 

On Saturday, Lorna and I attended the Pride Parade in Charlottetown.  We had planned to join the contingent with St. Paul’s Anglican Church as we did the last time the parade was held.  However, due to unforeseen circumstances, they were not able to be in the Parade this year.  However, we joined in with others and had a great time celebrating diversity and acceptance in Canadian society today.

Despite the exceptionally hot weather (for P.E.I.), there was a celebratory and positive attitude throughout.  That attitude was mirrored in the people that lined the route with people waving and responding to calls of “Happy Pride”.  And that truly was the feeling all along the route.  I had some concern that there might be people present who had a different attitude to the communities represented in the Parade.  However, there was no evidence of that, to which I give a loud Hallelujah.

When I reflect on the current situation with gender rights and acceptance, I am truly amazed at how far this journey has come in Canada and many other parts of the Western world in a relatively short time.  Lorna and I just finished rewatching the series Mad Men here at the cottage.  For those who aren’t familiar with the series, it is set in the United States in the Fifties and Sixties in the world of advertising.  In many ways, it is an accurate reflection of attitudes in those times in the U.S. and Canada to homosexuality and women and race, The only non-white people were eventually hired in the business as secretaries; women were beginning to have a presence in the business in small ways being faced with sexism and prejudice; gays and lesbians were certainly well ensconced in the closet and if they were outed, they suffered the consequences.

Those advances have been wonderful to live through in my lifetime and the acceptance in a place such as P.E.I. which is in some ways still fairly socially conservatives, is very gratifying.  The local weekly newspaper was filled with notices from politicians and businesses wishing people a Happy Pride Week.  However, there are troubling signs of a backlash with the rise of right-wing populism in Canada following the events in the United States with the overturning of reproductive rights and the potential threat to same-sex marriage and even contraceptive rights. 

Martin Luther King noted that “the arc of the moral universe is long, but it bends toward justice.”  I believe fervently that the gains reflected in the Pride Parade on Saturday are evidence of that moral universe bending towards justice and I will continue to do what I can to support and walk on that journey.  May you be blessed on your journey.

Of Life-in-Death and Death-in-Life

What happens, after life on this world has run its course, is something that I would predict almost everyone has a belief or at least an opinion about.  Is there life after death and if so, what form it takes is a part of all the Abrahamic religions and many others – although my knowledge of other religions is not sufficient to make a statement about beliefs in the multitude of religions that people profess.

Even within religions, if I can take Christianity as a model, there are many beliefs in how life after death will manifest.  Probably the most comprehensive exploration of this in the popular culture of the time was the Divine Comedy by Dante who began that journey in a dark wood in middle age and was guided through the three parts of the afterlife; hell, purgatory and heaven or paradise. 

That being said, I want to explore another aspect of death – what might be called a death in life.  The question I want to explore is, ‘is it necessary for something to die if something new is to be born?’  This question has arisen from a couple of sources that I have been engaged with this week.  First, the New Testament passage for this coming Sunday is from Paul’s letter to the Romans in which Paul opens with this question, “Do you not know that all of us who have been baptized into Christ Jesus were baptized into his death?”  The implication of this in Christian faith is clear.  In baptism, people die to their old life and are born into a new life as Christians.  To do this we must die to be born anew.  This is symbolized traditionally by immersing the person in water where they symbolically drown, and raising the reborn person from the water to new life as a Christian.

This is all well and good (and a blessing) for Christians, but does this understanding of dying to an old life and being reborn anew occur in other places?  Well, this is certainly true when we turn to exploring our dreams.  The motif of someone dying in a dream is not an uncommon occurrence.  It can be very disconcerting to dream of someone dying – particularly if it is someone you know in waking life.  As with most aspects of dreams this should not be taken literally – at least most of the time.  It is unlikely that the person you know in waking life is going to die or has died.  This can happen; however, it is often more meaningful to understand the dream as being a statement that something in the dreamer’s life has died or needs to die.  This old attitude or way of living has died to make room for something new to be born. 

I am currently rereading Care of the Soul, by Thomas Moore.  As the subtitle states, it is a guide for cultivating depth and sacredness in everyday life.  In the book, Moore explores, among other things, a number of myths in exploring how to care for the soul.  In the myth of Narcissus, Moore notes, “We are led to a mystery that is embedded in all initiations and in every rite of passage; the end of a previous form of existence is felt as a real death.”  This is true in the case of the death of a loved one.  The loved one has died but it is also a death of the relationship and all that the relationship was to you.

Personally, in our lives, there may be parts of our life personally or parts of institutions that need to die to enable something new to be born.  Often, we will spend a great deal of energy fighting the death of something in your life or some aspect of an organization or institution that is preventing new life from being born.  We need to ask ourselves, what needs to die in us so that we can live more fully God intends us to live?

May you be blessed on your journey to enable new life to be born in you.  

 

Don’t Let a Good Catastrophe Go to Waste

Being at our cottage in Prince Edward Island, I now have a larger appreciation for how COVID is being handled in different parts of the country.  In some ways it is almost like it no longer exists – or at least it is no longer a serious problem.  It is just one of those chronic health challengers we have to live – and hopefully not die from, like the flu.

 Both back at home in Ontario and here in cottage country, there is what can only be described as a relaxed view of COVID.  Most restrictions have been lifted or at least loosened.  We have no restrictions for travelling through provinces and no quarantine requirements or testing upon arrival in P.E.I.  which has assuredly made life much easier.  There are recommendations that we wear masks in stores and public places which is observed more in the breach than in the observance.  It is very easy to go with the flow and forget about wearing one.

The application of restrictions can lead to a somewhat illogical result.  The Anglican Church here allows us to meet without masks and to sing all the verses of hymns.  However, wine is not to be received by the congregation as it would normally, and only the priest partakes of the wine.  Go figure.

 I believe that we should not let the experience of the COVID pandemic fade into the mists of our memories and not try to use that experience as we move forward both in our religious life as well as our daily life.  This was addressed recently in one of the Daily offerings from the Society of St. John the Evangelist:  

Renewal

We are in the midst of a re-creation moment. As our world continues to reverberate from this once-in-a-generation pandemic, we are confronted with the opportunity to live differently, to not let a good catastrophe go to waste, but to heed the things that the Spirit has prompted in us: outward forms of love and stewardship, and inward forms of healing and renewal.  -Br. Todd Blackham

Many in Anglican Church and other mainline religions today in the West, despair that the church is dying and there won’t be much of the church left in twenty years, if present trends continue.  The Anglican Church in my home town of Parkhill, St, James, closed at the end of June as the latest of many church closings in our Diocese.  It certainly won’t be the last.  I won’t say it begs the question, but it certainly raises the question, what will replace it?  Canadian and all of the Western world is becoming persistently more secular with the church apparently having a much less significant part in the lives of people - particularly the younger generations. 

I really don’t know the answer to that question.  However, what I do know is that something or somethings will arise to replace organized religion.  In my understanding, this will happen because it will be the work of the Holy Spirit.  That part of the Trinity in Christianity faith and dogma often does not receive as much attention as the other two parts God the Father, and God the Son.  This is, at least in part, because it is unpredictable and not under the direct control of church authorities.  This was address in one of the Daily Meditations of Richard Rohr: 

The work of the Holy Spirit, seismic and subtle, never seems to land us in a place of perfect stasis and equilibrium for long.  Rather, it teaches us to be flexible, malleable to the ongoing creation of God such that when we are confronted with an invitation to adapt, we can respond with freedom rather than resistance.

Is there some new freedom that the Holy Spirit is inviting you into these days?

‘God dwells wherever man lets him in.’  Buber, The Way of Man, 33

So, in light of this, how do we not let a good catastrophe that COVID has given us go to waste?  It is not going to be easy for many of us who have set ideas of how we should be and what we should do.  We need to have open hearts and minds and spirits to what the future holds and where the Holy Spirit (or just ‘spirt’ for the secular folks) is leading us.  We need to use our discernment in determining if something is the work of the Holy Spirit or is the work of other forces.  However, we need to be open to what lies ahead.

 May you be blessed to engage the Holy Spirit on your journey.

 

Flood Facts and Stories

Lorna and I arrived at our cottage in Prince Edward Island a week ago and we are still settling in and adapting to the new mode of living.  Perhaps because our property is on the water – although well up from the shore which is actually ocean water, my thoughts turn to Noah and the Flood story in the bible. 

In this reflection on the Flood story, I am drawing on material in wonderful lectures by Prof. Joel Baden of Yale Divinity School which are available on YouTube.  Here is the link to the first lecture https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OZIm_edPz20.  I have listened to the lecture series a couple of times and find them enlightening and engaging. 

As Dr. Baden points out, most people, even in today’s secular society, know the story of Noah and the flood – or think they know it.  The basic story outline probably foes something like this.  God told Noah – the only good man in the world - that God was going to send a flood to kill all living thing.  God told Noah to build and arc and get his family on board along with a pair of animals of every kind.  The rains began and it rained for forty days and the water covered the earth.  The water subsided and Noah sent out a dove which, after a few tries, didn’t return and Noah and his family and all the animals disembarked and the animals and people re-established themselves on the earth to make a new start.  Most people can probably recount a basic version of the story which is still very much part of popular culture – particularly in this time of Global Warming and melting glaciers and Ice Caps. 

However, the story, as Dr. Baden illustrates, is not that clear cut.  There are conflicting aspects to the story.  Here are some of the things which don’t quite match the popular understanding of the Flood story:

                                                       Version 1                                       Version 2

Animals                          1 pair of all animals                        7 pairs of clean animals, 1 pair unclean;

Water                              Rains 40 days and 40 nights          waters fall from above and raise from below.

Duration                         Flood lasts 40 days and nights.           Flood lasts 150 days

Bird sent out                   a dove sent out three times                   a raven sent out once

These are a few of the example of the conflicting details in the story.  As Dr. Baden explains, the Flood story in the bible or bibles is a compilation of two sources – what are named the J source (for Yahwist) and P source (for Priestly).  Each source has a complete flood story which is coherent and unified.  They have been combined into one story which is what is found in the Christian bible and Hebrew scriptures.  This is part of what is called the Documentary Hypothesis which postulates four sources for the first books of the bible. 

If you would like to explore this in more detail, I would invite you to read or reread the Flood story in Genesis chapters 6 to 9, and check out the variation and see if you can spot these and others.  I also invite you to tune into Dr. Baden’s lecture 3 on the Flood https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wzV5qiQmTBw&t=1303s

Whether you are a religious believer or not, the Bible is a wonderful source of stories and wisdom and an account of people struggling to relate to what they understand as the divine source of life.  Reading it with an open mind and heart will give you an entry into a world which is more than you can ask or imagine.

Blessing as you read interesting books on your journey. *