Barn Owls for Peace?

                                               Jordanian farmer with a barn owl. (Photo by Hagai Aharon)

 Everywhere we look and listen these days it seems that bad news is the only news. I had something of an antidote last week when I joined another excellent webinar from the UCLA Nazarian Center for Israel Studies. I have benefitted from a number of webinars with excellent presenters on various aspects of Middle East geopolitics including a brilliant explanation of what has unfolded in Iran.

The webinar last week was The Barn Owl Project: An Ecological Solution in Agriculture for Israel, Jordan and the Palestinians. If this sounds excruciatingly nerdy Ruth would agree and she slipped away before it even began. I found it informative and, dare I say it, hopeful. 

I've shared before that Israel is along the Rift Valley faultline stretching from the south of Africa to Europe and it is the flight path for half a billion migratory birds twice each year. It is a magnificent spectacle but fraught with peril for a number of reasons including habitat loss and the detrimental effects of pesticides on raptors. 

The webinar was about a project to introduce barn owls in Israel and other countries as natural rodent control so that farmers are less dependent on chemical pesticides. The Barn Owl Project involves farmers, the military, school groups and more and it has grown with great success. Here is the webinar blurb: 

Professor Yossi Leshem will discuss a groundbreaking initiative—begun in Israel and expanded to its neighbors—in which Barn Owls are used as biological pest-control agents of rodents in agriculture. The owls have significantly reduced the use of pesticides in agricultural fields, which severely harm wildlife and migratory birds. The Jordanians and Palestinians joined this project in 2002, and it has been highly successful from both an environmental perspective and in connecting peoples and religions within this region of conflict. In light of the project’s success, it has been joined by other countries around the world, including Morocco, Switzerland, Ukraine, Georgia, Italy, Germany, Zimbabwe, Cyprus, Greece, and the United States. Leshem will also describe the unique position of Israel as a locus of bird migration, where 500 million birds migrate from Europe and West Asia to Africa and back over Israel twice a year, which allows for many scientific studies on bird migration and protection.

It was wonderful to hear of school groups made up of Jews and Christians and Muslims enthusiastically learning about and supporting the project. Before the terrible events of October 7 2023 farmers would cross borders to learn from one another and the owls themselves find mates in Israel, Jordan, and th Palestinian territories. While barn owls have traditionally been considered bad luck in Arab cultures the project has changed the perspective.

Leshem, now approaching 80, has presented the barn owl initiative to global leaders, including the late U.S. President Jimmy Carter, former German Chancellor Angela Merkel and the late  Pope Francis.

At the beginning of the webinar Dr. Leshem showed an image of a barn owl with an olive branch rather than a dove as a symbol of peace. Why not? The peace dove seems to be ailing and we need all the positive images we can find these days. 

The Rev. Dr. Bruce McLeod & the Human Family

 

At least 30 years ago when I was minister of St. Andrew's United Church in Sudbury I was the presenter to a group of community leaders about a joint outreach project although I can't recall the specifics. I wanted to emphasize that while our society was inclined to build walls between the rich and poor we shared our planet and our humanity. 

I wanted to illustrate this so I reached out to former United Church Moderator the Very Rev. Dr. Bruce McLeod who served in that role during the early 1990s. McLeod was both affable and abrasive at times, willing to be outspoken and provocative. He was a congregational minister, an activist, and an aspiring politician. 

I knew Dr. McLeod  had a painting called The Family of Man which he had commissioned from Canadian artist William Kurelek, the same painter whose work I included in a blog earlier this week. That snowy street scene has Kurelek's family in the foreground and Bruce picked up the painting from the artist's house 

                                                            The Family of Man -- William Kurelek

In this painting Jesus is walking on the water in the background toward a the sinking ship of the world with a brick wall separating the haves from the have-nots. The back end is sinking, but none will survive. In the foreground is Bruce McLeod with his hands upraised.

I tracked Bruce down by phone and he enthusiastically offered to send me an image via email. I printed it and used it for my presentation.  Not long ago this interaction came to mind -- who knows why --  and I discovered that Dr. Mcleod was still feistily alive at the age of 96. Then, only a few days later, he wasn't. 

Here is an excerpt from the obituary provided online by the United Church. The Man Alive interview is worth watching. The quote below is from an interview last year in Broadview magazine: 

Rev. Dr. McLeod served as Moderator of the United Church from 1972–1974. During his term he travelled extensively throughout Canada. In 1973, he was the subject of an episode of CBC’s Man Alive, with host Roy Bonisteel, who spent a day with the then-new 44-year-old moderator of The United Church of Canada, seen by some as the church’s voice for a new generation. 

“The world is not empty and purposeless. There’s something going on here,” he told Broadview in an interview published in April last year. “And it is not a neutral presence! It’s a presence that got the whole thing rolling, out of love, and delighted in what was made. That presence is still here, and it knows our names, and sometimes wakes us in the night and says, ‘Why aren’t you up and doing?’”

 

Same-Gender Marriage in Canada at 25

Anne (left) and Elaine Vautour were married alongside Kevin Bourassa and Joe Varnell in a groundbreaking ceremony in Toronto 25 years ago this week. Richard Lautens/Toronto Star file photo

 I was a bit surprised, in a "time flies" way, to read that it was 25 years ago this month that two same-gender couples were married in Toronto, a first in Canada. They were married at Metropolitan Community Church in Toronto before the legislation allowing such marriages in this country using a provision called Publishing the Banns. 

In 2001, Pastor Brent Hawkes used this legal loophole, an ancient Christian tradition still allowed in Ontario, to marry the couples. At the time, same-sex couples could not obtain marriage licences from municipal clerks, but the Ontario Marriage Act allowed couples to be granted a licence if their names were published and read out within a service of worship at church for three Sundays in a row. i think I was asked about this provision only once in the early 1980s near the beginning of my ministry. 

Lo and behold, these two couples are still married a quarter century later, acknowledging that there have been ups and downs, joys and sorrows, as is the way of long-term marriage. 

In an article I read about the 25th anniversary this paragraph stood out: 

... the landscape for same-sex marriage in Canada has evolved considerably. Anne and Elaine’s extended family now regards them simply as “the aunts,” reflecting a growing acceptance of LGBTQ+ relationships. As they celebrate their silver anniversary, the Vautours and Bourassa-Varnell continue to embody the essence of love and commitment, demonstrating that their marriages were not just about making a political statement, but about cherishing one another.

While there are still people including lots of Christians who are opposed to same-gender/sex marriage, I do feel that Canadian society has changed and for the better. 

Canadian Winter, Eh?

 

Just like today [Sunday/Monday] but in 1972. Fifty-four years ago the Ukrainian-Canadian painter William Kurelek captured the aftermath of a snow storm—like the one that just landed in Toronto—on the street where he lived in Toronto’s Beaches neighbourhood. 

Art Canada Institute 

For as the rain and the snow come down from heaven
    and do not return there until they have watered the earth,
making it bring forth and sprout,
    giving seed to the sower and bread to the eater,

so shall my word be that goes out from my mouth;
    it shall not return to me empty,
but it shall accomplish that which I purpose
    and succeed in the thing for which I sent it.

 For you shall go out in joy and be led back in peace;
the mountains and the hills before you
    shall burst into song, 

and all the trees of the field shall clap their hands.

Isaiah 55:10-12 NRSVue

Too soon? 

Hey, I spent four to five hours in snow removal a couple of days ago during and after the biggest snow event in Belleville in 53 years. That was back when none of us had heard of a Polar Vortex. 

As we left church on Sunday morning the storm was picking up energy, and I girded my well insulated loins for the next 24 hours of shovelling, snow-blowing, and sweeping. It took a long time before the plough came to clean out our small court. 

Please don't be bitter that I consider this cold and snowy January to be a blessing. This is slow release precipitation after drought conditions for months. Our Quinte Conservation Authority tells us that water levels are slowly returning to normal levels and all this snow will surely help. As I've said often, we have become disconnected from the cycles of the natural world to our peril. 

                                                             Grandchildren excavating vehicle 

Granted, snowstorms can be disruptive and dangerous. Ruth's Monday train to Toronto was cancelled because of the conditions and lots of drivers ended up in the ditch. Still, we went for a walk in the woods and it was beautiful. 

Do some of you remember the old Canadian Winter police chase commercial where both the robbers and the cops are pushing their vehicles on a snowy street in not so hot pursuit? Maybe we need a little more of this sort of humour and a healthy dose of the joy of children who get out there and play. I would be content with a little reprieve, just the same. 

Here is the final paragraph of a lovely reflection by Megan Craig called The Peculiar Magic of a Winter Snowstorm from the New York Times a few days ago: 

The French philosopher Jean Wahl coined a term, “transdescendence,” to describe how spiritual things descend. They fall sometimes like snow, coming all the way down to earth. Maybe not forever. But it’s good to be reminded, however briefly, that the short, dark days of winter include pristine quiet, epic cold, the equanimity of nature, the sun rising, visible breath, icy limbs, rosy cheeks and, every now and then, light falling out of darkness to blanket a rough world. Let it snow.

Transdescendence -- I love this new-to-me term. Doesn't this reflect the words from the prophet Isaiah? 

The Importance of Holocaust Remembrance Day 2026

White Crucifixion by Jewish painter Marc Chagall depicts persecution of Russian Jews in scenes around the cross of Jewish Jesus

This is International Holocaust Remembrance Day. 

When we spent two weeks in Israel in 2023 we went to many places with Ruth's sister and brother-in-law. We went to Yad Vashem, the Holocaust Museum, on our own. It was my fourth visit to Yad Vashem although my first to the newer site designed by Moshe Safdie and opened in 2005. The location is striking and the various aspects of the museum including the art gallery are sobering and powerful.

For all my deep reservations about the state of Israel and the domination of Palestinians at the time, I felt that it was essential to have this reminder about the horrors of anti-Semitism and the annihilation of six million Jews by the Nazis in the Shoah/Holocaust. Little did we know the horror that would unfold only six months later.

                                               Yad Vashem Holocaust Museum

In the past two years the horror of the Hamas attacks on Israel took place, Gaza has been reduced to rubble by the IDF with huge loss of life, and the West Bank is in turmoil. 

This has emboldened those who hate Jews around the world with attacks on synagogues and people, including the innocents killed by terrorists on a beach in Australia, 

It is essential that Canadians, including Christian followers of Jewish Jesus, decry anti-Semitism and remember what has happened and is still happening when hatred takes hold in societies. 

The Canadian government includes this in its description of this sombre day: 

On January 27, 1945, the Auschwitz-Birkenau concentration camp – where more than one million people were sent to gas chambers and to their agonizing deaths during the Holocaust – was liberated. In 2005, that day was designated as the annual International Day of Commemoration in memory of the victims of the Holocaust. Each year, Canadians and individuals all over the world take this opportunity to remember the victims of the atrocities of the Holocaust and reflect on the dangers of anti-Semitism.

                                                                  Yad Vashem Hall of Names

Poets and Final Farewells

Mr Commonsense @fopminui

In the Netherlands, when a person dies with no family or friends to attend the funeral, the ceremony is not left to silence. A civil servant is present, representing the community. And beside them stands a poet.

The idea was born to prevent the final farewell from becoming a purely bureaucratic act. The poet receives the few available details: a name, a date, perhaps a job, an address—sometimes only a single, minimal fact. From these fragments, a text is written especially for that life.

During the ceremony, the poem is read aloud. It does not celebrate achievements, nor does it invent affections. It carefully gathers what remains. It turns an anonymous goodbye into a human gesture.

It is not a grand public ritual. It is something simple, almost invisible. Yet in that moment, the deceased is no longer alone. Someone speaks their name. Someone acknowledges them. And perhaps this is the deepest meaning of the initiative: to remind us that a life, even when it ends in silence, deserves to be farewelled by a voice.

 I was the presider of at least 500 funeral and memorial services through my decades of ministry. Some of them were huge, attended by hundreds of people to the point of "standing room only." Others were quite small, including one where I recruited congregation members to attend for a lovely shy man who had no living family or friends. There were a few of almost runaway emotion,  including anger, and others that were so emotionless that a chill came over the space. I've conducted only a few services in retirement including the recent memorial for a neighbout in his 20s who died following a drug overdose. 

I do feel that every life should be honoured, if possible, and I've noted a number of times before in this blog that I'm unsettled so many lives are going unrecognized or mourned in a communal way, especially post-COVID pandemic. 

I was quite taken by the description, above, of the funeral practice for those who would otherwise go unmourned with a poem for the deceased. The phrase: "It turns an anonymous goodbye into a human gesture" is particularly meaningful. 

Do we need a Funeral Poets Farewell Society? Maybe. 

Bird-Brained with St. Francis in Lent

 

Archaeology & Art

@archaeologyart

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10h

Bird pins (brooches) made out of scrap materials by Japanese Americans held in internment camps during World War II. From The Art of Gaman: Arts & Crafts from the Japanese American Internment Camps 1942-1946 by Delphine Hirasuna (Ten Speed Press, 2005).

"My sweet little sisters, birds of the sky," Francis said, "you are bound to heaven, to God, your Creator. In every beat of your wings and every note of your songs, praise him. He has given you the greatest of gifts, the freedom of the air. You neither sow, nor reap, yet God provides for you the most delicious food, rivers, and lakes to quench your thirst, mountains, and valleys for your home, tall trees to build your nests, and the most beautiful clothing... from the The Little Flowers of St. Francis.

We currently have a guest in our home who is enchanted by the profusion of birds at our feeders in this intensely cold weather. They are chowing down on seeds and peanuts as well as frequenting our heated birdbath for a drink. Our guest has Alzheimer's Disease so she is asking the same questions about the birds on a five-minute loop, all offered with a sense of wonder and appreciation. We're figuring out how to answer with some variety!

I was taken by the Tweet above-- how appropriate -- created by "caged" Japanese Americans unjustly held in internment camps in the United States, as were Japanese Canadians during World War II. While their wings were clipped by racist governments they could still observe the birds of the air and imagine being free.

Cross-stitched gift from parishioner Vicki Stephens circa 1999

Recently I listened to a biologist who encouraged the audience to be aware of the birds we often take for granted yet are all around us, every day, even in Winter.

During Lent this year we're inviting the folk at Trenton United to be bird nerds (Ash Wednesday Feb 18). writing down what they see and hear. This will be in honour of the 800th anniversary of the death of St. Francis who legend tells us would preach to amd bless the birds and other creatures This attention to the birds can be a form of prayer and appreciation of Creator and Creation. I think we'll title this exercise Bird-Brained with St. Francis in Lent.

I just found out that composer Franz Lizst wrote pieces in tribute to St. Francis including Preaching to the Birds. Have a listen:

https://ca.video.search.yahoo.com/search/video?fr=mcafee&p=st+francis+and+the+birds+legend&type=E210CA1286G0#id=1&vid=ef5b3965c63f971d50b38de991333616&action=view

                                     Bernard Hesling (1905 - 1987) - Saint Francis Preaching to The Birds