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?’”