posted on April 25, 2011 in Columns, The Messy Table

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I am writing this late on Saturday night, after a long day. It’s been a day of preparation, and lots of it. Up early to get some dough made, then kids to breakfast, and off grocery shopping early, hoping to avoid the crowds. Not too many bumps along the way, not too much extraneous chocolate in the shopping basket. All well.

posted on April 25, 2011 in Columns, Miscellaneous, Patricia Schneider

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‘Till you have cried the whole night through
And awakened still to sorrow
Until your heart is broken in two
And only pain awaits tomorrow.

posted on April 18, 2011 in Columns, The Messy Table

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Yesterday at church, we were celebrating together. The service started with palms, of course. The children gathered in the Session Room before the service, and I equipped them with the greenery.

posted on April 18, 2011 in Columns, Patricia Schneider

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“You may share these with others, but only those who have walked this path will understand fully what you have written.”

posted on April 15, 2011 in In Song

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In this living faith, unauthorized and not published by Wood Lake books, in the beginning Presbyterians started life in Canada as Settlers. Some say we’ve been settling ever since.

posted on April 11, 2011 in Miscellaneous

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This sample is to demonstrate the fly out effect for information presented as part of the magazine, but is hard to present in a web format.

The idea is to put an information button at the side of the article like this.

That way you can get more information with disrupting the flow of the story. This example might be small to read, but it was copied directly from Indesign as is. I could work at making the image and text larger.

posted on April 11, 2011 in Columns, The Messy Table

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I saw you on the Tube today with all those suitcases. You looked tired. I think you just got here – you had that look. I remember it from my own face, too. Maybe you didn’t sleep on the plane; maybe you are just overwhelmed by all the noise, all the faces. I smiled a bit when our eyes met, but I think I just made you feel awkward and a bit defensive, so I looked back to my book.

posted on April 11, 2011 in Columns, Patricia Schneider

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I glance at the clock above my husband’s hospital bed. It is 12:30 Sunday morning and the spirit of the one I loved best has just slipped into another world.

posted on April 4, 2011 in Columns, The Messy Table

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I didn’t go to work that one day last week so I wasn’t on the train that afternoon. I would have been there, sitting and waiting, but I had decided to work from home instead. But when I got to the station the next morning, I saw the signs.

posted on April 4, 2011 in Columns, Patricia Schneider

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We try to go to church but Harry and I realize that this will be the last time. We barely make it back to the car. The handwriting is on the wall.

posted on April 1, 2011 in In Song

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There are many talented people in the Presbyterian church. They could be, should be sharing their gifts as part of a national and denominational strategy for making our worship vibrant and joyful, and for effectively sharing our faith. Are they? And is there a strategy?

posted on April 1, 2011 in Features, Theology 101

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Life is not a problem to be solved but a mystery to be lived, according to Søren Kierkegaard. What is true about life is just as true about the resurrection. When the resurrection is approached as a problem that can be solved, the most important question becomes, “Did it really happen?”

But when the resurrection is a mystery to be lived, the question becomes, “What does it mean?” We are invited to hear again the shocking news proclaimed by Mary when she ran back to the other disciples: “We have seen the Lord!”—and to live these words as our own. We are invited into what Joan Chittester calls “the giddy confusion” of the resurrection.

That is, after all, what Jesus’ disciples did. The disciples of Good Friday found themselves in the hopeless certainty that Jesus, and the gospel, he incarnated, were dead, sealed forever in a tomb of stone. All that Jesus stood for had been defeated.

But three days later, their lives had been transformed. Whatever occurred that day convinced them that Jesus was greater than everything that the forces of evil had imposed on him. All attempts to contain him had failed. Jesus and his gospel were alive forever.

Like gazing at the sun, we are better not to look directly at the resurrection to think that we can solve it. Instead, search around the edges. The risen Christ kept appearing in unlikely places and in unlikely ways. Mary thought she was speaking to a gardener. The two unnamed disciples thought that a stranger was walking with them to Emmaus. Others saw him as a lonely figure standing on the shore of Lake Galilee calling out to them to put their nets on the other side of the boat. The risen one comes to us similarly when and in whom we least expect it.

The resurrection is really the beginning place for our faith, not the end. Without it, Jesus would have faded into the pages of history. He would have no more lasting impact than countless other itinerant preachers and healers who walked the dusty roads of first-century Palestine. Some of his wisdom was borrowed from others, some of his actions were claimed by others. But because of the resurrection, we now must look at his life from a completely different perspective. Welcoming the outcast, loving the enemy, giving freedom to the oppressed, calling the poor in spirit and meek “blessed”—these are no longer the musings of a madman but the way to life itself, sanctioned by God.

To live the mystery of the resurrection is to live with the unquenchable hope that death is not the ultimate reality that defines us. Neither are violence, hatred, prejudice, apathy, insecurity, or any of the other manifestations of death that we encounter every day. Rather it is life that is God’s final word for us, revealed in the resurrection of Christ.

To live the mystery of the resurrection is to live with the faith that the doors to the tombs of self doubt and distrust, as well as all the other limitations and boundaries that hem us in, have been blown off their hinges and we have been invited by Christ to walk into the freedom of new life.

For some, the resurrection points mainly to a reality beyond death and to the promise of life eternal for all who believe. However, for the apostle Paul, the meaning of resurrection is in the present. “You have been raised to life with Christ,” he wrote. It was not news for a few but for all. It did not depend on a person’s goodness but on grace. If only we all knew that we were raised with him, what a difference it would make! As Coldplay sang a few years ago, “I don’t want to battle from beginning to end. I don’t want to cycle, recycle revenge. I don’t want to follow death and all of his friends.”

Several years ago, I helped a friend of mine build a large pen in his backyard to house their new puppy. They trained Dusty to go out the door of their house and into the pen. They would then close the door behind him so that they didn’t need to be on constant watch. After two years, they found that they no longer needed to close the door, as the dog would enter his pen and never think of leaving it, having accepted that enclosure as the boundaries for his life. What about us? Are we pinned inside the fences of the rational still trying to problem solve? Is the risen Christ calling us into the wild, the unknown, the giddy confusion where we can live
the mystery of resurrection life?

posted on April 1, 2011 in Letters

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Re A Man and His Faith, February

I have always admired Rev. John Congram and his ministry. Knowing him as a humble servant of God, I feel certain he would be embarrassed to find five large photos of himself in one issue. Including the cover, two more full-page pictures, and two one-third page pictures were included, all of which are the identical picture. While not meaning to be overly critical, who decided this was the best use of space in our church magazine? I quote at the end of the article: “This interview has been excerpted to fit into the magazine.” I humbly suggest: be less photo-happy, and room would have been made for the entire article, the quality of which was excellent. I, too, with my fellow brother in ministry, have discovered life in the arms of mother church, through Christ our Lord.
Gerald Sarcen
Via Email

posted on April 1, 2011 in Letters

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Re The Real McCoy, February

Yes, the PCC has a great challenge and opportunity on its hands when it comes to the issue of diversity, especially ethnic diversity.
International potluck suppers and wearing traditional dress in worship are good starting points to gain an appreciation for different cultures. However, if we are to truly benefit from the gifts that people from different ethnicities bring to the church, we must do more.
It is not enough to state through (or in response to) an overture that we want to incorporate this rich diversity into our church. We need to take some risks and explore new ways the ethnic diversity in our denomination can be leveraged to transform all of us, regardless of skin colour.
February was Black History month. How enriching it would be to learn how Canadian Presbyterians were involved in the history of oppressed Black people. What a blessing it would be to hear faith stories from the perspective of Black Presbyterians. These stories are not meant to affirm only Black people, but all people.
That’s the beauty of belonging to an ethnically diverse denomination. The stories of God’s saving work among a particular ethnic group becomes the greater denomination’s story. Our identity as Presbyterians is shaped by all of our experiences. What an exciting future we as a denomination have ahead of us!
Rev. Paul Kang
Toronto

posted on April 1, 2011 in News

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“Kilimanjaro? Serengeti? Ngoron-goro crater?”

“No,” I responded to a fellow traveller at the Dar es Salaam airport. I had been visiting Shinyanga, a less-frequented region of Tanzania.

Just a day earlier I was in the drought-affected Kishapu district of Shinyanga, visiting communities where Presbyterian World Service and Development and the Canadian Foodgrains Bank will provide food assistance until the summer harvest.

Kishapu district usually experiences two rainy seasons: mvuli or short rains, and masika or long rains. The Mvuli rains usually begin by November, and farmers plant crops then for a February harvest. The masika rains usually begin by March, when farmers plant another set of crops for an August harvest.

Last year, the short rains in Kishapu began in November but stopped after only two days. Many farmers had planted maize and other crops, which are now stunted or completely dried up. Farmers experienced the double loss of both their mvuli harvest and their seeds.

In response, PWS&D and CFGB will support 11,400 people in Kishapu district by providing maize, beans, oil and salt through our local partner, the Africa Inland Church of Tanzania. As part of the program, 250 farmers will be trained on climate adaptation and mitigation strategies related to drought. Each of these 250 farmers are in turn expected to pass on the training to five other farmers.

At a gathering in the Mayanji village
of Kishapu, the 100 villagers present apologized for the small number that gathered to meet us. They said most of the men left the community seeking work as casual labourers to earn money to buy food for their families. They explained they are thankful when they are able to afford a one-kilogram bag of maize flour because there are days when a family has nothing. On those days, edible plants are gathered for a meagre soup. Any grain stored after the harvest last August is now depleted, and seeds held in reserve were either planted in November— with an almost total loss—or have been consumed as food. When I asked how many people only ate one meal a day, the majority raised their hands; the remainder raised their hands at two meals a day. Thankfully, the World Food Program is providing grains for a primary school feeding program in Mayanji.

The second community of Miyugyu appears even worse off. The land is almost desert-like in some areas. In this community there is no school feeding program and the villagers expressed concern, especially for the elderly, widows and the ill.

In both communities I was struck by the obviously lean appearance of the men who are farmers. Similarly, the very lean livestock was another reminder of lack of water and resulting lack of vegetation for grazing. Villagers report that the price of cattle and goats has fallen significantly, in many cases to less than half of what they were.

The villagers of Mayanji and Miyugyu expressed thanks to the church in Canada who will help them get through these difficult times. “Tell them we are thankful, for God blesses
you to bless us.”

posted on April 1, 2011 in Miscellaneous

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Be Less Photo-Happy, by Gerald Sarcen, Via Email

The Beauty of Ethnic Diversity, by Rev. Paul Kang, Toronto

An Onerous Process, by Daniel Cho, Toronto

Easter and Lenin’s Tomb, by Kenneth McMillan, Thornhill, Ont.

Roots in Hungary, by Kalman Kovacs, Music director for more than 33 years for Strathcona Presbyterian Church in Edmonton, Alta.

Excommunicated Minister, by Charles Neill, Edmonton

Thousands Raised, by Nancy Bettridge, Online

Reclaiming Prisons, by George Tucker, Thunder Bay, Ont.

Profound Reflection, by erry Samuel, Kincardine, Ont.

Dare Us All, by Nancy Howse, Online

Too Small God, by Michael Moorhouse, Calgary

He IS Presbyterian!, by George Agar, Online

Balanced Reporting Needed, by

posted on April 1, 2011 in People & Places

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“Praise God in his sanctuary; praise him in his mighty heavens.”—Psalm 150
Herb Ciceri, the accomplished organist of Knox, Georgetown, Ont., invited friends Ray Kingsmore on the drums and percussion, and special guest Charlie Finlay on the saxophone and flute. They Bach and Beethoven, to Ray Charles and the Beatles. Along with a Hammond organ, acoustic and electric piano, Herb Ciceri made the Knox pipe organ sound like it has rarely, if ever, done in the past—a tribute both to the player, and the quality of the 1964 organ built by Keates Organ Company in Acton, Ontario. “Let everything that has breath praise the Lord.”—Psalm 150.
Best part of this story: the musicians are willing to do this again: contact herb-ciceri@rogers.com. Online feature: more pics of the boys at play.

posted on April 1, 2011 in For the Journey

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IT WAS LATE in the day in October 1990. We were traveling south on the Cariboo Highway, heading home from Williams Lake. CBC Radio was playing in the background. I wasn’t listening. I was driving in my usual zombie state with my mind impaled on the horns of my overactive imagination. And then something straight-armed my attention. It sounded like the words, “Jimmy Stillas.”

I jerked back to consciousness and fumbled for the radio. Jimmy Stillas was dead. Linda and I sat and listened in complete shock as the story starkly unfolded. By the time we had reached home, shock had turned into dismay.

Jimmy Stillas (1936-1990) was highly regarded as the Chief of the Ulkatcho First Nation in the hinterland of the West Chilcotin. In October 1990, while out hunting on his grandfather’s trap line, his snow machine went through the ice. It took his hunting partner two days to walk out for help. In the end, Stillas died a tragic death. The RCMP’s alleged delay in initiating a search when Chief Stillas was reported missing was one of the incidents that triggered British Columbia to hold the Cariboo-Chilcotin Justice Inquiry; it reported in 1993 and made extensive recommendations around reforming policing and police/aboriginal relationships in the area.

But this is only the news story. The people’s story is much more profound. Chief Jimmy Stillas touched our lives only obliquely and yet he had a profound effect. When we first arrived in the Cariboo Chilcotin in 1989 to engage in rural mission work, the Ulkatcho nation, which was about four hours west of the closest urban centre of Williams Lake, was engaged in a standoff with the province over the logging of the Beef Trail Creek drainage. Beef Trail Creek was the centre of some important aboriginal trap lines. Logging it would severely endanger the trap lines and subsequently the livelihoods of several families.

Before Christ launched us in mission work, I had been a forest technology instructor at a community college. We hadn’t been in the Cariboo Chilcotin very long when I was contacted by the Cariboo Chilcotin Tribal Council to see if I would consider helping out with some teaching as part of my mission work. We had prayed about it and felt led to do so. And so once a month, for about a week at a time, I would drive the mostly gravel road for four and a half hours out to Anahim Lake to teach forestry to a group of young men and women on the Ulkatcho Reserve.

Thus began our mission relationship with the Southern Carrier or Dakelh people that eventually spread to the Kluskus and Nazko First Nations and continues on today. I was deeply impressed with this first encounter, and what impressed me the most was the way this group of young people looked up to Chief Jimmy Stillas. He had begun like any one of them. He had struggled with life, even with alcoholism, and yet he had risen from the ashes like a phoenix to sit at the negotiating table as an equal with the leaders of the province. He was always driven by a genuine concern for his people and not just for himself. I don’t think I met a single young person at the time that did not aspire to emulate him, to live differently. And neither did I meet a single tribal elder who did not respect him. It seems to me, given the reality of the fractious tribal life and politics at the time, this ability to inspire his whole community bordered on the miraculous. Chief Stillas was a genuine inspiration to his people, and continued to be so even long after his death.

All great men and women, even some merely good ones, have always inspired their communities to live differently, to live with distinction, to live peculiar lives. As rare as they are, most of us can make a list of such people, some we have known personally and some by reputation only. Jimmy Stillas is on my list. But what about Jesus? Is he on anyone’s list?

Perhaps it’s a stupid question, but I find myself asking it this Easter. In fact, I have pondered this question from time to time ever since I became a disciple of Jesus some 30 years ago. The reason this question keeps coming up is, at least for me, as I look at the life of Jesus and as I look at the life of the community that bears his name, I am challenged to find many similarities beyond the congregation at the institutional level. This seems to be particularly true at Easter when the focus is on Jesus who gives his life for the world, and I share life in an institutional community that bears his name and that seems to me to be increasingly concerned with taking its life from the world or at the very least dogged with a concern for its survival in the world. It begs the question—Did Jesus inspire his community with his life and in his death or not?

“Then (Jesus) said to them all: ‘If anyone would come after me, he must deny himself and take up his cross daily and follow me.’” (Luke 9:23) I have always heard these words individually and struggled to figure out how to live them personally. But the scripture makes it clear that Jesus spoke these words “to them all” … to his community. For me it’s a relatively new experience to begin to hear these words of Jesus as a community not just as an individual—to interpret and live them “in community.”

As I do this, I am helped from within the Christian community as these words of Jesus are echoed in the teachings of some contemporary prophets like Tullio Vinay (founder of the Agape Community in the Waldensian Church): “The Church’s task or mission is not to save itself … Christ has already done that. It is rather to give itself in love and service … in fact to die for the world.” From within the Christian community these words of Jesus resonate in the teachings of some contemporary mystics like Thomas Merton: “The last thing in the world that should concern a Christian or a church is survival in a temporal and worldly sense: to be concerned with this is implicit denial of the Victory of Christ and of the Resurrection.”

These are amazing words for a community and institution to live by, to be inspired by, to shape its life by. But words are not enough. If a community and institution is going to live differently, to live with distinction, to live a peculiar life, it has to take its inspiration from an actual life lived, an actual life given. For me, that’s the challenge this Easter. What I think this means for those of us who share the community of Jesus in the institution of the Presbyterian Church in Canada is that we need to rip the cross off of the wall of the institution where we have it comfortably stored, and plant it right on the back of our institution and refuse to do anything that does not reflect the life and death of Jesus for the world. A community that gives its life for the world, that’s what I am looking to discover in our sessions, presbyteries, synods, and assemblies from now on.

posted on April 1, 2011 in News

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As a five-year agreement between Presbyterian World Service and Development and the Canadian International Development Agency drew toward its close, staff at both agencies were working to extend the current funding for another six months.

In a Feb. 23 news release, the church’s relief and development arm reported that a new five-year agreement submitted to CIDA in September 2010 had been rejected in December. The new proposal had requested a 10 per cent increase in funding, and was meant to begin when the previous agreement ended on April 1, 2011.

As the Record went to press, PWS&D staff were at work on a new funding proposal to be submitted at the end of March. If approved, the new program would begin Oct. 1.

Although no written agreements were in place at press time, Guy Smagghe, PWS&D’s government relations officer, said he was “very confident” that CIDA would fund a six-month extension of their current program. If the extension is provided and the new proposal is accepted, no funding gap will occur. “They approached us,” he noted. “I think that reflects positively on our track record.”

For the past five years, PWS&D received $458,000 from CIDA each year for programs in El Salvador, Nicaragua, India, Malawi and Tanzania.

A comprehensive assessment of PWS&D completed by CIDA in June 2010 presented a positive report of the work and administration of the church’s agency, and concluded that the initiatives it supports are “consistent with CIDA’s priorities of poverty reduction and sustainable development.”

CIDA has changed its proposal process, PWS&D director Ken Kim told the Life and Mission Agency in March. “CIDA, for many years, has worked with us as a partner.” It means that when we discussed what our programs were, there was a back and forth. So we presented a proposal and they had questions; we responded to those questions. The new call for proposals doesn’t allow for that. There’s a deadline, and everybody submits according to the criteria published on the CIDA website. They will tell you right away if you don’t meet those criteria; there’s a minimum entry point. After that, they have four or five months and they will tell you yes or no.

“In December we received a message from CIDA informing us that they would not be ‘retaining our proposal for further consideration.’”

On its website CIDA states the new process “will streamline the application process and reduce the administrative burden for project applications, leaving more money for real development work on the ground.”

According to PWS&D’s year-end report, contributions from individuals and congregations totaled $4.1 million in 2010, with more than $1.6 million donated in response to the Haiti earthquake. As the Record went to print, PWS&D had issued a Spring Challenge to congregations, hoping to raise $500,000 to help reduce hunger.

posted on April 1, 2011 in Called to Wonder

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Click here for this month’s Called to Wonder.