OUR FAITH ROOTS US IN PLANETARY SURVIVAL

      

 

The most fundamental question facing every human being alive on the planet today is, ‘Will the planet survive or will we continue to heat up the atmosphere beyond the point of survival?’ What good will it do if we continue to develop human well-being if continuance of the earth will not sustain humans? 

 

There are still people who are skeptics on the conclusion that the atmosphere of the earth is heating up. The scientists have been trying to make this evident for the past sixty years. I am firmly convinced that they are telling humanity the truth: I am measuring the melting of the polar ice! The faster the ice recedes, the hotter the planet is becoming. There is a need to be alarmed at the warming of the atmosphere.

 

Everyone who claims to believe in God must ask what our faith stance can contribute to the survival of the one and only place we can call home.  They will be surprised at the resources and energy that our faith can give toward the survival of the planet.

 

Unfortunately, humanity has dominated during the past five centuries by it strength and power all living creation. We have completely divorced ourselves from nature. Nature and all parts of the physical creation were meant to be subservient to the demands of human beings. This attitude of human dominance, with no responsibility towards the created world, is leading us straight over the cliff of destruction. We know where this bus is headed and it is not in a good direction!

 

We must discover (because the past five hundred years of development has lost it) the Creator- God who created (and is still creating) this marvelous cosmos. Why would God have created such a marvellous creation and only bring forth humanity in thee last few thousands of years after 13.5 billion years? What joy did God create when each of the stars and solar systems were created? 

 

Our religion and prayer must root us in the original work of God: creation. Our prayer life must also take us into the heart and the joy of the God of creation. There is much power in our religion to bring us to share the great pride and satisfaction that God has in the creation of each blade of grass, each bird that sings and every drop of water on this planet. 

 

The survival of the human race and all parts of the planet demands a major cultural shift for humanity. We can do it if we choose survival. We have yet to mine (dig deep into) the beliefs of our religious faith. 

 

In 2015 Pope Francis issued the encyclical (official policy), Laudato si, which outlines the possibilities for a Christian faith that cares for and nourishes planetary (and human) survival. This policy paper encourages and challenges all Christians to work for the well-being and survival of the earth.

 

There is great power in religious conviction to work towards a sustainable world.

Do not underestimate the power of our religious faith to motivate Christian believers to work toward a sustainable world? 

 

The encyclical Laudato si is the articulation of deep-felt convictions in so many parts of the Christian world. We just have to be brave enough to implement this neglected part of our Christian faith.

 

 

 

 

 

 

THE LONG HARD STRUGGLE FOR MEANING IN LIFE

    

 

This week I am on the move to a new parish in Moose Jaw. This is all brand new to me. This is one Saskatchewan community that I can say I am unfamiliar with and do not know a single person there. But this is Saskatchewan and there will many people who know people I know. Connections will abound. But as I pack up this becomes a season to reflect on what it means to plan for the remainder of your life.

 

Seventy years ago people did not live as long as we do today. Our lives have been extended on the average by almost twenty years over the past seventy years. The challenge facing every Canadian is ‘will these last twenty years be meaningful and purposeful or will this be treading water?

 

Every human being needs to have a reason to get out of bed in the morning. No one wants to be condemned to watching TV for a good part of the day because there ‘is nothing better to do.’ What emptiness?

 

Some years ago one of our thirty-some couples shared their experience with his aged father. The father was considerably older than the mother who had predeceased him at an early age. “We can see Dad going down from time to time. We try to find an excuse to leave the kids with him overnight. Well, next morning, there is Dad whistling and a humming!” 

 

He was needed! He had a purpose in life. Meaninglessness and boredom will accelerate your trip to the grave. What could give your day more purpose than two or three little grandchildren that need attention now?

 

If it could be possible we should have all our nursing homes filled with twelve year old volunteers who could become friends with our seniors, listen to their stories and experiences but enter into meaning conversations with them. It might be a littler noisy in the corridors of our nursing homes, but what welcome sounds?  People respond with joy to any interaction with a twelve-year old. This would be a win-win situation. 

 

What makes life meaningful is relationships. The lockdown of the past sixteen months has imposed great suffering on our elders. “No one visits!” Many families have observed that their mother has declined markedly because there was no contact with children and grandchildren. Loneliness shortens our life.

 

This is where we need to have reflection and planning for the last two decades of our life. What will make me want to get out of bed every morning?

 

Our Christian faith leads us out of our self into service and compassion for others. People can find great meaning to their lives by reaching out to those who have lost loved ones, need assistance with shopping and doing their income tax, and getting to their doctor’s appointments. We become more alive when we are helping others.

Horrors if meaninglessness limits us to watching TV to try to fill the empty spaces of the day. 

 

The last two decades of life can be the time to truly become the person God’s wants us to become: hands of deep compassion. But meaning for our own personal life does not fall out of the sky. We need to do the hard work (fearful thought it be) to make our life worthwhile, right to the very end.

 

 

IT IS MERCY THAT I WANT

                               

Several years ago, when we had many forest fires in Northern Saskatchewan, a scientist from the University of Saskatchewan pointed out that the power of nature to regenerate itself is so strong that ‘if you were to examine closely the dying embers and smoke of these forest fires you would see little blades of new grass sprouting even before the fire died out.’ Nature is determined to live and to thrive. 

 

Human beings are a resilient lot. We have suffered much at the hands of others but there is a strong push to survive and to thrive. The struggle to thrive are most often manifested through trial and failure.

 

This is where the thrust of Pope Francis that the Church work more and more to become a Church of mercy and healing is so welcome and needed. In all our ministry and interaction with people, what they need, is to receive  mercy and compassion. The ability and the power to share God’s mercy is a great potential in the life of every believer.

 

Anyone who has suffered a divorce or the breakup of your family is a person who carries many unspoken hurts and failures. These hurts may smolder and cause so much agony as they try to rebuild their lives. The divorced need mercy and understanding.

 

Countless and unspoken families carry the pain of a member who has died of an overdose (primarily males over the age of 29) from illicit drugs. These deaths, almost all are accidental are so needless. This son or brother whom you loved has been snatched from your life. There is a deep hole of sadness and incomprehension. The reality of the overdose epidemic crosses all social classes. Everyone is only one family away from this tragedy. This family needs the help of God’s mercy brought about your quiet support and compassion.

 

As we come out of the sixteen months of lockdown imposed on us by the Covid epidemic we have countless elderly parents who have not had physical contact with their children and grandchildren for so many months. The isolation has been very burdensome on the elderly. Many families have observed that ‘there has been a real decline in their mother because she has not had any meaningful contact with her family. Her memory is failing because of the she cannot hug her grandchildren. What a almost-silent call for mercy?

 

The young unemployed adults are too often the invisible people who also suffer. Work or meaningful employment is crucial to the well-being of people. We need to have a reason to get up in the morning. We need work in our daily lives. The frustration and emptiness of the unemployed needs understanding. They need encouragement in the long weeks of inactivity. The unemployed need the support of the mercy of God that can be given through our hands. 

 

AS a Church we want to move people from away from just feeling that they are good people who have good morals. The call from the Gospel is that we move into the world and bring goodness and mercy to others. We have yet to mine the potential for spiritual growth and meaning that living and practicing God’s mercy can bring. 

 

We want to claim the power of the final blessing at the end of each Sunday mass. We are bring sent into the world, not be secure and comfortable, but to practice the living mercy of God to those who are hurting, estranged or just on the edges of life. 

 

 

 

 

WE SUFFER

This is a season of deep suffering. 

 

The discovery of so many unmarked graves at former residential schools has brought the entire country into suffering. There is no part of the country that is not affected and is participating in some manner in the suffering of our First Nations peoples and all other Canadians. Suffering in not limited to only the direct victims.

 

We have been very slow to consider the entire population of Canada as a living body, a living organism. There are many different groupings of peoples in this vast country but we do share strong common values of respect, human rights and compassion for one another. Just like your physical body, when one part is injured the entire body feels the pain. When you stub your big toe on a chair leg, why do all the leg muscles respond in discomfort? When your big toe hurts why do you not feel like jogging your daily two K run? 

 

In all social groups (a country is a large and diverse social group) when one serious issue of pain arise, then other issues of suffering and exclusion flow into the river of pain.  These issues have always been present in our history. They have been pushed aside and not give the attention they deserve. Now, with this seemly new national pain shared by a great number of Canadians, the other painful issues flow into the mix.

 

This is the time when our First Nations peoples can bring to the surface all the pain, exclusion and second-class status they have been reduced to throughout the past one hundred and fifty years. All Canadians, long standing and new immigrants, need to embrace the pain and suffering. It is not easy. It is not pleasant. As we listen to the stories of past hurts (and some of the present issues of missing and murdered women) we are so often confused.

 

Our First Nations Peoples are claiming their equal status with all other Canadians. They no longer will tolerate being passed over when it comes to employment and education. They do not want their schools on the reserves to be second class. They want equal and fair treatment in our health care system.

 

Catholics and all Christians are suffering with the memory that we cooperated in oppressive colonial policies. This suffering is not a one-way street.

 

When you embrace the sufferings of another you also suffer. The wrongs of a hundred years ago come back to inflict pain on this generation. As Christian people we will embrace this pain and all the fallout that comes with it in our society and bring it to the very cross of Jesus. This is the cross being lived out, very concretely in 2021. We ask that God’s Spirit will give us life, healing and reconciliation. May this pain be redemptive and not useless.

 

The great mystery of the cross is that God can raise from our suffering, tears and confusion new life, reconciliation and peace. I am not living in some distant spiritual forest. This pain and suffering is the mystery of the cross being played out in my country, my church and my own life, 2021. 

 

This means listening and embracing the pain and suffering of our First Nations peoples, the Chinese workers who built the railway in the late 1800’s, the British Home Children, the missing and murdered women in this country and all others who have suffered at the hands of others.

 

My life is filled with great suffering at this time.   This is a suffering that embraces the pain of our ancestors, the pain of anyone who has suffered exclusion and the people who have been regulated to the file of ‘unimportant’ by sheer indifference.  We embrace the consequences of colonialism.

 

As many others in my country and my Church, this suffering is in my  bones and in my prayers.

 

OUR HISTORY IS BEING RETOLD

         

 

Our history is being reshaped as the people from the margins of society are demanding that their story become part of the accepted story of Canada. 

 

History is always being retold and reshaped. Consider your own family. There are memories and personalities from your family history that are never mentioned. It is only years later, when you are already close to seventy, that you discover that the reason that your family had so little connection with your Grandfather’s sister and her family was because the husband was very addicted to alcohol and had caused many problems for your Grandfather and the rest of the family. Their solution over the decades was to keep a safe distance between the families. 

 

This did not mean that there was not history in your great-aunt’s family. Your family refused to recognize it or to deal with it. As you are discovering your larger family’s story, history is not being invented, it is just being recognized. 

 

We are living through such a historical shift in Canada. Our First Nations peoples are clearly saying that we do not want to be considered as second-class citizens. We have our history. It must become part of the Canadian story, no matter how painful it might be. 

 

Women are demanding that their story, their contribution to the Canadian fabric be recognized and integrated into the history. There have been some very powerful women who made a significant difference to their family, community and country.  Women are making their presence felt.

 

The Asian, the black, the Arabic and Indian people who have emigrated into the Canadian fabric are demanding that Canadians recognize their story: their struggles to be accepted, the racism they encountered and the contribution they have made to the Canadian people.

 

Whenever you hear of someone telling their story and memories, (beginning with your own family’s story), always ask: And what is being left out? Who is missing? Ask the family on the margins of your own clan: And what part of the story are we ignoring? What part of the family story are we reluctant to deal with? 

 

In your parish community, whose story do you not pay attention to? Is it the family who suffered the suicide of the father leaving a mother with four little children? Is it the couple whose son is homeless, living in the east side of Vancouver, and caught up in the drug culture? 

 

And we have to ask how much of the story of Jesus do we not pay attention to? What parts of his story do we not make a part of our lived story?  What part of the history of the Gospel is not a living part of your church community?

CONFUSING TIMES ARE VERY HARD TIMES

 

I hate  driving in the fog, whether daytime or at nighttime. I am afraid that someone may come crashing in from my rear or not recognize my headlights in the front. I am confused. And I feal very fearful. 

 

We are living in a time when there are no signposts of truth. The culture is very polarized and very shrill about their positions. What should hold us together with clear values are almost non-existent. You may try to teach your children one value only to have it trashed by the very next TV program they are watching. We live in a post-truth world. It does not matter what the truth is. This is all about winning. It is power that counts! And that is all!

 

You teach your children that life is sacred. You must not kill – even your own self. Next month the family is greeted with news that your great aunt has just had herself put down with medically assisted death. What do you teach your children as the truth? What values can they stake their lives on?

 

Human beings need to have some clear and definite values. We find it very difficult to live when the value ground is shifting every year. The values that are true and give for us to follow are like the runway lights on a runway at night. I remember the northern pilots telling stories about how much they appreciated the runway lights when they came in from the North on an ambulance call to bring a patient to the University hospital in Saskatoon. So often as they would recount these night trips you could feel that they wanted to get out and hug each one of those night lights. Each light told them exactly where and how they could accomplish their flight mission.

 

As the culture is shifting more and more to a very individualistic position there is greater distrust of any type of institution or organized set of values and directions. It is all about how I, the individual, is going to do things. No one is going to impose some other truth on me!

 

In all societies, religion has been the force that defined peoples’ lives and had signposts that were clearly right or wrong. Religion gave your value to your own individual existence and your place on this earth.

 

Religion has been regulated to the margins. It is strictly and individual’s choice. You have your religious values and I have mine!

 

It is in this confusing fog that we live. What does it mean for our Christianity?

 

This is a time to rediscover the great truths that our Christianity brings. We are just like the first Christians who were misunderstood, rejected because they believed in the wrong truth. Their position challenged the powers that be during the first two centuries. They had to locate the powerful meaning that their faith in Jesus Christ brought to their lives/family/society. We are in the same position.

As we move through this fog of confusing values, we want to locate the truths of the revelation of Jesus Christ. We want to be claimed by the power of his truths. 

 

We may be living in the fog of moral confusion, but our feet are standing firmly on the ground.

NEVER ATTACK PEOPLES’ RELIGiON

                                  

 

When Saulteaux Nation Chief Felix Thomas and Federation of Sovereign Indigenous Nations Vice-Chief David Pratt, Friday, June 11, 2021, asked Catholics to boycott the Sunday Mass they stepped into very dangerous territory.

 

We have learnt through centuries of colonization and suppression the incredible damage that can be done when one group/person uses religion to dominate another. Our ancestors, the conquering peoples throughout history, have trampled over the religious sensibilities of the peoples they conquered. Our European settlers made tremendous mistakes when they dismissed the religions of the peoples who lived in the Americas.

 

When the European settlers tore up the sacred texts and tried to stamp out the prayer gatherings/ceremonies of the established population (included here are all the South and North American religious traditions) they sought to crush a people. As a human being, when you attack my religion you attack my person!

 

Throughout the past ten thousand years the conquering forces destroyed and imposed their religious system on the subjected people.

 

When you seek to diminish the religion of another, you are diminishing a person. We have much to repent about the actions and attitudes of our ancestors. We carry their sins in our history.

 

Religion must not be politicized. We have some strong right-wing Catholics who strongly (they are very shrill) want to deny communion to any Catholic who might support a civic law that allows abortion. It is a blatant error to use religion to exclude people.

 

We live in a very polarised society. People are so divided on very important issues. People are so shrill and angry. They do not listen to the position of the other. In too many instances truth has degenerated into “my” truth. Truth is not above and beyond us. Truth does not challenge the entire society. Truth has become in this divided society what I want to make it to be!

 

In front of the religious knowledge and experience of the First Nations peoples we must be silent and reverent. We must recognize their experience of the divine/ transcendent power in the world. We must respect and listen attentively to their prayers and ceremonies. The experience of the divine is much greater than any one of us.

 

First Nations spirituality must stand in respect before the spirituality of the Buddhist tradition. And all people must bring respect to the dignity and the life-giving powers that the religion of each people gives them. This is a time of great learning and a time of strong repentance for any past attitudes that saw “my position is the only one” and “you are all wrong!”

 

We can locate all kinds of attacks and put-downs within Christianity in the year 2021. We are a long way from being perfect. 

 

Holding all the past mistakes in my hands (or in my memory) I must stand before the religion of another person in respect. The religion of another is always sacred. We need to take off our shoes in the presence of the religion of another human being.

 

A person’s religion states clearly their human dignity and value. When I attack the religion of another or use it for political purposes I am attacking the other person. May I never attack the religious values and practices of anyone who is different from me.