I don't go to church to be disappointed in myself but it happens from time to time. Usually it is when I am reminded of the tenets of my faith and missed opportunities to apply them better, and during this past Sunday's service, that is what happened.
Most of the service was as one might expect: scriptures were read, songs were sung, and prayers were delivered. During our service, there is an opportunity to light candles of concern or celebration. Two were lit for congregations in our regions, one was lit for the death of a friend, and another was lit for the birth of a great-grandson. Of course someone lit one for the dead in Tumbler Ridge and that whole community, wishing them swift healing from the trauma their community endured. I thought about going up, but wrestled with the idea for too long and the moment was lost.
I had first had the notion when we passed the peace at the start of the service, shaking hands with other people in the congregation and asking that the peace of Christ be with them. I shook hands with Madeline, a trans woman who started attending last fall with her partner Diamond. I know people in that community have experienced even more expressions of hatred since it was revealed that the Tumbler Ridge shooter was a trans individual, and I told Madeline I was glad to see them.
Then I shook hands with Nicole and Danielle, the couple who joined us as full members about a year ago through profession of faith, and who now look after the supplies for the post-service-fellowship. They are sweethearts and I am always delighted to see them.
But it got me thinking about the communities of faith where the four of them might not be welcome, and the unspoken prayer began to form.
A little while later we got to our reflection, which was not a sermon per se, but a brief talk by the guest invited by our Outreach Committee: Samuel Juru, the executive director of the Newcomer Centre (which was formerly called the Mennonite Center for Newcomers).
He spoke about his experiences growing up in Zimbabwe and being visited by armed government agents there after questioning those in power in a televised Q&A while a student. About coming to Canada as a political refugee, and how his first job here, despite having a degree in international relations, was unloading trucks on the nightshift.
Despite the fact that many other immigrants and refugees in his circle felt having a decent paying job and an apartment meant he had "made it", he reflected on what he wanted to do with his life, returned to school and started two decades of public service helping those trying to come to Canada to make it a better place.
It was a wonderfully personal and inspirational story, that had less to do with faith (although he related praying to God to give him Samson's strength on his first night of unloading heavy, tube-style televisions) and more to do with values, and maybe that is when it hit me:
How many of my fellow Albertans would have been indignat or even angered by the things that brought me joy that morning?
Shaking hands with a transgender woman? Greeting a lesbian couple? Listening to a black immigrant share his story about not only making a successful life with a family here in Canada but helping others to do the same?
It feels like I am continually reading the amplified grievances of people lamenting the way things "used to be," which, let's face it, were probably a pretty good time for white Christian males...but not a lot of others.
This seems to be the banner that the Alberta separacists (no, I believe that is spelled correctly) are trying to draw people to, and in that moment of realization, a few things came into sharp focus to me:
1) sometimes, the simple act of being a wholly inclusive community of faith and providing a safe space for people is enough in itself, and
2) that being a welcoming and justice-oriented organization is going to feel threatening to some people, and
3) that impasse will be difficult, if not impossible to bridge in our current environment, and we should ask for help.
As people lined up to ask for prayers of both joy and concern, I recognized that what I should do, what I ought to say, is to go up, and highlight that impasse, and then pray - not for us but for the haters.
Pray that the Divine opens their eyes, or their minds, or their hearts, whatever requires broaching. Ask them to see a world that celebrates differences instead of fearing it, to imagine one that embraces diversity as a source of strength and not dilution. Because as entrenched as our positions might seem to be, we won't be able to move forward effectively without some of those on the other side changing their minds.
And with corporate-owned news media and billionaire-owned social media so intent on keeping us divided and antagonistic for eyes and subscriptions and likes and clicks and advertising dollars , the oligarchs and the rest of them can sit back and watch us divide ourselves, and then roll up to conquer later on.
All of this ran through my head as I struggled to pay attention to the other candle-lighters asking for prayers, but when the last one spoke, I was still there, in my seat. Unwilling to stand and make this ridiculous ask that we, as followers of not just the 'brand' but the actual teachings of Jesus, try to find it in ourselves to recognize the intolerant as fellow children of God.
And what has gnawed at my soul since then is not so much the fact that I was unable to do it; the real pain is the lack of regret I feel for not having done it.
Understandably trepidatious about visiting us when 2-3 other households were already here, Audrey's sister Vera finally made it up to see us this past weekend.
It was a great visit - she and Audrey made a pile of wontons for soup and I made barbacoa beef for our burritos last night. but the real highlight for me was the games.
Like all too many of our friends and family, she circulates with fewer people these days, largely out of fear of infecting them with omicron, as she works in a health care facility. And not a lot of those people are into board games, especially unfamiliar ones to them, like Ticket to Ride or Settlers of Catan.
Catan is one of Vera's favourite games though, so I can always count on getting a game in when she is here. And because Bobby was over on Saturday too, it meant I got to play my first-ever six-person game of Catan, which Glory won handily.
She almost blew it when she announced she was going to win next turn. I mentioned how much I wanted to thwart her by taking her longest road award but was short a few cards, at which point EVERY OTHER PERSON at the table offered to trade me the wood and brick needed to push me to the four additional roads I needed to usurp those two points from her. This roiled her up to no end, but also taught her a valuable lesson - namely, the Catan victory chant:
Watching a competitive game momentarily devolve into something collaborative (or at least mostly collaborative) is always entertaining, and happens in almost every corner in Formula Dé. It is difficult to find these moments outside of games, frankly, where the competition is far healthier and rule-bound than many other examples in our lives.
Before Vera joined us, we journeyed out to Rocky Mountain House to visit Audrey's other sister Betty, and her family, including my two nieces, nephew, one niece's husband and another's fiancé. The latter is a nice young fellow hoping to become a conservation officer in B.C., and is also a board game fan. Blake introduced Bobby and I to a much-loved vintage game of his called The Farming Game. I have little interest in farming and almost as little in games from 1979 that look like off-brand Monopoly, but was compelled by Blake's ardour and gave it a shot.
I am very glad I did. and for two reasons. The first that The Farming Game's poor production values and limited graphic appeal concealed a tremendously fun and competitive game. Like Monopoly, players go around a square board, but instead of buying property, they attempt to expand the farm they start out with (which, tragically and appropriately enough, begins in debt).
One side of the board lets players prepare for a variety of harvests and paying a variety of expenses, while the other three sides detail a series of harvests, organized similarly to the colour groups in Monopoly. once per group, you can earn profits from the particular harvest, but only if you have invested in it previously. Your hayfields can produce 2-3 times for each go-round, but gamble on cattle or fruit and you will be praying to land in a strip only 3-4 squares long.
More importantly was watching Blake run us through our paces in the game. He was highly conversant in the rules, but also keen on answering questions, and to offer earnest advice to players who might be lagging behind. When Bobby ended up winning due to a bumper fruit harvest, Blake was tickled pink, and gratified that we enjoyed a game that he has enjoyed so much since he was 12 that he used to play it by himself to see how long it would take him to exhaust the bank of $10,000 bills.
When I flew out to my job interview for Games Workshop way back in 1995, they actually scheduled time for me to play a game with the warehouse staff. It was a new game at the time that I was completely unfamiliar with, but it turns out that my knowledge was not why I was playing it. A small part was to see how quickly I could pick up on new rules and mechanics, but a larger part was to see if I was a good sport, a team player and fun to play with.
At Betty's table in Rocky, I was unsure if I was the interviewer or the interviewee, but I was glad we played, and that I came away with very favourable impressions of both The Farming Game and Blake. And playing Catan, Jackbox and Ticket to Ride with Vera made me reflect on how lucky we are to have people in our lives to share the things we enjoy.
My church became what's called an Affirming Ministry back in 2014, meaning we had completed a course of education and dialogue together and then voted on our commitment to joining a national body (Affirm United) in working for the inclusion of people of all gender identities and sexual orientations in the United Church of Canada and in society. We had a party that fall to commemorate the occasion, and every year at that time, on our Affirmiversary, our Affirm Team volunteers to lead the service.
It is a privilege to be able to do the sermon for such an occasion, even if it is a bit daunting to do so with both of our ministers in the audience (gulp!). As a team we talked about themes and ideas we wanted to address, and we ended up settling on oppression, as well as ways to overcome it.
I had only the barest outlines for this when we learned Nitti would need to be put down, and it was very hard to get back to it after that. It didn't come together quite as cohesively as I had hoped, but I think the message came through strongly regardless. I put the readings at the end of this post for those who are curious.
Happy Affirmiversary! A lot has happened since last year, hasn’t it? I mean, obviously I am concerned about the possibility of our neighbour to the south becoming a failed state in the next few weeks, but really, the big news has been COVID. Man, what a shake-up!
I mean, my household got off kind of easy in most ways. I’m still working, only from home, Audrey is still needed to help in her school, for however long that lasts, Fenya is taking her university classes online, and Glory is working in Churchill, where they are just starting to put measures in place that we’ve had "down south here" for a while now, like public masking.
But it has been bad, right? Here in Alberta, there have been nearly 20,000 cases and over 250 deaths. People have their household incomes diminish or even vanish, and nearly everyone is feeling the strain of restrictions on our lives that we hadn’t even imagined a year ago. We can’t do what we like, see who we want, eat in most restaurants or enter many spaces outside our homes without a mask. I mean, I do it, and I do so without hesitancy so others can be safe, but I still hate it.
You could almost describe it as oppressive, couldn’t you?
Is it possible that this horrible, destructive and pervasive virus has given many of us our first, small taste of oppression? To have our livelihoods impacted or removed entirely, as if by a whim? To have our movements, gatherings and other actions restricted? Do we perhaps have a marginally better understanding of the coercive loneliness of the abandoned senior? Or of the dominance that many minorities, both racial and sexual, live under everyday?
If nothing else, has COVID-19 been an effective reminder of the privilege many of us enjoy in our everyday lives? And perhaps a bit of empathy for those who don’t?
Oppression is still a real thing in our world, sadly, and it certainly applies to our siblings in the LGBTQ+ community. In the six years since we have become an Affirming Ministry, we have done a lot of education and I think a lot of us have come a long way in understanding how it feels to walk in those shoes, but bet there are still some who will hear this, or read it, and think “well, come on now - that is hardly a community that is oppressed.”
Just because no one is making queer people wear armbands with pink triangles on them or because there are finally legislative protections in place for many of them doesn’t mean they are not oppressed. Consider:
Bi-sexual and trans people are over-represented among low-income Canadians
There are higher rates of depression, anxiety, obsessive-compulsive and phobic disorders, suicidality, self-harm and substance abuse among LGBTQ+ people
They are at double the risk for post-traumatic stress disorder than heterosexual people
LGBTQ+ youth face approximately 14 times the risk of suicde and substance abuse than heterosexual peers.
7% of trans respondents in an Ontario-based survey had seriously considered suicide and 45% had attempted suicide
Closer to home, my nephew, who identifies as queer, showed up unexpectedly on my doorstep at 9 am on a Sunday morning earlier this month. I had slept through his text from 3 hrs before telling me he was driving up from Rocky Mountain House.
He was really upset. Up early and unable to get back to sleep, he was checking Facebook on his phone and had come across a post about his former church appointing a lesbian woman to a position of some authority. But there was a reply from a former pastor he knew personally, and who he thought was someone trustworthy and understanding, listing his opposition to it and saying the scriptures are clear on this [they aren’t], and that he “fears for the future.”
With no place he felt he could go to in town and unable to stay put, Mark came to my house, hoping I could put him in touch with someone from an affirming ministry. Rev. Deborah was able to call him for a chat that afternoon, and I am so, so grateful she could address some of his concerns. The root problem remains, though: there are forces in the world that want to make the different among us feel like they are somehow lesser folk.
So let’s agree on a couple of foundational points: oppression is bad, sexual minorities (among others) are subject to it, and maybe some of us have a marginally clearer idea of what oppression feels like now than we did perhaps last year at this time. Where do we go from here?
Kamand Kojouri’s poem paints a powerful picture of silence overcoming noise, not a quiet and acquiescing silence - this is important - but a loud one, appealing for acknowledgement, demanding to be heard. It is a silence louder than the jeering shouts or fearful chants of the oppressors and their ilk. But it’s tough! Intuitively, when we hear hate, when we hear lies, we want to shout back, drown out the deception, the distortion, the deceit with the truth, and I think there is still a place for that, but there is also value in establishing silence first, to create a space in which the truth can be heard.
And what do we do with that silence?
The reading from Ephesians about the “Armour of God” is often co-opted by readers wanting to focus on spiritual warfare against otherworldly creatures and their influence, even going so far as to call them out as “spiritual forces of evil in the heavenly realms.” But here in the temporal realm that we live in day-to-day, it lists the tools needed to triumph over the rulers and authorities, those who would maintain the status quo and those who fight to preserve a state of injustice.
“The belt of truth buckled around your waist, with the breastplate of righteousness in place, and with your feet fitted with the readiness that comes from the gospel of peace.”
I am not even close to being a biblical scholar or theologian, but as a person trying to follow the example that Jesus set and someone hoping to make God’s world a better place, truth, righteousness, readiness and faith sure look to me like a recipe for the end of oppression.
And then, in our reading from Matthew, Jesus again underscores the behaviours that we need to display in order to be numbered among the righteous: to give food to the hungry, drink to the thirsty, clothing to the naked, visits to the imprisoned and welcome to the stranger.
I changed the order a bit, because I think that last one is really crucial to remember today, on our Affirmiversary. To be actively, affirmingly welcoming, to a community that has not always been treated well by Christianity in general, and at times, by our own denomination.
But the words of Jesus also remind us of the allure of the status quo,the inherent human resistance to disruption and the fact that if no one changes their mind, nothing really changes. As is perhaps typical for the New Testament, the way forward is not necessarily to defeat or destroy the oppressors, but to change their minds - to shift them from being oppressors to being supporters.
Frankly, a straight-up fight might be easier, and it would almost certainly be more cathartic… but we understand in our hearts, it would never end.
Kamand’s poem ends this way: “My silence speaks.” It is not an encouragement to remain silent in the face of oppression, but to use silence to call it out, quietly affirming what is right. Letting people know that transphobic language is hurtful, that homophobic slurs are not to be tolerated, that laws impinging upon the rights of LGBTQ+ people are not fair and must be changed.
And it won’t be easy, because some people benefit from injustice, some people draw a false sense of safety from oppression, and others simply have little to no empathy and just don’t care.
But we won’t stop. We will keep pushing an agenda of fairness and inclusion for everybody until we get to a point where we can’t imagine it another way, where injustices immediately prompt a wider silence - followed by action.
The South African anti-apartheid activist Steven Biko once said “The revolutionary sees his task as liberation not only of the oppressed but also of the oppressor. Happiness can never truly exist in a state of tension.”
And happiness should be the goal of all ministries, not just affirming ones, and I don’t mean to be a bummer on this, our sixth Affirmiversary.
Let’s be grateful for the headway we have made!
Let’s be grateful for the leaders and educators we have who are helping us to get there, like Rev. Mervin and Rev. Deborah, and our friend Shylo from Robertson-Wesley!
Let’s be grateful for our Affirming Team, who puts this service together every year and gets us amped up for Pride!
And most of all, let us be grateful to each other, the people of St,. Albert United Church, proud to be a welcoming, loving and Affirming community of faith for six years now!
The fight against oppression may never truly be won, but God has given us the tools - truth, righteousness, readiness and faith - and Jesus has shown us the way. The best is yet to come!
Our Affirmiversary should always have a certain degree of focus on the LGBTQ+ community, but I do wish I had taken some time to call out the Black Lives Matter movement and other similar initiatives around the world focusing on freedom from oppression. On the whole, though, I felt pretty good about it, and it seemed to be well received. One fellow, an RCAF vet I chum around with a fair bit at church, told me he appreciates my messages because he can tell they come from the heart, so I guess if I stick with that, I will continue to make out all right.
(A video for the entire service can be found here, and you can jump to my reflection at 29:32 here.)
READINGS
Ephesians 6:10-17 (NRSV)
The Armor of God
Finally, be strong in the Lord and in his mighty power. Put on the full armor of God, so that you can take your stand against the devil’s schemes. For our struggle is not against flesh and blood, but against the rulers, against the authorities, against the powers of this dark world and against the spiritual forces of evil in the heavenly realms.
Therefore put on the full armor of God, so that when the day of evil comes, you may be able to stand your ground, and after you have done everything, to stand. Stand firm then, with the belt of truth buckled around your waist, with the breastplate of righteousness in place, and with your feet fitted with the readiness that comes from the gospel of peace.
In addition to all this, take up the shield of faith, with which you can extinguish all the flaming arrows of the evil one. Take the helmet of salvation and the sword of the Spirit, which is the word of God.
Matthew 25:41-46 (NRSV)
Then he will say to those at his left hand, ‘You that are accursed, depart from me into the eternal fire prepared for the devil and his angels; for I was hungry and you gave me no food, I was thirsty and you gave me nothing to drink, I was a stranger and you did not welcome me, naked and you did not give me clothing, sick and in prison and you did not visit me.’
Then they also will answer, ‘Lord, when was it that we saw you hungry or thirsty or a stranger or naked or sick or in prison, and did not take care of you?’
Then he will answer them, ‘Truly I tell you, just as you did not do it to one of the least of these, you did not do it to me.’ And these will go away into eternal punishment, but the righteous into eternal life.”
A Poem by Kamand Kojouri
“Let my silence grow with noise as pregnant mothers grow with life. Let my silence permeate these walls as sunlight permeates a home.
Let the silence rise from unwatered graves and craters left by bombs. Let the silence rise from empty bellies and surge from broken hearts.
The silence of the hidden and forgotten. The silence of the abused and tortured. The silence of the persecuted and imprisoned. The silence of the hanged and massacred.
Loud as all the sounds can be, let my silence be loud so the hungry may eat my words and the poor may wear my words.
Loud as all the sounds can be, let my silence be loud so I may resurrect the dead and give voice to the oppressed.
It's an old picture, torn from the pages of the September 1995 issue of Premiere magazine (remember that one? It's been off the newsstands since 2007) and tucked into a three-ring page protector. I rediscovered across it in the bookshelf cupboard in the Batcave while tidying up the other day.
It's a picture of Robert Rodriguez, one of my favourite directors. He's made a lot of movies I've really enjoyed over the years, most notably Desperado with Antonio Banderas and Salma Hayek, probably the sexiest action pic ever made. He made his first movie, El Mariachi, for a reported budget of $7,000, on mostly borrowed equipment, which he financed by being a paid subject of medical experiments (and where he met the man he cast as the villain!).
His repertoire has a ridiculous range, second only to George Miller in my estimation, directing violent affairs like Machete and Planet Terror right alongside the family-friendly Spy Kids franchise. But while all of these facets make him cool, they aren't what make him one of my favourite directors.
It's his character.
Comic creator Frank Miller has a well-deserved reputation as a bit of a difficult crank to work with, and had expressed disbelief that anyone could adapt his own works in a satisfying manner. Rodriguez again used his own money and a volunteer cast to create a short based on Miller's brutal but brilliant noir crime story, Sin City. Miller loved it and agreed to co-direct a feature film with Rodriguez.
But the Director's Guild of America does not permit co-directing, so Rodriguez quit the DGA in order to make the movie in a manner that satisfied both himself and the property's creator. Although he did subsequently rejoin, it was a poignant statement about creative independence.
As evidenced in the Black Mamba commercial he shot for Nike with Kobe Bryant, Robert Rodriguez is someone who takes his work seriously, but doesn't take himself seriously.
But neither that anecdote nor a funny, self-aware shoe commercial is what makes him one of my favourite directors. And the picture always reminds of just what it is that distinguishes him in my eyes.
It was taken by Brian Smith during the filming of Desperado. Rodriguez looks just impossibly badass despite the fact that it is a staged shot. He wears cargo shorts and a grey t-shirt, accessorized by a fisherman's vest full of lenses, and a red bandana tied around his head kerchief-style to keep the hair out of his eyes. He has a bandage on his nose (covering the two stitches he got from an altercation with a viewfinder), but the most notable feature is the steadicam he is holding, attached to the harness on his chest. The dramatic backdrop, a flaming Lincoln situated mere feet behind him, completes the effect.
The accompanying article talks about his difficulty in moving from an indie film like El Mariachi to a big-budget actioner from a major studio. How he annoyed some reps from Columbia because he claimed he didn't know what an AD (Assistant Director) was. How he kept even this larger budget under control by casting a cameraman as a cancer patient. How he took a three day course in steadicam operation so he could take the shots himself to save both time and money.
The bulk of my admiration, though, comes from a single anecdote: with rapidly diminishing light, Rodriguez determined a superior angle to shoot a scene. His production assistant said there was no time to move the dolly tracks that would allow the camera to move laterally in a smooth enough fashion to capture the pan the director wanted, and said they would simply have to keep the shot they already have.
Rodriguez surveyed the ground, framed up what he wanted in his mind's eye and said, "Nah, get me a shopping cart and a steadicam, and I'll do it myself."
I don't know what I like more about this tiny tale, this microscopic Tinseltown fable; the fact that Rodriguez had such a clear picture of the shot he desired, or that he was able to come up with such a creative and unconventional way to get it.
Sometimes I struggle to determine what the heck it is I want, as I am sure many of us do from time to time, and when I do know, I will often take the path of least resistance to get it. Not every time, to be sure, but enough to annoy myself in retrospect.
Looking at that picture of a man who not only has a clear vision, but has equipped himself in a way that removes as many obstacles between him and it as possible is, to me at least, inspirational. That's why I tore it it from a magazine that I bought in Edmonton so I could have it in view on my desk in Mississauga while working in sales for Games Workshop.
This overly dramatic image of a man I have so little in common with is a great reminder of the importance of vision, the value of persuasion and persistence, and the notion that there are nearly an infinite number of ways to accomplish most things. Important ideas, these, and timeless.
So much so, in fact, that I think I will bring it to work tomorrow.
As I write this, it is (checks watch) 15 minutes until the start of the second presidential debate between Hilary Clinton and Donald Trump. The bingo cards are printed, drinks for the drinking game are standing by. Since Friday, all anyone can talk about is the leaked footage featuring Trump describing how his fame and wealth enable him to approach, including married women, not only in an aggressive manner but in a way that is essentially sexual assault.
What followed was a simultaneous dogpile from the left (and a lot of folks in the middle) and immediate repudiation of Trump by dozens of down-ticket Republicans who have apparently only now realized what a boat anchor he is to their political careers.
Tonight's debate is expected to contain a number of deflections from Trump onto Secretary Clinton's husband, who, it turns out, is not only comparably famous, but also has a lot to answer for from an alarming number of women. In anticipation of this, Trump held a press conference with many of Mr. Clinton's accusers less than two hours before the debate. We will have to wait and see if this strategy helps Trump in any way beyond reinforcing his already rabid base, but the smart money says otherwise.
But let me refocus on someone else and their response to Friday's video for a moment: UK Independence Party Leader and Brexit architect Nigel Farage. Farage was quoted as saying,
"Look, this is alpha male boasting. It's the kind of thing, if we are being honest, that men do. They sit around and have a drink and they talk like this.
"By the way, quite a lot of women say things amongst themselves that they would not want to see on Fox News, or the front page of a newspaper. I'm not pretending it's good - it's ugly, it is ugly."
Wow.
You don't have to listen very long to the Trump tapes to hear an insecure weasel of a man seeking approval and validation from, of all people, Access Hollywood host Billy Bush, Trump is an egotistical man-child, a wealthy and entitled idiot so convinced of his own brilliance, he has convinced millions that he is as smart as he says he is, with almost no evidence to back the assertion. We can't expect anything good from him.
But for Farage, a selfish and short-sighted but generally accepted to be sane individual to say that mean everywhere are talking about pushing themselves sexually on women against their will? Unbelievable.
"I have been in locker rooms. I have been a member of a fraternity. I have never heard any man, ever, brag about being able to maul women because they get away with it -- never."
Folks, this is not just talk.
Men, when you hear garbage like this, I hope you are calling it out.
You don't really get a choice, per se; there is an accepted liturgy called the Revised Common Lectionary that tells you which Bible passages are used for whichever Sunday, and the minister (or in this case, the Lay Worship Team I am on) bases the service on them.
Looking at the scriptures I would need to craft a sermon around, I became discomfitted to a fairly significant degree. Compared to my previous outing back in 2013 which had involved the Beatitudes ("Blessed are the meek" etc), the tenth chapter of Mark made for some tough sledding, I tell you:
10 Jesus then left that place and went into the region of Judea and across the Jordan. Again crowds of people came to him, and as was his custom, he taught them.2 Some Pharisees came and tested him by asking, “Is it lawful for a man to divorce his wife?”3 “What did Moses command you?” he replied.4 They said, “Moses permitted a man to write a certificate of divorce and send her away.”5 “It was because your hearts were hard that Moses wrote you this law,” Jesus replied.6 “But at the beginning of creation God ‘made them male and female.’[a]7 ‘For this reason a man will leave his father and mother and be united to his wife,[b]8 and the two will become one flesh.’[c] So they are no longer two, but one flesh.9 Therefore what God has joined together, let no one separate.”10 When they were in the house again, the disciples asked Jesus about this.11 He answered, “Anyone who divorces his wife and marries another woman commits adultery against her.12 And if she divorces her husband and marries another man, she commits adultery.”
Wow. So 'anyone who divorces his wife and marries another commits adultery against her', huh? Boy, considering how oblique Jesus can be in his parables, that seems surprisingly cut and/or dried...
The chapter goes on to talk about the very popular and crowd pleasing "Let the children come to me" anecdote, but coming as it does after such stern-sounding pronouncements from Jesus, it almost feels tacked on; a spiritual sorbet to cleanse one's palate:
13 People were bringing little children to Jesus for him to place his hands on them, but the disciples rebuked them.14 When Jesus saw this, he was indignant. He said to them, “Let the little children come to me, and do not hinder them, for the kingdom of God belongs to such as these.15 Truly I tell you, anyone who will not receive the kingdom of God like a little child will never enter it.”16 And he took the children in his arms, placed his hands on them and blessed them.
The accompanying text from Job was no party either, describing a man whose resolute faith is tested by God and Satan:
2On another day the angels[a] came to present themselves before the Lord, and Satan also came with them to present himself before him.2 And the Lord said to Satan, “Where have you come from?”Satan answered the Lord, “From roaming throughout the earth, going back and forth on it.”3 Then the Lord said to Satan, “Have you considered my servant Job? There is no one on earth like him; he is blameless and upright, a man who fears God and shuns evil. And he still maintains his integrity, though you incited me against him to ruin him without any reason.”4 “Skin for skin!” Satan replied. “A man will give all he has for his own life.5 But now stretch out your hand and strike his flesh and bones, and he will surely curse you to your face.” 6 The Lord said to Satan, “Very well, then, he is in your hands; but you must spare his life.”7 So Satan went out from the presence of the Lord and afflicted Job with painful sores from the soles of his feet to the crown of his head.8 Then Job took a piece of broken pottery and scraped himself with it as he sat among the ashes. 9 His wife said to him, “Are you still maintaining your integrity? Curse God and die!”10 He replied, “You are talking like a foolish[b] woman. Shall we accept good from God, and not trouble?”In all this, Job did not sin in what he said.
Even those not inclined to theological pursuits can see this is not, on the surface at least, the most uplifting of material to work with, especially for an amateur. For a brief moment, I considered the possibility that our two regular ministers, privy to the liturgical schedule, had perhaps cunningly timed their own exits to coincide with the arrival of these readings, but dismissed such a notion out of hand as being logistically untenable.
I simply wasn't comfortable going in front of everyone and telling them that divorcing and remarrying was a ticket to the Hot Place. First, because I didn't believe that to be the case. Secondly, who am I to condemn people I know and love, people like my own sister, or our late friend Roger? On the surface, things looked kind of cut and dried, but thankfully, I was not alone in this task, and had two other people on my team to help me wrestle with them, especially the reading from Mark.
We craft the worship service as a team, divvying up prayers and hymns and the various elements, with the rotating sermonator taking a slightly lighter load. We all agreed that we couldn't chicken out and ignore the passage from Mark, as tempting as that might be, and as unqualified as I felt to preach on it. Linda provided some excellent notes from a bible study, and Val, a former minister, helped we work out an angle to approach the topic of divorce.
We also had to find a non-scriptural reading to accompany the Biblical excerpts; sometimes this is a poem, sometimes a passage from a book. When we got together to share our suggestions, I gave one that was adequate, but let my colleagues know that the one I liked actually came from a comic book.
Linda's ears pricked right up, since her husband is an avid comic collector. "A comic?" she asked. "Which one?"
"It's from 'The Sandman', by Neil Gaiman," I said, a bit sheepishly.
"Oh, everyone's heard of Neil Gaiman..." Linda asserted.
Val, a lady who retired from active church duties some years prior, just smiled and said, "Well, I'm not familiar with him at all, but let's hear it."
I cleared my throat and read:
“Have you ever been in love? Horrible isn't it? It makes you so vulnerable. It opens your chest and it opens up your heart and it means that someone can get inside you and mess you up. You build up all these defenses, you build up a whole suit of armor, so that nothing can hurt you, then one stupid person, no different from any other stupid person, wanders into your stupid life...You give them a piece of you. They didn't ask for it. They did something dumb one day, like kiss you or smile at you, and then your life isn't your own anymore. Love takes hostages. It gets inside you. "
I can't even describe how gratifying their response was; the moment I finished, both ladies let out a simultaneous "oo" that made me think I might be on the right track after all. They both agreed we should use it, as it brought a bit of whimsy to the proceedings, without diminishing the debilitating effects of both love and its absence.
In a perfect world, I would have strode into church that Sunday morning with a song in my heart and confidence in my spirit, but having gone to bed about half past three in the morning after another wonderful Geekquinox dinner, I ended up at the lectern a little worse for wear, with a bad case of drymouth and the leftover wheezes from an allergic reaction the night before. Seeing my divorced and remarried sister in the front row was reassuring and daunting in equal measure, and an odd sensation that was, I can assure you. Bound up with the intense trepidation I had regarding the potentially divisive subject matter, well, it made for an intimidating approach to the lectern, and sweaty palms throughout my delivery.
Still, the Lord hates a coward, or at least, so I have heard, so I sidled up and took my best shot at it.
(If you would rather read the sermon than listen (and I flatter myself with the very notion you might be interested in either), they did post the text on the St. Albert United Church web page. I have pasted it below.)
Overall, it went really well; no one fell asleep that I could see, there were lots of thoughtful nods, a few chuckles in the right places, a tear or two, and, I am reliably informed, a simply massive rolling of the eyes from my wife when I mentioned the Kobayashi Maru from Wrath of Khan.
Gaining confidence and momentum as I neared the end, I finished feeling I had conveyed the message Val and Linda and I had agreed on, but the real test would come afterwards. Would I be thanked perfunctorily by people on their way home to write angry letters to... well, I don't know who actually. Would those people more steeped in scriptural knowledge than myself simply shake their heads of lament how close I got while still missing the target. Worst of all, would those in the congregation who I knew had gone through marital breakdowns feel hurt or judged?
Thankfully, all the faces we saw in the receiving line after church were happy ones. Many people thanked Val and Linda and I for the cohesiveness of the service, something we amateurs can find hard to pull off. Some made a point of thanking us for addressing the more difficult of the two readings, as it hadn't always played out that way in their experience. Others thanked us for the research we did, and for taking the time to bring context to a passage that they found trying, or fraught with personal judgement.
Rev. Mervin's wife shook my hand with a wide grin, having heard her fair share of sermons on that text over the years, and saying we had done a great job. Some of my friends in the congregation shook my hand while laughing at the impertinence (maybe even chutzpah) of a comic book being quoted in church, and at my oblique Star Trek reference, and once again it was suggested that perhaps I had missed my calling, probably the highest praise I can think of.
I found myself wondering what Rev. James and Rev. Mervin would think of it, if they got a chance to listen to it, or what reaction it might have prompted from our late friend Roger, a divorced and remarried minister. In the end, I was satisfied that the spiritual and emotional needs of those who had heard the message had been met, and the family and I soon had to leave church to attend the Pro Coro concert that Fenya and Cantilon were performing at that afternoon.
That evening, a former church board chair called to say he was sorry he had missed me, and wanted to thank me for making him laugh and think that morning, and how he had almost started applauding the way one might after a drum solo when I wrapped up my 'rebuking disciple' monologue in the midst of my sermon. I told him the truth, that I was lucky have such strong and supportive colleagues in Lay-Led Worship, and that you can accomplish great things when you are on a Dream Team.
"You're on two," he reminded me. "Your family is another great team, and I hope you know how proud they are of you."
"I do," I confessed.
"Well, except for the Kobayashi Maru bit," he added. "I thought Audrey's eyes were going to get stuck up in her forehead, she rolled them so hard."
Most meaningful of all though, was an email I got from someone that I had I emailed the text of my sermon to, after they told me they had difficulty hearing it (probably due to the speed of my nervous delivery!).
As a divorced person, I can’t express to you how meaningful I found your interpretation of Mark’s passage to be.My spouse and I separated in [the mid-nineties], after 20 years together. They passed away [a few years ago], and until then I lived with a sense of failure – and guilt for not being able to make it work.I have also felt embarrassed, and even now prefer to say that I am widowed rather than admit to failing in my marriage relationship. This has been fed somewhat by the literal interpretation of the Bible, and I assure you that I am not a literalist at all, but it still has an impact on how one sees oneself.Your thoughtful and extremely well-designed reflection was very much appreciated.Perhaps you have missed your calling???
I attended a workshop this past weekend and the facilitator said that he did not see himself as the originator of his stories, but rather as a conduit for them, and this email made me realize the truth of his words. There is nothing I could have come up with on my own that could have affected this person as much as the sermon I was able to wrangle out (with able assistance from my teammates!) from a thorny patch of the New Testament, despite how onerous I found the task to be at the onset.
I am grateful for the opportunity, and also for the great instruction Rev. James gave us when we started the Lay-Led Ministry program.
How humbling to be able to impact people in such a fashion!
What’s Law Got To Do With It?
A
Reflection by Stephen Fitzpatrick
Did anyone else hear today’s reading from Mark about divorce
and get a little apprehensive?
I know I did!
It is a challenging piece to be sure, so my initial instinct
was to centre my reflection around Job’s story instead, but to be honest, that
felt a little cowardly. Scripture like
what we heard from Mark is open to all kinds of misinterpretation and even the
potential for misuse, and the three of us felt it needed to be addressed. It
was gratifying though, as I did my research, to discover that even highly
trained professional theological types are intimidated by trying to sermonize
on the tenth chapter of Mark! And where the professionals hesitate, the amateur
will proceed with an abundance of caution!
When I read Jesus’s words that someone who divorces and
remarries has effectively committed adultery, I feel like it affects me
personally. I’ve only been married the one time myself, but there are people in
my life that I care deeply for who have become divorced, some of whom I felt
were fortunate to have remarried. Given the somewhat depressing statistics we
read about divorce rates these days, I am sure most of us can say the same.
Were we wrong to be glad for these people when they found someone new to
re-commit to? Were we implicitly endorsing adultery?!
And some of the things Jesus is saying about marriage here,
isn’t this the same stuff being quoted by Christians who are opposed to same
sex marriage? What happened to
inclusivity and tolerance?
Did I wander into the wrong church by mistake?
Relax, everyone; you are in the right place!
Make no mistake though: it is not that long ago that some
people would use that part of Mark chapter 10 to justify making divorced people
feel unwelcome in places of worship.
But as we grow and mature as a society, so too does our
understanding of this ancient wisdom become more refined and nuanced. We approach Mark’s story asking “What does
God want of us?”
Interestingly enough, this is not what the Pharisees were
looking for when they opened the conversation with Jesus by asking, “Is it
lawful for a man to divorce his wife?” The Pharisees here are not honestly
seeking knowledge or insight from a revered teacher, they are members of what today
we would probably call a political party trying to get Jesus to say something
incriminating. They tried before, asking if it was lawful to give tribute to
Caesar, which is what Mark means by saying they ‘tested him’. This was not a television quiz show or a game
of Trivial Pursuit, and it makes this story as much about politics as it is about morality, if not more.
Displaying his brilliant command of rhetorical judo again,
Jesus flips the inquiry on its head by responding with his own question, asking
them what Moses said on the topic. When they say that ‘Moses permitted a man to
write a divorce certificate and send her away’ (which we can verify by looking
it up in Deuteronomy), you might think that settled the question, but there is
more at play here than is immediately apparent.
There were small-l liberals and small-c conservatives in
Jesus’ time, just as there is in ours, and like us, they have differing ideas
about most things, from how to apply the law, to interpreting scripture, to how
best to live moral lives. On the topic of divorce, these people living in the
first century were just as conflicted as we are today, with most people falling
into one of two camps: one school of thought allowed divorce for just about any
reason, but another believed in denying divorce for any reason except adultery.
The Pharisees were hoping that by pushing Jesus to take a side for or against
divorce as it was currently practiced in Judea, he would alienate one side or
the other, and reduce his growing popularity. Their question was designed as a
no-win scenario, what the Star Trek fans among us might call a ‘Kobayashi Maru’.
Jesus gets the Pharisees to quote Deuteronomy and answer
their own question, then steps up and answers the unasked one: why? If marriage
was created by God to make two people one, who are we as mere mortals to undo
this divine plan?
“It was because your hearts were hard that Moses wrote you
this law” Jesus says, admonishingly. Deuteronomy declares that a man may
divorce his wife and send her away if she becomes displeasing to him, if he should find something indecent about her.
They don’t go into any sort of examples or details (thankfully!), but I think
this illustrates the limited choices of women in times past, particularly the
times of the Old Testament. Remember, none of these people would be individuals
marrying for love, but representatives of families binding together for
increased security and prosperity.
Moses recognized, as Jesus recognizes, human frailty, and
the fact that two people who have entered into a lifetime commitment, for
whatever reasons, may find a time when it is simply better for all involved if
they are no longer together. Jesus describes a divine ideal wherein two people
are brought together to make one – perhaps a child, perhaps community – but
humans are not always able to measure up to divine ideals, and so the provision
for divorce is made.
After the Pharisees have gone, Jesus’ own disciples
challenge him further on this, some translations replacing the neutral word
‘ask’ with the more adversarial ‘interrogate’. He responds by explaining that a man who
divorces his wife and marries another commits adultery against her. And
likewise if a woman divorces her husband and marries another man. Is Jesus
saying that divorced people should never, ever remarry?
Some people might think so, but I don’t happen to.
There are probably as many ways to interpret this piece of
scripture as there are people interpreting it, one perspective being that Jesus
is not speaking against someone who divorces and remarries, but someone who
gets divorced to remarry. This is
likely the ‘hardness of the heart’ Jesus is referring to; not some kind of
arterio sclerosis, but a calcification of affection and a lack of adherence to
solemn vows. To Jesus, this sort of spousal
‘trading-up’ was the same as
adultery.
It’s also interesting that Jesus explicitly mentions a woman
divorcing her husband, which was not permitted under Jewish law, but was allowed under Roman law, which
suggests to me there is more than just legal interpretation at play here. Jesus
is tackling the larger picture, the ‘what’s it all about?’
When it comes to God’s law, it is not like Hebrew law or
Roman law so much as it is a law like gravity;
an inexorable pull that we can resist, but might not find very easy.
So Jesus is not contradicting Moses, and he is not
explicitly opposed to divorce, but it is clear he finds it disagreeable. And why shouldn’t he? Anytime that a
relationship ends that both parties had earnestly hoped would last a lifetime,
there will be hurt and dismay and bad feelings all around. And not just for the participants either, but
to children, parents, extended families and friends.
When I told my mother about the terrible situation
surrounding a friend’s divorce, she clucked her tongue and said, “It’s a sin.”
Not in the sense that my friend or his spouse had done
something fundamentally wrong in agreeing to end their marriage, or that they
would now have something to atone for, but a sin in that a transgressive event
was now going to occur, and people were going to be hurt, and left broken as a result.
Jesus takes the challenge of the Pharisees and turns it on
its head, making the discussion about human shortcomings, and reminding us that
regardless of our individual wants and needs, it is important to always look to
God’s plan for us.
Similarly, Job reminds us to have patience and faith in God,
regardless of our tribulations.
Can you imagine? A man sitting in a trash heap on the
outside of town, surrounded by ashes and using a piece of broken pottery to
scrape boils and fluid away from his body, and when his own wife suggests he
would be better off dead, he says, in essence, “What are you talking about? You
gotta take the bad with the good, y’know?” Such conviction! It doesn’t necessarily work in Hebrew, but
the Yiddish word chutzpah seems especially
appropriate here.
God calls us together to become whole, some of us through
community, some of us through committed lifelong relationships. Jesus reaches
out to the broken, the marginalized, and the vulnerable, to bring them into
wholeness as well. After his admonitions
against adultery do you think what happens next in Mark’s story is just a
coincidence?
Parents have brought their children to temple for Jesus to
bless by the laying on of hands, as would often be the case for a prominent and
respected teacher, or rabbi, as he was.
The disciples try to prevent this, rebuking the parents;
that is to say, ‘expressing a sharp disapproval or criticism’. There is no
transcript, obviously, but we’ve all experienced a good, solid, rebuking at
some point or another, haven’t we? It
isn’t too hard to picture how things went down, is it?
“Hey, hey, hey, get down from there you kids! Where are your
folks? Look, mom and dad, the rabbi is a busy man, he doesn’t have time to
bless your children right now, he has bigger fish to fry! Why, just this minute
Jesus got finished telling the Pharisees what’s what about people getting
divorced, and it’s pretty important that all of us disciples understand his interpretation
of the word of Moses so that we are all on the same page and-
“Who is interrupting me? I am trying to explain to the moms
and dads here that Jesus is just too busy to…oh sorry Jesus, I didn’t know you
were right there…Great! You can tell them yourself how busy you-
“What? Let them through?
“Like…now?”
“But I thought you were still going over the thing with…
“Sure, okay, no problem! I love kids, myself! Children are
the future, right? Come on through folks, sorry about the rebuking…”
Mark makes a point of mentioning that Jesus is displeased
with the actions of his followers; he demands
they let the children approach, and finds yet another opportunity to impart a lesson, telling them (and us) that
“anyone who will not receive the kingdom of God like a little child will never
enter it.”
In my ears, I hear Jesus reminding us that God is not a
referee, God is not a rules arbitration committee, God is a loving parent who
wants the best for all of us. We need to
approach God with openness and love and trust, embracing our vulnerability and
human frailty, the way the children do. This is the only way we will experience
the wholeness and rightness of being that God intends for us.
In a lot of ways, Jesus is the poster child for being
misunderstood by his peers, and as his followers two millennia down the line,
we often struggle to understand his meaning as well. By focusing on
interpretations of law regarding whom is permitted to remarry who, we can miss
the important lesson here: that a lifelong commitment before God between two
people must be treated with respect, and not discarded for casual reasons.
Britney Spears, I am looking at you and your 55 hour ‘marriage’, here.
What does God want for His children? He wants us to be happy
and whole, helping others and living lives of peace. And who is often the
greatest obstacle to this? Ourselves.
In his teachings, Jesus recognizes our humanity and our
imperfections, our stubbornness and hard-heartedness, and forgives us for them,
even when we have difficulty forgiving ourselves.
Friends, there is a grim humour to the fact that half of all
marriages end in divorce, the other half in death. It is bad when a marriage ends; like my mum
says, it’s a sin. But as followers of
Jesus, it is our job to help those so broken, or those struggling with their
commitment, to find their way to wholeness and happiness again, with God’s
help. And, to me, this is what being an
inclusive, affirming, and welcoming faith community is all about.
There was a recent article linked to Jalopnik, a vehicle website under the Gawker media umbrella I sometimes peruse, about Brad Pitt having shelled out considerable coin to buy a WWII era German motorcycle. The original article came from British tabloid the Daily Mirror, and the Gawker linkage came courtesy of their full-on gossip site, Defamer. Both articles made this machine's Nazi heritage the key point of their respective headlines, i.e. "Brad Pitt spends $385,000 to ride around town like a sexy Nazi", or the Mirror's characterization "Brad Pitt splashes out £250,000 on Nazi motorbike".
Thankfully there were a number of people, myself included, who posted comments pointing out that the vehicle itself probably had very few characteristics that denoted it exclusively as a tool of National Socialism. A BMW with a sidecar is just a cool bike, regardless of when it was made. I know for a fact that if I ever came across one at auction or on Kijiji, Audrey would be very likely to encourage me to purchase it.
I went on and posted a comment about how, although the Nazis were obviously deplorable, it is hard to deny that the German army of WWII was impeccably tailored, and another person replied with bemusement about how I emphasized my distaste for Naziism:
I thought the black licorice analogy was pretty good as well, but let's be clear: loving black licorice does not make me a Nazi. And someone else in the thread backed up the 'best dressed army idea but saying, "Sure, Hugo Boss makes everyone look good, but you might want to stay away from his 1934 collection..."
In short, growing up listening to a fair amount of passive acceptance and casual tolerance of racist attitudes means I now feel obliged to state my feelings on the matter clearly and for the record. For instance, in my first year of college, two brothers on my floor of the freshman complex hung a Nazi battle flag in their window. Most of us disregarded this stunt as a misguided and yokelish attempt to be provocative or edgy, but now I regret not having confronted them about it, and asking them what their own intent was.
Following on the heels of this online exchange, I was in conversation with a friend last night who, I wouldn't go so far as to say lamented, so lets say opined about how ironic it was that having grown up in Kentucky and lived in the US most of his life, and having attended more gun shows than he could count, he had to come to Calgary to see a Nazi table at a militaria show.
I was stunned and got Jim to explain: he was looking over the wares at a Militaria Show and Sale in Calgary a week or two back, and there was a table selling dolls or action figures that had been re-dressed in WWII German military uniforms.
Now, there is nothing intrinsically wrong with this; it is a show devoted to military collectibles and replicas after all. But the two proprietors of this table were not your typical bookish, academically oriented, armchair general types, but rather two angry looking young white men with shaved heads and 'White Power' type t-shirts.
This was sufficient enough to get Jim's spider-sense tingling, so he approached someone involved with the event, bobbed his head in the direction of Ken and Barbie's Fourth Reich, and asked, "Ssssooo...what is all that about?"
This individual saw where Jim was looking, rolled their eyes and said, "Well, apparently how it works is: if you go over there to buy a figure and end up chatting the two of them up and they think you are a kindred spirit or whatever, they will slip some literature about their group into your bag under the table."
"They can do that?" Jim asked incredulously.
"If they aren't overtly breaking any rules, there isn't a lot we can do about it, really."
With Jim having just moved to Canada this summer, I found this tale disappointing on a number of levels, but Jim takes it in stride. "Look how far they've fallen," he says. "Their best option is to come to a gun show and troll with Nazi dolls, hoping to get a bite."
"Y'know, they marched not that long ago in Calgary; a year maybe two," I asserted, unwilling to concede their irrelevance.
"How many guys? More than 30? Wearing brownshirts and stuff?" he asked.
"No," I confessed, "I think maybe twenty, in leather jackets and Doc Martens and such. And there were probably two to three times as many counter protestors."
"Pfft," retorted Jim, "We have nothing to worry about here."
"I suppose so," I said, "But part of me is still upset that Canadians are too polite to take a couple of racist yolkheads like that out to the woodshed and make it immediately and physically apparent that they are not welcome."
Jim was unsure. "The last thing you want to do is give these guys more exposure, sympathy or a martyr angle," he cautioned.
"No," I said, "The last thing I want is to be the world's most ironic Canadian: charged under hate crime legislation for beating up on Nazis. That just feels like too much."
And yet, when I told the story at a dinner party last night, Totty said he wasn't so sure; there was just enough righteousness in there to potentially make the arrest worthwhile.
These test balloons come up periodically from the crypto-fascist or covert Nazi corner, periscopes that might do no initial harm, but which could potentially embolden a hateful u-boat beneath the surface.
Years ago at a Warhammer 40,000 tournament in Calgary, one competitor showed up with a tank-heavy Imperial Guard army painted up to resemble a WWII SS tank brigade. Since there was no specific prohibition against offensive insignia or suchlike in the rules, it became kind of a sticky wicket, that I think the marshall handled by having that player remove all the banners with their swastikas and runic lightning bolts and the like, and told him that army would not be welcome back next year. It also helped that this particular marshall was a physically solid ex-Canadian Army fellow with a deep and abiding interest in military history, and although a consummate professional, made made it crystal clear (CFB in military parlance) to this individual that he was personally aggrieved by the display.
In the end, I think that 'discreet Nazis' isn't any sort of trending topic. Lean times make fertile ground for racist kooks, and scapegoating 'the other' among us has never gone out of style; look at the polarization in much of the political discourse in the U.S., with some candidates talking about building walls on both the southern and northern border of their land. Going to ground while quietly networking with others could be a cogent strategy for the ultraright, so keeping an eye on actual and wannabe Nazis might be a better use for our tabloids than ascribing National Socialist sympathies on celebrity collectors.
On the other hand though, Jim makes a cogent point, and how scared do I want to be of skinhead doll salesmen at the end of the day?
Not too long after Audrey, Fenya and I moved back to Alberta in 1999, Mom and Dad went gyppo.
They sold their town house in 2002, bought an RV took off to Newfoundland, and my sister Tara went along with them. No fixed address and if it didn't fit in the motorhome, it didn't go with them.
As sad as I was that Fenya's Nanny & Poppy were now going to be 4 time zones away, I was also envious of their audacity and proud of their courage at such a huge lifestyle change, especially with Dad turning 70 that year.
They'd already downsized quite a few artifacts moving from the split-level years earlier, but moving into an RV meant an even more ruthless assessment of belongings, some of which were given away, others sold, and a bunch came home with Audrey and I.
Going through some of these old belongings in preparation for the building of BatCan, I came across a battered manila envelope from the U of A Hospital Radiology Department that I presume had once contained x-rays, but was now home to a thick file folder full of certificates and photographs of Dad's. It seemed appropriate to paw through it tonight in order to see if I could find a good shot of the Old Man for Father's Day, and I did, but stumbled across some others as well.
Maurice Fitzpatrick, RCN, 1955
Dad talked a fair bit about his ten years in the service from 1950 to 1960, particularly his 5 years in the Royal Canadian Navy. As a young man fascinated by aircraft, he had actually joined the Air Force at the age of 17, but left after they had mixed up the marks on his officer's candidacy exam with someone else's, and didn't speak as much of those five years.
As a sailor, becoming an officer eluded him as well, but for what reason I can't say; possibly he had his eye on a trade in civilian life, working as he was towards an airframe mechanic's certification at one point, but eventually following his proficiency for ground-based radar into a career in air traffic control.
One of the many things I take from my father is his humility, so when he talked about his military service, it was never out of pride or bluster or braggadocio. His stories typically centered around people he had met, things he had seen, or times that his quick wit and smart mouth had gotten him into trouble (yes, quite possibly another dominant gene).
Often his anecdotes were incidental, a way of setting recent events into a proper scale or context, such as when he was animatedly relating a near collision in traffic on his way home in the rain. When I asked how scared he was, he looked at me and paused before saying, "Well, it's not like the time I was sitting in the back of a sub-tracker and about to land on the deck of aircraft carrier in shitty weather in the North Atlantic when the pilot turned around and said to me, 'I sure as hell hope the landing gear came down this time'...but it was no picnic, I'll tell you that."
Dad grew up on a farm, loading pulp-wood (which he spoke of far more than any other agricultural endeavours he might have undertaken; so much so that for years I assumed his father had a pulp wood farm) and driving teams of horses, so he was no stranger to hard work by the time he got to the armed forces, and in good physical condition (despite being a smoker at the time). Any complaints I might have as a child regarding physical exhaustion were typically met with suspicion, if not outright scorn, and often a relating of one of two tales from his time in uniform.
The first was when an officer took exception to Dad's attitude about something (which may have been justified, or the officer in question may have been a martinet; I can't recall), and made him jog around an airplane hangar on a hot day with his rifle held high above his head as an alternative to more formal punishment.
Dad completed his lap, and stood there dripping with sweat and panting while the officer asked if he had reconsidered his position. When Dad indicated he was unsure, the officer suggested he take another lap to see if that might modify his perspective, so he hoisted his .303 Lee-Enfield (a bulky bolt action number still in service with the Rangers of Canada's north) and trotted off. Momentarily, his chest heaving, he faced the officer again, but neither of them proved malleable on whatever point of contention they had, and Dad being stubborn (I'm seriously starting to question how many of what I consider my own behaviours are just more things I inherited from him at this point...), he once again lofted his rifle and began another lap.
I'm not sure how many laps there were in total, but whatever the number of the last one, Dad didn't finish it, as he woke up in the sick bay with heat stroke, and with the officer in question terrified that he had actually killed one of the men under his command. They never gave each other any trouble after that incident, as I recall.
The second benchmark for exertion in my father's world was the survival course he took at CFB Shearwater in 1958, and I think these are pictures from that same course. It's possible that this was a different course at CFB Cornwallis, but the legibility of some of the records leave a fair bit to be desired.
It is not unreasonable to assume that a Survival School would include some degree of obstacle or 'confidence' course as part of its curriculum, and that such a course would include some tried and true features of such conditioning tools.
Fear of heights? Don't want to hear about it; enjoy the rope bridge.
What's that? You're not infantry? Oh, my mistake! Tell you what, finish climbing under this barbed wire and we'll sort it all out back at the base, no hard feelings, right?
Just kidding; please negotiate this ravine without permanently destroying your ankles or knees, as they are government property until your day of discharge.
Say, is that water cold? It looks kind of cold, which is why myself and all the other instructors are wearing bulky coats in most of these pictures.
As mentioned, physical exertion and discomfort didn't slow the Old Man down a heck of a lot (one area we obviously do differ in), but there were elements of this course I distinctly remember him describing as extremely unpleasant and discomfiting.
One of them was having to stay inside a boarded-up shack as it filled with smoke, and waiting for the sound of the instructor's whistle before making your way out of a window. I'm pretty sure a couple of candidates passed out and had to be removed by the instructors.
I know for a fact I have a peculiar trace of claustrophobia in my makeup; I have no trouble in elevators or small rooms, but if I can't move my arms freely or have my elbows pinned to my side, even in a crowd, I start to get pretty agitated. It wouldn't surprise me a bit if some of that came from Dad too, and I hope I remember to check with Mum on Canada Day.
If that is indeed the case, then I am amazed he was able to make it through this part of the course, which involved crawling through an narrow underground tunnel for a considerable distance.
At one point the tunnel took a sharp turn that was extremely difficult to negotiate while pushing a rifle in front of you, and necessitated some careful maneuvering around the corner in pitch blackness, and taking care not to get the firing assembly of the rifle dirty, as this would mean having to traverse the tunnel a second time.
Regardless of whether this represented an obstacle course or a confidence course, Dad apparently passed it, and kept the certificate to prove it.
It's no secret I am proud of my Dad, and with good reason I think, but looking at these pictures and records is a bit bittersweet as I regret not having looked at them when he was still here to ask about them.
Still, I'm grateful some of these artifacts lasted long enough for me to scan them and share them. Encountering my father at a time when he was considerably different individual than how I tend to remember him and when he was significantly younger than I am now has been a fascinating exercise in time travel.
Maurice Fitzpatrick: front row, second from right - Aug 1958
