Millstones and Memories

There is an historical village in Cape Breton that tells of the importance of millstones to Scottish crofters in the 1770's.  Millstones for grinding wheat into flour were as common as refrigerators.  The highlanders were being encouraged to get rid of their mill stones and use the bigger mills in towns that were often owned by rich landlords or clan heads. Of course, the lords would charge a penny or two to grind the wheat for their tenants to cover the cost of building the mills. And many of the crofters resented being expected to pay when they had perfectly good mill stones in their homes. So the lords sent soldiers out to the little stone huts where they would confiscate the mill stones. The stones were then smashed against other rocks until they cracked. Sometimes they were even tossed off cliffs or into the ocean. Can you imagine if the mayor of your town or city told you to use a fancy central fridge that the whole town would use as being more efficient, charging a fee for you to use it, and if you didn't, the mayor sending the RCMP in to take your fridge to the dump? This injustice was the last straw for many families who packed up their families and possessions and sail off to Cape Breton where no one would throw their mill stones away.

The Scots left oppression behind for a new start. Anyone who oppressed families and especially children, were to be resisted or shunned. Much like this scripture reading from Mark where people were warned not to harm little ones. The picture of being tossed in the ocean with a mill stone would have been vivid, relatable and more than a little shocking. In fact this whole passage is more than a little shocking. Cutting off hands or feet or plucking out eyes? Did Jesus think we were all like starfish and able to regrow new body parts? This emphasizes how important it is to take care of the most vulnerable people in our society, children. When we forget that, we can cause great atrocities.

Right now, we have to wonder how children are doing. With large class sizes, overcrowded schools and reports that 300 new schools need to be built in Alberta, and with the US surgeon general declaring parenting being a health hazard due to high levels of stress, and with a teacher shortage looming as Baby Boomers retire, are children being treated as liabilities or luxuries? Are the world's countries working together to find solutions to the climate crisis we're facing that will impact today's children? Are we protecting our youngest citizens by providing them the nutrition and the education they need to thrive? Special needs children have to buy their own speech therapy tablets, classes don’t have enough teachers aides, and single moms find that there are unexpected school fees for junior high options in some schools.  So much for public schools and free education.

Then there’s the impact of colonialism on some of our children.  There were over 130 residential schools operated in Canada between 1831 and 1996.  In 1931, there were 80 residential schools operating in Canada. This was the most at any one time. The United Church operated 14 of them. The residential school system impacted 150,000 First Nation, Inuit, and Métis children. An estimated 6000 children died while at the schools, about a 4% mortality rate.  The survivors had children, grandchildren and great grandchildren.  The trauma of being taken away from their parents and grandparents, their language and culture and often forcibly put into schools without the proper resources and care that was needed, in drafty overcrowded conditions with inadequate food, are all a matter of public record, thanks to the Truth and Reconciliation Commission report.

Unfortunately, the legacy of emotional trauma continues today.  From 2011 to 2021, there was a 6.5% increase in the number of indigenous children in care.  Indigenous children accounted for 7.7% of all children under age 15 in the general population, but 53.8% of children in foster care (Statistics Canada, 2022).  A third of the children are living in foster homes that fall below Canada’s poverty line.  The National Centre for Truth and Reconciliation (2021) has said this too is a legacy of the residential school system.  There is a greater effort to place children in homes with at least one indigenous parent, but a little over a half of children are placed in homes with at least one indigenous parent.  And to top it all off, there are more Indigenous children in the child welfare system now than there were in the residential school system at its height.  This information comes from Statistics Canada. 

The legacy of residential schools is a mill stone around the necks of governments, churches and the average Canadian, whether we are aware of it or not.  It will be a millstone around our necks for a long time.  Hearing that public money in Alberta will be given to private schools does not help.  It’s frustrating to realize how the system is still struggling to know how to work with indigenous people to break the chain of suffering many children face.  There are break throughs, however.  Foster parents do their best to make sure indigenous kids have ample exposure to their cultures.  Indigenous communities are taking over finding foster parents in their communities so that the kids can stay close to home.

There’s still work to do.  But just as it took great courage for Queen Esther to stand up for her people, indigenous people are finding great courage to stand up for their children.  Just as Jesus told his followers to be very accountable for their behavior, especially toward children, we need to call people to be very accountable for the decisions they make that impacts our children.

Tomorrow is Orange Shirt Day and this is an opportunity for us as followers of Christ to do what we can to stand in solidarity like Esther for children.  Consider joining the honor walk at noon at the Native Friendship Center in Athabasca.  Consider phoning the Education Minister.  The ATA has an online petition that people can sign.  Be kind to struggling parents, and loving towards little ones.  Together with God, let’s make a difference in children’s lives! Amen.

Throwing seeds around

 
There’s something satisfying in the smell of freshly mown lawn.  That green stretch of grass that lusciously fills our yards and breaks up the monotony of cement sidewalks is beautiful to behold.  But it takes a lot of work and a lot of seeds.  There’s aeration and raking and watering, and weeding, and heaven help you if you have dandelions, creeping Charlie or fairy rings.

There are neighborhoods where someone has decided to be, shall we say, more creative and less conventional in their yard.  The first time people decided to landscape their front yards with rocks or low-maintenance plants or even vegetable gardens, they were seen as odd and eccentric.  But for folks in BC this week, those creative landscapers might be the only ones happy with the state of their yards.  BC has a severe drought happening right now, and they aren’t the only ones.  The Southern US is suffering record-breaking heat waves and a heat warning alert was issued in of all places, the Yukon and Northwest Territories this week.  Even the Antarctic is seeing record-breaking temperatures in July despite it being the middle of winter for them. Wow.

Back in the 1980’s David Suzuki came and spoke to a teacher’s convention in Edmonton and told the teachers that human beings are very similar to frogs.  If you try to put a frog in a pot of boiling water, naturally, it will do everything it can to get out of the water.  But if you put it into a pot of room temperature water, and turn the heat up slowly, the frog will not jump out of the water even when it is dangerously hot.  The frog will boil to death.  Suzuki then went on to talk about greenhouse gasses and global warming, and of course he was treated as an alarmist who didn’t know what he was talking about. His words were like seeds that fell on rocky ground.

Fast forward 30 years and our glaciers are shrinking, the Antarctic ice cap is melting, the polar bears are starving because the ice they need to get to the seals is disappearing, and we still ignore the warnings of climate scientists.  Our politicians don’t have enough support and trust from the public to make the tough decisions that are needed to keep us frog-like humans alive. 

There are signs though that some of Susuki’s seeds were heard here and there.  There are more electric cars being driven even in Athabasca and Fort McMurray.  One enterprising fellow has enough solar panels on his farm that he is able to charge his car and was able to drive it all the way to Calgary and back.  The University of Alberta is discovering that sheep love paddocks with solar panels and still find enough forage, and one farm is growing a bumper crop of spinach under its solar panels.  Speaking of solar panels, where would you guess the largest solar panel farm in Canada is located?  Near Lethbridge, Alberta, yes, this very province!  It will produce as much energy as a nuclear power plant and covers the equivalent of 1,600 Canadian Football League fields.  That could be a lot of spinach and sheep as well!

So not every word of climate crisis has fallen on stony paths, as Jesus said.  Some seeds have put down roots, others are being choked by the conspiracy theorists, and others have been eaten by people who disparage any efforts to make a difference.  You know, the kind of people who say we can’t buy into solar energy because the rare metals are causing more environmental problems than the oil industry. Or that electric cars will never be practical in Alberta because of our long cold winters. They preach apathy and status quo while waiting for the perfect solution to be gift wrapped to us and handed over on a silver platter.  Something that will be easy and free.

In other words, they are holding out for a perfect lawn and don’t want to do anything other than a perfect lawn.  And they condemn anyone who has a dandelion or a fairy ring or an ant hill messing with their beautiful turf.

How does this relate to our scriptures today?  Jesus talked about the words of hope being choked by the weeds of the cares of the world and the lure of wealth.  This is as true today as it was in his day.  Only he didn’t have 24-hour news channels broadcasting the cares of the world.  He didn’t have scientists and flat earthers debating on social media. 

He did preach gardening to fishermen who were on the brink of starvation.  There’s a boat that was found by a team of archaeologists that dates back to around 50 AD when the Galilea lake was experiencing a drought.  The boat was covered in repairs and patches and damage.  There was no money for a replacement boat for the likes of Peter, James and John.  Thsee fishermen were competing with Romans that were depleting the fish stocks and threatening their livelihood with extinction.  That’s why the many stories of Jesus saying, “throw your nets on the other side”, were so important to them. 

Jesus taught that when we talk about things like our faith, or our concern about global warming, we are not to worry about how those words are received.  Some words will fall on deaf ears.  Some words will fall on angry ears and we know to walk away from those conversations.  But some of our words will land and take root and turn into action.  It takes deep spirituality to find the resiliency and hope to face our world.  It takes bold discipleship to have the courage to speak up and scatter our seeds to plant our imperfect lawns.  And it takes daring justice to chose ways to live with respect in creation in wise , loving and hopeful ways.  May we find time this summer to be deep, bold, daring seed planters for the sake of the God who created us and created this beautiful world that God so loved.  Amen.

Cutting remarks

 What a wild and weird pair of scriptures we have this morning.  The Exodus passage about Zipporah, and Mark’s heavy-handed amputation text.  Both are about cutting things off physical bodies and are disturbing to say the least. 

The Zipporah story happens after Moses encountered the burning bush and was on his way back to Egypt.  The original Hebrew is so barebones, it’s hard to translate.  Who was killing whom, did Zipporah cast or touch the skin to Moses, why was God angry in the first place, and why did Zipporah have a flint knife in the bronze age?

Imagine, people have written books and essays on those 2 little verses, trying to understand just what was going on.  I certainly had never heard of the ‘bloody bridegroom’ before someone here asked about it, not what I was expecting when I invited folks to submit bible passages or quotes they were curious about.  Some people read this as Zipporah, the daughter of a priest, using a ritual obsidian knife, doing the rite while Moses was sick and recommitting herself to their marriage.  Others hear this as Zipporah being angry at Moses for not having circumcised his son, and throwing down the skin in disgust.

The Hebrew is that vague and that easily mistranslated.  But consensus seems to be that she was cutting off that which she saw was a barrier between Moses and God.  Jesus talked about cutting off whatever was separating his followers from God too.  He was using shocking language that would have upset his folks.  Back then there were no prosthetics and no effective anesthetics. Losing a limb often meant death by blood loss or being condemned to a life of begging, unless a family member would take the unfortunate person in.  Losing a foot or a hand was dangerous!

Jesus didn’t want the disciples to start amputating body parts right and left.  He wanted them to take very seriously what it meant to be his followers.  He wanted them to realize how dangerous their attitudes could be.  Let’s remember what they were doing when he scolded them.  They were getting ready to judge someone who was not part of their inner circle.  Someone who was casting out demons in Jesus’ name. 

Now to put this into context, this is the same chapter which talks about Jesus going up to the mountaintop with Peter and James and John, and when he came back down, the rest of the disciples had failed to heal a child of her demon.  So, to see other people do what they had failed to do must have been downright galling.  They were jealous!  They wanted Jesus to cut the others down and condemn them as outsiders. 

Jesus said that he didn’t want to copywrite his name, or to give the disciples an exclusive franchise on the use of his name.  He wasn’t interested in trademarking his healing skills, and he didn’t want the disciples to think that they could be an exclusive club.  But more importantly, he wanted to turn them away from focusing on what other people were doing wrong to focusing on what they could be doing better.

He didn’t say, cut other people’s foot off, he was saying cut your own foot off.  In other words, instead of being angry and resentful and jealous of other people, of being judgmental about them and flying off the handle at them, stay focused on your own spiritual journey.

We have seen a lot of people expressing a lot of anger and frustration these last few weeks.  There’s anger at the government for not doing enough.  There’s anger at the government for doing too much.  There’s anger at my neighbor for disagreeing with me.  There’s anger at my family member for not agreeing with me.  It seems like we’re caught up in an epidemic of anger as much as anything.  And an epidemic of finger-pointing, resentment, jealousy and frustration.

Jesus said to his disciples that rather than point fingers at someone who was having success, they should look at themselves first.  Why were they feeling jealous of someone else?  Why were they being tattle tales and grumblers?  Why were they sure that they had the right to feel superior or to be the insiders who knew better than the rest?

It is easier to blame others for our frustrations and our anger bursts than it is to look inside at our own pain.  Parker Palmer talks a lot about how we are addicted to fixing, saving, advising and correcting others.  We like to be right, we like to be indignant.  We like to judge and be angry.

But that’s not what a Christian is called to be.  Some of the greatest saints of our faith spent a good deal of time wrestling with their darker nature.  They may not have cut their feet or hands off, but they did circumcise their hearts and minds.  Sometimes, like Moses, they were in so much trouble with their anger and their jealousy that they needed someone else, someone wise and faithful like a priestess’ daughter to help them see the source of their disconnection with God and cut that source off with a ritual practice.  Moses was the big hero, the man with all the tricks up his sleeve that would free his people from slavery, but it was his wife that remembered that faith begins at home. 

What do we need to cut off in order to live more faithfully?  This summer I tried drying my clothes on the line like I remembered my grandma doing.  I wonder about buying a solar panel to charge my phone.  I drive my hybrid car to the city less.  I hope to find ways to lower my carbon footprint, as I’m sure you are too.  I cut off my words and thoughts when they slip into racist assumptions, I circumcise my discomfort when I hear stories of residential schools or oppression or racism or homophobia.  These things are painful for us to face and admit, but they are barriers to our relationships with one another and God as well.  When we look at ourselves first before pointing our fingers at others, we are able to start out on our heroic journeys as Christians and healers.  Let us follow Jesus on the path to building a more loving and peaceful society for all creation.