Pilgrims' Tales: Palm Sunday

Like Chaucer's travelers to Canterbury, a company of folks are heading to Jerusalem with Jesus in the 40 day pilgrimage Christians call Lent. Each week during Sunday worship, Crescent Fort Rouge United will meet one of that company in a monologue. This Sunday, we hear from a midwife (Luke 19:29-40).




It was bands of cloth from my cloak she wrapped him in so long ago,
And now I find myself giving up my cloak again,
laying my cloak down on the road,
my cloak paving the way
for this parade of nuisances and nobodies.
He comes riding a little brown burro,
a work horse not a war horse,
a little brown burro, so small his feet almost touch the ground,
a little brown burro, not unlike the one his mother rode
to satisfy the census-taking soldiers years ago.
Birth in a borrowed barn!
We are never safe from surprises in a world made cruel.
He was a baby like all the others I’ve brought into the world:
Wet and slippery and full-voiced
until I put him in his mother’s arms,
she who sang of justice to the poor,
her cradle song – her manger song.
Now, on this parade route, we sing Peace.
Peace on earth! We sing as if it’s possible,
just as the angels sang to startled shepherds.
Peace on earth – not just his birth announcement
but his marching orders.
Ours, too.
And so once more I offer him my cloak,
along with all the others who line this back street,
we who have only one cloak to give,
give it
as the hope of the world parades by
on a borrowed brown burro.

Pilgrim's Tales: Lent 5

Like Chaucer's travelers to Canterbury, a company of folks are heading to Jerusalem with Jesus in the 40 day pilgrimage Christians call Lent. Each week during Sunday worship, Crescent Fort Rouge United will meet one of that company in a monologue. This Sunday, we hear from Lazarus, raised from the dead (John 11:1-44; John 12:1-11).

Thank you, God, for the grave digger who made the hole and sealed me up. And thank you that I do not need the grave he made, at least for now. But bless his work anyway.

Thank you for my sisters.

Thank you for my sister Martha with her sharp tongue and blunt ways – 

she was the one who told off Jesus for coming too late, 

and for telling him that after so long in the earth I would stink to high heaven.

Thank you for my sister Mary the dreamer, the soft one. 

She cannot be relied on to get a meal, 

but will always bring a flower to grace the table.

Thank you for the funeral food I now enjoy.

Thank you for olives, for the tree that grew them.

Thank you for lemons, and the farmer who tends them.

Thank you for lamb and barley,

and the smell that fills the house, mingling with my own smell,

the smell of the earth, the smell of the grave.

Thank you for wine for celebration.

Thank you for friends with food in their beards

and rejoicing on their lips.

Thank you for life.

Thank you for life!

I who stumbled through my days,

carrying my life like a heavy burden instead of a treasured gift.

I did not have a life before my death, but now…

Thank you.

Pilgrim's Tales: Lent 4

Like Chaucer's travelers to Canterbury, a company of folks are heading to Jerusalem with Jesus in the 40 day pilgrimage Christians call Lent. Each week during Sunday worship, Crescent Fort Rouge United will meet one of that company in a monologue. This Sunday, we hear from a mother.

His father got it wrong.

It wasn’t just our younger son who was lost, the one who skidded off the rails so dramatically, the one who got us to sell half our land so he could have cold, hard cash, only to waste every last coin on intoxicants and bad company. He was lost to us, yes, treating us like human vending machines instead of parents with a bit of wisdom about the world and a lot of love for him. He’s the famous one in the story, the younger son. Everybody likes a bad boy.

But my husband got it wrong.

Our elder son was lost, too.

If the younger treated us as human vending machines so he could squander it all on a way of life I don’t care to think about, our elder son also didn’t see us as parents. He never could just lean back into the love we have for him, but always was trudging around trying to please us. I often wished he would show a bit more spirit. He was so worried about earning his place in our family that he built a wall around himself with bricks of resentment and the mortar of bitterness, imagining nothing he did was ever good enough. He was trying to earn his place in a family he was already part of. It’s as if he thought, “If I work really hard, they will like me.” Not “If I work really hard, they will love me” – he was so lost he was content with like from his own family. He was so lost he couldn’t see the love that was already there.

I don’t know how both our boys got so lost. Being family is the hardest work in the world. 

Pilgrims' Tales: Lent 3

Like Chaucer's travellers to Canterbury, a company of folks are heading to Jerusalem with Jesus in the 40 day pilgrimage Christians call Lent. Each week during Sunday worship, Crescent Fort Rouge United will meet one of that company in a monologue. This Sunday, we hear from a gardener.
                                                                                     

I like to stay put. In fact, this journey with Jesus is the first time I’ve ever been on the move like this. Gardening takes a long, long time in the same space. You till and dig and compost and manure and dig and weed and till and compost and manure. You invest the sweat of your brow into a piece of land. It’s not like having a dairy cow that you can lead down the road to another location. If you’re a gardener, you have to stay put to see the fruit of your effort.

Which is why no one could believe it when I walked away from my fruit trees to take to the road with Jesus and the others. See, Jesus gets it, gets it – he gets it. Sure, others celebrate the harvest, the goodness of the earth, all that stuff. But that’s about what the earth can do for us, how the earth feeds us with grain and grape, gives us timber to build tables and temples. But Jesus sees something more, something that good gardeners know: nothing is ever lost. Nothing is ever lost.

You can prune a grapevine or a fig tree, cut off the dead branch that is sapping the life of the plant so the plant can use its inner resources to blossom and bear fruit. And most folks focus on the fruit – grapes, figs, what’s not to like?

But those dead branches aren’t ever lost. They go into the compost, take years to break down in the company of other dead branches, orange peels, apple cores, kitchen scraps, all that stuff nobody wants. All that stuff people think is useless just takes more time to do it differently. It’s a holy mystery how it breaks down, changes into rich dense compost. And the gardener uses that compost to enrich the earth, to help other things grow. Nothing is ever lost, just changed.

Jesus treats people that way. Those who are dead to us, those who are lost to us: the lepers, the collaborators, the sick, the sinful, the ones we turn away from – they are not lost to Jesus. No one is ever lost to him. And here’s the miracle: when Jesus finds them, he finds us, too. We are changed by that holy mystery of insistent belonging. Like a good gardener, Jesus helps us grow. Nothing is ever lost, but things can change.

Pilgrims' Tales: Lent 2

Like Chaucer's travellers to Canterbury, a company of folks are heading to Jerusalem with Jesus in the 40 day pilgrimage Christians call Lent. Each week during Sunday worship, Crescent Fort Rouge United will meet one of that company in a monologue. This Sunday, we hear from the Pharisee who saw Jesus weep over Jerusalem.
                                                                                                                                                      

It’s odd that tears make for clearer vision. You’d think with all that water and salt coming out of your eyes, your vision would be blurred.

I am a scholar. I value deep debate, the struggle to understand what God requires of us, the tension between our rich tradition and the new spirit that calls for change.

And the tensions of living a life of faith in these bewildering, bedeviled times.

These struggles call for a sharp intellect.

And yet…and yet…

I am beginning to realize that it’s when I see through my tears that I see most clearly.

When I sat in the hospital room, holding my grandmother’s tiny hand, no longer pretending to be brave – there are my tears.

When I watch that Tim Horton’s commercial, where the man goes to the airport to meet the plane from his homeland, to at last be reunited with his children and his wife, and he says “Welcome to Canada” – there are my tears.

When I see the desperate people in Haiti – so many family members dead, so many missing people, not being able to feed your children, to protect your daughters – there are my tears.

Or the Winnipeg woman who died in a bus shelter, died of exposure, died of poverty, died of neglect – there are my tears.

Or when I held our new baby for the first time, that little miracle of bright eyes and fingers and toes and baby-smell, that gift, that blessed, blessed gift – there are my tears.

Tears make for clearer vision.

Salt opens the icy road, that long, long road between my head and my heart.

And I see.

I see what matters, through my tears.

Pilgrims' Tales: Lent 1

Like Chaucer's travellers to Canterbury, a company of folks are heading to Jerusalem with Jesus in the 40 day pilgrimage Christians call Lent. Each week during Sunday worship, Crescent Fort Rouge United will meet one of that company in a monologue.

Lent 1: The Devil

You don’t know it, but I’ve got you already.


And the beauty is, you don’t know it because you don’t believe I exist.

Not that I mind. It makes things so much easier for me.

See, I know you.

I know you gave up long ago.

I know you look at the time you were passionate about your faith – remember that time, so long ago? – I know you look at the time you were passionate about your faith with a certain smirking paternalism, the same way you remember your youthful idealism when you got swept up in Trudeau-mania or the Young Communist Party or Greenpeace.

Your faith is like the rusty protest button in the bottom of your sock drawer.

I know you gave up long ago.

You decided there was no contradiction between being faithful and being comfortable.

See, I do know you.

Used to be, it was easy for me to pick out the Christians in the crowd – they were the ones visiting the sick, welcoming the stranger, working on the underground railroad, scouring pots in the soup kitchen, walking the picket line, going to jail.

Time was, the Christians not only went to jail.

They went to the lions.

They were known by their love for everyone, even their enemies. They recognized no distinctions of class or gender or race, and that made them stand out. Which made it easy for me to pick them out.

Which was not the same thing as making it easy for me to do my job.

But now? Piece of cake.

You have confused peace with not making waves.

You’ve become devoted to what makes you feel good instead of what mends the world.

You blend in with everybody else.

You’ve decided to be nice instead of to be faithful.

You are already mine.

If I Were Boss of the Olympics...

Won't be long now until the 2010 Winter Olympics in beautiful British Columbia, an event so important that our Prime Minister prorogued parliament (or was that to shut down the Afghan torture inquiry?). Nobody has asked me, but if i were the boss of the Olympics, here's what the winter games would look like.
Opening ceremony: Clara Hughes, the only Canadian athlete to have won medals in both winter (speed skating) and summer (cycling) games will light the Olympic flame. Singing of Canada's national anthem will be led by James Keelaghan. Other Canadian performers will include Bruce Cockburn (who will debut a new song about irresponsible parliaments and the evils of torture), k.d. lang (who will debut a new song about the Women's Ski Jump event, which is going on because the Men's Hockey teams would boycott otherwise), and Marg Delahunty (who will threaten to smite the Prime Minister unless he gets back to work, pronto). Further, the corporate sponsors will have agreed that, for the sheer joy of supporting the games, no athlete will have to wear a logo on their uniform, thus reverting to the days when we could readily determine nationality without having to look for a flag among the Nike swooshes, and logos for VISA, Coke, Cheerios, etc. i know this is hopelessly naive, but i am actually old enough to remember when corporations were high-minded enough to sponsor great television programming like a play from the Stratford Festival, with an ad only at the beginning and the end -- "This special program is brought to you by IBM."
And speaking of corporations, the sponsors (bless them for their deep pockets) will be big enough to allow the charity RIGHT TO PLAY high visibility at the Games, even though none of the sponsors are "official" sponsors of this worthy NGO.
Clara fans will recall she donated $10,000 to Right To Play after she won gold at Turin - and our government did not give athletes a financial bonus for medalling (to use that strange new verb). If you haven't, check out RIGHT TO PLAY online.
Back in 1980, my first visit to New York city, i went to the famous toy store, F.A.O. Schwartz on 5th Avenue, where there were a ton of teddy bears wearing Olympic sweaters...and they were being offered at a deep discount. Do you recall the boycott of the Moscow Olympics? Do you recall why so many nations withdrew? It was in protest of Russia's invasion of Afghanistan. Funny old world, isn't it?
Protest doesn't usually sit well with sports fans. Sport can be an escape hatch, a time to enjoy the physicality of people unlike us (that is, those who train hard and push their bodies to perfection), team spirit, national pride. But if these spectacles come at the cost of shutting down worthy causes like RIGHT TO PLAY, continuing sexism (no Women's Ski Jump events), denying freedom of speech....hmmm. Even those cute red mittens we're being encouraged to buy to show our support for Canada's Olympians are made in China. And CBC news recently revealed that souvenirs being sold at the Games as Aboriginal art are likewise made in China (okay, maybe by Chinese aboriginals?)
i'll watch the games, especially the Speed Skating, the most elegant sport on offer. And i'll be rooting for Clara, an amazing athlete, a generous spirit, a deep thinker (to hear her on spirituality and sport, go to www.cbc.ca/tapestry/archives/2008/021008.html).
But part of me will be longing with all my baby-boomer heart for the days when all of us were gutsier about protesting injustices. Remember Carlos and Smith at the 1968 games? Sport is not above comment, or above debate, or above human rights.

So, go Clara! And on the podium, show us your RIGHT TO PLAY T-shirt!