May in March

Yesterday the Feather and Cross group from our church was to do a tour in the Sugar Bush with an Indigenous guide. We are a group of Lutheran Christians interested in learning more about our Indigenous neighbours and exploring ways to live in right relationship. We do a number of events throughout the year, and this would have been the third year with a trip to the Sugar Bush. It was cancelled because of the forecast for heavy rain and winds. Also, the trees are not running because of the unusually warm spring. It is as if we are experiencing May in March.

I recall, not so many years ago, hearing that the effects of climate change would be much more rapid than were imaginable. This prediction seems to be spot on, and leaves one wondering. There has, of course, rightly been much conversation about how the climate change reflects on humans acting badly. Others also weigh in on the observation that solutions, concerns, etc. are largely anthropocentric. This, too, is commonly true although we are starting to hear people reframing the crisis in a way that draws attention to the way in which other species are paying the price for our folly. Some, too, speak of the burden this is for the earth itself.

I recall, some years ago, having this image in my mind of the earth experiencing humanity as a pesky insect that it finally, on day, decides to swat. I find this image becoming more and more prominent in my mind, as things become increasingly apocalyptic. I’m not sure if we live with a willful blindness, or if we are caught in habits of activity that we cannot extricate ourselves from. But to call it troubling is an understatement and I wonder how the religion can assist in a time such as this.

A famous apocryphal tale told of Luther was that he was once asked what he would do should he know that the world would end the next day. He was reported to have said that he would plant an apple tree. Luther scholars scoff at the veracity of this although it is an interesting and possibly helpful way to frame how we should comport ourselves as glaciers melt, forest fires rage, and sea level rise. To plant a tree is a pledge to hope, even if it is hoping against hope. To deprive people of hope is evil, I think, even while I realize that hope without a reality check is dangerous – a luxury we cannot afford in this current time.

But perhaps there is some hope in remembering that wisdom traditions the world over have found a way forward in remembering that humanity is a partner with all of creation, and that our first ethical responsibility is to the past and future of the earth. Despair might seem like an easier solution than imagination, but holy hope can be found when we deny ourselves – both as individuals and as a species and imagine a different future, leaning for inspiration on the artists, poets, musicians, and scientists. Moreover, in learning to live with less we might discover again that in losing we gain, and in gaining less we redefine what more is.

Hope and Her Friends

These have been some hard days this last week. We have witnessed news reports of children seeing their parents gunned down, young people shot while at play while people of all religious convictions worry for the well-being of loved ones. And so we wonder if a future of some hope obtains for people in the Middle East in light of intransigent conflict, and for the world in light of environmental degradation. It is not altogether unexpected to find ourselves in some serious states of despair. What can be done?

Some weeks ago at a conference on decolonizing education, we discussed how self-care is necessary in the midst of the hard work of bringing issues of truth, reconciliation, and reparation to the classroom. Everyone has different ways to keep their sanity in the midst of hard work and difficult times, but certainly friends to speak, cry, and play with has been a Godsend for me.

Interestingly, the Feather and Cross committee at St. Matthews Lutheran Church had planned a workshop some time ago, on the topic of Indigenous understandings of friendship with Adrian Jacobs for yesterday. It was a fulsome and rich way to spend a Saturday one week after news reports of reprehensible atrocities committed by Hamas, and the predictable chaos that ensued as we witnessed the way in which evil begets more evil across divides. Adrian began our session by talking about the power of music for healing his soul before he introduced us to some teachings about friendship that emerge from Haudenosaunee wampum belts.

The learning was so rich, but two themes came to the fore for me. One is that the land schools us in friendship and teaches us that interdependence is a gift that draws us closer to one another. The second learning was that the Creator wills balance for our lives, and friends can help us to find equilibrium when the chaos of life has sent us tumbling. The teachings were rich, but doubly so in that we didn’t only learn about friendship in that day away, but we experienced it in many ways, by way of open sharing, embodied teaching, eating together, and learning to handle a lacrosse stick and toss a lacrosse ball at day’s end.

The latter in this list was especially potent, I think, in that we were all newbies and so had a shared starting point of fumbling, failing, and experiencing the ecstasy of the first successful throw and catch. One of the lacrosse instructors noted that there were many smiles in the field. It was lovely.

We all need some loveliness, joy, and play in these hard days. Friends can help us in this. I was grateful for the opportunity to deepen both friendships and my understanding of friendship. At the end of the day I thought upon the biblical image of Abraham being called a friend of God, which makes of God a friend as well. And in being a friend, God changes the nature of friendship such that friendship becomes divine. I certainly experienced some of that yesterday and I pray that you do too and so find a hope that does not disappoint but anoints you with its hope’s own friends: faith and love.

Circling Back

These last few weeks have been busy, and full. A week ago, I spent spending all day Thursday and Friday learning about decolonizing education in a module organized by the Centre for Indigegogy at Wilfrid Laurier University, offered by an Indigenous professor at the Faculty of Social Work and her non-Indigenous colleague – Dr. Kathy Absolon and Dr. Jessica Hutchison. The next day I went to a Powwow at the University of Waterloo. Just last Thursday I went to an unveiling of mural by the Indigenous artist Michael Cywink on a wall of the library at Laurier. And then yesterday I went to an “Every Child Matters” walk in the morning in Kitchener to commemorate both the survivors of the residential school system in Canada, as well as those who did not make it home. I followed this with a nice long walk to Waterloo, and in the afternoon, I went to a art opening at the school where I work, Martin Luther University College, on the theme of the Seven Sacred Teachings.

It has been a full couple of weeks!

As you can well imagine, I have learnt much. But the intriguing piece in this, is that I have learnt what I already knew. Let me say a bit more about hat.

At the Indigegogy learning event we were asked to respond to a presentation on the history of colonization on Turtle Island. I had to admit that in that particular presentation I didn’t hear anything I hadn’t heard before, but I received it anew, or at a different level. I was reminded of the power of circles for pedagogy. I shared that I sometimes think that if I have taught students something, we can move on to the next thing. But in that event, I learned that circling back to something I already know is the condition for the possibility of it impacting me at a deeper level.

In occidental thinking paradigms, we often work with a very linear model. A leads to B, leads to C, etc. But when we think about how we experience life – and trauma is a very fine example of this – A might lead to B, but it can often be the case that Q leads to A, and B leads to F. We move in circles. I remember, many years ago, speaking with an Indigenous man who told me that successful hunters learn the value of travelling in circles. I am learning the value of learning and teaching in circles.

As a Christian, I live with both a circular and linear worldview. We imagine, and the bible narrates, an end, or telos, of history. This narrative we call life is moving in a direction. But at the same time, my devotional and worship life is predicated on a circle. Advent leads to Christmas, leads to Epiphany, to Lent, Easter, Pentecost, and back to Advent again. Around and around again.

Of course, these need not be in competition, just as education can both lead to a terminal degree and a posture of lifelong learning. I have certainly learned these last couple of weeks that I need to learn again what I already know so that I can one day know as I have been known.

Step by Step

Tomorrow we wing our way to Halifax, where our good friend Matthew Anderson will pick us up and transport us to Creignish, Nova Scotia, where we will begin the Camino Nova Scotia: The Gael’s Trail on Monday morning.

My wife and I are both very excited for this adventure! This will be our third pilgrimage, the first being in Norway along 360 km of St. Olaf’s Way, organized by Matthew. The second was in Southern Saskatchewan along what was called the Traders’ Road. We joined Matthew and others for the last 100 km or so, of a 350 km trek. The first pilgrimage scratched a bit of a cultural itch for me, given my father’s Norwegian ancestry. The second was an opportunity to return to our Western Canadian roots, and to think along with Matthew and the others about the ways in which settlers in Canada have violently dispossessed Indigenous people of their lands, and livelihood. This trek, too, will be exploratory.

My wife and I both love Eastern Canada, and so this opportunity to walk along the meeting point of Cape Breton and the Gulf of St. Lawrence has mightily intrigued us. We will walk some 80 kms over 5 days with one down day with 13 other walkers along with staff from Camino Nova Scotia. There will be moments of learning about this corner of Mi’kma’ki (the lands of the Mi’kmaq) who are the ancient carers of this land and about the early Gaelic settlers here, whose cultural practices and language exist still today.

In the course of a pilgrimage (if this will be like the other two), in addition to experiencing cultures and learning history, there is the strange and grounding experience of moving one foot at a time. We are so bound up in ways of being that are marked by a rush that brushes aside both where and when. A slow, deliberate, and long walk disorients us, or perhaps reorients us in that it “easts” us and turns us in the liturgical direction of resurrection, which literally means to rise again.

What is raised, again, in such a walk? Slow, deliberate, and intentional walks remind us that the land is our Mother, a point made by people indigenous to this land as well as ancient Christian saints such as Basil. We begin to think again about where in our life. “Where am I?” By grace, this question makes its trace in our soul and shapes us after the pilgrimage.

But such a walk also opens us to the mystery of time. “When” begins to mystify us again as we are drawn back into the present moment. One foot at a time becomes a way to pray into now. Each step made intentional allows us to get lost in the present moments so that finally and mysteriously time becomes translucent. Instead of living by the ruse that there isn’t enough time, we enter into the gift of the present moment.

God comes to us in each step, as where and when, satisfy us in strange and wondrous ways.

Dancing a Story

Yesterday I attended the Waterloo Indigenous Student Centre Pow Wow. I have been at this Pow Wow a number of times. It is a great opportunity to connect with some friends, to watch some great dancing, to hear the big drum and to support some local Indigenous artisans.

I was especially inspired by a dance called the “Duck and Dive.” The Pow Wow MC told the story behind the dance. It is a men’s dance that recounts the historical attack of the Nez Perce tribe by US Calvary in Montana in 1877. He spoke of the Nez Perce’s valiant two day attempt to counter a much stronger force. He spoke of the Calvary’s shooting more women and children than men. In the dance, the dancers rehearse the strategy of duck and diving to escape the shots. The dance, in sum, rehearses the story of the violent subjugation of Indigenous peoples by colonial forces and in so doing the dance reverses that subjugation step by step.

As I thought about the dance, and the manner in which it powerfully illumines a narrative that I did not know, I was struck by how effective dancing a story was. One of my concerns as an educator has been to challenge my students to bring the body back into the classroom. The history of modernity in western cultures has been a history of problematizing the body. People ignore the body as a source of wisdom and/or obsess over the body and its image. The dance reminded me of another way to see the body: the body is a story teller.

Of course, our bodies tell many stories. I have a scar below my lip that recounts a basketball I took to the face when I was in junior high/middle school. Our histories are written into and on our bodies. Limps, scars, and bodily habits all bear witness to the ways in which our lives are embodied. Learning to listen to the body is one of the most important lessons in life, but a lesson that we too often fail to learn.

That Paul compares the assembly of believers to a body, and that the ancients described the assembly of citizens as a body politic speaks to the importance of the body. I was so mesmerized by those bodies at the Pow Wow dancing the Duck and Dive. As these dancers spun and swirled, they told us that history matters, bodies matter, and dancing matters. As I looked out on the dancers sharing their skill in telling an embodied tale, I was reminded that I too tell tales with my body. My every flinch, each grin, my open or closed arms, all of these say something about who I am and about my understanding of the world we live in.

I might not be dancing a story, but people are constantly reading my body language and so I am reminded that bodies matter, including the body politic, the body of Christ, and the body twirling the Duck and Dive at the Pow Wow, preaching a kind of a sermon – one I felt deep in my bones.

Art Opening at Keffer Chapel

They gather the room round,
All artists of the land, all born in a clan,
their hands blessed by sweetgrass, sage
by cedar, by tobacco.

Their subjects are wampum belts, medicines,
the tree of peace, fire, water, all our relations.
They portray truth, beauty, goodness and
so set their souls on display. They
invite me to join them on the wall.

Later I stand in this chapel,
now a gallery, now the Holy of Holies
and hear the whispers of angels. They speak
with the paintings, with the artists, with me.
And then they touch my lips with a live coal
and I cry out: “Here am I! Mend me…”

On Water Walking

Saturday morning found me at the edge of the Grand River in Kitchener. I was there to learn a bit about the role of water in the spiritual practices of certain Indigenous people of Turtle Island/ North America. The event was organized by the Feather and Cross committee of our church. We sat at the feet of Mary Anne Caibaiosai, a knowledge keeper and a water walker. A water walker is someone who commits to walking the distance or circumference as a body of water.

I used to think that at the heart of a water walk was the attempt to draw attention to concern about the well-being of the water, and that is true but there is so much more that a water walker does from my experience of Mary Anne’s account of the All Nations Grand River Water Walk. She spoke about the need to care for water in light of environmental challenges, but then she spoke quite passionately about it in personal terms. At one point she said “The water needs us.” She compared sick water to a person who is too ill to get out of bed, and in need of words of caring. At the heart of the water walk, it seems is not only the saying of something to us about water, but also something to the water about our affection, love and care for it. For four years, once a year, Mary Anne and a group of core walkers walked the distance of the Grand River from its source to its mouth where it enters Lake Erie. Water was carried in a copper pail for hundreds of kilometres with the accompaniment of an eagle staff.

Mary Anne invited us to understand water as a person, with care and agency, with purpose and history. We were invited to reframe our relationship with a part of God’s creation which really does know us intimately. We are, of course, about 60% water. It makes up our blood, our urine, our tears and more. We use it to sustain our being, to wash our wounds, to travel and more. But most of us likely never think of water as a person. I have heard, in the past, of a common Indigenous practice of offering a body of water a sprinkle of tobacco before entering it. At the event this morning we were given tobacco to give to the Grand River, along with some word. I said “Thank you Nibi” and thought about how I need to think differently about water. This was an astounding gift from Mary Anne.

Water plays such an important part in Christianity in baptism, in the narratives of Jesus and Israel. What might happen if we begin to think of the washing of water over the head of a baptismal candidate as an embrace of one of God’s creatures by another? What if we recollected that at the font the Holy Spirit was as much in water as the Son was in flesh at the incarnation and sacrament, but in the shape of a co-creature and as beloved of God as we are? I think that this might not only enrich our image of baptismal water, but of all water.

Later in the day I went for a sail, and I have to say that I saw Lake Ontario differently, in a good way. For this I give thanks.

Convocation Season

Convocation season is upon us. At Wilfrid Laurier University, where I work, this biannual event (one in spring; one in fall) has been ramped up this year in order to allow for people who missed an in-person convocation to attend one on campus now – a year or two after they were granted their degrees. We had one such event a couple of weeks ago, and then one again yesterday. These events tend to be a bit shorter than a normal degree granting convocation, but we have a full on event coming out way next Friday.

Convocation has become remarkably smoother than it was when I first started teaching at the school. When I first began they did few convocations with thousands of graduates. It sometimes went on for hours, and faculty were known to sneak a book in with their program. Now, convocations run all week, twice a day and they tend to be closer to the one-hour mark than two. But what an important hour it is for many students! Of course, not all students opt for the pomp and circumstance but many consider it an important launching moment – having an opportunity to get one last photo on campus with friends, family, and faculty members.

The event itself is quite colourful, with faculty wearing the robes from the universities granting them the PhD. Mine is quite handsome, I think, with a rich red bordered with a bright blue, and a beefeater hat to top me off. It is fun to see the variety, each robe representing another community of learning.

Over the last few years, some Indigenous faculty have been wearing their own communal regalia. So, alongside of the robes from universities we will see ribbon skirts, moccasins, suede vests, etc. This is a rich and important development in our community, I think. It signals that in addition to the academic work that these scholars have performed, they are also informed by and buoyed with the wisdom of their communities. When Indigenous faculty wear their regalia, I have a strong sense that our community has this wisdom in our midst, a wisdom attentive to balance alongside of progress, space and place alongside of time, and the knowledge of the community alongside of the lone scholar working away in their lab or office.

Indigenous students increasingly add their own distinctives to the university robes that they often choose to wear. Moccasins, jewellery, beaded accessories, etc. grace their western dress with Indigenous blessings. It warms my heart, as does the event itself. It is a gift to teach students and to celebrate with them this milestone in their lives is grace upon grace, and evidence of the Creator’s diversifying fingerprint within our midst.

A Pinch of Tobacco

I stepped into a wood
yesterday under the tutelage
of a son of this land, who
gave me a pinch of tobacco to
lay at the base of a
sentry maple tree; and it
struck me that this
is grace… being given
what we need to give
so that giving itself is
gift.

At the end of the time of
teaching, my wife and I
walked deeper into the wood,
in this time of its wonder: with
trees walking from sleep;
blankets melting away; and
Jefferson salamanders
making their way to
places of procreation.
I felt hope birthed in me,
holy hope tasting of
maple.

Tiller We Meet Again

When we bought Santa Maria, our 24 foot Mirage sailboat, some 12 years ago or so, her tiller was a mess. The previous owners had not cared for it in any way, and the teak had deep cracks and chips. During the first year she was on the hard I sanded the tiller, and filled the cracks and chips, and varnished it more times than I could count. It actually came up looking quite good, which was quite a win for me since my wife is the woodworker in our household – although I have to admit that she oversaw my efforts.

The tiller is in need of repair again. I spent the other night sanding it and had this lovely sense of connecting to Santa Maria, some 70 kms away from my basement. The tiller brought me closer to the boat and wondered why.

Of course, the tiller itself is an aide de memoire. But there is more. It wasn’t just that I remembered moments on the boat, but I felt a connection to the boat. It might be, in part, the physicality of the work. The boat is a place where I most feel away from office work where I am generally in my head in spades. The boat allows me to get back in my body in a profound way: sensing the play of the wind, and feeling the roll of the waves. My skin, in particular, is acutely aware with the feel of the sun and the spray of waves, the textures of lines and sails, and temperature of the cushions in the cockpit radiating heat or cold.

As I was working on the tiller I thought a bit about this being a non-digital activity, although I was listening to music via my phone while doing so. I generally am suspicious of anti-tech rants but find that a balance of tech, and not, in life generally enables me to find some sense of peace and joy in life. I am reminded of Randy Woodley’s excellent book – Shalom and the Community of Creation: An Indigenous Vision ¬– in which he connects the Indigenous value of harmony and balance to the biblical concept of Shalom, which affirms a kind of wholeness that is instantiated in Torah-living and in the Way of the Reign of God.

I think the joy of sailing is so intense because it affords me another way to balance the kind of work I do day in and day out. We live in a culture in which we value growth and exponential increase. But there is a joy of inestimable value in finding balance in life: body and mind; rest and activity; play and work; and community and solitude.

I am so glad to know that Santa Maria is again, even in the winter, helping me to find a little balance, and with this, a deep joy.