A day to mourn, a day to learn

Today is the second annual National Day of Truth and Reconciliation. How are you marking the day?

I put on my orange shirt and intended to go downtown and seek out some of the events planned by different groups, but changed my mind when I realized that there are a few time-sensitive things at home that I can't put off. I was feeling a bit guilty about that until I heard a piece on the radio about some young Indigenous artists and how they were planning to spend today.

One said that she was going to stay home and spend it in quiet mourning for all the wrongs done to her people, and to work on projects that connect her to her culture. "It's not a day of celebration for me," she said. "It's a day to remember."

Hearing that, I thought that perhaps it might be better to have a quiet day as I go about my tasks, listening to music by Indigenous artists, thinking about my friends who are from various First Nations communities, praying for healing for all who are hurting as memories surface today. And perhaps later I'll reread the 95 Calls to Action from the Truth and Reconciliation Commission, which can be found here, and look for a good book to read so I can learn more about the work settlers like me need to do toward making amends for our colonial past. If you have any books to recommend, please leave a comment below...

How are you marking today?

I leave you with a powerful music video by Digging Roots called The Healer, and pray their refrain, no more, no more struggling, no more, no more suffering, can become our mantra as we find ways to live in Truth and Reconciliation as people of Turtle Island...

Jake's gift

One Sunday morning in March at the community of Emmanuel, Jake flashed a big smile at me from across the room. This was before I even knew his name. So I walked over and introduced myself, and he smiled that big smile again and said, "My name is Jake, and I need someone to pay attention to me."

I laughed and said, "I'm all ears." Jake proceeded to tell me that he was spending a lot of time in the Maker Space at our downtown library, learning about digital printing. He said he had been spending hours and hours working on a small replica of a farm windmill, and he was quite fascinated with the process of using computer code to generate it. I told him that was really a cool thing to learn.

Two weeks later, he brought the windmill to show me. It was printed in an off-white plastic medium, and I told Jake that I was impressed, as my own knowledge of computers is fairly limited.

A few weeks later, I was chatting with the regulars at his usual table, and Jake said, "I'd like to make you something. How about a little planter?" I was delighted, and told Jake that would be really something, as no one has ever made me anything with a digital printer.

Three Sundays later, Jake approached me and said, almost sheepishly, "I finished your present. Unfortunately, the Library won't give it to me unless I pay them nine dollars and ninety cents for the materials." As luck would have it, I had slipped a ten dollar bill into my back pocket that morning for another reason, but I pulled it out and handed it to Jake. "I can't wait to see it," I said. "I bet it's awesome."

And it is... the next Sunday, Jake brought me a little planter pictured above with the receipt for $9.90 from the downtown branch of the Edmonton public library. I fussed over how cute and Escher-esque it is, and he said, "And see here? this little trough on the side lets excess water run out if you overwater your plants." He was delighted to give it to me, and I was every bit as delighted to receive it.

When I got home, I puzzled over what to plant in it, and remembered some microgreen seeds in my kitchen cupboard. I planted them, and the next Sunday, I took the planter back to show Jake that it works. We set it on the altar so everyone could see the results of Jake's creativity, and he was quite proud in his humble way.

Last night for supper, I made a lovely deli-style sandwich with some yummy little microgreens on top.

Thanks, Jake!

When ONE is too many

The City of Edmonton's annual homeless count is today. Volunteers endeavor to find and count the homeless people in our city, and I always wonder how accurate their count is. Not very, I suspect.

Yesterday, I drove Lee to his place of work in the Research Park not far from the Anthony Henday ring road, and took Shadow-dog for a walk around the area. It's a lovely area with a couple of ponds and many well-placed trees, not far from South Edmonton Common, a major shopping centre. 

So I wasn't too surprised when I discovered a man with a shopping cart living among the trees in an unused corner of a parking lot. I'm guessing his chance of being counted today is pretty much nil.

The Edmonton Coalition on Housing and Homelessness (ECOHH) sent other volunteers out today with a handbill containing some of the info you'll read below. ECOHH wants to raise awareness of the fact that a count of the homeless population doesn't really do much to solve anything. However, the handbill did manage to shock a group of teenagers when they read that 222 people died on Edmonton's streets in 2021, compared to 132 in 2020. It's clear that serious issues for homeless people are increasing.

It's one thing to gather statistics on how many people are homeless, and another to solve the lack of non-market affordable housing. Homeward Trust, a local social service organization that has a program called Housing First, notes on its website homepage that 2,671 people are currently experiencing homelessness. Of them, 56% identify as Indigenous, 45% as female, and 18% as youth.

In a wealthy province and country called Alberta, Canada, even ONE homeless person is too many.

Even more shocking, it's estimated that more than a quarter million people in our country will experience homelessness at some point this year.

Edmonton City Council is doing what it can, but the real problem is that provincial and federal funding for affordable housing and support services has been completely inadequate since the 1980s. Adequate housing is a human right, one the 2,671 people known to Homeward Trust lack. And that number doesn't begin to address the tens of thousands of people who are living in unsafe, unhealthy, inadequate, or too expensive places, people who are in danger of becoming homeless themselves for any number of reasons.

So what do we do? For the moment, we can write Premier Jason Kenney (premier@gov.ab.ca) and Prime Minister Justin Trudeau (justin.trudeau@parl.gc.ca) and tell them it's past time to invest in actually building desperately needed housing. They need to be reminded that it has been proven, time and again, that giving people a roof over their heads is more fiscally responsible than leaving them to fend for themselves on the streets. Otherwise, governments end up investing more taxpayer funds to care for homeless people than investments in housing and wrap-around care require.

Even one homeless person is too many. Especially when you come upon one who seems to be dying on the sidewalk before your eyes, as I did on Sunday morning.

If you are able, please click those email addresses and write to ask that federal and provincial governments invest in affordable housing and wrap-around care. If you're not from Alberta, it's easy to computer search your own politicians. 

It's time to #endhomelessnessyeg. And everywhere else, too.

December 5, 2021
There's a much longer line of tents now...

Care for a Courageous Conversation?

This week I had the opportunity to attend a Healing of Memories International workshop led by Father Michael Lapsley, an amazing man who knows a lot about pain and healing. It was a rich experience -- an opportunity to share in the sorrows and struggles we all face as human beings and take a step forward in my own journey. We can tend to minimize our own pain when faced with horrific tragedies like the one recently experienced by brothers and sisters from James Smith Cree Nation who attended this week's workshop. But we all learned that pain is pain, and healing is possible when we are able to face it and eventually let it go. Of course, that is the work of a lifetime.

Please don't forget to keep James Smith Cree Nation, Weldon, and their community members both in and out of hospital in your prayers as they continue on the road to healing.

Father Lapsley is here for a few more days, and will lead a special event tomorrow evening at St. Faith's Anglican Church (11725 93 Street) from 6-9 pm here in Edmonton. Edmonton and area friends truly interested in healing, truth, and reconciliation, please consider coming. Father Michael's work in South Africa and around the world can help us here on Turtle Island... recent events show us how much healing is needed in our world and in the lives of all who live in this land.

All are welcome.

Raise a song of gladness

The resurrection icon
we will pray with on Sunday

When Covid-19 shut the world down back in March of 2020, I wondered how long it would be until our Ecumenical Prayer evenings of scripture, silence, and the songs of Taize would start up again. 

Throughout these 30 months, I have missed the consolation of singing and praying with musicians and friends of different denominations, though I did my best to keep prayer going online. Of course, praying alone, even when you know other people are praying along in their own spaces, just isn't the same. Especially when it comes to raising our voices to God together.

It's been a long two-and-a-half years of being separated, but this Sunday, September 18th, we are gathering to pray in person with the group of musicians and the music I have missed so much. It's a resurrection, of sorts! And all are welcome to join us!

As health officials keep reminding us, the pandemic is not yet over, so it's recommended to wear a mask whenever we're indoors or in close proximity to people outside our immediate circles. I will be doing that as I don't think I've had the virus yet, and my life with diabetes means I still don't want to run the risk. It's up to each person to decide for themselves how they are most comfortable participating.

We will return to raising songs of gladness and prayer on this coming Sunday evening, September 20, from 7 to 8 pm at St. Thomas D'Aquin church, 8410 89 Street, which happens to be the place where we held our last prayer evening on March 8, 2020. I hope you can join us if you're in the area. We will be praying for the good of all of creation, as we are smack dab in the middle of the month of Creation.

Raise a song of gladness, peoples of the earth... Jubilate Deo omnes terra!

Simple Suggestion #286... Save seeds

I can't believe I've gotten this far into these Simple Suggestions without moodling about seed-saving. Though I do love the seed catalogues that come every January, even better is planting the seeds I've saved myself because they cost me -- and the planet -- nothing. They don't have to be shipped across the country, and they're guaranteed organic when they come from my own backyard.

To me, it's just fascinating how life perpetuates itself on this planet, and how many different ways plants have of presenting their seeds to the earth. In my experience, the only things needed to save seeds are curiosity, a willingness to wait for them to mature, and a way to dry them well.

Granted, there are many different methods of saving seeds, some of which involve all sorts of chemical processes and fungicides. But the thing to remember is that our ancestors didn't have hi-tech ways to save their seeds from year to year. They simply dried and saved what they had, perhaps supplementing their caches by trading with neighbours.

So here are the seeds I'm saving this year:

14 different varieties of tomatoes.
I just spread the seeds on labelled paper napkins,
dry them, and pull them off the paper to plant next spring.

Five varieties of pepper seeds,
taken from the insides of this year's peppers.
Peaches and cream corn seed, 
dried on the last cob of the season.

Purple, yellow and green bush beans,
purple peacock and scarlet runner pole beans.

Snow peas (above) and snap peas (already put away).

Purple and white onions.

These seed pods are so cool!

Garlic cloves, and tiny onion bulbs
that barely got started this year
but will be full grown onions next year, hopefully!
I'll plant my garlic from this year's cloves in the next few weeks.
 

There are lots of other seeds yet to come -- pumpkins and squashes, cucumbers, sunflowers and annual flower varieties. About the only seed I've had a hard time saving is carrot and some of the other root crops, and I wonder if that's because the varieties I grow are hybridized beyond the ability to produce seed in the usual way, or if our season isn't quite long enough for the seed to mature here. I keep trying -- there are a couple of Chantenay carrot seed heads out in the garden that I hope to dry and try again next year. I guess we'll see!

The real trick with seed saving is to ensure that seeds are viable so that we don't miss out on the early part of next year's growing season because things refuse to sprout. I like to check my seeds in the spring by soaking them overnight and seeing if they'll start to show signs of life between paper towel kept damp and dark under plastic. (That's what paper towel gets used for in this house -- otherwise we use regular rags). I also like to store my seeds in the charity return envelopes that come in the mail since most of our charitable giving is now done online.

There's nothing like growing your own food... but even better is growing your own from seed you've saved yourself! If you have any questions, don't hesitate to ask! That's what the comment section below is for.

Looking for more Simple Suggestions? Click here.

We're all a little lost

Somehow I forgot to hit the publish button. This moodling was actually written on September 11th.

Today's reflection is brought to you by 
Luke 15: 1-32.

This morning's Gospel reading of Jesus' stories about the lost sheep, the lost coin and the lost son is a beautiful message for us in light of the past week's events. Or any week's events, for that matter.

What it boils down to is that we're all a little lost. We think we know what we're about, and we like to project a certain level of self assurance, but it doesn't take much for us to get turned around, like the little lamb or the woman whose coin goes missing.

The loss of a relationship, a death in the family, a missed opportunity, even just a misplaced cell phone, and life goes off the rails to varying degrees (cell phones are minor issues, mostly). Some events leave much bigger holes in our lives and souls than others.

But God knows us, and knows what we need at every given moment, because God is always with us. God is embracing us in the midst of divorce, death, unemployment, addictions, mental health crises, you name it. The Comforter in all our losses, if only we reach for that comfort, especially when we go astray. And as Pastor Quinn pointed out, the fact that we can sometimes laugh or smile in the midst of disasters is a sign of God's presence. God is in our sense of humour! 

God meets us in our lost moments, and waits for an invitation to celebrate with us once we find our way again. Grace is always there, waiting, to embrace us in whatever way we need.

These are the things we celebrated at Inner City Pastoral Ministry this morning. Today was a sad and quiet morning of mourning with James Smith Cree Nation, with Dorothy, who lost her older brother, and with remembering Brian, who was murdered in Tuesday's stabbing rampage here in the city. We are not the Community of Emmanuel for nothing. God-is-with-us even in these hard, hard things that make the tears run down our cheeks. And also in the smiles and jokes with which we often say farewell for another week.

Farley closed the service by singing Gretchen Peters' song, Say Grace, which was a truly perfect choice (God inspires Farley regularly). I leave it with you, and wish you a week of knowing you are found, and always welcomed back with open arms.

The most recent suffering

Last night I listened to the voices of the parents of the young man who killed 11 people on James Smith Cree Nation, and cried along with them.

It's a parent's deepest suffering to lose a beloved child, never mind two children.

And to have to watch as children make choices that lead to destruction not only for themselves, but for others too, is gut-wrenching. You could hear it in the apologies and sobs of Myles and Damien's parents.

A friend of mine tells me that he has reached "saturation point" with all these Indigenous issues, and wonders what happened that sets their suffering on a higher rung of the existential ladder than anyone else's. Suffering is universal, he says, so how is theirs worse? 

It's a mindset that's easy to fall into if we live in a world of white privilege. 

While it's true that we all have our heartaches and sorrows because suffering is universal, what makes the trauma of Indigenous peoples so much worse is that they have been treated as less than human and ignored for generations by settler peoples (our ancestors included) who, knowingly or unknowingly, saw Indigenous lands and livelihoods as free for the taking. 

It's centuries -- not weeks or months or years of injustice -- that has led to the gangs, drugs, addictions, and violence that took 12 people down, including two sons of the couple whose hearts are forever broken. 

Our hearts need to break with theirs before we can really understand and true healing can begin. 

If suffering is universal, I pray that healing can be, too.

The waning of the garden

It's that time of year again, when the sun disappears earlier and earlier (8:10 this evening, and it was 8:30 just last week!!) Summer's heat has let go for cooler evenings, and though the plants started dying-back in August, yellow leaves in my veggie patch are becoming more pronounced. Our 4000 L water tank has emptied out during the past very dry month, we've pulled all the peas and beans and dug their beds, and I'm up to my ears in tomatoes and other veggies that need to be canned or frozen. God's abundance is in evidence everywhere I look.

Even so, the garden is on the wane, and it's time for my last garden video report of 2022. Anybody need a cabbage?

Sunday Reflection: New words for an old prayer

Today's reflection is brought to you by

Matthew 6:9-13. 

I like that Jesus taught his disciples -- and us -- how to talk to God (pray) in the gospels. But I wonder what words he might choose in this day and age. After all, the translation of his Aramaic over the centuries, and the more recent human shift in understanding God as more than male or female both leave me wishing he'd show up and offer us new words for his prayer. 

Not that I have problems with God as Father, but I like God as Mother, Lover, Tender, and many other descriptions as well. What Would Jesus Do?

I've already posted a newer version of the Creed from my first experience at ICPM some years ago, and now I'd like to share a version of Jesus' prayer that I think he would like, one that applies to us all no matter how we believe. It's written by Miriam Therese Winter, a Medical Mission Sister (who wrote Joy is Like the Rain, which for me represents the joyful inclusion of guitars in church music). Her version of the prayer is beautiful, especially when juxtaposed with the original found in Matthew 6: 9-13:

O Holy One, who is within,                        Our Father in heaven,

we celebrate your many names.                 hallowed be your name.

Your wisdom come.                                     Your kingdom come,

Your will be done,                                       your will be done,

unfolding from the depths within us.          on earth as it is in heaven.

Each day you give us all that we need.      Give us this day our daily bread,

You remind us of our limits,                        and forgive us our debts,

and we let go.                                              as we also have forgiven our debtors.

You support us in our power,                      And lead us not into temptation,

and we act with courage.                            but deliver us from evil.                      

For you are the dwelling place within us,  For yours is the kingdom, 

the empowerment around us,                     the power, 

and the celebration among us,                   and the glory, 

now and forever.                                         now and forever.

Of course, the newer words will never hold the familiar comfort of the traditional prayer for most people, but it's a beautiful broadening of Jesus' words for modern minds. It excludes no one, reminds us that God is already more present with us than we often think, and still holds the same basic meaning: that we are meant to talk directly to God, and that God loves us and looks after us.

What more do we need?

Squash blossom special

Ricotta-stuffed blossoms

My garden is producing lots of squash and pumpkin blossoms in these summer days, so a couple of weeks ago, I decided it was time to try some for supper.

My dear friend Lidia, God rest her, taught me about squash blossoms one summer morning before covid. She asked me to go out to her garden and collect the blossoms for her. 

When I brought them in, she proceeded to remove the anthers (the yellow pollen-covered stem-like piece inside) and the calyxes (the green spiky bits on the outside bottom near the centre of each petal). 

Unfortunately, I had to disappoint her by leaving before she could serve me some for lunch, so she explained that she was going to put a spoonful of ricotta cheese inside, press it flat, dip the whole thing in beaten egg, dust it in flour, and fry it in butter with a bit of salt and pepper.

It took me three years, but now I've done it several times, and wow, the results are delicious! Who knew those flowers could have such a nice flavour?! 

Chalk it up as another simple little blessing that came from knowing my neighbour Lidia.