Full life

It’s been a while since I sat down to post here with intent. Life has been full. Two grandchildren, their parents, chaos all around, and a lovely visit with adult children. I haven’t been caught up in the Olympics…yet. But that could happen.

Big news in my part of the world has been the catfight between the Premiers of Alberta and B.C. – both females. The issue is the Northern gateway Pipeline. Most of it crosses B.C. and the Premier wants some cash to balance the huge risk they take in hosting that long pipeline through pristine wilderness. Premier Redford of Alberta is huffing about the royalties for the sludge they are transporting belonging to Alberta ALONE! Any change to that fact would require a change in our Constitution, according to Redford. The tension has become quite high, influencing even the Premiers’ conference this past week.

The Alberta paranoia regarding the possibility of even compensating B.C. is ironic. The province that boasts proudly of being ‘Christian to the core’ seems rather reluctant to consider the risk management needs of others when that threatens Alberta’s wealth. We are a manifestly self-centred and greedy province. We are rich, and we intend to stay that way, no matter whose territory is threatened!

Actually, I think B.C.’s concern is well founded. The pipeline is in the hands of Enbridge, which seems to be dealing with a new leak every week in some part of the world where they have pipelines. They have stopped talking about “no leaks will happen,” and now say, “When there is a leak, we will respond instantly!” I don’t think I would trust them to transport anything myself. But that’s just me.

Apart from the depressing tone of the news this week, we watched a powerful film last evening. It is Detachment, the story of a brilliant, but damaged teacher, who goes through his career avoiding strong attachment to any student, while being a good strong teacher, whom the students respect and admire. Barthes (his role name) becomes attached to a young street hooker and a bullied student, and slowly loses his detachment as the movie progresses. The death of his beloved grandfather is a major crisis for him, and the young people help him through it with their care and admiration.

The perspective on the school system and its effect on the teaching staff is dramatic and demoralizing, and provides a dark backdrop for the personal tale of the movie. The two crucial young people in the film are played by virtually unknown actors, Sami Gayle and Betty Kaye, about who there is nary a word in IMDb! Great movie, though not a happy one. See it if you can.

Detachment caused me to reflect on the similar story that can be told about the life of many in ministry, people who enter the work of preaching and pastoral care as a way of doing therapy on their own lives, and who are then broken by the reality of the all-too-human congregations they serve. So often the Church of our idealized studies bears little relation to the churches within which we carry out our ministries. Many a priest or pastor plumbs depths of disillusionment, even despair, in their careers. I’m quite sure the same can be said for others who travel different career paths, and experience the same disappointments. Perhaps many withdraw as Barthes does in the film, and require some kind of healing, or ‘conversion’ at some point in life.

Beginning next Sunday, my free weekends are over for the foreseeable future. I am filling at Rimbey through August, and then move to work half time in Lacombe until they are able to call a new ‘second’ minister. I am glad to be going back to work, while at the same time I feel some loss of my nice ‘retired’ routine, so stable, so relaxing. More for me to think about: I have been a notable failure at retirement over the past decade. One day soon I will have to change that. But not this autumn.

The Future

For Father's Day, some of my children downloaded a trio of books to my Kindle. One is a history of the famous Hatfield-McCoy blood feud in the Ozark mountains - now a movie, I understand. Interesting, if confusing reading. The families intermarried and fought on both sides of the Civil War in the US. Some of the "Northern" Hatfields/McCoys were slave owners; some of the "Southern" branches of both families did not own slaves. Go figure. Of this, more another time.

A second book is called "2052," and is a calculated prediction of what our world will look like in 2052 - forty years hence. It is well documented, with many experts in various fields contributing expertise to the enterprise.What I have learned to date is that our world, particularly the Western world, is living in a manner that would require 1.5 earths to sustain life as we now know it. This over consumption will continue until either we reach a collapse point, or governments get real about living in a steady-state economy rather than a "growth-despite-everything" model.

Reading this sobering, but fascinating treatise has prompted my thinking in a couple of directions. I think of some of the people I know locally, in a booming economy, who live very high off the hog. A lake cottage, a big "fifth wheel," two powerful trucks, a couple of ATVs, a brace of snowmobiles, and an annual trip to the warmth of the southern hemisphere. This may not be typical of Albertans, but it the standard everyone who works in the oil patch aims for. I can't imagine what percentage of the earth's bounty such a lifestyle consumes. My lifestyle - much simpler - consumes plenty. This one? God knows.

Despite the appearance of wealth that such a lifestyle gives, the plain fact is that these people are virtual slaves to the oil company they work for. Their slavery is economic, rather than physical. Once they become used to the six figure income they draw by working six or seven days weekly, at least twelve hours a day (Albertans work more hours per year than people in any other Canadian province), they feel a great need to adopt "the lifestyle." That lifestyle is the one I described above. The slavery aspect comes when you tote up the monthly payments that such a lifestyle entails. It is a staggering amount. Attempts made by more than one individual that I know to escape the work pattern of the oil patch has met with failure, because no one is willing to give up "the lifestyle," but without an oil patch salary, the lifestyle cannot be sustained. They are stuck. Family life suffers, marriage collapse, addicts crowd in, but the 'beat goes on.' And the earth pays the ultimate price which will one day swamp all of us, and force changes that no one is willing to even contemplate in the midst of a boom.

The authors of the study I am reading, "2050, a Global Forecast for the Next Forty Years," tell us that as the Third World catches up with us, our lifestyles will stagnate and then begin to sink. How will our people tolerate this without depression and madness of other kinds? More importantly, how can we, those of us who are becoming conscious of this now, make an impression on others, or even begin to shrink our own lifestyles to survival levels?

This future, bleak, but not terminal, will not be my future. It will be the future of my great-grandchildren and their children. Already the Western dream of each generation being "better off" than the previous one is grinding to a halt. I wonder how the "typical" Albertan great-grandchildren will live in 2052 or 2072?

I can understand how people are drawn to religious fundamentalism. It solves a lot of problems and removes the anguish of thinking of these things. Armageddon is coming, so care of the earth is irrelevant, and if I am  "saved" I will go to heaven. Problem solved. "Gas up the RV, honey, we're off to the mountains! We'll say a prayer before we go, so God will be our co-pilot on the road."

So I am left with: "What can I do today, in the face of these facts? I believe God has given us the earth to care for and nourish, as well as use. How much clout or power do I have to make an impact on the future that is coming?" Does this raise any questions for you, dear reader, or will you think of becoming a fundamentalist to set the whole issue aside?

Supported by bombs and guns

I got a shock this morning. I was preparing to sit down and write a blog here about my travels in the north recently. I was distracted by an article in The Monitor, a publication which comes from the Canadian Centre for Policy Alternatives. The article was about how the five largest pension funds in Canada invest their money, so that people like me can have a monthly income. I learned, to my horror, that these funds - including the Canada Pension Plan, a federally funded plan - invest heavily in "war industries." These include arms makers, nuclear weapons manufacturers, the people who make cluster bombs, and the company (Lockheed Martin) that produces the controversial F-35 warplanes that Canada is likely purchasing!

The CPP Investment Board recently doubled its shares in the top-100 war industries. "Canadians now own shares in all but one of the world's top ten weapons makers."(The Monitor)  It's understandable from a purely profit margin perspective. The top-100 war industries' combined military revenues were $419 billion in 2010. This means that you and I, as we collect our pensions, become the proud owners of a handful of cluster bombs for use in local wars; a few AK47 machine guns used by child soldiers in Africa. Yes, folks, we are 'contributors,' we are 'involved,' in ways that none of us ever imagined.

The conflict between profit and ethics immediately springs to mind. "…The CPPIB, like other Canadian funds, pays fine-sounding lip service to social, environmental, and ethical issues. They make it abundantly clear that their mandate legally obliges them to focus on making as much profit as legally possible, regardless of what product or service that a corporation provides."(The Monitor) One Executive VP,  Mark Wiseman, was paid more than $3.1 million last year.

the CCP Investment Board makes a big deal out of the fact that they support only ethical weaponry. A warplane or an artillery piece is an ethical weapon, even though either of these instruments can - and do - deliver APL's - anti-personnel landmines, even though these latter are deemed unethical weapons because the mutilate and kill women and children more than combatants.

I could go on, but you have surely gotten my point by now. Canadian pensioners are complicit in all of this! You may say, "How? I don't make these decisions!" Correct. But those of us who collect CPP live off the avails of war. I find it disturbing beyond belief that this is, and I don't have a clue at the moment about how to respond to this. I can't see myself sending my monthly pension cheques back. But to whom do I complain? How many Seniors groups would it take to make  Harper and McKay or Flaherty even blink? But surely those of us who care about such things must work at finding a way to make our views on this matter known and public.

Perhaps the PM would care a bit more if his kids had to live in a war zone, surrounded by land mines for a few months. Or if Peter McKay took his gorgeous new bride on a safari through Angola, or Kenya?

Of course, if this investment plan were changed, by some miracle, perhaps my pension would suffer. How would I feel then.…

The Unfinished Church

Yesterday (Sunday), I conducted worship and preached in the St.Peter's Ecumenical Church (Lutheran, Anglican, United) in Slave Lake Alberta. That's roughly 4000 kms north of where I live. Last year, Slave Lake experienced the trauma of being caught in a forest wildfire. It was a huge blaze, covering many hundreds of square kilometres. Over 405 of the town was reduced to ashes. Many families lost everything they owned. The Ecumenical Church was affected by the fire, and as a result, a new Church has been erected over the past year.

More about the community another time. This time, I want to share my excitement about the church, both building and congregation. From the outside, it looks completed. Inside, it's another story. The huge narthex/hall is an open space with a fireplace in one corner. The Nave is reached through an arch which will hold a glass door. Part of the floor is tiled with cushy plates. The rest is bare plywood. The altar, pulpit and reading desk are all movable. The chairs are serviceable, but temporary, waiting for the interlocking chairs which will be serviceable and also beautiful.

People on the design team kept telling me, with great excitement, of the next addition, the next project, the next step forward. The congregation is a trefoil. Some weeks, they use Anglican liturgy, on other Sundays, Lutheran liturgy prevails. United Church liturgy is added. Same congregation, with additions and subtractions, same pastor each time. In some ways, they make it up as they go along, because few groups have ever done it quite this way before. The whole thing, while moving ahead, is unfinished, incomplete.

To me, that seems just right, and wildly symbolic of the call of God on the Christian community in our age. 'Come together, make a commitment, start something, make it up as you go along, design together, but practice the faith in the midst of incompletion, because, even when the church is all built, we should remember that it isn't finished! We need to keep on making it up.

Too many church buildings and church congregations are complete…they are finished. And many of them, as well as being 'finished,' are also FINISHED! Remember that old saying? "He's still walking around because he doesn't know that he's dead." It makes me incredibly sad to see churches and congregations that keep walking around, dead, without knowing it. I keep trying to think of ways to raise these places and people from the dead, but I guess only God can do that. And perhaps only God can lay some of these places to rest, in God's good time.

In the meantime, standing in the midst of an unfinished church, with an unfinished congregation, was exciting and life giving. I led the worship, but I also was a worshipper, and I came away having been touched by God.

Names

"Names are not always what they seem. The common Welsh name Bzjxxllwp is always pronounced 'Jackson.'" So wrote Mark Twain many decades ago. After I finished chuckling, I thought some more and realized tat names slant off in all directions when they are pronounced differently in different regions of the world.

For example, my surname is Strachan. In some parts of Scotland, mostly in upper class areas, the name is pronounced "Strawn." In other parts of Scotland - among coal miners, for example - it is pronounced "Strakkan." The Scots tld me that both pronunciations are proper and acceptable. Not, however, to in my ethnic soul. Coming from poor coal-mining stock makes my name irrevocably "Strakkan."

It is wonderful how defensive and rigid we can be about the names we carry, and of which we are pround. Our biases get expressed subtly but clearly in this way. I once knew a woman, for example, whose roots were Anglophone, but from the rural Eastern Townships of Quebec. Her name was Beauchamps, which I would pronounce as "Bo-shomp." She, on the other hand, stoutly maintained that her name was "Beech - am." A whole history of ethnic rivalry in Quebec was told in that pronunciation.

In the Bible we have perhaps the most telling example. In the Book of Judhes, chapter 12, verses 1-15, we have the story of the bitter war between two Semitic tribes, the Gileadites and the Ephriamites. The two tribes fight a great battle. The Gileadites defeat the Ephraimites, and set up a blockade across the Jordan River to catch the fleeing Ephraimites who were trying to get back to their territory. The sentries asked each person who wanted to cross the river to say the word shibboleth. The Ephraimites, who had no sh sound in their language, pronounced the word with an s and were thereby unmasked as the enemy and slaughtered.To this day, a "shibboleth" is a linguistic marker that is characteristic of members of a group, which is used by another group to identify members of the first group. Such identification typically has bad consequences for the members thus identified.

Aless lethal example can be found in the difference in pronunciation of a name by people who have a French cultural background, as opposed to those whose language is English and English only. In the US National Football League, there was a famous quarterback who dominated the game for a couple of decades. His name: Brett Favre. He was from Louisiana, where there is a French strain in the back-culture. The rest of the USA, with little or no French back-culture, could only pronounce his name as "Far-ve." It was much easier for Canadians, with a French strain in their back-culture, to say "Fav-re." 

Over centuries, names change and evolve with the introduction of different ethnicities into the families that carry the name. One of my friends, now deceased, was named "Uhrich," pronounced "You-rick." My wife's German relatives insisted that the name should be pronounced "Oo-rish." Proper German. My friend was not only unconvinced by this explanation, but more than a little cool to the suggestion that he was pronouncing his surname incorrectly!

 I knew a "Byron," whose name had been "Bjornson," a "Lily", whose name had been "Song Lili." So…what is your name? Where did it come from? How did your ancestors say it, or change it? Seek and you shall find!