What a housing emergency means

Yesterday, here in Edmonton, Mayor Sohi declared a housing emergency in an effort to bring all levels of government together to come up with housing solutions. A good step, but there's a long way to go. At this point, it's anybody's guess as to whether other government officials will actually show up to the meetings.

Temperatures here in Canada's northernmost provincial capital are warming up a wee bit (-20 with windchill to -30 as I write), but people are still suffering frostbite and there have been at least 3 deaths from the cold this week that I know of, likely more. A housing emergency means that there aren't enough places for people in my city to stay warm, never mind live in a community of their own choosing. It means more than that, too.

As Canadians, we have been told that our country is high on the list of places where migrants and refugees want to live. For decades, our standard of living has been something many aspire to share. We've been proud of that.

But the fact is that housing prices continue to rise (due to greed in some cases) and because of that, there clearly isn't enough affordable housing for the people already here. If there was, no one would be freezing to death outside. Our governments used to invest in supportive and affordable housing, but lately they haven't put money down to get shovels in the ground and build what is needed right now. 

If that's not a housing emergency, I don't know what is. Clearly, things have to change so that we can ensure that no one has to live outdoors, and so we can welcome new would-be Canadians, especially from places where life is untenable.

I wasn't going to share this interview link from early Sunday morning as it feels embarrassing to do so, but the images (notice the fellow I wrote about last week with his dog, Billy Bob, on the trolley?) and the last minute or so of the interview about contacting elected officials -- are the whole point of what I keep going on about here. 

https://www.cbc.ca/player/play/2299556419635

The thing is, the inability to afford a home that affects even one person has a ripple effect on all of us. We are all connected, whether we realize it or not. No matter where we live, it's possible we don't realize that some of our neighbours may be having to choose between paying the rent or buying groceries/medications. 

Some of us might be safe, warm, and secure for the moment, but if we don't speak up in defense of those who are struggling, their miseries will compound, and might overwhelm the systems that sustain us all. Crime rates, pressures on healthcare and mental health, addictions, and so many other ills only increase when people are up against a wall. That's a future that none of us really want to imagine. 

So it's time to make noise.

Please, if you haven't already, contact your elected officials. Remind them that all of Canada (all of the world, really) is in various states of housing emergency. Give them the Bottom Line: housing is a human right, and government officials MUST work to ensure that everyone has homes that they can afford. And if you want to go the extra mile, suggest that basic income for all would be helpful too.

Both can happen with some effort, creativity and political will. But we have to push our politicians in the right direction, because they get distracted from these life and death situations by the darndest things! 

After reading my last moodling, my mom said, "why don't you post contact information for people who want to write letters?" So here it is. Mom -- you're right, I should have done it sooner! And everyone is welcome to share this moodling/these addresses with their circle of friends!

Sean Fraser, Canada's Minister of Housing, Infrastructure and Communities. Email address -- sean.fraser@parl.gc.ca 

Jason Nixon, Alberta's Minister of Seniors, Community and Social Services. Email address -- scss.minister@gov.ab.ca

And if you're not Albertan or Canadian, please don't doubt that there's a housing emergency where you live. It's world wide. Sending an email or phoning your own elected officials can get the ball rolling for a better and more resilient world. 

Hey, there's my word of the year!

I'll get off my soapbox now and post happier things for the rest of the month, I promise!

A year for tenderness

My best friend and I have had a tradition of picking a word at the beginning of each New Year, a word that we want to focus on for the 12 months to come. Usually the words are tied to our hopes and dreams, or to personal attributes that we want to work on.

2016's word was Trust, and it turned out to be a year in which I had to do lot of work on my trust in God. There were a lot of times when it was hard to see Her and Him working in the details of my life and the lives of those around me. It required a real effort on my part to let go of my own ego (a never-ending battle) and really listen to the people in my life so that I could love them better.

And though it was a very difficult year in many regards, I reaped many benefits, including the commitment to more regular centering prayer and a greater openness to possibilities even in situations that seem negative. God is in charge, and I think my trust in His and Her goodness and mercy increased in 2016. Even so, it was a tough year that broke me and some of the people around me in unexpected ways. Being brought to our knees by circumstances beyond our control is humbling and, to be frank, exhausting. I don't think I've ever cried as much as I did in 2016, angry, sad, and happy tears, but perhaps that just means I'm getting softer as I age!

When I was in Taizé in October, I brought home a postcard of the Madonna of Tenderness, above, written by Frère Eric, and she is posted near my desk. See how tender the Mother and Child are to each other? His little hand wrapped around her neck, caressing her cheek behind the veil, her cheek against his? If we could all feel the tenderness of mother for child and child for mother more often in our lives, this world would be a much different, more hopeful place.

And so, my word for 2017 is tenderness. I need a little more tenderness in my life. I need to be more tender toward the people around me, and I also need them to be tender toward me. I want to see the world become a place where tenderness and forgiveness and acceptance is chosen ahead of blaming and anger and apathy, where we can all find the peaceful places in our hearts and open them wider instead of becoming overprotective of what we think is ours. I want to remember that all the abundance of goodness, beauty and truth that we have has been given to us by our Tender God, our God who tends us and is attentive to us, our God who is more generous and loving than we can imagine.

That's my word, and I'm sticking to it.

If you were to pick a word for the year, what would you choose?

The power of a river, of love

The city has vanished today, it's snowing that hard. I know it's there on the other side of a wall of whiteness, but it's not possible to see the skyscrapers across the river, never mind three blocks down the road.

Shadow and I took just a short walk this morning. I decided to let him follow his nose, and was surprised when his nose turned homeward even sooner than I expected, probably because the windchill was reaching -29 C (-20 F). By mid-afternoon, the white stuff was up to the pup's chest, and it's supposed to continue snowing until noon tomorrow. 30 cm (12 in) was predicted, and I think we've got that already.

So it may be a while before Shadow and I can return to our favourite walks along and in the river valley. I'm glad we took the valley trails last week and on the weekend. If you remember, last Thursday we found a lovely rebel bike trail and were able to walk along a mostly frozen expanse of the North Saskatchewan where it takes a fairly tight turn. I told Lee about the walk that evening, and suggested we walk it together on Saturday.

The next day was warm and sunny, and everything began to melt. Grass started showing in our back yard, and the dog got so mucky from walking in puddles that I had to throw him in the laundry sink when we got home. 

On Saturday afternoon, Lee, Suzanna, and I took Shadow down the same rebel bike trail -- and the difference in the river's edge was amazing. Friday's warmth had weakened the ice that had spanned the river on Thursday, and the water pushed it right up against the banks in a giant jumble of slabs of all thicknesses. It would have been amazing to have a time-lapse camera set up for the 48 hours between the two walks...

This picture was taken on Monday, after more snow started to fall. You can see the open water where more ice is forming on the other side of the broken ice slabs. What amazes me the most is how tonnes of them piled up against the bank after just one day of warmth. The forces of nature are often quiet, moving almost without notice, but unstoppable all the same. 

And love is unstoppable, too. I've been thinking a lot about the happenings in Ferguson, Missouri, and how much people the world over need to remember that it's up to each person to decide whether love or hate will flow with inexorable force in our lives. It brings back to mind an old David Foster tune (written around the time the Berlin wall fell, with a line or two sung by Brian Adams) that I haven't heard in ages -- upbeat and optimistic -- that insists we are moving back to a River of Love. If you've never heard it, and the key change that still gives me goosebumps, I've found it on YouTube and posted it and its lyrics below.

My prayer, for everyone in Ferguson Missouri, for ICIL and those working to counter its hatred, for our missing and murdered First Nations women and their families, and for the marginalized homeless who are certainly feeling the cold in my city today, is that we can all remember our oneness and unleash God's relentless, unstoppable love in every corner of our broken world. God, help us to act justly, love tenderly, and walk humbly with our hands in yours.

+AMEN.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=j885Awunb6c

Life after life

Stand before eyes of the world

Each man, woman and child must decide

We hold inside

All the keys to paradise

All nations, all people, all are one

We were born in love and innocence

That's how we came here

We were given hearts to love or hate with

Our time has come

When we can live as one

River of love

We are moving back to the river of love

Tired walls must fall

That new hearts may be set free

We stand close to the edge of the truth

Old wounds must heal in a fresh equality forever

All nations, all people, all are one

We were born in love and innocence...

Every day our lives draw together

Why don't we help each other?

This is a chance for all the word

To have what it needs

The freedom to love

We were born in love and innocence...

We are moving back to the river of love...

A church for my girls... and everyone else

An open letter:

Dear Pope Francis and all you other bishops of the world,

I have been a baptized Catholic for all but the first seven days of my life. I grew up in a devout Catholic family, and earned my first few dollars in their Catholic church supplies store, surrounded by Catholic people when I worked there, and when I attended Catholic summer camps and Catholic youth retreats as a teen. As a young adult, I took university courses at a Catholic college, taught in a Catholic school, and eventually ended up with a Religious Education degree, going so far as to start my Masters before having a family. The long and the short of it is that you might be hard-pressed to find many lay people as steeped in Catholicism from the get-go as I am. Of late, I'm thinking I've overdone it!

Growing up just after the Second Vatican Council, I lived in a time of hope. It seemed that the church was renewing itself, broadening its point of view, becoming more up-to-date. Ecumenism! Liberation Theology! Inclusive language! Expanding roles for women, for lay people! So when my Catholic husband and I had our own family, I mistakenly thought that I could pass all this Catholic enthusiasm on to my own children by taking them to church from the time they were newborns, bundling them along to weekday mass when they were too young for school, teaching them and their peers at children's liturgy on Sundays, buying them Catholic books (from the aforementioned church supplies store), involving them in music at mass by leading a Junior Youth Choir for ages 4 to 12, helping them through their sacramental preparation for first communion, reconciliation and confirmation, and discussing all things Catholic with them whenever possible. If faith is caught, not taught, I was throwing everything I had into helping them catch it, even as the church changed tactics, reverting from a welcoming expansiveness to a more narrow exclusivity.

My girls caught the faith, but now it seems that they are rejecting Catholicism for reasons far beyond all my efforts to share its richness and beauty. The richness and beauty has paled because of a certain overzealous religion teacher who insists on emphasizing Catholic dogma and doctrine over Jesus' teachings about loving and serving one another, sharing our gifts, and being like him. The richness and beauty are being drowned out by a world that doesn't accept outdated teachings from a patriarchal hierarchy that science and common sense have proven wrong over time. My girls see a church that pays lip-service to women's participation. They see an institution that says "Pay, pray and obey," more than a community that is "justice, mercy, compassion, and mutual aid in the maintenance of life for one another," as female theologian Ivone Gebara puts it.

My daughters have faith, but they can't stomach the Church, so my husband and I are going to mass alone these days. And sometimes I wonder why we bother, because there is much there that I can't stomach either, like pompous and exclusive language, lay people being kept away from the altar, a re-emphasis on the rules and regulations that govern the celebration over Jesus' simplicity in sharing a meal, and a narrow view of who is worthy to receive. When I look around my church on a Sunday, I see the elderly, and young families, and a huge gap in the middle where families like mine should be. They've lost interest for many reasons. I am losing interest because I don't want to be part of a narrower church.

I read recently of another theologian, Victor Codina of Bolivia, who sees that the only way the Catholic Church will recover from a long downward slide is if it moves away from the ancient hierarchichal church model that dominated most of the past two millennia, beyond the Post-Vatican model of church as the People of God, straight back to Jesus' model of being church with the poor and marginalized until all are equal and all are welcomed to the table of community.

And when I look at my family, I know in the marrow of my bones that he's right. The hierarchy doesn't speak to them at all, and has definitely missed the boat with the multitude of Catholics who have left the church in my lifetime. The church as merely the worshipping People of God isn't working for my daughters either, who have never really felt connected to the community because there aren't many young people -- most of their Catholic school friends aren't churchgoers. Up until recently, our family's mass attendance was an exception to what seems like the rule -- we've always known more Catholic families who choose Sunday sports/shopping/sleep-ins than families willing to attend wordy Sunday liturgies that often don't seem to connect with life on the other six days of the week.

Dear Pope Francis and friends, since the change in the papacy last March, you have been throwing threads of hope to people like me. Now I ask, why not come up with a new version of church that is relevant to what ordinary people are actually living? How about rebuilding a church that actively invests every baptized believer with the same importance as its clergy, more like the way Jesus sent out his disciples? Could we try having a church that calls everyone to act justly, love tenderly, and walk humbly in the way Jesus did, without so much emphasis on all the rules and regulations associated with its structure, and with more stress on reaching out, getting to know, and being with and for the ones our church and our society shun? Can we come up with a liturgy that speaks to peoples' hearts, rather than using ancient prayer formulas that only the theologically-trained can readily understand? Can we recall that the early church was about gathering the people, telling the stories, breaking the bread and caring for each other in a much less formal way, and which was directly connected to the rest of life?

Jesus knew that we all need to be called to serve causes greater than ourselves. Lately the institutional church seems to be focused on increasing its numbers by bringing back the lapsed Catholics, but lapsed Catholics need a solid reason to return, a reason that awakens their passion for their faith, and I'm not seeing it being presented anywhere.

What is clear is that my girls -- and the rest of us -- need the kind of church that sets everybody's hearts on fire, a church that takes people past paying, praying and obeying to actually living Jesus' radical call to discipleship in the world, working and living for peace and justice in a community where everyone is valued and their gifts are celebrated and fully utilized. Jesus cared for the poor in their many guises in his corner of the world, the early Christians did the same, and so can we, if we step out of our comfort zones.

So, my brothers in the hierarchy, what can you do to build a new church to set our hearts on fire? What can we do together? I think it is time to call a New Council, invoke the Holy Spirit, and invite not mainly theologians and clergy this time, but everyone and anyone who wants to follow Christ (including those who have been turned off by the overzealous). Allow everyone to brainstorm, but most especially our youth, and let us all work together to chart a new path that will bring us all back to Jesus' way of being one with God, creation, and each other.

I keep you all in my prayers.

With hope,
Your sister in Christ,
Maria K.