Got a lovely bunch of Coconuts, anybody?

If you have ever gone wandering along a tropical beach with palm trees, you may have been told not to sit under a palm tree because more people die from falling coconuts than from shark attacks.  That, however, is an urban legend and an exaggeration.  But sitting under a coconut tree can be hazardous to your health.  No one knows the time or day when a coconut falls, and the comparison to sharks started when an emergency room doctor complained about all the injuries he was treating due to falling coconuts.  It created so much kerfuffle that someone wrote a very cheeky song called “Killed by a Coconut”, which is almost as silly as the song “I’ve Got a Lovely Bunch of Coconuts” which if you don’t know it is very similar to “I want a hippopotamus for Christmas”. 

Sometimes I feel like hope is just as silly as singing about coconuts and hippopotami.  Our scripture readings don’t seem very hopeful either.  And the news these days discourages a hopeful attitude. Who can be hopeful when their power is off because of bombs or they’ve lost family and friends in a nightclub shooting or they have had to wait for an ambulance for hours and then wait in a hospital for a doctor for more hours.

It’s easy to lapse into apathy when our lives are full of such stories.   It’s also easy to fall into the opposite extreme, anxiety.  Will this time be when the flood comes, or the heat wave or the hurricane or the forest fire? Or just assume that every day will be filled with disaster and there’s nothing that we can do to prevent it?  A third alternative is cynicism, the assumption that nothing good will ever happen.  A lot of conversations start with words like “Don’t”, “I can’t”, “We mustn’t”, “That won’t work”, “We tried that once”, or “no”.  Like a tire that has a slow leak, cynical words can completely deflate us until we feel flat, apathetic, cynical or anxious.  If we internalize all those words, that can lead to serious depression.  The negative, cynical, apathetic, anxious thoughts can become self-destructive mental illness that requires professional help to unravel.  There were times when I needed to reach out to counsellors to improve my mental health, but for many in our world, this is a constant struggle that needs medical and professional support.  Which is in short supply these days.  Social workers are facing the same challenges this year as doctors and nurses did during covid, a rise in demand and in workload.  Burn out, retirement, and a health system that does not fund mental health programs consistently or predictably mean uncertainty for both professionals and those who need the programs.  PRAAC, who raises money to fund thrive workers to help people experiencing family violence, depends on government support as well as our fundraising and organizations like Together Talk have to apply for grants to provide free mental health care on one hand but also struggle to get the message out to people that the service exists and it’s okay to ask for help.  People who have hope are more likely to ask for that help than those without hope.

At our yarn circle we asked the question, “what is hope and how does it differ from wishful thinking?”  Wishful thinking is imagining things will work out the way I want without any effort on my part and may involve an exaggerated hope or fanciful thought.  A ten year old can wish for a real live pet unicorn all they want, but they are not going to get one.  A twenty year old can work in a stable to earn enough to buy a pony that they call ‘Unicorn’ and dress it up with a pointed hat.  One is wishful thinking, based in fantasy, the other is based in the real world and with hard work will come true.  But even better than these two examples is the twenty year old taking her pony to the Stollery Hospital and giving sick children rides on her ‘unicorn’.  That is Christian hope.  It comes from thinking of others, and being alert to opportunities to serve our neighbors. 

When Christ said ‘stay ready and alert for no one knows the day’, that is hope – alert and brave and focused on a better future.  Not afraid to face the reality of shoveling manure to get a unicorn.  And Christian hope is also about being honest about the challenges that life throws at us.  We will see disasters, but we are to keep looking and preparing for Christ’s coming. 

The challenge is discerning what is wishful thinking and what is hopeful thinking.  After several days of rain this week, rain in Alberta in November, global warming is becoming more tangible.  Some think it’s wishful thinking to imagine lowering our dependence on petroleum products, and slam environmentalists for such ideas.  Better do nothing than make a baby step towards change.  Yet one person’s wishful thinking is another person’s hope.  It was wishful thinking to imagine the USSR would stop being communist, wishful thinking that the Berlin Wall would come down, wishful thinking that Northern Ireland would be at peace, that apartheid in South Africa would end, that the slave trade would end or that we could have a truth and reconciliation process in Canada, to name a few.  One person’s wishful thinking is another person’s call to hope.  One person may see a coconut as a dangerous weapon, but another person will see it as a fruit that despite its hard shell and brown exterior, is worth the effort of cracking open.  And when we crack that hard nut, we too can be nourished in ways that inspire hope in others.  We are called to choose hope and to work for hope.  Researchers at the U of A in Edmonton are finding that hope impacts our physical health as well as our mental health.  Hope can heal relationships and the world with God being our helper.  Thanks be to God for this wonderful gift!

Patience, young Grasshopper!

I had a classmate at AST who was about 10 years younger than me and who reminded me of my younger brother.  He was rather like a Saint Bernard puppy, full of energy but a little too big.  At times, I would say to him, “Patience young grasshopper!” 

It seems so easy to encourage someone else to be patient, but it’s harder to be patient myself.  I was enthusiastic too, I was going to change the world, make it more honest and loving, and all it would take is my generous heart and a church crazy enough to ask me to step into their pulpit.  I was impatient to get my sleeves rolled up and ready to work.

Together we would solve racism, global warming, homelessness, food insecurity, the exploitation of temporary foreign workers and more.  Look out Canada, here I come!

Luckily for me, I had a wise mentor and a lay supervision team who said to me many a time, “patience, young grasshopper”, as I failed to solve the world’s problems with a snap of my fingers.

Patience, interestingly, is a big part of pineapple farming.  It starts out, unlike apples or cherries, not as one flower, but two hundred flowers.  As they get pollinated, the fruit of all these little flowers meld together. And unlike oranges that go from flower to fruit in a single season, it takes 2 years to go from bloom to pizza topping. Pineapple farmers need lots of patience!

Patience that Jesus talked about, and Paul lived, wasn’t just a flippant platitude that they threw around in abandon.  They lived it every day.  Through trials, prison time, travel, working hard for a living, or walking from place to place not knowing where they would sleep or what they would eat.  They prayed and hoped, they suffered and yet kept on with the big picture in mind. 

And Jesus reminded his disciples as they stared in awe at the beautiful temple, that buildings come and go, countries and nations one moment are stable and the next on the brink of disaster.  We are not to panic in situations like that, but to remember our priority is to love one another, love our neighbors, pray for our enemies and love God.

Destruction of buildings reminds me of a lady in Kiev. The city has lost many of its beautiful buildings due to the war with Russia.  But she talked about living in a subway, doing her part to help the 100 folks sleeping there on cots and bunk beds get along with each other and work together to rebuild.  The small acts of resistance she can do may only be to tuck a blanket under a child’s chin before they sleep, or to help two neighbors stay calm during a disagreement, but she does her part.  The Russians may destroy the buildings, but they cannot destroy the community.  If anything, the attacks are forging a new understanding of what it means to work together patiently for a common purpose.

Jesus also talked about the fragility of nations.  Not unlike the latest political situation in the US.  People speculated about the end of democracy, how the Trump followers would take over states and revamp the elections process in ways that were detrimental to the whole country, not to mention slanting the justice system even more to a narrow agenda.  And I won’t say a word about Alberta politics except to say that there are some who want to stoke the fires of divisiveness and conflict, us versus them fearmongering, entitlement and resentment. 

Then there’s the climate situation.  Catherine Faith MacLean who is the minister in St. Paul’s United Church in Edmonton, talked about going to the World Council of Churches this past summer as a delegate from our denomination.  She told us that youth delegates from around the world addressed the Council specifically and solely about climate justice.  They all expressed the belief that we have already gone past the point of no return with Global Warming, and Rev. MacLean realized that these teens had never known a time in their lives where the threat of climate change wasn’t seen as real and tangible.  Their witness was chilling and challenging.

There was also hope there.  The United Church contingency was sitting right behind the Russian Orthodox representatives who were very careful about what they said but one priest introduced her to his personal friends from the Ukrainian Orthodox Church. One could read between the lines of that casual introduction!  The World Council of Churches also were hospitable to the many women clergy, who wore their clerical collars every day, and are commissioning a study on human sexuality.  And although this organization, with members from 352 denominations from more than 120 countries, representing over 580 million Christians worldwide, does not include Roman Catholics, the Pope sends observers to hear the deliberations and conversations.  It was founded in 1948 to build tolerance, peace, justice and respect.  That sounds like a project that needs lots of patience as they identify common ground and continue to learn how to work together.

Patience grows like a pineapple, one blossom at a time.  The Poet Rilke wrote “have patience with everything unresolved in your heart… try to love the questions themselves, as if they were locked rooms. Don’t search for the answers, which could not be given to you now, because you would not be able to live them. Perhaps someday far in the future, you will gradually live your way into the answer.”  Patience, a gift from God, is something we can gradually live into with a little faith, a little kindness, and a little self-control.  May we all find the patience in the face of uncertainty that Jesus and Paul had, and trust that God is still saying with love, “Patience, young grasshopper!”

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pineapple#/media/File:Flowering_Pineapple_Sept_4_2011.jpg

Quietly shaken or alarmed

I’ll never forget eating supper at Naramata Centre in our kitchenette.  It was our first time there at this marvelous United Church family camp and the children were quite small.  We were eating dessert when I saw red smeared all over the wall behind the dining table.  It was surprising and I was uncertain where it was coming from.  It was too thin to be blood, but I grabbed a washcloth and cleaned it up easily.  I made sure neither of my children were bleeding, but they were both in perfect health.  I sat back down to have some more dessert then looked again.  More red on the wall! Got out the washcloth, wiped the wall, sat down again, and watched my children like a hawk.

Our dessert was freshly hand-picked cherries that we had harvested from the orchard. Amber, not quite 2 years old, was biting a cherry then fingerpainting the wall with the juice on her fingers!

I don’t remember how I reacted other than cleaning her hands as well as the wall and moving the cherries away from her.  Not just to limit her artwork, but also because too many cherries can cause havoc on our digestive systems.  Having self-control around cherries is hard!

I admire the self-control Jesus exhibited in this story of the Sadducees.  If we read all of Luke 20, we would hear the religious scholars testing Jesus with conundrums and puzzles.  Paying taxes, John the Baptist’s ritual in the Jordan River, and more.  This question about seven marriages was a mental experiment, rather like the more famous Schrodinger’s Cat in a box.  It was also a very divisive topic between the Sadducees and the Pharisees, subject of a vigorous.  They pulled Jesus into the debate, suggesting a ridiculous scenario that the Sadducees thought would end any discussion of an afterlife.  It reads oddly to our current culture, this is not seven brides for seven brothers, but one bride.  If we look at it from the culture of Deuteronomy, we can understand it better.  The world of Deuteronomy was one of tough survival where the tribe was the focal point of every individual’s identity.  And with no rrsps, tffs or pension plans, widows could be in danger of starving to death.  The patriarchal culture didn’t help either.  With a male-centric society, being disconnected from a male family member to protect her was dangerous for a widow.  So, they came up with Levirate marriage which was designed to protect widows and ensure every male ended up with a male heir to inherit their estate and continue the tribe’s existence.  I’m very glad it is no longer a part of Canadian society.  It does exist in other parts of the world where there is a high level of mortality in both adults and children as well as a patriarchal culture.

But this was meant to be a trick question with an obvious answer.  The Sadducees expected Jesus to say that the wife would obviously not be married to anyone because an afterlife is ridiculous.  The Pharisees hoped Jesus would somehow find a way out of the trap.  Jesus said in effect that the riddle was focusing on the wrong question.  God’s children do not concern themselves with who possesses what, or who is married or who belongs to another.  Ownership, entitlement, even sex is not what God’s children should be focused on.

And God’s children are not to worry about fads, fashions and alarmists who only promote emotional reactions to life’s challenges.  2 Thessalonians says, “don't become easily agitated or disturbed by some prophecy, report or letter falsely attributed to us… Let no one deceive you, in any way. Stick to the traditions you received from us, either by word of mouth or by letter.”

Easier said than done.  It’s hard to know who to trust when we get bombarded by scammers who phone or text us out of the blue. How do we know what to believe any more? The United Church has inherited a simple tool that has been around for a long time, with roots in Greek philosophy and Hebrew faith.  It is to use logic, experience, history and faith to discern what is best.  It generally works well.  Logic is a good first step.  Learning from others’ experiences as well as our own is important too – I hear that people get texts claiming to be me asking them to send a money order and I never do that.  Sharing this experience can help keep people safe. 

History both personal and global is also important.  Orhan Pamuk wrote a book about a fictional Cholera epidemic in Turkey and how that was written before Covid 19, yet it was very predictive of how Covid 19 impacted our society because he knew his history. 

Logic, experience, history and faith can help us unravel tricky issues like Jesus did with the Sadducee puzzle.  They can help us build our resilience in times of challenge and unravel complex issues.  They can help us look at situations more calmly, and they can help us develop self-control instead of being constantly shaken and alarmed as Thessalonians describes.

If self-control is a gift of God, it can challenge how we look at others and ourselves.  This is at the heart of the debate around homelessness in Athabasca, for example.  We are not scared of people who are currently experiencing temporary housing shortage, but we are very nervous about mentally ill folks who act impulsively or illogically.  If we look at them as people who have poorly developed self-regulation, will we have more compassion and understanding of them? People assume that everyone has self-control.  But the more we learn about neurodiversity, addictions and the brain, the more we must challenge that assumption.  Recovering alcoholics and addicts say that only when they let go of the delusion of their self-control can they find their Higher Power helping them grow real self-control.

The Good news is that self-control can be grown with patience and understanding, no matter our age or our neurodiverse brains.  It is a gift that is free for the asking.  My daughter no longer paints with cherry juice on the kitchen wall.  She has learned to paint on canvases, the bigger the better! She has also learned to eat cherries with self-control.  Jesus modelled self-control, nurturing it in himself and others and we can too, with faith, hope and kindness as our guide.  Thanks be to God for these gifts of the Spirit at work in our lives!

“Homestead” by Amber Rosborough, 2022 in mixed media, not cherry juice!

The Shameless Tree Climber

When I was a kid we lived one year at a place that had an orange tree in the backyard.  Sounds exciting on paper, but it wasn't that great in reality.  Mostly because the neighborhood wasps found it before we did and were fiercely protective of it.  Every time we tried to get near the delicious looking oranges, those nasty little stingers were determined to keep us away.  It was frustrating to smell the oranges, see the oranges but never taste the oranges!

I imagine that's what Zacchaeus felt like when he heard stories of the new rabbi coming to Jericho.  He wanted to get to Jesus, to see Jesus and listen to him. Zacchaeus had more than a few wasps barring his way.  Scripture said he was short of stature and we often go to the simplest of translations that he was a Danny DeVito, a short man who couldn't see above the heads of the taller folks around him.  However, it's possible that he was short of stature in the community, more like status challenged rather than height challenged.  Certainly, the description of who he was and what he did for a living adds credibility to this theory.  Last week's scripture described the difference between a religious leader and a tax collector and how Jesus used the disreputable tax collector as an example of humbleness that is to be honored. 

Zacchaeus wasn't just a disreputable tax collector; he was the head of all tax collectors in Jericho.  Like a loan shark who worked for a foreign country, he would have less respect from his fellow countrymen than a CRA agent born in Fort McMurray trying to get carbon tax payments out of oil companies!  He was a traitor not just to the citizens of Jericho but also to the principles of Hebrew scriptures who taught never to accept bribes, charge interest on loans or collect more than his fair share.  I'm sure if he had been asked prior to climbing the tree, he would have said that it wasn't him that was at fault, it was the system.  And it was a dirty job, but somebody had to do it. 

That was enough to folks to treat him waspishly, to feel stung by his greed, and to resent him so much that they weren't going let him get by their blockade.  How dare someone like him want to see someone as amazing as this Jesus was!  They shut him out, turned their backs on him and refused to give an inch to this greedy selfish man. 

Back then men showed their importance by how mature and dignified they acted in public.  The prodigal father, for example, would have scandalized his neighborhood by running to meet his returning son home from big city pig stys, hiking his skirts to do so, and flashing his calves in the process. 

If running was such a shameful act for a man in a story, how much more embarrassing would it be for a prominent citizen to climb a tree in public? 

Now I will confess to climbing the occasional tree even as an adult, but you would never catch me doing it in a long dress.  Can you imagine the scandal of a grown man being so silly as to do such a thing?  I have no idea how easy sycamore trees are to climb.  Was this an easy thing for Zacchaeus to do, or imagining Danny DeVito, again, was this a hot sweaty activity he did while others laughed at him, ignored him or even didn't notice him in the growing excitement of the crowd? 

Regardless, he was so hungry to see Jesus he ignored his discomfort, embarrassment and even further censure of his neighbors if he was that willing to go out on a limb to see Jesus! 

Talk about faith!  Not too different from an orange tree producing fruit that humans can't eat because of wasps. Silly, ridiculous even. 

Faith can be a tenuous thing that seems ridiculous from the outside. It can be an impulsive thing or a well-thought out plan. It can show up when we least expect it to.  When I started planning my fruit of the Spirit theme, I randomly paired faith with oranges without any particular reason.  And when I set out on my adventure to Toronto, I felt a bit silly at the idea of me helping out with a hymnbook project. Everyone else had a master's in music or a doctorate in music, wrote hymns or worked full-time as organists, music ministers and the like.  What could I as a lowly ukulele player contribute?  When I got to my hotel room, I found an old tea bag in my purse that was wild sweet orange tea.  Our first meal out in the General Council Office was garnished with an inch thick slice of orange.  And at the hotel breakfast buffet, I grabbed a couple of packets of what I thought was honey to soothe my singing throat and when I got to the Islington United Church room we were using, I discovered that they were packets of orange marmalade! 

But more importantly, despite not being a professional musician whatsoever, I was treated with dignity and respect and kindness by everyone there.  Bruce Harding, musician and editor of More Voices helped me navigate the subway.  Lloyd MacLean, member of the band who wrote songs like "Draw the Circle Wide" and "My Love Colors Outside the Lines" listened to my comments with respect, and my classmate Alydia Smith who has a doctorate in ministry and works at General Council as the Identity and Mission Network coordinator, was happy to see me again!

They treated me just like Jesus treated Zacchaeus!  Except Jesus went way more overboard.  He didn't just preach about being kind to those we see as less than or other than us, he broke through the mindset of 'othering' people completely.  He saw the silly man perched precariously in the branches and invited himself over for supper.  Just like my orange tea bag gathering dust in my purse, Jesus was found in the embarrassing moments, the lost moments, the impulsive moments and barged in unexpectedly.  Something that continues to happen today when we go out on a limb and climb to get a clearer view.  May we find Jesus in our own such moments of faith!