King Charles, the Caribbean & Slavery

King Charles joins a Junkanoo parade in Parliament Square in Nassau, The Bahamas, last Wednesday during his tour of the Caribbean. (Ben Stansall/Reuters)

 King Charles III of Great Britain is on a nine-day tour of Caribbean islands which were once part of the British Empire. These former colonies made a lot of Britons very wealthy when slavery still existed and plantations thrived on the forced labour of pilfered human beings. This included the royal family, the aristocracy, the Church of England, and many more. According to a CBC piece: 

From the 15th to the 19th century, at least 12.5 million Africans were abducted and sold into slavery by European traders, with Britain transporting an estimated 3.2 million people across the Atlantic, making it one of the biggest slave-trading nations.

There is something of a reckoning underway in Britain at the moment with important and contentious discussions underway about apologies and reparations to those who ae descended from those enslaved people and the countries where the wealth was siphoned away to the British Isles for generations. I can't watch a period piece or a murder mystery located on the glorious estates of the haughty rich without a queasy feeling about how they were financed. 

The British government is considering what recompense might look like and so is the beleaguered Church of England. Some Anglicans are furious about Project Spire, a reparative justice initiative of 100 million pounds to address the trade and exploitation African peoples. Most dioceses are running in the red and churches are closing, so why divert funds to past wrongs? The headline above is an example of the resistance to this initiative. 

Charles may not be in a partying mood during these visits. He is the titular head of the Church of England and the British monarch so while decrying the stain of slavery is important he walks a cautious line when it comes to formal apologies. These concerns are being raised during his tour and a times he looks more like the Artful Dodger than a king. We'll hear how honest he's willing to be in a speech to Caribbean leaders tomorrow. 

Making amends can be messy and even ugly at times. It can also be living the gospel and choosing justice. 

Who Are Your Saints?

 

1 For all the saints, who from their labours rest,

all who by faith before the world confessed,

your name, O Jesus, be forever blest.

Hallelujah, hallelujah!

Happy End-of-Daylight Savings Time...or not, depending where you live in the country, or even within the province of Ontario. It's all bizarre isn't it? Why mess with our circadian rhythms?

I'm content to celebrate All Saints Day instead, the Christian liturgical festival including All Hallows Eve, All Saints Day, and All Souls Day. Christians "borrowed" the notion from the Druids who believed that this was the "thin place" between this life and the spirit world. 

Christians, at least a lot of us, acknowledge the saints and souls of faith who are part of the cloud of witnesses which surrounds us. 

My dearly departed mother comes to mind today. She had a deep Christian faith that never wavered even though her life included plenty of hardships, some of which could have been soul-crushing. She sang her faith, was generous to many causes, worked at a food bank, came around on accepting LGBTQ2S persons, didn't hold grudges. 

I'm also thinking of a better known Christian, Wendell Berry, an author, professor and farmer. I admired him for decades but when he died in August I experienced the "paralysis of analysis", not able to figure out what to say about such an extraordinary life. An American, Berry wrote essays about the sin of racism decades ago and protested in his 70s against mountaintop coal mining in his native Kentucky. He left academia to return to farming and was eloquent in his assessment of agribusiness that destroyed small communities. Berry's novel Jayber Crow is one of my favourites, a story about nothing and everything that matters. 

I hope you can conjure up a saint/soul or two today. 

Here is the link to a tribute to Wendell Berry by his friend, Norman Wirzba  ttps://www.christiancentury.org/features/wendell-berry-s-vision-sacred-world

The late Bill Moyers, a superb interviewer, sat down with Berry a few years ago

https://ca.video.search.yahoo.com/search/video;_ylt=A2RRCMPwQudqPPEAqOLrFAx.;_ylu=Y29sbwN1cy1lYXN0LTEEcG9zAzEEdnRpZAMEc2VjA3Nj?type=E210CA1286G0&p=wendell+berry+bill+moyers+interview+youtube&fr=mcafee&turl=https%3A%2F%2Ftse3.mm.bing.net%2Fth%2Fid%2FOVP.1gJrlSOFlSwJH4p1MyCQawHgFo%3Fpid%3DApi%26w%3D296%26h%3D156%26c%3D7%26p%3D0&rurl=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.youtube.com%2Fwatch%3Fv%3D95VcefsgsfE&tit=Bill+Moyers+-+Wendell+Berry%3A+Poet+and+Prophet&pos=01&vid=d7855b64b91cd11d06100dd750889920&sigr=nfZsNqOsCAa5&sigt=uWaQjpbKLIZ4&sigi=eHF5CMt1Nkae

The Indian Act & Truth and Reconciliation

            Assembly of First Nations National Chief Cindy Woodhouse with Prime Minister Mark Carney 

This past Monday First Nations Leaders met with Canada's first ministers, including Prime Minister Mark Carney. This was the first time a meeting with a primary focus on Indigenous issues and concerns has occurred in two decades. While this was an important initiative it came about, in part. because of the growing concern that the federal government's legislation to fast-track "projects of national concern" will run roughshod over Indigenous treaties and rights. 

During a media scrum during a break in the meeting in Ottawa Premier Wab Kinew of Manitoba, the only Indigenous premier in the country held up his status card and called on the Canadian government to abolish the 150 year old Indian Act. 

I am a big fan of Kinew but there has been some criticism, justified I think, that this moment diverted attention away from substantive issues on the table for this meeting. PM Carney agreed that the Indian Act in racist and seemed open to its abolition. This was a low-risk comment in some respects because nothing needs to happen immediately. In fact, the first proposal to ditch the Indian Act came in 1969 under the first PM Trudeau, Pierre, when Jean Chretien was the Minister of Indian Affairs. It was withdrawn within a year because the fine print indicated that Indigenous peoples would be worse off because existing treaties would come to an end. "Indian" leaders were opposed back then and similar concerns were expressed following Kinew's comments on Monday. 

Manitoba Premier Wab Kinew and Assembly of First Nations National Chief Cindy Woodhouse Nepinak at the AFN's Day of Ceremony on Sunday. (Brett Forester/CBC News)

The Indian Act is racist. It was designed to control Indigenous peoples in every aspect of their lives. They weren't allowed to leave a reserve without permission from the Indian Agent, always a white person. If an Indigenous woman married off reserve she lost her status and the benefits which derived from it. Sometimes the Indian Agent was a clergy person so the suffocating control extended to religion, including the shameful Residential School system. The national police force, the RCMP was enlisted to enforce the regulations and restrictions. 

To say that the Indian Act should be abolished may be true in general terms but the complexity of bringing this about in a way to ensure justice, dignity, and financial fairness will require a deep commitment a succession of governments hasn't been prepared to make. Removing one system, no matter how unjust, requires a clear path to something better.

 The United Church of Canada is committed to Truth and Reconciliation with Indigenous peoples, recognizing our own racist past. It's important to pay attention to what is happening here and now. 

Trash-talking, Tariffs, & Holy Ground

 

Take, take off your shoes You’re standing on holy ground 

Take, take off your shoes. You’re standing on holy ground 

The earth is the Lord’s And the fullness thereof 

From the waters beneath To the heavens above 

So take, take, take off your shoes 

You’re standing on holy ground 

You’re standing on holy ground

 On the eighth day of creation the Lord looked around 

At the power plants and freeways and the trash on the ground 

Plantations growing rubber where the grain should be high 

You couldn’t see the sun for all the smog in the sky 

So take, take, take off your shoes 

You’re standing on holy ground 

You’re standing on holy ground

verses from TAKE OFF YOUR SHOES by Jim Manley

Last evening we retrieved our blue boxes from the garage and sorted through our indoor recycling bin in preparation for today. It is the weekly ritual so many people complained about when programs began years ago which now is routine, even though it can be a challenge worthy of Solomon's wisdom as to what is plastic and what is paper given the coatings used. In our municipality there is no charge for household recycling but we pay for trash pickup, sort of a carrot (peelings) rather than stick as an incentive to be good citizens. 

On the subject of peelings, our compost is whisked away at the curb weekly but we have several backyard composters at work for a good part of the year. I make multiple pilgrimages to yard waste mecca Spring and Autumn with leafy stuff. When I was a kid my Dad enlisted me to rake leaves to the edge of the street where they were burned -- everybody did it. It was part of the aroma of the season but that ended because it was unregulated air pollution. 

As it happens there was a worthwhile interview on CBC Radio Metro Morning today about what we do with our refuse in these strange days of tariffs. Roughly 30 to 40% of Ontario waste crosses the border into Michigan and New York, an endless flow of what we want to be "out of sight, out of mind."  I hadn't realized that there are virtually no guidelines for  commercial waste so 80 to 90% is not recycled. Homeowners recycle about half, so we still have a long way to go.

Even with tariffs it's still cheaper to ship our trash across the border but there is a growing discussion about what happens if that option gets too expensive or is closed off. Nobody wants a landfill in their neighbourhood so we're back to considering incinerating trash. Despite the "energy from waste" claims, industrial scale incinerators are not a good idea, The scrubbers just don't remove all the toxins and those living downstream are the recipients of the nasties which can exacerbate asthma and other respiratory problems 

When I was a pastor in Clarington region lots of people opposed the building of an incinerator by a corporation with a lousy record for toxic emissions in other places across North America. I went to public meetings as did members of my congregation but it was built anyway with promises that garbage wouldn't be imported from other regions. 

We held a day-long environmental, Earth Care fair of sorts at our church with participation from several other local congregations and it was well attended. We had seminars on greener energy options and retrofitting church buildings and the incinerator project. A member of my congregation, a physician, was involved in the anti-incinerator coalition and offered a worthwhile presentation. We figured that if "the Earth is the Lord's and the fullness thereof" (Psalm 24) we had responsibilities to do our part in honouring our patch of our planetary home. 

Will there be growing pressure to burn our trash? There has been talk of expanding the Clarington/Durham incinerator. Why were we banned from burning our leaves decades ago but seem willing to burn plastics and other nasty stuff now? 

Waste disposal and landfills may be necessary in our hellbent on consumerism society, but as lovers of Creation and children of the Creator we must have a care. Fifty years on, Jim Manley's song, both playful and pointed, continues to be timely. 

Well, kids you really filled the earth and then you subdued it 

But there’s nothing in my book that says you’ve got to pollute it 

So take, take, take off your shoes 

You’re standing on holy ground 

You’re standing on holy ground

Restoring a Home Where the Buffalo Roam

Oh, give me a home where the buffalo roam
Where the deer and the antelope play
Where seldom is heard a discouraging word
And the skies are not cloudy all day

 I'm reading the novel Eliza Sunshine by award-winning Canadian author Michelle Good -- you may know her from Five Little Indians. Good, who is Cree,  came to novel writing relatively late after years working in advocacy as a lawyer.

Eliza Sunshine is a multi-generational story beginning with a Cree family and community living in western Canada before there was a nation with that name. An essential aspect of their existence was the annual buffalo/bison hunt which they approached with a combination of pragmatism and reverence. Bison were killed for sustenance and virtually all of the carcass used. At the same time there was a sense these creatures were kin and that there was a "covenant" (Good's term) with them. When previously unknown hairy-faced men arrived their traditional way of life came to an end.

                                                                    Mound of Bison Skulls 

History tells us that European settlers, including those building railroads, engaged in mindless slaughter of bison, often taking only pelts and tongues and leaving the rest to rot. Some researchers argue that bison were also killed as a way of subjugating the Indigenous peoples who depended on them. In a few decades the vast herds numbering between 30 and 60 million across the continent were gone and less than a thousand bison remained. It has taken more than a century to bring numbers back into the hundreds of thousands but the majority are domesticated animals raised for food. 

In Canada and the US governments and Indigenous communities have been involved in this restoration. For First Nations bison are an essential aspect of their cultural and spiritual identity and the reestablishment of small herds is often an emotional enterprise. 

                                             Lake Audy, Riding Mountain National Park, bison herd

In June we were in Manitoba and spent time in Riding Mountain National Park where there is a small herd of about 40 bison. The Lake Audy bison enclosure is about 500 hectares with a road through it accessed by cattle gates. We were told that dawn and dusk were the best times for viewing so we were there early on, sighting a number of bears, coyotes, and deer on the way. But no bison. We drove slowly around the enclosure, stopping at a lookout where the only evidence was impressive excretions. As we were just about to depart there they were, grazing calmly right beside the gravel road. It was just us and the largest land mammals on the continent, including eight calves, and it was a holy moment. 

 No, we did not exit our vehicle as I've seen people do in Wyoming to get closer because they apparently had a death wish. We've probably all seen the video of the camper in Yellowstone who was tossed by a cranky bison without provocation. 

                                     Brain-dead tourist in Yellowstone National Park

Our attempts at reconciliation with Indigenous peoples won't be worth a plug buffalo nickel if we don't take into account the ecocide that was part of cultural genocide for more than a century. Restoring homes where the bufflalo/bison roam is a matter of justice and a source of hope. 

Famed documentarian Ken Burns explored the history of bison in America but there are some excellent Canadian docs as well. 

More Prayers in the Oval Office

 

First of all, then, I urge that supplications, prayers, intercessions, and thanksgivings be made for everyone,  for kings and all who are in high positions, so that we may lead a quiet and peaceable life in all godliness and dignity. This is right and acceptable before God our Saviour...

            ! Timothy 2: 1-3 NRSVue 

This photo makes me shudder with horror. It shows twelve American Roman Catholic bishops surrounding the Father of Lies in the Oval Office, praying for the President in a scene reminiscent of moments when evangelical leaders did the same. The lone exception is Paula White the prosperity gospel televangelist who leads the White House Faith Office. If  you've ever watched her wild performative schtick you'll realize that she should be in a padded room, not anywhere near the seat of power. 

This photo and the video have undermined the credibility of the Roman Catholic Church in the United States, and this is sad. In recent months a number of leading Catholics have spoken out against the mass arrests of immigrants. They have gone to detention centres to celebrate mass with those who were incarcerated and accompanied parishioners to court hearings. More recently they have condemned the hideous plan to live-stream an execution.

This Oval Office mess does not have the support of the Vatican and since it unfolded some of the bishops have apologized, although not all. One said that some of his parishioners were hurt because of the effect of Trump’s policies on their families. “We should never have been put in that position by the White House,” wrote Grob, adding that he had harboured reservations and “wish I had heeded them”. Indeed. 

Another explained that they had been invited to spend 90 minutes with government officials and told that it would be a private discussion about immigration enforcement, religious-worker visas and human dignity, with a possible chance to pray privately with the president. They weren't told that a video was being recorded and they never agreed to its release on social media, which happened almost immediately. 

Can you imagine this sort of performative prayerfest happening in the office or our Prime Minister? So much for separation of church and state.

Yes prayer is important and praying for leaders is biblical. It happens regularly in our congregation during worship but never in a partisan way. This this was clearly manipulation by the White House as the midterm elections loom. What were these bishops thinking? They were incredibly naive, well aware that they are prohibited from the appearance of  endorsing a political party. I trust that the apologies by the bishops are sincere, but they've go a lot of 'splainin' to do. 

Election Day in Israel

 

This is Election Day in Israel and it's impossible to predict what will unfold. 

By any measure incumbent Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu should be ousted. He is under criminal indictment for fraud, breach of trust, and taking bribes. He has attempted to undermine the Supreme Court, to the dismay of many Israelis. His government is a "deal with the devil" coalition including right wing extremists. There is plenty of evidence that in his arrogance he ignored credible warnings about the impending terrorist attacks by Hamas. The destruction of Gaza and tacit permission to attack Palestinians in the West Bank has made Israel an international pariah. 

Still, Netanyahu could emerge as Prime Minister once again. In Israel there are many political parties so coalitions are the norm rather than the exception. Governments can be elected for four years but can be brought down at any time depending on shifting allegiances. It all seems precarious, especially in such uncertain times. 

                                                                       Gadi Eisenkot rally

The principal opposition party led by General Gadi Eisenkot, former military chief of staff, seems to be a better alternative but there are no guarantees of stability. The balance may be swung by smaller parties representing the Arabs who are citizens of Israel and eligible to vote. 

Of course this election has huge implications for the citizens of Israel who are weary after years of war after war. Before the Gaza conflict began there was a deepening concern about the erosion of the rule of law and democracy. 

Jews in many parts of the world including Canada are watching with considerable interest because growing global anti-Israel sentiment has spilled over into anti-Semitism. They have no say in the election but as has always been the case, there is a vile segment of many societies including ours which will use any excuse for hatred of Jews. 

One of the most violent incidents occurred here in Belleville where the local synagogue was attacked by a gunman.  There are many Jews who are alarmed at the level of violence toward Palestinians, feeling that this is not consistent with the core values of Judaism yet they are targets of the hateful as well. 

We can hardly believe that we spent time with family who lived in Israel only months before the October 7 2023 attacks by Hamas. We visited many places that are so important to our Christian faith and to Judaism, travelling past Gaza in our travels. Our family members are back in North America after decades in Israel and a visit such as ours would be impossible now. 

 I do pray that this election can create a different path for elusive peace in the region.