Society

Noah’s Trauma

February 5, 2021 1 Comment

I’m praying for health care workers, nurses, doctors today. The Covid-19 Pandemic is taking a toll. And its not over. When it is “over,” it will likely not be over for many of them even if it is over for us.

If you are not sure that our health care teams are under a rising and constant stress from the pandemic just a run a search for it. The articles and the stories of tragedies among health care providers are there in many countries.

Recently a parent in our congregation sent me an email with their child’s inquiry. “Why did Noah curse his child?” I had an answer but I framed it within my belief informed by exposure to trauma based care.

I think Noah was wrong; he made a mistake. Even though God called him and God preserved his life, Noah may have carried in his body the mysterious weight of surviving and of leading through the flood. Noah a man of the soil (Genesis 9:20) knew what he was doing when he planted the vineyard, waited a few years to harvest the grapes, and then made wine.

This builder of the ark had become a man of the sea. Where he may have once felt in control on life on land, he experienced an utter lack of control on the seas of judgment. The experience was likely traumatic. Yes, I wonder, what grace from God was available to him. But Noah, even a few years after the flood, after running a ship made for survival, “became drunk and lay uncovered inside his tent.”

Ham discovered his father, and told his bothers Shem and Japheth. They covered their father with a blanket, but only after walking in backwards, so they would not see their father naked. When Noah “awoke from his wine” he heard what the “youngest had done to him” and cursed him.

I think Noah’s response is actually a reaction to shame and he brought God into it. Ham stumbled into the moment that Noah had created. I think surely Noah was still working out what he had lived through.

The write of Hebrews reminds us that by faith, “in holy fear” Noah “built an ark to save his family.” (Hebrews 11:7) But what was he doing by faith now?

I’m not sure of all the motivations for health care providers. But perhaps most entered in order to save us. The pandemic has complicated and frustrated that desire. They would like to keep us out of the hospital so they affirm and calls us to the preventative actions we can take. Frustration rises when we don’t act like the pandemic flood is real. And then there is the actual care. The doors of their ship, the hospital, are still open for the sick and dying. So we go and some of us are restored to health.

This pandemic will draw to the close. I’m concerned for the health care providers who have carried the weight of our survival. What safe places of refuge will be created for their soul care?

Dear Health Care Providers, My neighbourhood doesn’t do the 7 O’Clock Health Care Provider Salute anymore. But I haven’t forgotten you. I’m praying for you today.

Relationships, Society, Work

,

Students Squeezed in a Vice of Our Own Making

February 2, 2021 0 Comments

I recently read Patrick Deneen’s Why Liberalism Failed, so I’m going back through to capture some quotes. Most memorable for me has been his description of the crisis post-secondary students are experiencing.

Deneen writes:

The rising generation is indoctrinated to embrace an economic and political system they distinctly fear, filling them with cynicism toward their future and their participation in maintaining an order they cannot avoid but which they neither believe in nor trust. Far from feeling themselves to constitute the most liberated and autonomous generation in history, young adults believe less in their task at hand than Sisyphus rolling the boulder up the mountainside. They accede in the duties demanded of them by their elders, but without joy or love–only with a keen sense of having no other choice. Their over whelming response to their lot–expressed in countless comments they have offered to me over the years describing their experience and expectations of the r own education–is one of entrapment and “no exit,” of being cynical participants in a system that ruthlessly produces winners and losers even as it demands that they understand this system to be a vehicle of “social justice.” One can hardly be surprised that even the “winners” admit during frank moments that they are both swindlers and swindled. As one student described the lot of her generation to me:

“We are meritocrats out of a survivalist instinct. If we do not race to the very top, the only remaining option is a bottomless pit of failure. To simply work hard and get decent grades doesn’t cut it anymore if you believe there are only two options the very top or rock bottom. It is a classic prisoner’s dilemma to sit around for 2-3 hours at the dining hall “shooting the breeze,” or to spend time engaged in intellectual conversation in moral and philosophical issues, or to go on a date all detract from time we could be spending on getting to the top and, thus, will leave us worse off relative to everyone else…. Because we view humanity–and thus its institutions–as corrupt and selfish, the only person we can rely upon is our self. The only way we can avoid failure, being let down, and ultimately succumbing to the chaotic world around us, therefore, is to have the means (financial security) to rely upon our selves.”

Advanced liberalism is eliminating liberal education with keen intent and ferocity, finding it impractical both ideologically and economically. Students are taught by most of their humanities and social science professors that the only remaining political matter at hand is to equalize respect and dignity accorded to all people, even as those insitusmions are mills for sifting the economically viable from those who will be mocked for their backward views on trade, immigration, nationhood, and religious beliefs. The near unanimity of political views represented on college campuses is echoed by the omnipresent belief that and education must be economically practical, culminating in a high-paying job in a city populated by like-minded college graduates who will continue to reinforce their keen outrage over inequality while enjoying its bounteous fruits. Universities scramble to provide practical “learning outcomes,” either by introducing a raft of new programs aimed to make students immediately employable or by rebranding and reorienting existing studies to tout their economic relevance. There is simply no choice to do otherwise in a globalizing, economically competitive world. Few remark upon the fact that this locution becomes ever more common in advanced liberalism, the regime that was supposed to ensure endless free choice.

At the moment of liberalism’s culmination, then, we see, the headlong evacuation of the liberal arts. The liberal arts were long understood to be the essential form of education for a free people, especially citizens who aspired to self-government. The emphasis on the great texts–which were great not only or even because they were old but because they contained hard-won lessons on how humans learn to be free, especially from the tyranny of their insatiable desires–has been jettisoned in favor of what was once considered “servile education,” an education concerned exclusively with money making and a life of work, and hence reserved for those who did not enjoy the title of “citizen.” Today’s liberals condemn a regime that once separated freeman from serf, master from slave, citizen from servant, but even as we have ascended to the summit of moral superiority over our benighted forebears by proclaiming everyone free, we have almost exclusively adopted the educational form that was reserved for those who were deprived of freedom. And yet in the midst of our glorious freedom, we don’t think to ask why we no longer have the luxury of an education whose very name–liberal arts–indicates its fundamental support for the cultivation of the free person.


Partick J Deneen, Why Liberalism Failed. Yale University Press, 2018. p. 11-13.

Education, Society

,

#BlackShirtDay

January 15, 2021 1 Comment

Last week I went on a walk with my youngest. She is thirteen years old. We chatted for a bit as we walked and then both settled into the pace and the quiet.

However, after a time, she asked me, “What are you thinking about?” It’s a favourite question. I answered and then asked her. “What are you thinking about?”

13yr old: I’m wondering if the people who made that show, Raising Dion, are going to make another season.

Me: I really enjoyed that show. I think they will. What do you like about it?

13yr old: I like his super powers.

Me: Don’t you think Dion’s mother was so stressed out? Raising kids with super powers must be something parents have to worry about.

13yr old: I have super powers.

Me: Yes?

13yrd old: I can write stories.

Me: Yes you can!

I’m asking you and I ask myself, “Should I be worried?”

I do worry. But not because of her super powers, but because her skin is black and she is growing up on a continent where white racial preferences and powers so often resist full kinship and economic inclusion with people who are black. She lives in a place where engagements with white people can become authority encounters vacated of generosity and acceptance if the expected respect and deference is not forthcoming. She lives where things turn ugly if the cultural rules of whiteness are not accepted. These kinds of encounters can happen on the street, in a school, on the playground, online, in a restaurant, in a classroom, on a protest line, in a church, at a friend’s house, in the park, at work, in a board room, on the sidewalk, in a store, at a gas station, in an auditorium, in the legislature, on the bus, in the courtroom, on the beach, over coffee…

Will she be ready? Will she be fortified in heart with the courage required to exercise her super powers and not be overcome by evil? Will she know she is beloved?

I know super powers do not protect us from the violence of hate. But I hope if my 13yr old gives voice to her stories and that she will play a part in realizing Martin Luther King Jr.’s dream. It’s his birth day, 15 January; he was born in 1929 and died in the year of my birth, 1968, assassinated while I was still in my mother’s womb. I didn’t know him, but I have been shaped by the spirit and content of his powers in speech and in leadership and in his dream.

But still, I worry.

(Here’s a shout out to Harambee Cultural Society who have encouraged us to get beyond worry and do something together. Thank you!)

Change, Society

, ,

Is this an apology?

December 3, 2020 2 Comments

My wife and I have taken to walking in the dark. It’s seems to be our only way to keep exercising as winter approaches, the daylight hours shorten, and the pandemic keeps us out of the gym.

I stopped in my tracks and laughed out loud the other night as we entered the intersection of 33rd and Ontario here in Vancouver. We both stopped to take a picture of the new banners at the corner of what used to be the community known as Little Mountain Housing.

If you don’t know about the sale of public land that had been dedicated to provided affordable housing in our city you can read about it, but you won’t learn much about the deal. Instead all that we know for sure is that there has been a long wait to realize any real gains for our city from the deal.

I’m not sure if Holburn is apologizing for the long wait; but I think they are. We should all take notice.

I was reading this very morning from Psalm 12 and the phrase in verse 5 captured me: “Because the poor are plundered and the needy groan, I will now arise,” says the LORD. “I will protect them from those who malign them.”

The issue remains, public lands have been sold that were dedicated to providing stability to the poor and vulnerable in our city. This land right in the heart of our municipality was set aside to provide housing stability and therefore opportunities for those who were vulnerable. I know that’s idealistic. I don’t romanticize the situation that existed there and that exists today in our city for those on the verge of homelessness. But I fear that Hoblurn’s promoted ambition to create “elevated lifestyles” is an idealism that does not include the poor.

I welcome correction.

Change, Society

, ,

What if my neighbour could be president?

October 28, 2020 0 Comments

What if my neighbour could be president?

I think I would like to vote for my neighbour.

Jesus commended being a neighbour. In fact Jesus seems to think more of being a neighbour than being a president, especially if one’s vision of greatness is lording it over other people.

I think my neighbour might be a good president, especially since she doesn’t want to be president. But, she acts like a president all the time; well if by that you mean she acts like a neighbour. She’s always organizing people to meet the needs of the day and when they can’t be organized or won’t be organized, she still finds a way to get it done. She’s quite the strategist too, thinking about the future, making adjustments so humans flourish. I would vote for her.

Jesus said the greatest commandment was to love God and that the second (commandment) was like it: to love your neighbour as yourself. When asked about loving the neighbour, Jesus promoted being the neighbour who loves. Seems like we should be voting for neighbours.

One of the things I’ve noticed about great neighbours, is that they tend to love those closest to them even when they are far from home. Love starts at home, maybe leading does too.

I think my neighbour could be a good president. I’d vote for him because he’s pretty keyed up about making our community a place where you would never want to sacrifice your children in order to live here, or even survive here. He doesn’t have a lot of catchy sayings, but he does seem to tell the truth… thoughtfully. In fact, he’s always thinking about how to make this a place where the next generation could thrive.

I have another neighbour who could be president. Maybe I should vote for him. I could write him in. He has a good fence, but he’s always leaning over it to say hello. He would be appalled to condone death by drone. Over the years he’s built unlikely friendships by serving behind the scenes over and over and over. I’d vote for him in a heartbeat.

What’s wrong with voting for a neighbour? What if the most powerful elected official in the country was going to be your neighbour? That would make you pause wouldn’t it?

And then there’s my neighbour who cares about air, soil, and water — and by doing so she really cares for people. She would make an excellent president. She’s so glad for people to work and she knows the priceless value of habitats. Why can’t we have presidents who know the power of “and.” You and me. Me and you. You and me and the stuff of earth.

What if choosing leaders as if they were going to be my neighbour might actually help me vote?

I think I’d like to vote for my neighbour. What about you?

#voteforyourneighbour

Note: No neighbours have paid for this endorsement, nor have any candidates for the office of president reached out to me. Most of my neighbours are Canadian, so they can’t be president. But, I sure have enjoyed thinking about my neighbours being the president if I voted for them!

Leadership, Society

, ,