Truth in Ashes

Ashes and smoke drift toward me, the acrid smell drawing my attention.

I stand on the soccer pitch at Moleli High School, and watch the soaring flames move closer. The British teachers have mobilized the students with buckets filled with precious water, a line of them soaking the outer edges of the pitch, which in Zimbabwe in late September is mostly dirt anyway.

But the wilderness of trees beyond the field, twisted acacia, monkey fruit, and mopane, provide dried tinder that burns easily, happily feeding the flames.

I step toward the line of improvised firefighters.

“Don’t bother,” says a voice beside me.

Mai Chinogwenya, the head of the math department, stands beside me shaking her head, arms crossed.

“There’s no danger,” she continues.

“How do you know?” I ask.

She looks at me, probably wondering how anyone can be so stupid. Whoever has designed the school layout knows about fire. The dirt-covered sports fields ring the school, providing a natural barrier to flames. The buildings are mostly brick and cement anyway, so any would-be danger comes mostly from smoke.

Mai explains all this to me, then adds, “Besides, the wind’s changing direction. Anyone can see that. They’re wasting water, and their time.”

“They don’t know,” I offer.

She shrugs, too polite and good humoured to point out that they should ask. The brush fire has now reached the far edge of the soccer pitch. We watch the British teachers hit at small pockets of fire with brooms. Their student bucket-brigade moves slowly, clearly less-than-enthusiastic, well-accustomed to fire. Other Zimbabwean teachers cluster together, enjoying the spectacle, saving their energy to help only if it’s necessary. They’re amused, but indulgent of this Western tendency to rush into things, to sometimes miss the big picture and the local wisdom.

In the West (and North), many of us have forgotten things that people who live closer to the earth learn early in life. Like the fact that fire is natural and unavoidable, that it can be managed and lived with, that it can help not only for food and heat but for growth, and that it has a symbolic cleansing power that cultures have recognized for millennia.

Whether in the burnt offerings of the ancient Hebrews or the cremations on the Ganges, humanity recognizes that we have need in our lives to burn away the old to make way for the new. In our modern electronic culture, we can easily forget the basics, that those things that are most dangerous, like fire, like religion, can also be life-giving and essential.

As we enter the season of Lent on this Ash Wednesday, my thoughts return to that day, the ashes swirling, the heat, and the reminder to take it slow. Human life is short, fragile, burnable, but meant to be breathed in deeply, and experienced richly. We are surrounded by wisdom, pain, laughter, joy, loss, love - all the flickering colours of a flame. If we fight the truth that ultimately we too will be reduced to dust, we also fight the truth that we are part of something larger than ourselves, something deep, something necessary, something eternal.

On Grief

I reread the book of Job this past summer. You remember Job. He’s the one who loses absolutely everything, and continues to hold fast to faith in God, despite his suffering. I was preparing a piece for a US based Christian magazine, and my reflection focused on my own encounter with mortality, and the ways in which my friends and family walked with me through the hard times.

In the last few weeks, my family has again encountered the pain of death, but today I find myself in the role of Job’s friends. In her seventh month of pregnancy my youngest sister delivered a still-born baby via c-section.

My sister Laura’s apparently perfectly formed baby Emma simply stopped living. No cause, no reason can be found. And my sister and her husband are left devastated.

Babies delivered after the sixth month require burial. I mention this for those who might remember the old days when a woman would often not even see her still-born baby. But today, parents are encouraged to hold their babies after delivery for as long as they feel comfortable. I stood in the recovery room with Laura and Bernie and baby Emma and stroked her tiny perfect face, and held her miniature fingers. In this act of acknowledgement, the dignity of her short life was affirmed. The truth that Laura and her husband Bernie were parents to this child was celebrated sorrowfully but importantly.

A funeral was held for Emma, and she is buried in a cemetery in Toronto near her parents’ home. But my sister’s grief weighs her down, assaults her, and drags her into darkness. My brothers, my sisters, my parents and I try to reach her, try to comfort her, but like Job’s friends we are at a loss. Her friends come, bearing food and kind words, but none of us can find the cure to her pain.

Laura wonders if Emma is alone. She wonders if she, Laura, could have done something to save her child. She wonders where God is in this. And she wonders whether the pain will ever stop, and even whether she wants it to, because happiness might be a betrayal of her baby.

Grief is complex, individual, and often hidden. Words don’t cure it, nor does time on its own. But fellowship can help, and prayer, and the acknowledgement that the one who has died does not suffer, does not yearn, and does not cry. But while the dead are at peace in the arms of God, those who are left behind face the light-sucking pain of loss.

I considered the book of Job again this week. I’ve worked in grief support, but I never find it easy. People grieve individually, in a way particular to their own situation. This may be because, despite our incredible education system, we don’t teach people how to die, and we don’t teach people how to grieve. We learn that on our own, in that unexpected moment when death attacks us. We hide from our mortality until it hits us in the face, unmistakable, and often, gone.

I find that Job’s friends have little to offer me in the way of advice, except for one thing:

They are there. They stay. They tear their clothes, and sit in the dust with their friend. They say useless things, but they do not leave.

And when Job’s friends stay, they manifest the truth about God. Death comes, but God stays. Carrying that presence of God with them, Job’s friends sit with him. Like Jesus on the cross, they do not hide from the suffering, from the truth that the human body must encounter death. The only way to the light of resurrection is through that dark night of sorrow. Love transcends it all, even through pain.

And so my family will continue to sit with Laura and Bernie. We will simply be there, our words useless perhaps, but our hearts certainly full. And we will wait, and wait, until the light comes again.

Connections

EGYPT: A couple of weeks ago I wrote about Nelson Mandela and the power of conscience to triumph over fear and change the world. Now the world stands in awe of the change wrought in Egypt by that very same courage. Difficult days remain for the people of Egypt, but for a few hours we celebrate their willingness to put an end to tyranny and oppression. While violence and war continue to ravage many areas of the world, the steadfastness of the Egyptian people illuminate the planet with hope. In Libya and elsewhere, a taste for freedom is growing…
…
KAIROS: About a year ago I wrote about the Canadian government’s decision to cut funding to Kairos, the ecumenical social justice organization of the mainstream Canadian churches, stating that it was no longer in line with CIDA priorities. No one who knows Kairos could believe that was the truth. Last week, thanks to the Freedom of Information Act, Kairos was able to obtain documents showing that their funding had in fact originally been granted and then, incredibly, the form had been doctored by International Cooperation Minister Bev Oda’s office. It took my breath away to see the word ‘NOT’ penciled in above the clearly signed line granting funding to Kairos. Are we still in Canada?
…
MISCELLANEOUS CONNECTIONS: As the people of the Middle East stand up at great risk for democracy, and as members of Kairos demonstrate the worth of persistence, I can’t help but hope that we as Catholics will also advocate for greater freedom of speech within our Church. Let us hear the voices of women. Let us feel the movement of the laity. Let us seek the love of God.

No more apathy. No more waiting for another pope, or another generation. Let us be the Church of inclusiveness, of hope and of God that Jesus called us to be.

Celebrating Love in all its Forms

Valentine’s Day comes toward us, showering us with flowers, chocolates, and paper hearts. Humans celebrate love, desire it, cling to it, thrive on it.

“Love, and do what you want,” Augustine wrote in the early 400s. But what does it mean to love truly?

We are captivated by stories of love, whether they tell of romance or friendship, whether they are truth or fiction. Romeo and Juliet, Samson and Delilah, Anthony and Cleopatra, Ruth and Naomi, and Jonathan and David are just some of the tales that fill us with wonder at the power of friendship and love to move and shape us. We search for deeper meaning when we take time for love. We have always done so. We talk about it, dream about it, pray over it, and always, always look for it.

Saint Paul wrote that “love is patient and love is kind” (1 Cor 13:4). Today that might mean waiting for your partner before having supper. It might involve calling a friend. It’s driving your children to hockey practice. It’s spending time with family. It’s feeding the hungry, and offering shelter to the homeless. It’s biting your tongue, and filling your heart.

True love hovers mist-like, hard to describe, just out of reach of any final words. But we know it when we feel it. It proclaims itself in the ‘I do’ of newlyweds, in the faces of new parents, in the touch of lovers, in the sacrifice of visionaries.

True love possesses other forms as well, more difficult to recognize, more often ignored. True love exists in the parent who demands complete homework, and the spouse who challenges their beloved over addiction. It lives in those who stand for justice, and those who walk for peace. True love is unafraid of caring confrontation, of demanding more, of expecting better. It holds dreams close and only lets go with a struggle, with a cry. It grieves the loss of love, the separation of death, the end of a vision.

True love gives itself for others, makes sacrifices, welcomes love in return. It reaches for the love of God, the ultimate love that would sacrifice and empty itself for humanity, holding nothing back, taking on any suffering, because its bearer knows that love is eternal and nothing good can be destroyed. The love on the cross mirrors the love of the resurrection, bound together, one in sacrifice, the other in celebration, unity, and peace.
True love holds tight to hopes of the future, faith in each other, and forgiveness of failings. It warms and builds, explodes within us, takes us higher, transforms us into our best self, the one God calls us to be. Found as much in friends as in lovers, in the presence of true love you know only one thing. You have come home.

Happy Valentine’s Day.

Three Women - Three Books

Different cultures, different times. I’ve recently read three books that reveal the vast breadth of women’s experience. If you’re interested…

Dr. Joan Sherwood’s Infection of the Innocents (McGill –Queens University Press, 2010) offers captivating insights into the stories of healthy wet nurses in late 18th century France who were exploited to treat syphilitic babies. The nurses were fed mercury, the standard medicine for syphilis at the time, in the hopes that the diluted medicine would cure the babies. The legal and medical breakthroughs that arose at this tumultuous time in French history have ramifications down to this day.

Andrea Cameron’s Cameron’s Corner (Butternut Publishing, 2010) provides an often quirky, frequently moving, sometimes witty and always fascinating look at life as a twenty-first century woman. As a mother, teacher, and world traveler, Cameron gives the reader one thought-provoking episode after another. Reflections range broadly from parenting an exceptional child to caring for Nepalese orphans to saving the Arctic ice to dealing with breast cancer. Each short vignette takes the reader on a ride straight to the heart. Cameron’s book is available at Leeds County Books, Brockville and from the publisher.

Lastly, Crystle Mazurek’s recently released Mommy, When are We Going Home? (GSPH, 2011) chronicles Mazurek’s own journey back to India, where she had lived as a child with her missionary parents. Mazurek returns to the village of her youth, and eventually establishes the India Village Fund. This one woman organization now arranges educational funding for hundreds of Indian children and youth, providing them not only with necessary school fees but with trade tools upon graduation. This is a story of determination and hope, comparable to Three Cups of Tea.

Christmas Lessons from a Small City

Two thousand years ago, in the cloaked hush of a Judean cave, surrounded by the smells and sounds of animals, our Lord Jesus Christ opened human eyes on the world.

Out of the nothingness of that shrouded night, angels sang of glory, poor shepherds left their fields, and rich kings headed out to find their God.

Out of seeming nothingness, our God appeared and consecrated the forgotten, the abandoned, the overlooked space of a simple cave. Our homeless God showed that wealth is a matter of perspective, a matter of looking into the dark forgotten spaces of our hearts, of opening our souls to the impossible and turning our thoughts to the divine.

Out of apparent nothingness, God landed helpless in this world, born of the least of it’s members, a woman who opened herself to the potential disgrace of premarital pregnancy, who risked rejection and even stoning for the sake of her God.

And throughout all of Jesus’ life, from birth to the moment of crucifixion and beyond, he continued to point to the possibilities for hope in the rejected, desperate people and situations he encountered.

Recently, Brockville made the news as one of the most economically difficult places to live. The loss of jobs is taking its toll on our community. And certainly, as the number of visitors to the Food Bank rises, we know that things are not easy for many of our citizens.

But there is hope in this season. You would think with our economic problems, generosity would be scarce in Brockville. You’d think people would be hoarding their pennies. You’d think stinginess would rule this most beautiful of seasons. This is not the case.

The people of Brockville have demonstrated an overwhelming generosity during the past weeks of Advent. While there are many examples of this, from charitable organizations, the Salvation Army and each of the Churches, my most recent experience of Brockville’s generosity comes from the St Mary CHS canned food drive.

Every year the students of St Mary have blown away their record food collection. Starting with 2000 items in the year 2000, they collected 36 290 last year. Yesterday, we learned that this year's total topped 50 000. That's FIFTY thousand items from a city of 22 000 people, and a school of 750. In proportionate terms, that would be like a school in Toronto collecting 4.5 million items (more than two cans for every citizen). How does it happen??

The students take to heart Jesus’ message to care for the least of our neighbors. But this story is so much bigger than one school’s efforts. The community of Brockville has backed this drive 100% since it began. Students have been amazed as donors have responded to their requests for help. Out of nothing, hope has been born by the people of Brockville.

One example out of many: A group of three students told me the story of approaching the check out at the Walmart grocery exit with their cart full of cans, only to have people in the line insist on paying for their order – of over $100. And the donors refused to give their names.

Like the miracle of the loaves and fishes, Jesus calls out to us across the ages, “Feed my people”. And though we may feel we have nothing, this community has a wealth of caring that cannot be measured.

Christmas reminds us to be on guard for the miraculous, to take nothing and no one for granted, to open our hearts to the forgotten, and to roll up our sleeves and work for the kingdom. We are all on a journey to the manger, every day of the year, and none of us walk alone.

Thank you Brockville, and merry Christmas.

SOA Watch November 2010

We stand under clear sunlit skies, small white wooden crosses clutched to our hearts, thousands of us, gathered together to mourn the deaths – the murders – of the innocent in Latin America, victims to soldiers trained at the facility before us, the infamous School of the Americas (SOA) in Fort Benning, Georgia.

From the temporary stage set up in front of the School – carefully fenced and protected by a line of police against us cross-bearing, peace-wishing unarmed vigil-keepers – the announcers slowly sing out the names of the dead. We respond to each one in a single voice, ‘Presente!’. For the dead live on in our hearts.

My husband, son and I have come for the annual School of the Americas Watch, a Peace Vigil that gathers thousands from across North America and the world each year to call for the closing of the SOA. We have participated in workshops and listened to presentations on social justice and peace throughout the weekend. Those of us who are Christian have prayed and worshipped, and I have had the sense of coming home to a church that still believes peace is possible, that still tries to walk in the footsteps of Christ. Today we gather for the last procession in front of the SOA.

I wait, and listen for the name on my cross: Angela Del Mir, 5 years old. What crime did a 5 year old commit that soldiers trained at this school had to kill her? What sin could you commit at that age which would make it acceptable in anyone’s mind to gun you down in cold blood? I can find no answer. And Angela is not the youngest of the victims whose names are called.

The youngest is an unnamed baby, 3 days old.

I weep as I hold my cross, and we step forward slowly in one united procession. I weep and I wonder how it is possible in this great country of America, that there would be a school set up at taxpayers’ expense explicitly to train Latin American soldiers to oppress their own people.

For that is indeed the purpose of the SOA, recently renamed the Western Hemisphere Institute for Security Cooperation (WHINSEC). The School of the Americas had garnered bad press for itself. Apparently American taxpayers were less than impressed when word finally got out about the killing of unarmed villagers as in the case of the hundreds who died in the slaughter of El Mozote, or unarmed missionaries as in the case of the four Maryknoll women, or unarmed Bishops as in the case of Archbishop Oscar Romero, or unarmed priests as in the case of the six Jesuit priests in El Salvador and their housekeeper and her 16 year old daughter. But why change the focus? Just change the name.

There are no wars between Latin American countries. There are only battles within Latin American countries. Why then does the US fund a school to train their militaries?

The answer is simple. By training Latin American militaries to oppress their own people, these militaries will facilitate the operations of American corporations. No US company need fear union formation within Latin American countries. They need not be concerned that they should ever have to pay a living wage, or benefits, or offer job security, or respectable hours. The military will take care of union busting. Slavery is safe with SOA graduates standing by.

No mining company need worry when they take over ancestral lands that the local villagers will stop them. The military will take care of evicting people. Where they go is of no concern to the company.

Safety regulations within mines or factories need not keep company presidents awake at night. The military will ensure that nobody says a word of protest, nobody speaks up for justice, nobody gathers to improve their lives or protect their land.

The graduates of the School of the Americas are in the business of creating silence. There will be no protest from the people. There will be no complaint from the workers. And if there is, death provides an easy solution. The illusion that American companies are bringing jobs to Latin America, that this is not modern slavery, will remain intact behind the guns and helicopters of the graduates of the SOA.

This is why we are here. This is why thousands of us have gathered. We must be the voice for those who have none. We must be the presence for the murdered, the threatened, the downtrodden, the oppressed, the forgotten, the silenced.

I look at the flimsy white cross in my hand, so delicate, so makeshift, no strength to it on its own, then I reach out and place it in one of the openings of the fence, as thousands of others do the same. I look at the faces of those around me, I see their tears, I recognize them as part of my Church, this church of conscience and peace, this church that tries to stand at the foot of the cross, this church that can and must speak for the poor, the mourners, the marginalized, the suffering, the dead. And suddenly my little cross becomes part of something bigger.

We gather here on the second weekend of November, on the anniversary of the deaths of the Jesuits. But speaking out against the SOA must be a year-long endeavor. Even as I write someone in Latin America is forced into silence because of the graduates of the SOA.

Join your voice to all those who call for an end to the SOA. Go to www.soaw.org.