Just a tap!

"It is possible to become discouraged about the injustice we see everywhere. But God did not promise us that the world would be humane and just. He gives us the gift of life and allows us to choose the way we use our limited time on earth. It is an awesome opportunity." ~Cesar Chavez

Stopping at a stoplight one morning recently, we felt a jarring motion from the back of our car. As I put on the 4-way flashers, my husband got out of the car to inspect the damage. A lady hopped out of the car behind us exclaiming, "We didn't hit you!" 'Well,' he says, 'somebody did!' 'Maybe we tapped you!' she conceded. Fortunately there wasn't any damage and we continued on our way.

However, while I found it more than slightly amusing, I also found the exchange stayed with me. For me this encounter illustrates one of the problems with our society today. While it wasn’t all right to hit our bumper, it apparently was all right to tap it. In other words the degree of the action, not the action itself is what constitutes wrong-doing.

This translates in everyday living to it being OK to give a woman in a hijab that ‘look’, while shooting men because they are in a mosque definitely isn’t. They both exhibit the same root behaviour: islamophobia. While it is all right to keep that extra $10 you get in change, it isn’t all right to steal $5000. You can deny part of society a living wage, but it isn’t all right to starve someone to death or deprive them of medical attention. Really??

Apparently it is not the acts of injustice that we see around us that deter us so much as it is the degree of that injustice. Children learn at an early age that admitting they had their hand in the cookie jar does not bode well. They are punished for the act rather than rewarded for their honesty. It is no wonder that we grow into adults who buy into the prevailing tone of society. It takes courage to step outside of the crowd, to acknowledge those small acts of injustice and perhaps rick bringing the same behaviour down on ourselves. We are constantly hearing of the necessity ‘to stay under the radar’ in order to stay safe.

Pope Francis, looking at this phenomenon a little differently, wrote in Evangelii Gaudium: “My hope, is that we will be moved by the fear of remaining shut up within structures which give us a false sense of security, within rules which make us harsh judges, within habits which make us feel safe, while at our door people are starving and Jesus does not tire of saying to us: ‘Give them something to eat.’”

Comments

"The Sadness of Geography"

“Do you understand the sadness of geography?” I have to admit that when I first read this quote by Michael Ondaatje, a Sri Lankan-born Canadian writer, my immediate response was ‘What sadness?’ Geography is all about climate, geology, topography, the names of lakes, rivers, mountains and seas, isn’t it? It is about things, about memory work. It is not about emotions! At least no geography course I ever took was. But then I started to think….. What are those things that divide us? What are the causes of people being unhappy, persecuted, denied their basic human rights and freedoms, being ostracized in society? Those causes are the things that make people different; things like the colour of their skin, their customs and religion, how they dress, the language they speak. These things for the most part are decided not by who they really are, but by the geography of where they are born. And they persist ‘unto the fourth and fifth generations’ no ...

"On Giving Thanks"

Thanksgiving Is usually one of those ‘easy’ times for me. It is easy to be thankful living with abundance, in safety, with family and friends – so many things to give thanks for, so many blessings undeserved. Some years and for some people, it is not so. What would Thanksgiving mean to me then? How would I deal with it? I came across this prayer not long ago ~ For that which was For that which is For that which will be Thanks be to God And I began to wonder ~ Is the real meaning behind Thanksgiving not so much the ability to be thankful for those things we have in abundance? After all, that is easy. But rather to be thankful for everything we have been given or experienced in life, or are now experiencing: the highs and the lows, the mountain-top experiences and the valleys of death, the deserts and the abundant har...

The Candle is Peace....

“ A candle is burning, a candle of PEACE, A candle to signal that conflict must cease For Jesus is coming to show us the way A message of peace humbly laid in the hay” ~words by Sandra Dean What conflict does our society see as needing to cease? Many see a conflict within their family, where peace can be brought about by expelling/silencing someone who is the cause of the conflict, who is unwilling to go along with the family’s expectations or who is unable to abide by them through mental illness or addiction. Peace to them means quiet because no one dares to challenge the status quo. “All I want under my tree Peace and love and harmony Wrap it with a ribbon please I'll share it with my family." ~Chorus from ‘With my Family’ by Rita MacNeil, 1993 Peace for the country happens when the powers that be are in charge, making decisions that are followed unquestioningly by the proletariat - no riots, no strikes, no protests there. ...

The Greatest Gift

“What can I give Him, poor as I am? If I were a shepherd, I would bring a lamb; If I were a Wise Man, I would do my part; Yet what I can I give Him: give my heart.” ~from ‘In the Bleak Midwinter’ by Christina Rossetti Many of us will be singing, or have sung, these words at some time over this Christmas season. The first verse of the carol, ‘In the Bleak Midwinter’ begins with words that echo many Christmases here in Canada: ‘In the bleak midwinter, frosty wind made moan, earth stood hard as iron, water like a stone; snow had fallen, snow on snow, snow on snow,’ and so we usually find it included in at least one of the services held at this time of year. For me it has always fit in with the sentimentality of a Christmas Eve or Christmas Day service. Yes, we can all give our heart to this young babe - after all who doesn’t find babies hard to resist~ The songs of angels singing in the heavens, a bright star in the dark winter sky, potentates arriving from a...

"Nudgement"

As we progress through the season of Lent, we are urged by the lectionary aa well as by the words spoken from the front of the churches to consider how we live and what we do with our lives. Many of us take up a new spiritual practise perhaps denying ourselves something we enjoy or adding something to our daily routine that we think will benefit our spiritual growth in the long run. What we can seen to be doing is in fact judging our lives and then trying to make them better by doing ‘A’, ‘B’, or ‘C’. Quite a while ago I received a note from one of the readers of this blog and it has stayed with me over the time since it landed in my inbox. ‘I just coined the term "nudgement" for myself this morning. I was thinking of how EFM interprets "judgement" as something that surprises you or that you weren't expecting, which is a gentler notion of "judgement" than some of us grew up with, something that is enough out of the ordinary to urge us ou...

Hung on a Nail

While it wasn’t my first inclination on reading this sign, I feel a need to unpack what it is saying to me. Too often I am apt to pooh-pooh an idea or a metaphor without looking more closely into the meaning within. It is a saying first of all that relates to a first world problem. We are part of the minority in this world who actually have keys to worry about…who have houses [yes, more than one often] who have cars, who have valuables that we feel the need to protect. So the person doing the hanging is prosperous with the goods of the world, if not by their own standards, by the standards of the majority of people living today. So what else do we hang on nails? Car keys! I’m sure we have all heard at some time in our life, the story told of someone going to the nail where they always hang the car keys, only to find that they aren’t there, follow by frantic searching which fails to unearth the keys. Sometimes this story ends with the person saying a prayer askin...

Resurrection

“And if the message of Easter is about [new life], then for us to fast from gathering for worship is our following the path of new life, new life for those who we might hurt by gathering together and new life for us by learning to live — not for self alone, but for others and for God – that's resurrection.” - Presiding Bishop Michael Curry I am writing this just days before the Christian Church traditionally celebrates Easter. With the rest of you I have found my life consumed by the prevailing COVID-19 pandemic. We have all been called on to take responsibility not only for our own wellbeing and that of our family, but also for the well-being of everyone else in our communities. I have been struck over the last number of weeks of the number of Biblical stories I see being played out every day around us.. The Israelites hoarding the manna in the desert only to find it spoiled the next day are replaced with bare shelves in our grocery stores because certain things are ...

Ash Wednesday Musings, 2018

‘By the sweat of your face you shall eat bread until you return to the ground, for out of it you were taken; you are dust, and to dust you shall return.’ Genesis 3:19 Most scholars agree that the texts found in Genesis began to be written down sometime in the 10th century BCE and were based on oral and written traditions. It is this verse that is referenced in the Book of Alternative Services during the Ash Wednesday service, ‘Remember you are dust and to dust you shall return’. A few years ago now we attended an Ash Wednesday Service where the words had morphed to ‘Remember that you are stardust and to stardust you shall return’ moving into the cosmology of the 21st century, connecting our bodies with the whole universe. These express the beliefs of a different world view. They both call us to remember that life on this earth is impermanent and fleeting. They call us to pause and to ponder our lives. Which one resonates with you doesn’t matter. What does matter is that...

The God That Could Be Real

The fact is "in the beginning" is no more precise than "once upon a time". Nancy Ellen Abrams Over the last number of years I have become more and more firmly convinced that our concept of God is a human construct. It is the result of people over the ages from many different culture’s trying to explain their spiritual experiences with only the words and understanding that were currently at their disposal to help them. The last few months I have found myself deleting unread most of the computer mailings that come from progressive Christianity sites as being uninteresting or not speaking to me. They no longer talk about my concept of God. Instead they talk about a concept that while it was once more less mine, is no longer. I realize that this is a sign of change. Not change within the blogs which I am sure are still sending out the same type of material but rather of a change within myself. I can no longer read articles that talk about God as a be...

The Theology of Food

Theology is defined as ‘the study of religious faith, practice, and experience; especially: the study of God and of God's relation to the world’ [Mirriam-Webster online dictionary] A preacher began his sermon with the statement ‘There is no theology of food.’ which alone of all he had to say made me sit up and take notice. Not only take notice, but to begin to consider just why it sounded wrong to me and what exactly was my understanding of the connection between food and theology… because I felt very strongly that there was one! For the better part of two years I was part of a Meditation group that followed their weekly time of meditation by sharing a light meal provided by the various members of the group. Over that food, experiences were shared from our everyday life, ideas were voiced, and connections were made, all of which echoed our various understandings of just what it meant to try and live as a Christian in today’s world. This was theology, t...

NUDGINGS: a journey into the unknown

Search This Blog