Private Enterprise Welfare

The last twenty years of my gainful employment included many miles on the highways and interstates mostly in the U.S. of A. Now four years past the threescore and ten when I finally stepped out the left hand door, I am amazed how even in retirement the memories continue - almost every day and every dream every night! I am alive today because of my trucks. Anyway, I just realized those longhaul years also provided a heads-up to a societal trend already beginning back then! I saw my first cardboard sign held up by a bedraggled homeless-type, probably about fifteen years ago, well before it was in vogue here in Canada. With signs lamenting their woeful circumstances and usually concluded with GOD BLESS YOU, their ‘evidence of residence’ often was blankets and pup tents underneath certain city bridges.

My first attitude to these less fortunate was one of sympathy, or even a kind of respect. A little sociopolitical thinking here: what circumstances would lead people to hold up their poverty for all the traffic to see? It takes a certain amount of guts and humility to stand out there in front of everybody. I would wonder if they had siblings, or parents - kicked out of the house maybe? Would parents write about them in their Christmas letters? 😏Then the follow-up thoughts after observing some of these same persons in ‘off duty’ feeding their huge dogs, smoking cigarettes or even toking up. Not good thoughts, these clouding my first attitude, but not immediately leading to disparagement. I did most of this 'thinking' quietly, choosing to reflect on condition of my inner spirit for the mouth speaks what the heart is full of, as it says in the Bible (see Luke 6:45). No shortage of opinions on the CB radios and in truckstop drivers’ rooms. Ironically, not much shaming among the drivers, just loud opinions about those poor #!.< ers out there. 

My thoughts? I was a guest there in America. This country which “Trusts in God” also provides opportunity for the have nots to show their face. If you are down and almost out, but still up for it, you stake a spot and announce it to the Cadillacs and the 4 X 4’s and Big Trucks and SUVs and whoever. Yes, considerable humility required, and courage, as I reminded myself. Up where I come from we can hide our poverty – at least for a while – because our social system provides opportunity for those who cannot (or will not) go to work to “go on welfare.” There are pros and cons to our slightly more socialist system, so I told myself; and occasionally I would allow myself to be special guest to a drivers’ room conversation telling about government health care, govt pension plans, and I felt no need to carry a gun in my truck because I did not feel threatened by communists at all! In hindsight I recognize I may have over glamorized my country just a bit, especially to a captive audience. Once a trucker, always a trucker; once a preacher always a preacher! ... always some bs - so I was told once. 😇

Fast forward to these retirement years. This old trucker, this old preacher still thinking about many things, including considerable meditation and reflection about my circumstances. By now I have taken stock of the modest income accumulated during my working years and now converted to ‘fixed income.’ It’s called a LIRA, so my wife and financial manager tells me.  Aah, it may be modest, but definitely better than no income. My dreams at night and my retirement volunteer activities bring up the unending subject of life, life’s opportunities and tragedies, and how to make good decisions among it all. I have the dignity of eating meals in our home which got paid for a number of years ago – not as elaborate as most of my relatives and colleagues, but that’s another story. And we are very comfortable – unless a disaster or sudden ill health were to occur. How big a disaster? And what type of disaster? Mostly we are good!

Also (yes also) I am endlessly reminded of those less fortunate, the almost homeless, the unemployed or underemployed and substance addicted right here in my neighborhood. And, in this city it’s an easy train ride now for the downtown homeless also to show up here. Yes, our fast food drive thrus are a handy place to stand with the plaintive looks and cardboard signs, even borrowing the American closer “GOD BLESS YOU.” (See one of my earlier blogs “Hey What’s Your Name,” April 15, 2021). They now stand here before us too - social safety nets expired or squandered or ...?  American private enterprise begging is now another reality emigrated to this good Canadian city, Calgary, province of Alberta, often dubbed “little U.S.A.” So in this good country many refugees, many immigrants, and also ongoing economic and political disparities, all of this in the grips of a pandemic of epic proportions, neither Americans nor Canadians exempt.

 I have the feeling that if I were still a trucker down there, I would perhaps need to be kinder and even a bit quieter. My political views are still similar to the way they were then, a Christian socialist (yes), but instead of the occasional pro-Canadian speech, I might do some more listening, and perhaps even confess a bit about us westerners becoming somewhat disillusioned with an out-of-touch eastern government which needs a tune-up. 

Maybe all of us, whether north or south of that 49^th parallel, need to reconsider the gift of this Turtle Island. Environment and neighborly relations of utmost importance, it behooves us to get it right with our Creator, and with each other including the indigenous, and who cares whether it sounds liberal or conservative! 

And I would love to have a conversation with – if still alive – one or two of those pioneer street corner prophets.

 

One Heart and Soul

Now the whole group of those who believed were of one heart and soul. (Acts 4:32)

Every once in a while I read an article and I can do nothing but say to myself or anyone who might be nearby, "Amen. Amen. Amen." This morning it happened while reading the devotional from Rejoice! (MennoMedia, vol.57, no. 1, p. 70). Written by Karl McKinney, a 'retired' pastor, the message gives deep pause to any of us whether retired, employed by, fully engaged, or considering membership in any of our modern churches. He begins with a searching question.

Can our congregations declare that we share one heart and soul like the first Christian church? I believe the church in the United States has work to do before that can happen. On one occasion, says McKinney, I listened to church leaders and members worry that Christians in America were being persecuted, and America was being changed into a non-Christian nation. I did not hear anything resembling "Christians are suffering because we are of one heart and soul and share God's good news in Christ." Rather, I heard people fusing Christian and American in a way I don't share.

I resonate with McKinney as he goes on to say he does not feel part of the suffering that these white brothers talked about. The changes oft-described in these laments do not feel like a threat to me as a follower of Christ. These individuals lament that the U.S. is straying from its Christian founding. McKinney goes on, "I wonder if they know that the convictions that formed the nation were wholly different from those of Jesus' early followers. United States history involves extermination, enslavement, and forced removal of entire groups. Much of its infrastructure was built through the forced labor of enslaved people, indentured servants, and the working poor." So he portrays this unsavory U.S. history and I say not much better in Canada; witness creation of Canada's 'ribbon of steel', the Canadian Pacific Railway. Witness also the continuing discovery of unmarked children's graves at former Indian Residential Schools. And, yes in other countries as well; eg. the present-day violation of indigenous populations in the industrialization of Amazonian rain forests in South America.

His final paragraph strikes a chord equally applicable for all. "When we look to return to our nation's founding faith, are we following Jesus, or are we preserving Christian traditions from the colonial period?" Being an American or Canadian is not the same as being a follower of Christ.

Very thoughtful this devotional prophecy. And if it brings on some confession, that would be quite appropriate for prayer time.

A Conversation with Myself

Yesterday morning I sat at my usual table at my local Tim Hortons, midpoint of my usual early morning walk. Two articles on my iPhone got attention this time – amazing these days the info available in the palm of one’s hand! Don’t leave home without your iPhone lest your steps not be counted.😀

Anyway these articles, both written by devout Christians and yet offering a considerably different worldview, or Weltanschaung as my college and seminary professors used to say. The first was a cheery newsletter written by a missionary on ‘North American Assignment’ spelling out an allotment of recent faith and children and grandchildren’s adventures as well as new opportunities coming along seemingly day by day. It's an account of what might be described as life well-lived, including the donate button providing opportunity for us readers to click in the monetary support needed to keep all this going. It was one of those reads which stirred up some inspiration and also a hint of the envy I sometimes encounter reading friends’ Christmas letters, where all is roses and grandchildren with adult children getting PhD’s, etc. – you know the feeling.

The other was an article written by Adam Russel Taylor, recently appointed president of Sojourners, a print and online magazine of faith, culture, and politics. He begins this way.

I was born in the shadow of the civil rights struggle. My Black mother and white father made the controversial decision to marry in 1968, the same year Rev. Martin Luther King Jr. was assassinated, a tragic turning point in our nation’s history in which progress was replaced with riots, the Vietnam War, and a backlash to the advances of the civil rights struggle. I became convinced my generation inherited the unfinished business of that movement (SojoMail).  

This is a magazine with edge, and I have been a subscriber forever - a constant in my reading diet since its inception as The Post-American in 1971 (yes 50 years ago) when in my early twenties, I was a ‘radical student’ at Canadian Mennonite Bible College (now CMU) in Winnipeg. While excitedly discovering my Anabaptist roots there I also discovered American draft dodgers, very opposed to the Vietnam War, some of whom showed up in Canada as 1W volunteers to work in nursing homes or institutions, many of them becoming part and parcel of the youth scene in many of our churches. My social conscience was awakened during those good college years even as I was learning the Bible and a lot of theology, much of it written by European authors with awe-inspiring names like Bultmann and Barth and even a guy named Nietzsche. They were the experts we needed to read and write essays about. [Only in later years did I get a better contextual picture. Some of them were still in recovery from Hitler’s Naziism and that’s why they were so dogmatic (or existential) in their writings.] These stolid undergrad studies happened alongside the countercultural hippy movement going on those years. Radical social action became a part of my faith education and subsequent years of pastoral ministry.

So, these two articles, a missionary newsletter and an editorial, accompanied me home yesterday. One of the benefits of these morning jaunts is that I get the fresh air along with the think time. This homeward half had me thinking about these two rather different reads. I do not yet consider myself old but recognize that my thoughts cover a few years by now. I’ve been at this for a while! I regularly think about how things have changed, and also some things remain the same. The current need for social awareness is essential - at least for those not just stuck in opinions. Environment, indigenous and immigrant issues, and of course the spiritual and/or political search for freedom and peace goes on in this still fractured world. I suppose that is why the minute I retired I got to participate in the very thing that has been my lifelong interest! 😌 I landed an assignment from our Mennonite Church Alberta to see how we as Mennonites might walk alongside the many South Sudanese Christians and other immigrants showing up in Calgary. Together with them I’ve been knocking at the doors of one of our churches, and grateful for the welcome we are receiving here.

Further to this never-ending social awareness there is a yearning clearly evident also among our immigrant friends for something more - kind of reminds me of the Psalmist, "deep calls to deep" (42:7). There is need to pray together for healing, perhaps recovery, for evangelism. It's the spiritual yen. In John 14:6 Jesus says“I am the way and the truth and the life” spoken so clearly to his keener disciples and to all of us whether newcomers or oldtimers. And Matthew 11:28 also the big invite,“Come to me, all you who are weary and burdened, and I will give you rest.” Jesus' help for solutions to the many needs, family, employment, mental stability, or … is so often requested and welcomed! Many of us even in our socially conscious urban somewhat educated faith communities possibly could also use a refresher in basics. 

As shared in a recent blog, I also serve as Mennonite rep on Calgary Interfaith Council, presenting good opportunity for relationship with persons of other faiths. Of interest to me is that most conversations here, whether with Muslims or Mormons or Unitarians or Christians of ecumenical or evangelical stripe, roll easily on topic of my faith in Jesus the Christ. ("Growing Faith Closing Churches," September 28). Hmm, a good reminder here that I need to practice a little more of what I am, in fact just a plain old born-again follower of Jesus, child of God, something I already knew before I became that radical student way back there! 😌 In that vein I totally enjoy a missionary report devoid of national and international pain spots, simply celebrating the good! Social action and evangelism, living and being, both so important, so very eternal.

I close with another quote from the latest anniversary issue of that 50 year-old magazine. “Started by students who were convinced ... that the gospel calls disciples of Jesus Christ to be agents of change in our fallen world”(Sojourners, November 2021, p.23).

I got home from that stimulating walk just in time to log in with a number of others for Daily Prayer, forty-five minutes of guided prayer, also sponsored by our MCA. It's a nice way to put this exercising and this thinking in proper perspective.

 

When Heroes Need Help

Therefore, in order to keep me from becoming conceited, I was given a thorn in my flesh, a messenger of Satan, to torment me. (2 Corinthians 12:7)

Last evening ended on an interesting note for me. As many of my friends know, I am still a fan of the Edmonton Oilers, even 30 years after moving to that other Alberta city just 300 kilometers south on the QE2. And occasionally I post a bit of hockey commentary – yeahs or laments – one way of being in touch with friends (or enemies😀), mostly those who understand the game, and some who do not but they indulge my reasons for cheering for a team obviously not as good as those who win Stanley Cups! It’s been a while. I cheer for the Oilers because they used to win Cups! Actually it was five Stanley Cups during the 1980s, a decade when I lived in that ‘City of Champions’ while serving as pastor in a young lively new church full of fans who regularly gifted their pastor with tickets to the game. My oldest son, whose room was filled with Oilers paraphernalia, knew more stats about Wayne Gretzky than I could even begin to comprehend, and even now, living in Ontario (2 hrs time-zone difference) and himself a high-school teacher, often stays up late so as to ‘catch the third period’ even though it’s time to be in bed already.😏 It's very much a sentimental family thing!

So last night all about victory and about cheering! What a way to get back into in-person winter time activity. And yes, the hockey world’s hero, none other than Edmonton’s Connor McDavid, got Rogers Place fans rocking again, third period ice littered with caps ‘n hats – thanks to yet another hat trick! Second game of this season and already a three goals contribution to the Oilers’ 5-2 shellacking of our Calgary Flames is no small thing. The battle of Alberta is on, and there is promise of an interesting and profitable season for the National Hockey League. And the paparazzi were ready - several very timely shots of McDavid’s proud grandma.

This comes fast on the heels of a contrasting image. Another hero is faring not so well. Carey Price, touted as best goalie in the world, and who backstopped the Montreal Canadiens to the Stanley Cup Finals this last June, did not show up for first game of this season. Also not showing up for training camp the week before, it was announced jointly by NHL and NHLPA that he has voluntarily entered a player assistance program, available for players dealing with mental health and related personal issues (Sportsnet.ca). Not a broken arm or torn ligaments; no it’s more personal than that.

What is the price of superstardom? The media flap and the players’ praise and accolades for Price’s incredible goals against average GAA and achievements to date give a bit of hint at the price. Price (interesting name?) has always performed at a level beyond expectations, and this in professional sport always leads to even higher expectations. All of this for a young man, along with relationships and marriage and three small children, even while focused on coaches and training, honing the skills and the game. Yes the game! Professional sport is employment, high risk employment, and like all employment situations, there are always the official and unofficial realities. Carey Price is a rather private person, and as a confessing Christian he recognized a precarious circumstance - in over his head. Nothing new to his wife and those nearest and dearest to him. Canadiens’ General Manager Marc Bergevin, seemingly in shock himself, used the simplest unadorned words speaking to the media. Their celebrated superstar goaltender “is a human being.” Aah, yes he is!  

And so was/is Wayne Gretzky, Sidney Crosby, Nathan McKinnon, and ...  I think of other players on other teams: Marc Andre Fleury of Vegas (now Chicago) has hot and cold streaks, Edmonton goalies Mike Smith and Mikko Koskinen seem to understand each other enough to recognize they too have the hot-cold challenge, and therefore need each other as backups in the good sense of the word and as per decisions by coaching staff. That is a mental thing and requires the amazing concept of teamwork – quite apart from all things positively or negatively analyzed by the talking heads during intermissions. Many other illustrations come to mind, including hothead Columbus Blue Jackets coach John Tortorella, who actually communicates authentically and credibly to his players once they get used to his sturm und drang as us Germans would say. Then there are the players with attitude like Tampa Bay's Corey Perry (recently with Montreal and longtime Anaheim Ducks), Boston’s Brad Marchand, and Calgary’s bad boy Matthew Tkachuk. Their attitude is more interesting than their quality of play – although each of these is an above average player. Attitude is something which fans pay for also, some with more glee than others!

I could easily continue now with description of heroes, rascals, and entertainers in my favorite professional sport, but right now I'm thinking about a deeper mental human condition looking us squarely in the face as professional sport tries its post-pandemic resumption. There are other undeniable issues - concussions, racial and other mental inequities - coming to light also in NFL, NBA and Olympic competitions. Professional sport needs review. We the fans need review. Several points, and each would warrant many paragraphs, but not for now.

-       One. Professional sport is actually a great dehumanizer. This cry of a thoroughbred superstar may be a waker-upper for many others that the price of these amusement events is too high. Today’s games are a modern version of the Roman gladiator games where humans fought animals or condemned criminals to the death, and all for the entertainment of the spectators. 

-        Two. Life, and especially the life-cycle includes winning stretches and losing stretches. In the Bible there is a ‘loser’ John the Baptist who cried some phrases already familiar from the Old Testament, Every valley shall be filled in, every mountain and hill made low. The crooked roads shall become straight, the rough ways smooth (Isaiah 40:4, Luke 3:5). This was his introduction to Jesus the Christ, the one who would help with these ‘stretches’. A sample: “Blessed are the poor in spirit, for theirs is the kingdom of heaven.”…”Blessed are the merciful, for they will be shown mercy. Blessed are the pure in heart, for they will see God” (Matthew 5:3,7-8).

-        Three. Faith, or ‘the religious life’ actually can be a considerable burden for someone who misunderstands it. Christians, for example are divided into at least two groups: those who see God as an all powerful judging force - hoping, working, praying, and oft-times wondering why no miracles or solutions; and those who see God as the still small voice. Eg Elijah after some amazing accomplishments, still needed that still small assuring whisper (1 Kings 19:12). Muslims, as people of the book (Quran) pray 5 times daily. Indigenous recognize Creator in the four directions, ceremonies, plants and animals of mother earth. Works and Grace, two long-debated theological themes still before us. God, larger than our labels, more available than we are inclined to recognize.

And fourthly. Faith can also be the greatest gift for life, the ticket to all its fullness (John 10:10). Us human beings - and why be ashamed about that - have a need to be in relationship with our Creator, the one who knows us better than we know ourselves. And so, even if in a stretch of much cheering, need to be careful not to become addicted to winning (or pretending we are winners - applicable to every one of us even outside professional sport). My compliments to Carey Price for this very realistic demonstration of his faith, allowing the help he needs, claiming the grace, the mercy and the love available for him, whether or not he continues as the hero between the pipes. And Connor McDavid is probably aware of this too, especially in those games when he scores only one goal.