Tag Archives: spirituality

A new parable for Thanksgiving

Three generations of a large, extended family gather in a big old farm house for the holiday weekend. One grandparent has spent the best part of the day in the kitchen. The other runs errands as needed, and goes from room to room, keeping the family supplied with snacks, drinks, games, and the occasional hug.

The grown children and their partners, and most of the grandchildren made it back for Thanksgiving. They all seem happy to see each other, and are doing things together. There is a cribbage tournament happening in the living room, two of the younger grandchildren have taken over the basement television to play Minecraft.  Two of the teen-aged grand-kids are perched on the couch, making a point of ignoring the gamers, and showing each other things on Tik-Tok.

There is a good buzz in the house, and a sense of joy, and anticipation for the impending meal. The scent of roast turkey is a promise of what is soon to come, that can be smelled in every room in the house.  Everyone seems in the holiday spirit, except for the new partner of one of the middle generation. They have spent the day holed up in an upstairs bedroom.

This new partner, who’s at the family farm for the first time, makes their money in day trading. They buy and sell in markets based around the world, in places that don’t celebrate Canadian Thanksgiving. The longest sentence they’ve said to their partner that morning was “Money doesn’t take the day off, so neither do I.”

Their partner is somewhat used to this, but hoped they might take a break at least for a few hours. The compromise they reached, with hard looks at three paces, was the day-trader would join the family for supper.

Since then, the day-trader has invested their time like any other day. Tracking jagged peaks and valleys and little numbers on the screens of twin lap-tops, typing buy and sell and orders on their ipad, and talking on their Bluetooth headset.

They eat mini-pretzels by the jumbo bag they get from Costco, which they wash down with diet cola, also bought in bulk. They brought all their own supplies with them from the city.

The soda makes their stomach feel growly and empty, but they depend on the caffeine to stay alert. More soda leads to more handfuls of salty crunch, which leads to more salt induced thirst, and on and on.

One the Minecraft kids said, “We’re like, in the country. The wi-fi is super slow, and we’re all online.  Won’t that mess them up?”

“The oldest of the Tik-Tokkers looked up from their phone to say, “I checked the available connections in settings. They are running off their own hot spot. I wonder what the password is for Cash4Me2021.”

The other teenager says, “I bet you my piece of pie it’s the same as the license plate on their land rover, but don’t even think about trying it.”

By the time the potatoes are mashed, the gravy is in the boat, and the turkey carved and on the platter, two industrial size bags of mini-pretzels have been washed down with a two litre bottle of the dark bubbles. There have been numerous quick trips to the bathroom down the hall from the bedroom where they’ve hidden all day, but the trader hasn’t been downstairs, or spoken a word to anyone in the family. All three generations were warned to leave them alone while they worked.

The grandparent who ran the kitchen today has the other one travel the house announcing “Supper is ready”, and the extended family gathers in the dining room. There are extra chairs crowded in around the big table, that has both leafs in today. There is also a card table added to one end, for those who are last to the table. The family gave up on having a kid’s table years ago, because everyone wanted to be together.

The chairs around the tables fill in. Except for one. The day trader is the last to enter the dining room. They barely look up from the text they are reading. They don’t see the look on their partner’s face until they sit, and shut the phone down. One of the grandparents says, “It’s good to see you! How have you been?”

The day trader says, “Up about 11,000 dollars for the day. Parked it in my U.S. dollar account.”

The grandparent who asked says, “That sounds like work went well. But how are you?”

The day-trader’s partner sinks a little lower in their chair.

The day-trader picks up their phone, rises from the folding chair, and says, “Oh. To tell you the truth, I am a little tired. I really just came down to say hello, and good night.”

“Aren’t you going to join us for the meal?”, asked the grandparent who cooked all day.

“Honestly, I kind of filled up on snacks I brought from home, and don’t really need anything. But thanks for the offer.”

The day trader was up and gone before anyone at the big table could think of what to say.

The grandparent who had entertained the whole crew while the other was in the kitchen said. “We should get to passing food before it gets cold. This all looks great.”

One of the grand-kids looked around the table and said, “Let’s say grace first. We have a lot, so much, to say thanks for.”

Communion with the World- Learning Time from Harrow United Church, Oct 3, 2021

Today is World Communion Sunday. Since the early 1930’s Christian churches of many different denominations have celebrated it as a day to bring churches together in an act of unity. It started at a Presbyterian Church in Pittsburgh, and quickly spread across the US and Canada, and to many other countries.

Even though there may be significant differences amongst the various kinds of churches, there is hope that in the breaking of bread, the pouring of the cup, and the remembering of the message and mission of Jesus, that Christians can celebrate what they share in common.

Common. That’s kind of our word for the day. The English word “common” has its roots in the Latin word “communis”, which is very close to the word communion. Communion means the state of sharing, or exchanging thoughts or ideas, or feeling part of something.

The example offered in one online dictionary was of poets who live in communion with nature. That sounds like connection, feeling like you have something in common with nature.

I have been pondering how we would celebrate World Communion Sunday in this almost post-pandemic, post-election reality, in which there seem to be so many divisive forces at work.

What if in our faith community- another word rooted in communis, or common, we used the occasion of World Communion Sunday to exercise our imaginations, and stretch our hearts and minds a little? In this season of creation we’ve heard some bible stories and some indigenous wisdom, that invites to deeply consider our place in Creation, and our relationship with the land, the air, the water, the sky, and all living creatures.  

Can we be like those poets that commune with nature? That phrase has me imagining people outdoors, perhaps occasionally hugging trees, but also, just taking time to be, to look, touch, smell, pay close attention.

I have been drawing upon the book Braiding Sweetgrass, by Robin Wall Kimmerer, for inspiration and guidance.  Kimmerer is an indigenous woman, a member of the Potowatomi First Nation. She is also botanist and a professor of environmental and forest biology.

Early in the book she wrote about her first day of undergraduate program. Her academic adviser asked why she wanted to study botany. She wrote:

“How could I answer, how could I tell him that I was born a botanist, that I had shoeboxes of seeds and piles of pressed leaves under my bed, that I’d stop my bike along the road to identify a new species, that plants coloured my dreams, that the plants had chosen me? So I told him the truth. I was proud of my well-planned answer, its freshman sophistication apparent to anyone, the way it showed that I already knew some plants and their habitats, that I had thought deeply about their nature and was clearly well prepared for college work. I told him that I chose botany because I wanted to learn about why asters and goldenrod looked so beautiful together.” (p. 97, Braiding Sweetgrass)

The adviser looked at her said, “I must tell you that that is not science. That is not at all the sort of thing with which botanists concern themselves.” He went on to tell her that her question, which was about beauty, was not science, and that “if you want to study beauty, you should go to art school.”

The advisor’s response made her doubt where she came from, what she knew, and felt like he was telling her that his way was the only way to think.

She said, “In moving from a childhood in the woods to the university I had unknowingly shifted between worldviews, from a natural history of experience, in which I knew plants as teachers and companion to whom I was linked with mutual responsibility, into the realm of science.”

Did you notice how she wrote about plants as her companions? The word “companion” is rooted in two latin words. The “com” part derives from communis, or common, or sharing, that I mentioned earlier. The “panis” part is from the latin word for bread. A companion is someone with whom you share bread.

I think in her own, beauty-filled way, Kimmerer grew up communing with nature, like those poets. She found communion, with her companions, in the forest.

Later in the book, Kimmerer quoted another author, a scholar named Greg Cajete who wrote, “in indigenous ways of knowing, we understand a thing only when we understand it with all four aspects of our being: mind, body, emotion, and spirit.”

To me that sounds a bit like what Jesus told the scholars of religion, when he was asked about the Greatest Commandment, in other words, what must we be sure to do, to honour God, and walk in God’s way:

Jesus reminded them of what their faith already taught: “This is the foremost: ‘Hear, O Israel, God, our God, is one. You must love the Most High God with all your heart, with all your soul, with all your mind and with all your strength.’ The second is this: ‘You must love your neighbor as yourself.’ There is no commandment greater than these.” Mark 12:29-31 (The Inclusive Bible)

To live faithfully, in community, in the world, we are called to love with all parts of ourselves. Our hearts, souls, minds, and bodies. We are to love God, to love our neighbours, to love ourselves.

Kimmerer wrote that the struggle she had, in her early years of university, was that her “natural inclination was to see relationships, to seek the threads that connect the world, to join instead of divide. But science is rigorous in separating the observer from the observer, and the observed from the observer.”

Kimmerer learned how to speak the language of science, and did very well. She completed her bachelor’s degree, and was accepted to do graduate work in a great botany program. Her adviser wrote a letter in which he said, “She’s done remarkably well for an Indian girl.”

She completed her Master’s degree, and then her PhD, and was hired as a professor. Then she was invited to a gathering of Native elders, to talk about traditional knowledge of plants. She listened to “a Navajo woman without a day of university botany training in her life” who spoke of the plants in her valley, their names, where they lived, when they bloomed, who they liked to live near, what creatures ate the plants and which ones lined their nests with them, and what kind of medicine each plant offered. She talked about stories of those plants, how they got their names, and what they have to tell us. She spoke of beauty.

Kimmerer said the Navajo woman’s words were like smelling salts waking her up again. It was the beginning of her reclaiming that other way of knowing, of living in relationship with the world. She said, “I felt like a malnourished refugee invited to a feast, the dishes scented with the herbs of home.”

I love that in her return to her indigenous way of connecting with the world, I’d say, being in communion with the world, she felt like she’d been invited to a feast.

When we celebrate the sacrament of communion, we invite people to our table, for bread, and for wine, or juice. These represent not just the body, and the blood of Jesus, but the bounty of the earth. Grain harvested and ground, and baked into nourishing bread. Grapes picked and the sweet juice extracted for the cup. These are simple, worldly things, offered to us in love, that we might grow in our own capacity to see all humans, all creatures, the whole world as one. Amen

Interdependence- Learning Time for Sept 26, 2021 at Harrow United Church

Interdependence

Robin Wall Kimmerer is a member of the Potawotami nation, and a botanist, and professor of environmental and forest biology. Her book, Braiding Sweetgrass is an artful weaving of personal history, stories from her indigenous culture, and scientific observation.

In a chapter called the Council of Pecans, she told a story about her grandfather and his brothers, who one fall day in 1895 went fishing in the midst of drought, in an effort to bring some protein home for the family supper table. They caught nothing, but on the way home, walking near a grove of trees, one of them stubbed his toe on something hard and round hidden in the tall grass.

Pecan nut still on the tree

The boy looked down, then picked up a hard green ball from the ground and whipped it through the trees at his brother like a fastball, and yelled “Piganek! Let’s bring ‘em home!”  Pigan is the name in their language for any kind of nut, but was brought into English by the settlers as pecan. The boys could not carry many in their hands, but they took off their pants, tied the legs off with twine, and filled them like we might use a grocery bag. They ran home in their underwear, with their pants over their shoulders like big forked logs, to present their treasure to their mother.

Kimmerer’s people were originally from the Great Lakes region, in Michigan. When settlers wanted their land to farm, they were moved to Oklahoma, which is where those boys were when they brought home pecans for supper. They were moved again, to Kansas, to make room for another wave of white settlers.

Kimmerer has been back to the old family home place in Oklahoma, and there is a pecan tree shading what remains of the house. She wrote, “I imagine Grammy pouring nuts out to prepare them and one rolling away to a welcoming spot at the edge of the dooryard. Or maybe she paid her debt to the trees by planting a handful in her garden right then and there.”

That’s a great image. The woman pausing from her work of preparing food for a hungry family, to plant a few pecans in the garden. The phrase Kimmerer used was to pay a debt. There is a recognition in those words of a relationship between the people and the trees that provided food. There is gratitude, and respect, and responsibility. Another word we could use is interdependence, the recognition that all beings: plant, animal, human, need each other, and have duties to one other.

Kimmerer wrote, “in the summer of 1895, the root cellars throughout Indian Territory were full of pecans, and so were the bellies of boys and squirrels. For people, the pulse of abundance felt like a gift, a profusion of food to be simply picked up from the ground. That is, if you got there before the squirrels. And if you didn’t, at least there would be lots of squirrel stew that winter. The pecan groves give and give again. Such communal generosity might seem incompatible with the process of evolution, which invokes the imperative of individual survival. But we make a grave error if we try to separate individual well-being from the health of the whole. The gift of abundance from pecans is also a gift to themselves. By sating squirrels and people, the trees are ensuring their own survival.”

When the pecan trees have a big production year, and throw off a lot of nuts, the squirrels pack their larders. When they are well-fed, the plump pregnant mamas have more babies in each litter. Increased squirrel population means more food for hawks and foxes, and they flourish. Then predation increases, and the squirrel population decreases. Some of the nuts they’ve buried lay undisturbed, and more pecan trees get their start. There is a rhythm, a pulse to all of this.

Kimmerer sees herself, and her people, not as bystanders to this organic, living drama, but as integral parts of the living web. As I mentioned last week, this way of seeing is very different, and not easily compatible with the worldview of the settlers, the ones who displaced Kimmerer’s people.

When our White Europeans forebears came here, they brought the understanding that land was a commodity to divided up with lines on a surveyor’s map, property to be assigned, bought and sold, and put to work for the benefit of the owner.

Aerial images of Kingsville greenhouses at night.

Living in Kingsville, I hear a lot of discussion about land that was historically designated for agriculture, but is now hidden under acres and acres of plastic sheeting, for greenhouse operations. Are these farms, or factories? What happens to all the other forms of life that were once part of the ecosystem on that land? Where do the deer run, when glowing polyethylene structures cover their old trails?

White tail deer

I don’t know the answers, but I appreciate that Kimmerer’s way of seeing the world brings a different sense of involvement, interdependence, and responsibility.

This week we took time in the service for our annual blessing of the animals. It’s a tradition that goes back almost over 800 years in the Christian faith. There was a man in Italy called Francis of Assisi, who in his own way, pointed to the interdependence of all that lives in God’s creation. He wrote poetry in which he called the sun his brother, and the moon his sister. He considered all the animals to be family. By his words, but most often, with his actions, he encouraged love, and respect for all living creatures.

He was probably what people today would call a nature mystic- he felt a profound spiritual connection to God, when he was out for a walk in the woods. There are stories about him preaching sermons to the birds, encouraging people to feed animals who had been displaced when land was cultivated for farming, and of him praying for the healing of injured animals.

Francis knew and taught in the 13th century what many people today also know, that animals are capable of both receiving, and offering love. They live in relationship with the natural world, and the other creatures around them, and have much to teach us. Amen

Link to my March 20, 2021 piece for the Kingsville Observer

https://www.kingsvilleobserver.com/post/physical-mental-and-spiritual-self-care-needed-to-weather-the-covid-19-pandemic

As we are now a whole year into the pandemic, it seemed like a good time to encourage a people to check in with themselves.

How are you doing? Most people I ask answer with some variation of “OK, under the circumstances.”

Many of us are mostly OK. We have some resilience.

It’s harder to be OK if you test positive for COVID-19, are ill, or have had someone in your circle become sick, or succumb to the virus. It’s harder to be OK if the pandemic has hurt your business or cost you your job. It’s harder to be OK if the lockdown has meant you couldn’t visit a loved one in long-term care, is ill, or who was dying. It’s harder to be OK if you depend upon in-person recovery groups, counselling, or therapy to continue the work of being your best self. It’s harder to be OK if the rules mean you couldn’t have the family gathering, wedding or funeral that you would have arranged if things were different.

I recently attended an online meeting for pastors with a community mental health worker who used statistics to show what we can all guess has been happening. More people are depressed than a year ago. Suicidal thoughts and behaviour, self-harm, self-medication, violence in the home, abuse and neglect of loved ones are on the increase. Hopelessness, despair and anxiety affect our neighbours, friends and loved ones, especially young people. Pre-existing issues and tendencies can become worse under lockdown and harder to address.

The mental health worker reminded us that clergy are as prone to these hardships as anyone, and as likely to shrug and say, “I’m OK.”

Have you heard the old story about the frog? If you drop a frog in a pot of boiling water, it does all it can to get out. If on the other hand the frog’s already in the pot and you heat the water slowly, it will adjust as the temperature rises and not try to escape until it’s too late. It’s a terrible story.

We’ve been in the pot for a while. It may be time to check in with ourselves. A useful image is that of a tripod.

Body. Mind. Spirit. If I don’t attend to each of these, I won’t have a leg to stand on. It is harder to be resilient and to help others if I don’t care for these aspects of myself.

Care of my body includes attending to what I put in it — food, water, other liquids, supplements, medications (actual and self-prescribed!) I have to keep my body moving with daily exercise. (Use it or lose it!) What am I doing more of, or less of, since this all started? What habits and practices need adjustment?

Caring for my mind also means being proactive about what I put in it and how I use it. A steady diet of bad news and conspiracy theories can leave me in a dark place. Too much time on the computer or phone, consuming without thinking, can leave me in a zombie-like state.

You might shy away from the word spirit for its religious or otherworldly connotations but it can also point you toward your emotional well-being and sense of connection to others and the world beyond ourselves.

I need to actually use my brain — play a board game, or solve a problem, do something that does not involve an electronic device. If I am going to spend time online, I try to seek out positive stories to balance my mental diet. My new favourite website, other than the Kingsville Observer, is Reasons to be Cheerful. It’s a project of David Byrne, former frontman for the Talking Heads.

You might shy away from the word spirit for its religious or otherworldly connotations but it can also point you toward your emotional well-being and sense of connection to others and the world beyond ourselves.

We can feed and exercise our spiritual selves. Schedule time for prayer, meditation, devotional reading, yoga, or tai chi. Read or watch videos online about mindfulness. Find a source of spiritual nurture that speaks to you and which helps you be hopeful.

A good measure of how my spirit is doing is to take an honest look at my capacity to help others. If I’m so caught up in my own condition that I have nothing left for others, I may need to do something about it. Happily, the diagnosis tool can often also contribute to the “cure.” There are times when the best thing I can do for myself to revive my own spirit and reawaken my appetite for connection to a reality beyond my own, is to help someone else.

If you are struggling spiritually, emotionally, or otherwise, please reach out. If you don’t know where to turn, email me at revdww@gmail.com and I will do my best to help.