Thanksgiving Dinner & L'Chaim!

 Today we'll do what many other Canadians will do, drive to the home of one of our three adult children for Thanksgiving dinner. We'll join with them, their spouses, and our four grandchildren in one of those rare opportunities to all be together in one place. 

We're grateful that we can sit around a table to share good food and express gratitude for the many blessings of life. For some of us these are gifts from God. 

This year is particularly meaningful because a year ago, October 2025, one of our lovely daughters took advantage of the opportunity to have a mammogram at age 40. No symptoms, healthy living, but why not when there is no cost involved in our healthcare system?

To the shock of our daughter and her doctor there was evidence of cancerous cells. The specialist she consulted was not highly concerned and said that she was a Stage 0 patient. But as testing and time progressed she became a Stage 2 breast cancer patient and eventually underwent two operations, Neither of them was as radical as they could have been because of early detection but significant just the same. She was fortunate to be referred to Sunnybrook Hospital in Toronto, one of the best in the world for breast cancer treatment and she was continually impressed by the quality of care she received there. 

This said, she spent months going to medical consultations, undergoing scans, as well as the surgeries. All the while she continued to work, with only brief breaks, and mothered two young children. She discovered along the way that many young women are being diagnosed with breast cancer, an alarming number in their twenties and thirties, and too many discover their cancers at much later stages. 

Just over two weeks ago our daughter completed three-plus weeks of daily radiation treatments and got to ring the bell declaring her cancer-free, to the best of everyone's professional knowledge.

This has been a tremendously challenging journey for her, her family, and all who love her. Ruth has been a pillar of strength for her with stays in her home, and we've both been involved in trips to hospitals. There is something about watching a child suffer, no matter their age, which can be overwhelming.

We have prayed and offered care as best we could, and today we will give thanks for the outcome. There is a Jewish toast with the Hebrew word L'Chaim. It means "to life!' I find it meaningful because it's not about the past nor a claim for the future. It is a declaration of the gift of life in the moment we are given.

We are impressed that our daughter and her supportive husband have chosen to host our family gathering, given that she is still recovering from the debilitation of her treatment, and we're all pitching in. This will be a special Thanksgiving for all of us. 

I hope you are all able to celebrate the goodness of your lives today, whatever may swirl around you. Please keep in mind that October is Breast Cancer Awareness Month and that we are blessed to live in a country where there is exceptional medical care without cost to those are living with this disease. 

Dirty Squash & Thanksgiving Sunday

1 Come, you thankful people, come,

raise the song of harvest home!

All is safely gathered in,

safe before the storms begin;

God, our maker, does provide

for our needs to be supplied:

come to God's own temple, come,

raise the song of harvest home!

                                         Voices United 516

Happy Thanksgiving Sunday! I realize I risk confusing American readers but we're seven weeks ahead of you here in Canada. Still, the timeless themes of gratitude for abundance, the blessing of harvest and unbegrudging hospitality are shared. 

A couple of days ago we took advantage of yet another lovely Fall morning, heading to Prince Edward County, the peninsula jutting into Lake Ontario. Our destination was Lodge Point, part of Sandbanks Provincial Park. To our surprise we saw lots of Monarch butterflies, thinking that these migrating wonders would have passed through by now.  The County, as its known, has become Toronto's playground but heading there early and during the week meant we had the wind and waves to ourselves.

On our return trip we stopped at a roadside farm stand that we've appreciated for years. Prince Edward County was once known as "the Garden County" with dozens of canneries producing a third of Canada's canned fruit and vegetables in the days before transporting fresh produce long distances. There were scores of orchards as well. This distinction faded in the 1950s but there are still direct farm sellers, including the large but rough and tumble spot we visited. For years the public-facing person was a very old and matter-of-fact woman. Now it's a guy in his thirties who is probably a grandson. 

Last year there was a drought in our region and not much in the way of squash and other field vegetables requiring natural watering. We chatted about this for a moment. This year the dilapidated farm wagon was laden with hubbards and acorns, butternut and buttercup.  We bought a bunch and some small ones will adorn our Thanksgiving table, while one has already been transformed into a delicious soup. Most of what we purchased was still bearing some of the soil from the fields directly behind us. 

So, why am I telling you this today? I grew up with the front of the church festooned on Thanksgiving Sunday with produce from gardens, often brought by members of the congregation. It all became more polished (literally) over time and cornucopias became part of the display. We understood that it was important to recognize the gifts of the Creator for our nourishment, physical and spiritual, to never take this for granted. We sang about it on Thanksgiving Sunday, we heard about it in Scripture, and we saw and perhaps even smelled this abundance as a gift to our senses. 

This may seem antiquated now, particularly in more contemporary focused congregations but it may be more important than ever as "global weirding" changes patterns of climate and weather. 

I lament the alienation we are currently experiencing from our American neighbours but many of us have been encouraged to "buy Canadian" as well as supporting local growers whenever possible. These farmers are a blessing not to be taken for granted, nor is the rich heritage of agriculture in our country. 

Do Not Forget the Lord

⁷For the Lord your God is bringing you into a good land-a land with streams and pools of water, with springs flowing in the valleys and hills; ⁸a land with wheat and barley, vines and fig trees, pomegranates, olive oil and honey; ⁹a land where bread will not be scarce and you will lack nothing; a land where the rocks are iron and you can dig copper out of the hills.

¹⁰When you have eaten and are satisfied, praise the Lord your God for the good land he has given you. ¹¹Be careful that you do not forget the Lord your God, failing to observe his commands, his laws and his decrees that I am giving you this day. ¹²Otherwise, when you eat and are satisfied, when you build fine houses and settle down, ¹³and when your herds and flocks grow large and your silver and gold increase and all you have is multiplied, ¹⁴then your heart will become proud and you will forget the Lord your God, who brought you out of Egypt, out of the land of slavery.

Deuteronomy  8: 7-14 NRSVue

Waking Up on World Homeless Day

 

1 Jesus Christ is waiting, waiting in the streets;

no one is his neighbour, all alone he eats.

*Listen, Lord Jesus, I am lonely too.

Make me, friend or stranger, fit to wait on you.

5 Jesus Christ is calling, calling in the streets,

'Who will join my journey? I will guide their feet.'

*Listen, Lord Jesus, let my fears be few.

Walk one step before me; I will follow you.

                        Voices United 117

We have experienced glorious Autumn weather in southern Ontario with sunny, moderate days. Last night was a few degrees above freezing but we bundled up to cycle downtown in Belleville (pop 56,000) to make some purchases at the Farmer's Market and an excellent French bakery. Of course, we'd slept in our own home and put the heat on for a few minutes to take off the chill and we would return to the warmth.  On our way along the waterfront we passed people who'd "slept rough", those we might term homeless or unhoused. We've noticed that some of them seek out the lamp posts along the trail to plug in their cellphones and even compact generators. Resourceful!

As we set out I hadn't realized that this is World Homeless Day and later on a new documentary will be aired on TVO called Home.  https://www.tvo.org/video/documentaries/home

Here is some background from a CityNews piece on the doc: 

When tents started popping up on the lawn in front of a sprawling provincial property in Cobourg, Ont., television producer Linda Schuyler wondered who the people living in the encampment were.“I started to go in and get to know them,” said Schuyler, a filmmaker and producer who is best known as the co-creator of the “Degrassi” television series.

“As Torontonians, we have been very aware of the homeless crisis for a long period of time. And I always felt kind of helpless about it. It seemed like such a big problem. I didn’t know what I could do to help,” said Schuyler, who splits her time between Toronto and a community near the southern Ontario lakeside town.

She teamed up with filmmaker Will Bowes to explore the inner workings of the encampment and the complex individual circumstances of its residents. The result is a new documentary, titled “Home,” set to premiere on TVO on Saturday, coinciding with World Homeless Day.

The film introduces audiences to several unhoused people who settled at Brookside, a vacant property owned by the province that had previously been home to Cobourg’s elite and later became a youth detention centre. It details the myriad reasons how someone can end up without a home, from executives and business owners losing their livelihoods, to those who faced abusive partners, the death of loved ones and the challenges of addiction and mental health.

The filmmakers said they first entered without filming equipment and simply listened to people’s stories. Once they formed relationships, the filmmakers asked if people were comfortable speaking on camera. If they did, they’d receive a Tim Hortons gift card to acknowledge their time.

Earlier this week I listened to an interview with Wilfred Laurier University professor Erin Dej who is a collaborator in a project to provide resources to schools for discussions in classrooms about homelessness called Creating Dialogue https://creating-dialogue-curriculum.netlify.app/

I'm also thinking about the award-winning book Encampment: Resistance, Grace, and an Unhoused Community by Rev. Maggie Helwig, one of the most radically Gospel books I've read. 

All of these resources invite us to consider homelessness as more than a growing societal problem, to imagine the lives of those who have been pushed to the margins and deserve to be treated with dignity and compassion. Helwig reminds us that they are beloved by the Christ who often lived rough with his disciples. 

May the Christ who walks on wounded feet

walk with you on the road.

May the Christ who serves with wounded hands

stretch out your hands to serve.

May the Christ who loves with a wounded heart

open your hearts to love.

May you see the face of Christ in everyone you meet,

and may everyone you meet

see the face of Christ in you.

Voices United 349 

Nobel Laureate Anne Carson & the Winds of Iceland

 

                                              Anne Carson, definitely not re-retired 

The wind blows where it chooses, and you hear the sound of it, but you do not know where it comes from or where it goes. So it is with everyone who is born of the Spirit.” Nicodemus said to him, “How can these things be?”  Jesus answered him, “Are you the teacher of Israel, and yet you do not understand these things?

                                           John 3: 8-10 NRSVue

1 I feel the winds of God today;

today my sail I lift,

though heavy oft with drenching spray

and torn with many a rift;

if hope but light the water's crest,

and Christ my bark will use,

I'll seek the seas at his behest,

and brave another cruise.

        Voices United 625

 I like to think I'm moderately aware of the arts and culture scene in Canada, although as I age I'm being left behind. So, I was chastened when I heard the news that a Canadian poet and essayist,  Anne Carson, has been awarded the Nobel Prize for Literature. My initial response was "who dat?" Carson was born in Toronto and attended the U of T. Through the decades she has received many awards and is a member of the Order of Canada. Am I embarrassed that she wasn't on my radar at all? Yup. 

Carson has citizenship in Canada and Iceland and lives in the latter country for part of the year. I loved that she was reached by the Nobel Prize chair as she sat outside near Reykjavik, "listening to the wind." I have a lot of time for those who listen to the wind and ramble in the wind. Iceland is an island in the north Atlantic and it seems to exist between moderately windy and very windy. 

                                                             Cover illustration by Anne Carson

We loved our time in Iceland in September a few years ago and every single day we were buffeted by the wind. We drove hither and yon, including to the far west of a peninsula. We ventured along a dirt road off the highway to reach the sea and were puzzled by what appeared to be  a low white wall ahead of us. It turned out to be a line of sea foam at least a metre high piled up on the beach by wind and waves. We managed to find a path through and the experience as we walked, all alone, was mystical.

We spend time on two islands on the northeast coast of Newfoundland most years. Our elderly friend and neighbour as well as her family are bemused by our choice to walk shoreline trails on the windiest days, at times barely able to stand against the onslaught. One year the wind came up so intensely while we were out that the trail had flooded in a low spot by the time we returned and we did get wet feet. Ruth posts photos of our windy rambles on Instagram and they tend to be well liked, even if some who do so might not want the actual experience. We also visit the nearly 150-year-old wooden Anglican place of worship on windy days. It literally "creaks like a church in a high wind." I feel that the Spirit of  God is present in those moments. outdoor and indoor. 

In Hebrew "ruach" means spirit, and wind, and breath, which is perfect, don't you figure? So there is the ruach of Creation, and the prophet Elijah's profound mountainside experience, and Jesus confounding Nicodemus with his windy nocturnal talk.

Okay, before I'm blown off course any more I'll stop. Congratulations to Anne Carson and may the wind continue to fill her sails for years to come. 

 He said, “Go out and stand on the mountain before the Lord, for the Lord is about to pass by.” Now there was a great wind, so strong that it was splitting mountains and breaking rocks in pieces before the Lord, but the Lord was not in the wind, and after the wind an earthquake, but the Lord was not in the earthquake,  and after the earthquake a fire, but the Lord was not in the fire, and after the fire a sound of sheer silence.

                      1 Kings 19: 11-12 NRSVue

Spirit, Spirit of gentleness,

blow thro' the wilderness calling and free,

Spirit, Spirit of restlessness,

stir me from placidness,

Wind, Wind on the sea.

1 You moved on the waters, you called to the deep,

then you coaxed up the mountains from the

valleys of sleep;

and over the eons you called to each thing:

wake from your slumbers and rise on your wings.  R

            VU 375

A Legacy of Peace-Making

Yonatan Zeigen is the son of Vivian Silver, an Israeli Canadian peace activist killed in the Oct. 7, 2023, Hamas-led attacks on her kibbutz and other communities in southern Israel. (Lily Martin/CBC)

 Yesterday, on the solemn third anniversary of the attacks by the terrorist organization Hamas, I wrote about Vivian Silver, the Canadian/Israeli peace activist who was one of the people killed that day. Silver lived in an Israeli kibbutz not far from Gaza and worked for decades to build bridges of trust with Palestinians.

Last evening I saw a headline in a CBC news article which must be a radio interview as well. The headline quotes from an opinion piece written by one of Silver's sons in Haaretz, an Israeli newspaper:

Don't use my mother's name to justify killing in Gaza, says son of peace activist killed Oct. 7 Yonatan Zeigen reflects on 3 years since his mother, Israeli Canadian Vivian Silver, was killed

He expresses his concern that the Israeli government is using his mother's name to justify the campaign of violence against Gazans Despite the tragic loss of his parent Zeigen is determined to carry on her legacy, even though there is resistance to the peace work he is engaged in. 

We know that despite the uneasy ceasefire between Israel and Hamas more than a thousand Gazans have died since it began. Recovery for the hundreds of thousands of displaced Gazans is happening at a snail's pace and many are hungry and impoverished. The efforts to remove the rubble is hampered by a lack of equipment with additional machinery blocked from entering Gaza. 

 

I saw a photo of children walking to school through the destruction and thought of my own grandchildren getting on buses in the morning on their way to safe environments for learning. Most of the children in Gaza are being educated in tents because their school buildings were obliterated. They sit on the ground for their lessons because there are no desks or chairs. 

Yonatan Zeigen is carrying on his mother's  legacy of peace activism, working with Parents Circle – Families Forum, a coalition of Israelis and Palestinians who have lost loved ones to violence. Sadly, this organization is banned from Israeli schools.

We can pray for those who continue "waging peace" in Israel and the Occupied Territories in the midst of so much violence and mistrust. 

The CBC includes an interview with Yonatan and here is the final question he was asked:  

What would you like our listeners to know about your mother? 

I'm not sure that I want your listeners to know something specific. I know what she meant for me. 

She was a very dominant figure in my life, both as a mother, as a companion, as a grandmother to my kids, and both in shaping my perception of the world, my ability to feel comfortable with complexities in life, to express critical thinking.

I feel like she gave me a very sound infrastructure to [become] the person I am today. And I think she was meaningful, not only to me, but to a big variety of people all over the world that knew her directly or through her work.

Gaza now has the highest number of amputee children per capita in the world, according to data published by the NGO Aldeas Infantiles. Gazan photojournalist Saher Alghorra shows how the population of the Strip is trying to rebuild their lives

Remembering October 7 and Waging Peace

 

Three years ago today Hamas the terrorist organization situated in Gaza launched an attack on Israel that killed 1200 people, as well as many injured and taken hostage. It is tempting to immediately consider the deaths of nearly 75,000 Palestinians, thousands of them children,  who have died since that horrendous day and the reduction of the Gaza territory to rubble. Yet we can mourn the Israeli lives lost in the senselessness of violence and revenge. 

Perhaps it's important to go beyond the figures in this war and zoom in on some of the individuals who died, including Vivian Silver, a 74-year-old Canadian-born Israeli who moved to a kibbutz not far from the border with Gaza in her twenties. Vivian was committed to peaceful co-existence with her Gazan neighbours yet she too was murdered. She co-founded Women Wage Peace, an interfaith grassroots organization.^] Silver also began volunteering with Road to Recovery and Project Rozana to transport Gazan patients who were traveling to Jerusalem for Medical treatment.

In December 2023 a memorial gathering took place in Winnipeg, the city in which she grew up. The article in the Canadian Jewish News includes these tributes to Vivian;

Manitoba Lieutenant-Governor Anita Neville spoke about Silver’s legacy. “Vivian Silver worked to make a better and more just world possible. She co-founded an important peace movement,” Neville said.

“She built bridges of understanding. How can we pay tribute to a woman who lived her values so profoundly and whose murder was such a cruel denunciation of those values? We can work for a culture of listening and understanding. We can build bridges in our own neighborhoods and communities. We can teach our children to hold hope close in their hearts.

“It is unlikely that anyone here has a plan to create world peace. But, perhaps world peace is the sum of billions of small acts of peace. Perhaps in that way we can help Vivian Silver’s vision become closer to reality. May we all find peace in our hearts and offer kindness to others at a time when the world needs it so desperately.”

We need to remember the peacemakers who were lost that day. We can remember all those who mourn the deaths of loved ones in this brutal conflict.

Jim Bakker & "Pass the Loot"

 Jim Bakker, the disgraced former televangelist has died at 86. Jim and his wife Tammy Faye were the grinning, weeping cofounders of the PTL Club (Praise the Lord) television "ministry," raking in millions of dollars from gullible viewers to finance their personal excesses. Theirs was an upbeat Christian message in some respects, except for the tearful pleas for money. The gullibility of their fans astounded me, and I was surprised from time to time to talk with parishioners who thought they were great.

A sex scandal finally brought down Jim although the Ponzi Scheme with a halo which financed their personal excesses and theme park, once the third largest in the US, were a big part of their fall. After Bakker was released from prison he carried on with shady dealings, almost literally becoming a snake oil salesman. 

According to a Washington Post piece this morning: 

Wealth and the outward trappings of worldly success were a major component of the Bakkers’ appeal, as critics quipped that the true meaning of PTL was “Pass the Loot.” 

In the 1980s, the Bakkers’ salaries and bonuses soared well past $1 million a year. They had homes near Charlotte and in Florida, Tennessee and Palm Springs, California. Their bathroom fixtures were gold-plated, and even the doghouses — and their son’s tree house — were air-conditioned. Tammy Faye Bakker sold a line of makeup and owned as many as a dozen mink coats. She often talked about her shopping sprees on “The PTL Club” and in interviews.

What comes to mind today is how their disastrous slide from sincere faith to unbridled greed reflects the seep of "health and wealth" into the American psyche, including religion. So many people seem to  worship sports stars and celebrities making obscene amounts of money to divert attention away from what really matters. Politicians have become grifters, including you-know-who, and voters seem either inured to this or actually approve. Mega-church pastors align themselves with power and accumulate personal wealth. 

Lots of these religious scam artists make bold claims about wonderful revivals, with converts turning toward Christ and reestablishing a Christian nation. We might pray for an awakening across the border and in our own nation so that "pass the loot" is not the mantra for authentic living.