Compassion and Companionship in a Small City

What if Jesus hadn’t fed the 5000?

What if he had confined his actions to a ‘preaching tour’ without any active involvement with the poor and needy of his time? What if he’d thought they were too different, too dangerous, too unimportant to spend time with?
Well, the answer is simple: He wouldn’t be Jesus.

This means of course that if we want to be followers of Christ, if we want to be real Christians, then we have to get involved. Fortunately, many Churches understand this, and run hospitality and outreach programs.

For example, in my little city of Brockville, the Pier Christian Church’s Common Ground program provides hospitality, prayer and lunch for 50-80 people a day. Common Ground started as a coffee and prayer drop-in program several years ago. Its primary intent was to provide spiritual care to the wider community. At Common Ground everyone is welcome. Participants find friendship, fellowship, faith and food all in one place.

Good Christian ministry should always be more about solidarity than charity. True solidarity means being there for each other regardless of our circumstances, our appearance, our interests, even our sins. A church community isn’t made up of saints, but rather neighbors struggling to help each other and follow in the footsteps of Christ. This is what it means to love your neighbor. This is what it means to love your God.

The Pier’s Common Ground, like other church ministries, serves as a reminder that we cannot worship a homeless man on Sunday and ignore one the rest of the week. We’re called to be creative, courageous and compassionate. We’re called to walk in the footsteps of the man from Galilee who ate, prayed and laughed with the poorest around him.

What ministries are you involved in? What draws you to it?

Siblings and Summer

It’s my sister’s fault.

Alright, fine. It’s mine. I should have posted earlier this week, but my sister Jennifer is visiting from England, and we’ve spent the last few days together at a cottage in Bouchette, Quebec, far away from the internet and landlines.

It was wonderful.

There’s nothing like spending time with someone who’s known you since before you knew yourself. My sisters and brothers know ALL my flaws. They remember EVERY mistake. But they also remember every success, every joke, every trip, every joy and every sorrow.

This means that I have no choice but to be myself, completely and fully, when I’m with my two brothers and two sisters. It’s liberating to know there’s nothing left to hide and it doesn’t matter anyway. They value my strengths, help me deal with my weaknesses, and tolerate my stupidities.

The unconditional love of siblings (or best friends for the only child) is a blessing hard to put in to words, and hard to qualify except as priceless. Over the years our family has grown with spouses and children. Each new member has brought us the gift of their particular view of the world, and new insights into love, solidarity and friendship.

Families can be like complicated and unique treasure boxes, each member rubbing up against the other, sometimes producing irritation, more often (if you’re lucky like me) producing a shine. Good families are built on relationship rather than blood and DNA.

As my sister and I sat by the bonfire at midnight, gazing at a sky brilliant with stars and moon, the only thing more beautiful than the night was the knowledge of the blessings of my ever-loving, ever-changing, ever-growing family.

So I leave you with a question this week: What does family mean to you and where do you find it?

We Walk Together For a Little While

Many years ago, on a cold December night, I stood on a sidewalk in Kingston outside the Grand Theatre waiting for my date. He was late. It was the last night of term before Christmas vacation.

“Cathy!” My brother James called to me from across Princess Street. “What’re you doing? There’s a bunch of us going to Coppers.”

“Can’t,” I answered, as he crossed over. “Got a date.”

“Ooooo,” James ‘ eyebrows went up. “That him?”

A good looking young man in a leather jacket was heading toward us at a rapid pace.

I smiled. “Yup. Don’t do anything stupid. I like him.”

“Sure,” James said, and threw his arm around me pulling me close.

“Getyourarmoffme!” I hissed. He just grinned until I pushed him off.

My date approached and I introduced them. “James, this is Brian. Brian this is my BROTHER James.”

Later, Brian told me he’d never felt so relieved. Much later. Brian and I celebrated our twenty-second wedding anniversary last Friday.

Now twenty-two years may seem like a long time, and it might be an eternity in a bad relationship, but a few decades are nothing, not nearly enough time together, in a good relationship, be it friendship or marriage.

We walk with each other for a short time only on this earth, and some day Brian and I will say good-bye. Sooner or later we all grieve or are grieved. But for that short walk we can support each other and love each other. We can embrace companionship and bear each other’s sorrows.

It’s easy to let conflict overwhelm us, easy to blame the people closest to us for our pain, easy to nurse the ways we are wronged. God knows I’ve done that often enough. But it might be easier still to forgive, let go, and fall into friendship and love, if only we would let ourselves.

Friendships are treasures that last beyond human breath, and outpace the beating of a human heart. May you embrace yours, and hold close the memory of those who are gone. Eternity and love belong to all of us.

Prayers for Norway

My heart breaks for the people of Norway. Last week I wrote about the gift of camp counselors. Today we mourn for them and their charges. May we build a world beyond hate and violence. May we hold each other close on the journey toward it.

Memories of Summer Camp

I love summer. The heat, the blue skies, the refreshing lakes, and days that last well into the night make it a favourite time of year.

As a teenager I worked as a summer camp counselor, and I still think there is no better summer job in the world. Camp Pine Valley lay just outside of the little town of Sainte-Agathe-Des-Monts in the Laurentians in Quebec. It catered to Jewish children from Montreal, and I was grateful to the directors for hiring me and my brother even though we were Christian.

Like all camps, our goal was to entertain the children and make them feel at home in a rustic group setting. Days were spent moving from activity to activity, motivating and encouraging the children while keeping their homesickness at bay. Most came from wealthy families, and Pine Valley would be their home for the summer while their parents worked overtime through July and August.

The work could be exhausting and at times difficult, but the counseling staff developed strong friendships and support for each other. And Friday nights were always treated reverently as the Sabbath, emphasizing the presence of God for our campers.

Years later, after I met and married my husband Brian, we spent our summers at a camp where he had been a counselor and senior staff member as a young man. Columbus Boys Camp welcomed underprivileged Catholic boys from Toronto for an experience of wilderness and community. Although the campers’ backgrounds were different from those at Pine Valley, the same small group experience of meeting the natural world with a counselor in the lead brought the best out of children who had rarely left the big city.

Given the shortage of priests it wasn’t long before Brian and I were asked to assume the position of chaplains. We felt privileged to be given the task of helping the campers sense the deeper presence of the Spirit beyond camaraderie and play in forests, fields and water.

The value of our camp was brought home to us in so many ways. City children staring awestruck at star bright skies as we prayed around a campfire, or crying when it came time to leave their counselors made it clear that something had touched them in a profound and meaningful way.

Perhaps more than anything else, I was moved by the surprise return visits of former campers, now men, often well past their fifties. They were always welcome at the lunch table and I can remember one sitting beside me and crying as he told me how Columbus Boys Camp had changed his life. It had given him a whole new understanding of friendship, of faith and of who he was and what he could become.

I never returned to Pine Valley so I can’t say for sure that it had that same effect on its alumni, but I expect it did.

Both camps are now closed but there are many other camps doing that same good work today. To those young people who are out there doing the work of camp counselor, I say thank you. For some child you may provide the memory that gets them through the dark times, to some you may be the source of inspiration for a better future.

And you too will learn in the hard and sometimes endless work of providing support and encouragement, that you have great gifts to share and great worth to others.

More Sex Abuse in the Irish Church

When will it end? A judicial report into the handling of priestly sex abuse cases in the Irish Diocese of Cloyne, published this week, has once again revealed a Church leadership more interested in self-preservation than justice. This is the fourth report on sex abuse scandals in Ireland in the recent past.

According to the report, Bishop Magee, himself guilty of inappropriate advances on a young parishioner, disregarded the 1996 guidelines on dealing with sex abuse allegations, and did so with the full support of the Vatican. He also lied to government officials about the extent of abuse in the diocese.

These are not decades old allegations. All of the abuse happened after 1996, and the cover up continued until as recently as 2009.

Although Magee is assigned primary responsibility for the failure to deal with the allegations, the report also notes that the Vatican was “entirely unhelpful” to Bishops who did wish to implement them.

Apparently, dithering over implementing the guidelines had to do with questions of canon law. Rome fiddled while Ireland burned.

Unbelievably, not only did the Vatican refuse to help implement the guidelines, but once the story of the abuses broke, the Magisterium debated at length whether or not the clearly culpable Magee should keep his post. In the end he was removed from governance but allowed to keep the title of bishop. (Contrast this to the quick firing of Bishop Morris of Australia for the so much more serious ‘crime’ of suggesting that the Church open discussions on the ordination of women).

Not surprisingly, Frances Fitzgerald, the Irish Minister for Children commented that the Vatican’s “sole concern was the protection of the institution – not the children”. (Donadio and Kulish, “Irish Report Finds Abuse Persisting in the Catholic Church” New York Times, Wednesday, July 13 2011).

It is clear, absolutely clear, that those in power in my Church, the Catholic Church, are more interested in preserving the ragged remains of what they perceive as the prestige of their position, than breathing the spirit of life and love into the world.

While the church of the community continues to value humility, charity, justice, compassion and hope, the Church of the Rock (and a hard cold lifeless rock it is) navel-gazes and holds the world at bay. No child, no woman, no lay person can clamber on the slippery boulder from which the Vatican pronounces and denounces.

But here’s the thing. If God truly is a living God, if there truly is such a thing as the Holy Spirit, if truth does prevail in the end, then the Vatican should be careful. Rocks weigh a person down, and cause one to stumble and fall. Eventually they erode, collapse and roll away. Nothing eternal is made of stone. Remember the stone in front of the tomb? It moved, displaced by the power of the Holy spirit.

Lay Catholics need to speak up and be a voice for compassion, stability, honesty and truth. The Spirit given to all people, to all the world, has to be allowed to advocate for truth and change within the Catholic Church. If we don’t want to be complicit in the abuse of minors and the exclusion of women and married people, then we need to speak the words in our hearts. We need to call for reform and conversion within the cold stone walls of the Vatican.

In the end, breath, spirit, faith, hope and love, these intangible senses of the divine, carry forward and last beyond today, beyond the world, beyond all time. And that to me, is Church enough.

For more information on the Irish report go to http://ncronline.org/news/accountability/irish-report-reveals-abuse-bishops-mismanagement

Freedom Flotilla... Again

Should my world ever crash around me, my country reduced to a captive land, bombed, abused, and besieged, I hope and pray that people like those on the Freedom Flotilla will come to the aid of me and my people.

It breaks the heart to hear that this week the boats of the flotilla were first sabotaged, and then restricted from sailing to Gaza by Greek authorities. As Greece struggles with economic collapse, Israel is only too ready to help ... at a price. No one may sail to Gaza from Greece. And so the flotilla of ships laden with humanitarian goods are confined to port, even though the UN does not recognize Israel's right to restrict access to Gaza.

When will the world say no to this? When will we say no more collective punishment?

There are children in Gaza who hunger. The destitute and sick wait for help, confined and cut off by the Israeli military who treat anyone as a terrorist. But Deuteronomy is clear: 'The fathers shall not be put to death for the children, nor shall the children be put to death for the fathers' (24:16a).

Where is our willingness to safeguard the dignity of the human person regardless of race or religion? When will our world leaders speak up for justice and peace? If 86 year old holocaust survivor Hedy Epstein is willing to risk sailing on the flotilla, should we not at least risk words of hope?

May there be justice and peace in Israel and Palestine. May there be hope for all those held captive by fear or prejudice.