On Checking the Time and Climbing Mountains
The Rev. Dr. Terry Hidichuk

 

 

It was a day like most days,
that summer when I went running.
I left my home in sunny South St. Vital where all the houses are made of ticky tacky and they look all the same and all of our children are above average.

 

As I came to the corner, I saw a man walking in the opposite direction.
He was dressed differently than those of us in the neighbourhood.
Shabbily.
Old orange sweat pants.
Green Jacket that didn’t match.
His hair was long, tied in a ponytail.
He looked out place.
He was Indigenous.

 

I checked my watch.
I wanted to know what time I saw him, in case there was trouble in paradise while I was gone.

 

Oh, I can tell that story and easily interpret the act of checking my watch
As protecting my neighbourhood.
As being observsent
Even being a good citizen.

 

But that would be shading a certain kind of truth.
The act of checking my watch.
Was involuntary.
I did it without thinking.
At least not at any conscious level.
Later that evening as I reflected on the day, I thought about checking the watch and re-confirmed a dark corner where I live and breathe.
I checked my watch, because he was First Nations and there are no First Nations in sunny South St. Vital where all the houses are made of ticky tacky and they all look just the same and all of our children are above average.
I checked my watch because the man was out place and I was afraid he might damage my property.
I did it because at some deep unconsious place where the ghoulies and ghosties jump around,
I am afraid of those who are different.
At some place, just below the surface of my Canadian politeness, I am colonizer or in bed with the colonizer’s.
And that is where my racism begins and that it is the place from which I looked at my watch and took note of the time.
It was 8 minutes past four in the afternoon.

 

It was racism…especially if racism is about one human being judging another human not because of what they do but because the their ethnic origin, or class or religion.

 

But Christians call it something else
We call it sin.

 

A colleague of mine was fond of saying that we often think of sin as something as trivial as eating too much chocolate or reading dirty books.
Sin is more than that.
It is literally living our life off target.
Living our life alienated from God.
To sin is to live not as God intended, that is to live in harmony with creation and that means with all our brothers and sisters.

 

Sin, bubbles up in other ways, too.

 

Suppose you are driving down Main Street and you see one of God’s children, one your brothers, lying passed out in in doorway that he calls home.
You are in the car by yourself.
After you check to make sure the doors are locked: what do you say?

 

Now suppose it is Christmas dinner and old weird alcoholic Uncle Charlie has one too many adult beverages and passes out on the couch,
in what seems to be a Christmas ritual.
What do you say then…another drunk….
Or do you say: Peggy go grab a blanket and cover him up.

 

You see the difference.
We take care of Old weird Uncle Charlie because he is one of us.
The person passed out in the doorway…is the other.
NO care, no concern…
Just judgment and more pressure on the accelerator babbling some thought about paying too much income tax.
That is sin.

 

When we marginalize a human being because of their culture, their race, their identity…that is racism…that is sin.

 

We do it naturally, without thought…often as a response conditioned by an old colonialism, the vestiges of which linger on and on and on.

 

Two decades or so ago I was involved in the leadership of the United Church.
The Residential School question was in the news. I got a phone from another old colleague.
She and couple of retired teachers had taught in one of the United Church residential School and they wanted to talk to me.
I drove out Brandon on cold and snowy January day, arrived: heard their story.
They never abused any child.
They were offended that the church was even taking the matter seriously.
They were good people.
Church going Christians who almost four decades earlier had heard a “call” to serve the church by teaching Indigenous children English, Christianity and all things Canadian so that they could become part of civilized society.

 

They didn’t get the problem.

 

Taking children out of their context, their culture, their circle of love and placing them in a school away from their home in a culture alienated from what they knew.
What could possibly go wrong with that?

 

But that was an act of racism imbued with colonialism; what the Truth and Reconciliation report and Madame Justice MacLaughlin are calling “Cultural Genocide.”

 

This is so imbedded in both church and society that many in the white privileged world where we live and move and have our being still refuse to understand the problem.

 

We have all the heard the questions…
How much more money do they want us to waste?
Isn’t it time they just let it go?

 

Others of us are good Christian folk who always wanted to help and still do.

 

I was fortunate enough to attend the presentation of the TRC   report that was streamed live to the University of Winnipeg.

 

The Very Rev. Dr. Stan McKay, former moderator of the United Church of Canada offered some remarks before the Commissioners presented the recommendations.
At one point, Dr. McKay said he was sick and tired of people helping First Nations people.

 

I found the words disturbing.
About a week later, I had the opportunity to have a conversation with Stan and I asked him what he meant that he was sick and tired of people helping.

 

He went on to say:

Helping treats First Nation people as ones who have nothing to offer. It fosters dependence. Marginalizes and minimizes our gifts.

 

When I heard Stan, I could not help but hear the painful truth that
The vestiges of colonialism continues to bind the culture.
It continues to marginalize Indigenous peoples.
It is our sin.

 

Having said that, it is also important to say that good things have been done.

 

Since the 1980s Residential School Survivors have come forth with horrendous stories.

 

In 1991,
the Royal Commission on Aboriginal Peoples was convened to examine many unresolved issues and make recommendations to foster a fair and honourable relationship between Aboriginal and Non-Aboriginal peoples in Canada.

 

Also in 1991
the Anglican Church established an Indigenous Healing Fund to support the healing work undertaken by local aboriginal communities and groups.

 

In 1993
Anglican Primate, Archbishop Michael Peers offered a full apology for the Church’s role in being a part of the system and for the wrongs committed.

 

In 1998
the native-run Aboriginal Healing Foundation was created to manage the healing strategy and to complement existing government, church and first nations programs.

 

Those acts acknowledge the sin of both the colonial culture and the church.

 

Stories were told…
And some listened.

 

That was the beginning of our repentance.

 

The Greek language is most helpful.
The word for repentance, metanoia means to turn your life around.
We have started to do that…
But as the TRC report has stated in a variety ways, this is not enough.
And it is not enough
  • Because I still look at my watch just to protect myself from those I think don’t belong in my neighbourhood.
  • Because the penal system is over represented with indigenous people.
  • Because in one of the wealthiest, most blessed countries in the world First Nation’s communities still don’t have potable water.
  • Because we still live in an nation divided between them and us.

 

Justice Sinclair in his remarks to the nation:
Said that this is high mountain to climb.

 

And to be mountain climbers, it seems to me is to realize that that help is not enough.
Action is not enough.
Christians have to be different.
Repentance has to be a lifestyle.
We need to continue to turn our lives around and repent from our colonialism, and to embrace our faith in new ways.

 

According to Pastoral Theologian Emmanuel Lartey, faith is not so much about solving problems and it is about finding the grace, the strength and humility to embrace mystery.

 

We need to be different.
Not seek or offer answers but to enter into the unkown and in that way to embrace a godly life.

 

As Lartey says…
God cannot be subsumed in our sameness and either can other human beings.
Difference will not be overcome by assimilation into our likeness, difference can only be related to.

 

In other words repentance happens when I no longer see the person on my street as object to be feared but see him as brother who is different from me but still a child of God like me.

 

We cannot do this however by simply borrowing or adopting Indigenous ways:

 

Erica Lee , writing on the blog Moontime Warrior says…    

Across Canada, pow wows and pipe ceremonies are tokenized, used in lieu of systematic change. Feathers are painted on school walls, as if this will counteract the hostility of facing classes, curriculum, peers, and teachers that stereotype and erase us.

Repentance requires of us a different way of being.

Terry Aleck warms his hand drum, emblazoned with the crest of a killer whale, and calls for the Family Song
"To honour my family back home, but this family here, too,"
Aleck said.
The other drummers in the circle smile.
On cue, they raise their voice in song.
It's a bit unusual, because everyone else in the circle is non-aboriginal and this drum group congregates in Saint Hilda’s Anglican Church in Sechelt, B.C. . Aleck is a survivor of abuse of the most violent kind at an Indian residential school.
Terry Aleck attended the St. Georges Indian Residential School in Lytton, B.C. where he suffered repeated sexual abuse. (CBC)
As the CBC’s Duncan McCue tells the story…
Aleck first met John and Hilda Denham at the opening of the Truth and Reconciliation Commission in Winnipeg. From that meeting a relationship was formed.
"My relationship with Terry is unlikely, in that I'm a privileged white male. And Terry is not," says John Denham.
The Denhams admit they didn't know much about residential schools,
"The realization that kids had been forced to go to schools and died there, was just unimaginable and that shocked me," said John Denham.
"I wanted to know more about that.
Upon returning to Sechelt, he attended a drum-making workshop held by Aleck. The two quickly became friends.
"I could see their compassion and their caring in the work they were doing," said Aleck, who had turned to aboriginal teachings for spiritual healing. "It was like, 'Wow! OK, let's journey.'"
Supported by Aleck's gentle nature and openness to share his residential school experiences, the Denham's have spent the past five years learning about residential schools and getting to know their aboriginal neighbours.
Since meeting Aleck, the Denhams have organized several residential school "dialogue circles" in Sechelt. They helped raised travel money for members of the Sechelt Indian Band to attend the TRC event in Vancouver. Two summers ago, John Denham took his grandson on a Pulling Together canoe journey.
And meanwhile back at St. Hilda’s a drum meets on Wednesday’s.

 

The good folk at St. Hilda’s haven’t given up their tradition, they have allowed it be shaped and enriched.
The road to reconciliation passes through repentance.
Perhaps we need to stop checking our watches and start climbing so we can get to a new place.

Amen.