Friends,
I hope you all survived the commercial onslaught that passes for Christmas every year. This offering from Rev. Jim Rigby is a funny (and tragic) parable for our time. Yes Virginia - One person's wise man is another's terrorist. Of course, giving Mary and Joseph a room at your inn these days would get you thrown in jail under the Patriot Act (and Heaven knows how many other obscure and Draconian laws of der Homeland).
Let us hope that the true meaning of Christmas touched (at least in some small way) those who serve the empire rather than humanity, and so continue the steady march to oblivion as the walls of the empire slowly crumble under their own weight.
Until the day we learn to live in peace with justice, and without fear,
Leonard
**************
Office of Homeland Security Cancels Christmas
by Jim Rigby
Ellis Island - The three wise men were arrested today attempting to enter the country. The Iraqi nationals were carrying massive amounts of flammable substances known as "frankincense" and "myrrh." While not explosives themselves, experts revealed that these two substances could be used as a fuse to detonate a larger bomb. The three alleged terrorists were also carrying gold, presumably to finance the rest of their mission.
Also implicated in the plot were two Palestinians named Joseph and Mary. An anonymous source close to the family overheard Mary bragging that her son would "bring down the mighty from their thrones and lift up the lowly." In what appears to be a call to anarchy, the couple claims their son will someday "help prisoners escape captivity."
"These people match our terrorist profile perfectly," an official source reported.
All of the suspects claimed they heard angels singing of a new era of hope for the afflicted and poor. As one Wall Street official put it, "These one-world wackos are talking about overturning the entire economic and political hierarchy that holds the civilized world together. I don't care what some angel sang; God wants the status quo - by definition."
A somber White House press secretary announced that it might be prudent to cancel Christmas until others in the plot are rounded up. "I assure you that this measure is temporary. The president loves Christmas as much as anyone. People can still shop and give expensive gifts, but we're asking them not to think about world peace until after we have rid the world of evil people. For Americans to sing, 'Peace on earth, good will to all,' is just the wrong message to send to our enemies at this time."
The strongest opponents of the Christmas ban were the representatives of retail stores, movie chains and makers of porcelain Christmas figurines. "This is a tempest in a teapot," fumed one unnamed business owner. "No one thinks of the political meaning of Christmas any more. Christmas isn't about a savior who will bring hope to the outcasts of the world; it's about nativity scenes and beautiful lights. History has shown that mature people are perfectly capable of singing hymns about world peace while still supporting whatever war our leaders deem necessary. People long ago stopped tying religion to the real events in the world."
There has been no word on where the suspects are being kept, or when their trial might be held. Authorities are asking citizens who see other foreigners resembling nativity scene figures to contact the Office of Homeland Security.
Tuesday, December 27, 2011
Friday, December 23, 2011
Following the Ways of Peace (an offering by Kathy Kelly)
Published on Friday, December 23, 2011 by CommonDreams.org
Amid War, Following Yonder Star Towards Peace
Through most of my life, I’ve found it easy to resonate with the ringing and beautiful Christmas narrative found in the Gospel of Luke, but less so with that jangling discord with which westerners are so familiar—the annual collision between (on the one hand) the orgy of gift-purchasing and gift-consumption surrounding the holiday and the the sweeter, simpler proclamations of peace on earth heralded by the newborn’s arrival. I've found myself quite surprisingly happy to spend many Christmases either in U.S. jails or among Muslims living in places like Bosnia, Iraq, Jordan and now Afghanistan. My hosts and friends in these places have been people who are enduring wars or fleeing wars, including, as in the case of U.S. jails, a war against the poor in the United States.
The Christmas narrative that imagines living beings coming together across divides, the houseless family with no room at the inn, the shepherds and the foreign royals arriving, all awakening to unimagined possibilities of peace, comes alive quite beautifully in the community with which I'm graced to find myself here in Kabul.
Five of the Afghan Youth Peace Volunteers are spending winter months in the apartment here which accommodates their group as well as visiting guests such as our small Voices delegation. In recent months, the place has evolved into a resource center for learning languages and exchanging ideas about nonviolent movements for social change. I am filled with fond and deep admiration for these young people as I watch them studying each other’s languages and preparing their own delegation to visit other provinces of this land on the brink of civil war, meeting with other young people wherever they can.
I’ve often described Afghan Youth Peace Volunteers as having bridged considerable ethnic gaps in their steadfast aspiration to someday live without wars. It’s quite impressive, during this trip, to learn from them about how close several of them came to becoming armed fighters.
One young friend recalls having spent three weeks, at age 12, as part of a Taliban group. He had no choice but to go with the Taliban as a conscript. He was given a rifle, as well as adequate food, and assigned to be a sentry. "I loaded the weapon and I fired warning shots," said our young friend, who is now 21 years of age, "but I didn’t feel good about it.” A village elder intervened, saying the new recruits were too young, and the Taliban released my friend and the other young teens.
We watched a film together in which another youngster, about seven years previously, had acted the role of the leader of a group of children imitating Talib fighters. Carrying sticks, the young actors had harassed a little girl over her determination that she would learn to read. Now we asked the young man, himself a Hazara, how he felt about playing a Taliban child. He acknowledged having grown up believing that anyone who was part of an ethnic group that had persecuted his people could never be trusted.
The father of another youngster had been killed by the Taliban. Still another describes how he watched in horror as Hazara fighters killed his brother.
Last week, the AYPVs welcomed a new friend who lives in a neighboring province and speaks a different language to join them and help them learn his language. Asked about NATO/ISAF night raids and other attacks that have occurred in his area, the new friend said that families who have suffered attacks feel intense anger, but even more so people say they want peace. "However, international forces have made people feel less secure," he added. "It’s unfortunate that internationals hear stories about Afghans being wild people and think that more civilized outsiders are trying to build the country. People here are suffering because of destruction caused by outsiders."
The air, the ground, the mountainsides, the water, and even the essential bonds of familial living have been ravaged by three decades of warfare here in Afghanistan. People living here have suffered the loss of an estimated two million people killed in the wars. 850 children die every day because of disease and hunger.
Amid excruciating sorrow and pain, it’s good to see people still find ways to gather for celebrations, even when the sounds seem curious and the dances seem, to some, forbiddingly exotic. Differences between insiders and outsiders become less relevant as people meet one another to celebrate.
Peace can surprise us when it comes, and that alone is abundantly sufficient cause for celebration in this season, wherever we are. Dr. King wrote that "the arc of history is long but it bends toward justice," and we should not be surprised as new and growing movements around us reveal an unquenchable and ineradicable longing for simple justice. The killing fields that scar our earth and sear the memories of survivors beckon us to look and listen for new ways of living together. Massacres of innocents call to us to reject the easy and familiar and go home by an other way.
The desires to live more simply, to share resources more radically, and to prefer service to dominance are not unique to any place, season, or religion. Such desires may yet herald unions previously unimagined and a better world for every newborn, each one bringing an astonishing potential - as we do if we strive to fulfill it - for peace.
The Christmas narrative that imagines living beings coming together across divides, the houseless family with no room at the inn, the shepherds and the foreign royals arriving, all awakening to unimagined possibilities of peace, comes alive quite beautifully in the community with which I'm graced to find myself here in Kabul.
Five of the Afghan Youth Peace Volunteers are spending winter months in the apartment here which accommodates their group as well as visiting guests such as our small Voices delegation. In recent months, the place has evolved into a resource center for learning languages and exchanging ideas about nonviolent movements for social change. I am filled with fond and deep admiration for these young people as I watch them studying each other’s languages and preparing their own delegation to visit other provinces of this land on the brink of civil war, meeting with other young people wherever they can.
I’ve often described Afghan Youth Peace Volunteers as having bridged considerable ethnic gaps in their steadfast aspiration to someday live without wars. It’s quite impressive, during this trip, to learn from them about how close several of them came to becoming armed fighters.
One young friend recalls having spent three weeks, at age 12, as part of a Taliban group. He had no choice but to go with the Taliban as a conscript. He was given a rifle, as well as adequate food, and assigned to be a sentry. "I loaded the weapon and I fired warning shots," said our young friend, who is now 21 years of age, "but I didn’t feel good about it.” A village elder intervened, saying the new recruits were too young, and the Taliban released my friend and the other young teens.
We watched a film together in which another youngster, about seven years previously, had acted the role of the leader of a group of children imitating Talib fighters. Carrying sticks, the young actors had harassed a little girl over her determination that she would learn to read. Now we asked the young man, himself a Hazara, how he felt about playing a Taliban child. He acknowledged having grown up believing that anyone who was part of an ethnic group that had persecuted his people could never be trusted.
The father of another youngster had been killed by the Taliban. Still another describes how he watched in horror as Hazara fighters killed his brother.
Last week, the AYPVs welcomed a new friend who lives in a neighboring province and speaks a different language to join them and help them learn his language. Asked about NATO/ISAF night raids and other attacks that have occurred in his area, the new friend said that families who have suffered attacks feel intense anger, but even more so people say they want peace. "However, international forces have made people feel less secure," he added. "It’s unfortunate that internationals hear stories about Afghans being wild people and think that more civilized outsiders are trying to build the country. People here are suffering because of destruction caused by outsiders."
The air, the ground, the mountainsides, the water, and even the essential bonds of familial living have been ravaged by three decades of warfare here in Afghanistan. People living here have suffered the loss of an estimated two million people killed in the wars. 850 children die every day because of disease and hunger.
Amid excruciating sorrow and pain, it’s good to see people still find ways to gather for celebrations, even when the sounds seem curious and the dances seem, to some, forbiddingly exotic. Differences between insiders and outsiders become less relevant as people meet one another to celebrate.
Peace can surprise us when it comes, and that alone is abundantly sufficient cause for celebration in this season, wherever we are. Dr. King wrote that "the arc of history is long but it bends toward justice," and we should not be surprised as new and growing movements around us reveal an unquenchable and ineradicable longing for simple justice. The killing fields that scar our earth and sear the memories of survivors beckon us to look and listen for new ways of living together. Massacres of innocents call to us to reject the easy and familiar and go home by an other way.
The desires to live more simply, to share resources more radically, and to prefer service to dominance are not unique to any place, season, or religion. Such desires may yet herald unions previously unimagined and a better world for every newborn, each one bringing an astonishing potential - as we do if we strive to fulfill it - for peace.
Thursday, December 15, 2011
Joseph, Mary & Jesus pitch at tent at Trinity Wall Street Church!!!
WILL TRINITY CHURCH TEAR DOWN OWS NATIVITY SCENE?
Church and lay activists install guerrilla gift in front of Wall St. church
Today [Thursday, December 15, 2011] at 2pm, prominent New York religious figures along with Occupy Wall Street activists will erect a nativity scene outside Trinity Wall Street Church. The scene—which activists are calling a "peace offering" in advance of this Saturday's planned occupation of a sliver of unused Trinity land—will feature Joseph, Mary, and Jesus within an Occupy Wall Street tent adorned with relevant scripture.
"The story of Christmas starts with Mary and Joseph's search for a home," said Reverend Michael Ellick of Judson Church. "It's thus especially ironic, and tragic, that Trinity Church—one of the largest landowners in New York City—refuses even a tiny, unused piece of its vast land to OWS, which points to the same spirit of transformation that Jesus represented."
"This is truly a theological line in the sand," added Ellick. "The gospel is about real-world transformation, not cosmetic charity. How is it that Trinity's real estate is worth over 10 billion dollars, and all they can do for Occupy is hand out hot chocolate?"
Rev. Ellick and other participants will also deliver a petition from over 12,000 Faithful America members urging the church to offer sanctuary to the protesters. Faithful America is an online community of people of faith taking action for social justice.
"Trinity is faced with a choice: are they a church or are they a real estate company with a religious storefront?" said Andrew Huckins, one of the organizers of this Saturday's planned occupation. "We truly hope that Trinity moves beyond charity and joins the Occupy movement in its quest for social and economic justice."
According to Max Page, author of The Creative Destruction of Manhattan, in the early 20th century Trinity "offended the sensibilities of elite New Yorkers by ignoring the squalor over which it was landlord... and unjustly redistributing the wealth of the church to its uptown parishioners." In short, the book notes, Trinity acted "like a big business and not a religious institution."
"Trinity can use this opportunity to act according to the beliefs we all espouse," said Ellick. "We deeply hope that they do so."
Contact:
Rev. Michael Ellick (Judson Church): 646-734-0162
Andrew Huckins (OWS): 413-522-1129
Sean Devlin (Yes Lab): sean@yeslab.org
For more information: http://occupyfaithnyc.com/
Church and lay activists install guerrilla gift in front of Wall St. church
Today [Thursday, December 15, 2011] at 2pm, prominent New York religious figures along with Occupy Wall Street activists will erect a nativity scene outside Trinity Wall Street Church. The scene—which activists are calling a "peace offering" in advance of this Saturday's planned occupation of a sliver of unused Trinity land—will feature Joseph, Mary, and Jesus within an Occupy Wall Street tent adorned with relevant scripture.
"The story of Christmas starts with Mary and Joseph's search for a home," said Reverend Michael Ellick of Judson Church. "It's thus especially ironic, and tragic, that Trinity Church—one of the largest landowners in New York City—refuses even a tiny, unused piece of its vast land to OWS, which points to the same spirit of transformation that Jesus represented."
"This is truly a theological line in the sand," added Ellick. "The gospel is about real-world transformation, not cosmetic charity. How is it that Trinity's real estate is worth over 10 billion dollars, and all they can do for Occupy is hand out hot chocolate?"
Rev. Ellick and other participants will also deliver a petition from over 12,000 Faithful America members urging the church to offer sanctuary to the protesters. Faithful America is an online community of people of faith taking action for social justice.
"Trinity is faced with a choice: are they a church or are they a real estate company with a religious storefront?" said Andrew Huckins, one of the organizers of this Saturday's planned occupation. "We truly hope that Trinity moves beyond charity and joins the Occupy movement in its quest for social and economic justice."
According to Max Page, author of The Creative Destruction of Manhattan, in the early 20th century Trinity "offended the sensibilities of elite New Yorkers by ignoring the squalor over which it was landlord... and unjustly redistributing the wealth of the church to its uptown parishioners." In short, the book notes, Trinity acted "like a big business and not a religious institution."
"Trinity can use this opportunity to act according to the beliefs we all espouse," said Ellick. "We deeply hope that they do so."
Contact:
Rev. Michael Ellick (Judson Church): 646-734-0162
Andrew Huckins (OWS): 413-522-1129
Sean Devlin (Yes Lab): sean@yeslab.org
For more information: http://occupyfaithnyc.com/
Monday, December 12, 2011
Nativity,circa 2011
Dear Friends,
It is that time of year once again when Christians ponder the story of the birth of Jesus and all the events surrounding that miracle birth. As many times as I have seen the story of the Nativity I don't think I have ever seen anything more than a sanitized version, one that glosses over the ugly yet very real parts of the story.
It is much the same for so much of history, whether it be the story of Columbus (and just about every other story of colonization), or that of the genocide of Native Americans or Aboriginal Peoples of Canada. I am grateful to Gary Kohls for sharing the following story by Kevin Annett, called "Nativity." It is much more than a modern take on the Nativity; it is also a telling, between the lines, of the treatment of aboriginal peoples and of those who take Jesus' life and teachings seriously, and often suffer tremendously as a result.
In a modern world not unlike that of the time in which Herod ruled, one has to wonder how much (or how little) we have learned in roughly 2000 years. As many times as we hear (or see) the story of the Nativity, do we really get it? And if we do, as so many (who call themselves Christians) claim, then why do so we still turn away the stranger, the immigrant, the homeless...???
A former minister of the United Church of Canada, Kevin Annett has helped give voice to the long suffering First Nations Peoples of Canada. Here is Kevin's offering for yet another desperate Advent as we wait in the stillness of these dark days. Here is a link to Kevin's Website, Hidden from History: Canada's Holocaust, www.hiddenfromhistory.org.
In Peace,
Leonard
The last Christmas we were all together hangs over memory like the fog did that year in the Alberni valley. It was a time of gathering, two years and more of labor summoning so many together where once there were but a few. And it was a time of ending.
The church stewards had warned me to expect an overflow crowd at the Christmas eve service, and like overgrown elves they had busied themselves around the building, stringing wires and sound systems in the cold auditorium kept that way to save money. The snows had come early, and our food bank was already depleted.
With my eldest daughter who was but five, I had walked to the church one morning in the week before yule, pondering the cold and the sermon, when I met the one who would pierce the fog that year for us. She stood patiently at the locked door, her brown eyes relaxing as we approached. Her bare hand gestured at me.
“You’re that minister, ain’t you?” she mumbled to me, as daughter Clare fell back and grabbed my hand.
Before I could answer, the stranger smiled and nodded, and uttered with noticeable pleasure at her double entendre, "They say you give it out seven days a week!”.
I smiled too, gripping Clare’s hand reassuringly and replying, “If you mean food, we’re a bit short, but you’re welcome to whatever’s left.”
She nodded again, and waited while I unlocked the door and picked up Clare, who was clinging to me by then. The basement was even more frigid than the outside, but the woman doffed her torn overcoat and sighed loudly as we approached the food bank locker.
“For all the good it’ll do …” she said, as I unlocked the pantry and surveyed the few cans and bags lying there.
I turned and really looked at her for the first time. She was younger than she had sounded, but a dark, cancerous growth marred her upper lip, and a deep scar ran down her face and neck. Her eyes were kindness, and in that way, very aboriginal.
“I’m sorry there’s not more …” I began, since back then I still saw things in terms of giving. But she shook her head, and instead of saying anything, she looked at Clare, and the two of them exchanged a smile for the first time.
I stared, confused, at the cupboard so bare, and heard her finally utter, “Them people in church, you know what they need?”
I set Clare down and shook my head.
“They need Him. They sing about Him, and pretend they know Him, but hell, they wouldn’t spot Him even if He came and bit ‘em on their ass.”
I smiled at that one, and even dared a mild chuckle.
“You doin’ a Christmas play for the kids?” she continued.
“Yeah”.
“I bet it’s the usual bullshit with angels and shepherds, right?”
I nodded.
“That don’t mean nuthin’ to those people. Why don’t you do a story about … well, like, if He came to Port Alberni to be born, right now.”
I finally laughed, feeling very happy. She smiled too, walked over to the cupboard and picked up a small bag of rice. Donning her coat, she nodded her thanks, and said, “My bet is Him and Mary and Joseph, they’d end up in the Petrocan garage, down River road. The owner there lets us sleep in the back sometimes.”
And then she was gone.
I didn’t try explaining the stranger to anyone, ever, or what her words had done to me. All I did was lock the food cupboard and lead Clare up to my office, where I cranked up the heat and set her to drawing. And then I sat at my desk and I wrote for the rest of the day.
The kids in church were no problem at all. They got it, immediately. The Indians who dared to mingle in the pews that night with all the ponderous white people also took to the amateur performance like they had composed it themselves, and laughed with familiarity as the holy family was turned away first by the local cops, and then hotel owners, and finally by church after church after church.
It was mostly the official Christians who were shocked into open-mouthed incredulity at the coming to life of something they thought they knew all about. As the children spoke their lines, I swear I saw parishioners jump and writhe like there were tacks scattered on the pews.
“Joe, I’m getting ready to have this kid. You’d better find us a place real friggin' quick.”
“I’m trying, Mary, but Jehovah! Nobody will answer their door! I guess it’s ‘cause we’re low lifes.”
“Look! There’s a church up ahead. I bet they’ll help us!”
If you believe the Bible, whoever He was loved to poke fun at his listeners and shock them out of their fog, and our play would have made him proud. As the eight-year old girl who played Mary pleaded fruitlessly for help from a kid adorned in oversized clerical garb, and was covered in scorn by the young “priest”, I heard a sad moan rise from the congregation.
But things took a turn when Mary and Joe came upon an Indian, played by one of the aboriginal kids.
“Sir, will you help us? My wife’s going to have a baby …”
“Sure!” replied the native kid with gusto. “I got a spot in a shed behind the gas station down the road. The owner lets us all sleep in there!”
And in a contrived scene of boxes and cans scattered where our communion table normally stood, Mary had her baby, as erstwhile homeless men with fake beards and a stray rez dog looked on, and one of the witnesses urged Mary to keep her newborn quiet lest the Mounties hear his cries and bust everyone for vagrancy.
Voices were subdued that night in the church hall over coffee, cookies and Christmas punch, and the normally dull gazes and banalities about the time of year were oddly absent. The Indians kept nodding and smiling at me, saying little, and not having to; and the kids were happy too, still in costume and playing with the local stray who had posed as the rez dog in the performance that would always be talked about. It was the white congregants who seemed most pregnant that night, but they couldn’t speak of it.
It was one of my last services with them, and somehow they all knew it, since we had all entered the story by then. For a churchly Herod had already heard a rumor, and dispatched assassins to stop a birth, and me, even though it was already too late.
My daughter Clare was not running and rolling with the other kids, but in her manner joined me quietly with her younger sister Elinor in tow. Our trio stood there, amidst the thoughtful looks and unspoken love, and person after person came to us and grasped our hands, or embraced us with glistening eyes. An aging Dutch woman named Omma van Beek struggled towards me in her walker and pressed her trembling lips on my cheek, and said something to me in her native tongue as the tears fell unashamedly from both of us.
Later, when we were scattered and lost, I would remember that moment like no other, as if something in Omma’s tears washed away all the filth and loss that were to follow. And perhaps that looming nightfall touched my heart just then, for I gave a shudder as I looked at my children, almost glimpsing the coming divorce, and I held my daughters close as if that would keep them safe and near to me forever.
The snow was falling again as we left the darkened building, kissing us gently like it had done years before when as a baby, Clare had struggled with me on a toboggan through the deep drifts of my first charge in Pierson, Manitoba, on another Christmas eve. The quiet flakes blessed us with memory, and settled in love on the whole of creation, even on the unmarked graves of children up at the old Indian residential school.
The old Byzantine icon depicts Jesus as a baby, hugging his worried mother while she stares ahead into his bloody future: her eyes turned in grief to the viewer, yet his loving eyes seeking her, past the moment, past even his own death.
The image may still hang in the basement of my church, where I left it.
.................................................................................
Kevin Annett
260 Kennedy St.
Nanaimo, BC Canada V9R 2H8
250-753-3345
www.hiddenfromhistory.org
Ed Note [from Gary Kohls]: Reverend Kevin Annett was fired, without cause, from his successfully rejuvenated United Church of Canada (UCC) parish in Port Alberni, British Columbia (the United Church of Canada has no connection to the United Church of Christ [UCC] in the United States) when he refused to stop his probing into his church’s role in the abusive Residential Schools for Aboriginal children in Canada, where as many as 50,000 children died. (The Residential School system in Canada was essentially the same as the racist church-operated Mission School system for American Indian children in the US).
Rev Annett’s persistence in this investigative work has resulted in two books and an award-winning documentary (entitled “Unrepentant”) about the sobering history of the Canadian government’s and the Canadian Christian church’s genocidal activities against First nation’s children. A feature film depicting Rev Annett’s powerful story has been produced but has yet to obtain a distributor.
It is that time of year once again when Christians ponder the story of the birth of Jesus and all the events surrounding that miracle birth. As many times as I have seen the story of the Nativity I don't think I have ever seen anything more than a sanitized version, one that glosses over the ugly yet very real parts of the story.
It is much the same for so much of history, whether it be the story of Columbus (and just about every other story of colonization), or that of the genocide of Native Americans or Aboriginal Peoples of Canada. I am grateful to Gary Kohls for sharing the following story by Kevin Annett, called "Nativity." It is much more than a modern take on the Nativity; it is also a telling, between the lines, of the treatment of aboriginal peoples and of those who take Jesus' life and teachings seriously, and often suffer tremendously as a result.
In a modern world not unlike that of the time in which Herod ruled, one has to wonder how much (or how little) we have learned in roughly 2000 years. As many times as we hear (or see) the story of the Nativity, do we really get it? And if we do, as so many (who call themselves Christians) claim, then why do so we still turn away the stranger, the immigrant, the homeless...???
A former minister of the United Church of Canada, Kevin Annett has helped give voice to the long suffering First Nations Peoples of Canada. Here is Kevin's offering for yet another desperate Advent as we wait in the stillness of these dark days. Here is a link to Kevin's Website, Hidden from History: Canada's Holocaust, www.hiddenfromhistory.org.
In Peace,
Leonard
*************
Nativity
Nativity
By Kevin D. Annett
The last Christmas we were all together hangs over memory like the fog did that year in the Alberni valley. It was a time of gathering, two years and more of labor summoning so many together where once there were but a few. And it was a time of ending.
The church stewards had warned me to expect an overflow crowd at the Christmas eve service, and like overgrown elves they had busied themselves around the building, stringing wires and sound systems in the cold auditorium kept that way to save money. The snows had come early, and our food bank was already depleted.
With my eldest daughter who was but five, I had walked to the church one morning in the week before yule, pondering the cold and the sermon, when I met the one who would pierce the fog that year for us. She stood patiently at the locked door, her brown eyes relaxing as we approached. Her bare hand gestured at me.
“You’re that minister, ain’t you?” she mumbled to me, as daughter Clare fell back and grabbed my hand.
Before I could answer, the stranger smiled and nodded, and uttered with noticeable pleasure at her double entendre, "They say you give it out seven days a week!”.
I smiled too, gripping Clare’s hand reassuringly and replying, “If you mean food, we’re a bit short, but you’re welcome to whatever’s left.”
She nodded again, and waited while I unlocked the door and picked up Clare, who was clinging to me by then. The basement was even more frigid than the outside, but the woman doffed her torn overcoat and sighed loudly as we approached the food bank locker.
“For all the good it’ll do …” she said, as I unlocked the pantry and surveyed the few cans and bags lying there.
I turned and really looked at her for the first time. She was younger than she had sounded, but a dark, cancerous growth marred her upper lip, and a deep scar ran down her face and neck. Her eyes were kindness, and in that way, very aboriginal.
“I’m sorry there’s not more …” I began, since back then I still saw things in terms of giving. But she shook her head, and instead of saying anything, she looked at Clare, and the two of them exchanged a smile for the first time.
I stared, confused, at the cupboard so bare, and heard her finally utter, “Them people in church, you know what they need?”
I set Clare down and shook my head.
“They need Him. They sing about Him, and pretend they know Him, but hell, they wouldn’t spot Him even if He came and bit ‘em on their ass.”
I smiled at that one, and even dared a mild chuckle.
“You doin’ a Christmas play for the kids?” she continued.
“Yeah”.
“I bet it’s the usual bullshit with angels and shepherds, right?”
I nodded.
“That don’t mean nuthin’ to those people. Why don’t you do a story about … well, like, if He came to Port Alberni to be born, right now.”
I finally laughed, feeling very happy. She smiled too, walked over to the cupboard and picked up a small bag of rice. Donning her coat, she nodded her thanks, and said, “My bet is Him and Mary and Joseph, they’d end up in the Petrocan garage, down River road. The owner there lets us sleep in the back sometimes.”
And then she was gone.
I didn’t try explaining the stranger to anyone, ever, or what her words had done to me. All I did was lock the food cupboard and lead Clare up to my office, where I cranked up the heat and set her to drawing. And then I sat at my desk and I wrote for the rest of the day.
The kids in church were no problem at all. They got it, immediately. The Indians who dared to mingle in the pews that night with all the ponderous white people also took to the amateur performance like they had composed it themselves, and laughed with familiarity as the holy family was turned away first by the local cops, and then hotel owners, and finally by church after church after church.
It was mostly the official Christians who were shocked into open-mouthed incredulity at the coming to life of something they thought they knew all about. As the children spoke their lines, I swear I saw parishioners jump and writhe like there were tacks scattered on the pews.
“Joe, I’m getting ready to have this kid. You’d better find us a place real friggin' quick.”
“I’m trying, Mary, but Jehovah! Nobody will answer their door! I guess it’s ‘cause we’re low lifes.”
“Look! There’s a church up ahead. I bet they’ll help us!”
If you believe the Bible, whoever He was loved to poke fun at his listeners and shock them out of their fog, and our play would have made him proud. As the eight-year old girl who played Mary pleaded fruitlessly for help from a kid adorned in oversized clerical garb, and was covered in scorn by the young “priest”, I heard a sad moan rise from the congregation.
But things took a turn when Mary and Joe came upon an Indian, played by one of the aboriginal kids.
“Sir, will you help us? My wife’s going to have a baby …”
“Sure!” replied the native kid with gusto. “I got a spot in a shed behind the gas station down the road. The owner lets us all sleep in there!”
And in a contrived scene of boxes and cans scattered where our communion table normally stood, Mary had her baby, as erstwhile homeless men with fake beards and a stray rez dog looked on, and one of the witnesses urged Mary to keep her newborn quiet lest the Mounties hear his cries and bust everyone for vagrancy.
Voices were subdued that night in the church hall over coffee, cookies and Christmas punch, and the normally dull gazes and banalities about the time of year were oddly absent. The Indians kept nodding and smiling at me, saying little, and not having to; and the kids were happy too, still in costume and playing with the local stray who had posed as the rez dog in the performance that would always be talked about. It was the white congregants who seemed most pregnant that night, but they couldn’t speak of it.
It was one of my last services with them, and somehow they all knew it, since we had all entered the story by then. For a churchly Herod had already heard a rumor, and dispatched assassins to stop a birth, and me, even though it was already too late.
My daughter Clare was not running and rolling with the other kids, but in her manner joined me quietly with her younger sister Elinor in tow. Our trio stood there, amidst the thoughtful looks and unspoken love, and person after person came to us and grasped our hands, or embraced us with glistening eyes. An aging Dutch woman named Omma van Beek struggled towards me in her walker and pressed her trembling lips on my cheek, and said something to me in her native tongue as the tears fell unashamedly from both of us.
Later, when we were scattered and lost, I would remember that moment like no other, as if something in Omma’s tears washed away all the filth and loss that were to follow. And perhaps that looming nightfall touched my heart just then, for I gave a shudder as I looked at my children, almost glimpsing the coming divorce, and I held my daughters close as if that would keep them safe and near to me forever.
The snow was falling again as we left the darkened building, kissing us gently like it had done years before when as a baby, Clare had struggled with me on a toboggan through the deep drifts of my first charge in Pierson, Manitoba, on another Christmas eve. The quiet flakes blessed us with memory, and settled in love on the whole of creation, even on the unmarked graves of children up at the old Indian residential school.
The old Byzantine icon depicts Jesus as a baby, hugging his worried mother while she stares ahead into his bloody future: her eyes turned in grief to the viewer, yet his loving eyes seeking her, past the moment, past even his own death.
The image may still hang in the basement of my church, where I left it.
.................................................................................
Kevin Annett
260 Kennedy St.
Nanaimo, BC Canada V9R 2H8
250-753-3345
www.hiddenfromhistory.org
Ed Note [from Gary Kohls]: Reverend Kevin Annett was fired, without cause, from his successfully rejuvenated United Church of Canada (UCC) parish in Port Alberni, British Columbia (the United Church of Canada has no connection to the United Church of Christ [UCC] in the United States) when he refused to stop his probing into his church’s role in the abusive Residential Schools for Aboriginal children in Canada, where as many as 50,000 children died. (The Residential School system in Canada was essentially the same as the racist church-operated Mission School system for American Indian children in the US).
Rev Annett’s persistence in this investigative work has resulted in two books and an award-winning documentary (entitled “Unrepentant”) about the sobering history of the Canadian government’s and the Canadian Christian church’s genocidal activities against First nation’s children. A feature film depicting Rev Annett’s powerful story has been produced but has yet to obtain a distributor.
Wednesday, December 7, 2011
Time to Occupy War Street - Here's Why!!!
Friends,
The Occupy movement is facing a huge range of inequities in our world, among them the huge Military-Industrial Complex that sucks both the spiritual and economic life from the citizenry. Robert Greenwald has done an excellent job of succinctly presenting the GREED and dizzying influence of the corporate giants that dominate the killing industries. Read it and then OCCUPY WAR STREET!!!
Peace,
Leonard
*************
Financial Sector CEO Pay in 2010
Lobbying Domination
Disgusted by the overwhelming corporate influence in Congress? Look no further than the big military contractor companies, whose flagship companies spend enough on lobbying to dwarf even financial sector titans.
War Industry Lobbying Expenditures for 2010
Financial Sector Lobbying in 2010
Want to know where all the money went that could be putting people back to work or keeping U.S. manufacturing industries competitive? The war industry CEOs dumped lobbying cash on Congress and diverted all that wealth to their private bank accounts.
Striking a blow for democracy
The war contractors’ iron grip on the wealth and politics of our country has caught the attention of our friends at Occupy Wall Street, who are targeting war profiteers in its draft list of demands with a call to bring home “all military personnel at all non-essential bases” and to end the “Military Industrial Complex’s goal of perpetual war for profit.”
We’re allies of the Occupy movement, which swells from the 99%’s disgust and dysfunction with our system. A democracy for and of the people that favors the 0.01% at the expense of the 99.99% of us is no democracy at all.
We here at Brave New Foundation and the War Costs campaign have been inspired by the incredible work of the Occupy movement, so we created our latest video to help push this critical piece of their message: war for profit has to end. We’re asking viewers to share our video with their local Occupy groups and organize a guerrilla screening at an Occupy protest in your city.
The Occupy protests have a lot to teach us, and the leaderless movement is at minimum an indictment of our political system. They’ve stopped whispering, and we’ve all started shouting.
Occupy your city and show this video to your community.
The Occupy movement is facing a huge range of inequities in our world, among them the huge Military-Industrial Complex that sucks both the spiritual and economic life from the citizenry. Robert Greenwald has done an excellent job of succinctly presenting the GREED and dizzying influence of the corporate giants that dominate the killing industries. Read it and then OCCUPY WAR STREET!!!
Peace,
Leonard
*************
Meet the 0.01 Percent: War Profiteers
By Robert GreenwaldThere’s the top 1% of wealthy Americans (bankers, oil tycoons, hedge fund managers) and there’s the top 0.01% of wealthy Americans: the military contractor CEOs.
If you’ve been following the War Costs campaign, you already know that these corporations are bad bosses, bad job creators and bad stewards of taxpayer dollars. What you may not know is that the huge amount of money these companies’ CEOs make off of war and your tax dollars places them squarely at the top of the gang of corrupt superrich choking our democracy. These CEOs want you to believe the massive war budget is about security — it’s not. The lobbying they’re doing to keep the war budget intact at the expense of the social safety net is purely about their greed.
In many areas, including yearly CEO salary and in dollars spent corrupting Congress, these companies are far greater offenders than even the big banks like JP Morgan Chase or Bank of America.
Egregious Military Contractor CEO pay
The top 0.01% of earners make at least $9.14 million per year, a rarefied strata of income that includes defense company CEOs and Wall Street bank chieftains alike. But a deeper dive demonstrates how defense companies outpace the big banks’ knack for enriching themselves at the expense of everyone else.
Military Contractor CEO Pay in 2010
- Northrop Grumman CEO Wes Bush: $22.84 million.
- Lockheed Martin CEO Robert Stevens: $21.89 million.
- Boeing CEO James McNerney: $19.4 million.
Financial Sector CEO Pay in 2010
- JP Morgan Chase CEO James Dimon: $20.81 million.
- Wells Fargo CEO John Stumpf: $18.97 million.
- Bank of America CEO Brian Moynihan: $1.94 million.
Lobbying Domination
Disgusted by the overwhelming corporate influence in Congress? Look no further than the big military contractor companies, whose flagship companies spend enough on lobbying to dwarf even financial sector titans.
War Industry Lobbying Expenditures for 2010
- Lockheed Martin: $12.7 million.
- Northrop Grumman: $15.7 million.
- Boeing: $17.89 million.
Financial Sector Lobbying in 2010
- JP Morgan Chase:$7.41 million.
- Wells Fargo: $5.43 million.
- Bank of America: $3.98 million.
Want to know where all the money went that could be putting people back to work or keeping U.S. manufacturing industries competitive? The war industry CEOs dumped lobbying cash on Congress and diverted all that wealth to their private bank accounts.
Striking a blow for democracy
The war contractors’ iron grip on the wealth and politics of our country has caught the attention of our friends at Occupy Wall Street, who are targeting war profiteers in its draft list of demands with a call to bring home “all military personnel at all non-essential bases” and to end the “Military Industrial Complex’s goal of perpetual war for profit.”
We’re allies of the Occupy movement, which swells from the 99%’s disgust and dysfunction with our system. A democracy for and of the people that favors the 0.01% at the expense of the 99.99% of us is no democracy at all.
We here at Brave New Foundation and the War Costs campaign have been inspired by the incredible work of the Occupy movement, so we created our latest video to help push this critical piece of their message: war for profit has to end. We’re asking viewers to share our video with their local Occupy groups and organize a guerrilla screening at an Occupy protest in your city.
The Occupy protests have a lot to teach us, and the leaderless movement is at minimum an indictment of our political system. They’ve stopped whispering, and we’ve all started shouting.
Occupy your city and show this video to your community.
Article printed from speakeasy: http://blogs.alternet.org/speakeasy
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