In light of the most recent discovery of over 700 unmarked graves at a Residential School in Saskatchewan take the time to watch the CBC GEM production called Every Child Matters. Very well done and very informative. No more excuses to say that we just didn't know. We knew. We know.
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Looks like Sunday is going to be just right for hanging out in the shade and listening to some great music. We still have some spots left. We will be sure to provide cool water and shade to enjoy this concert. Swallowfield Farm is hosting The Rose Gellert String Quartet this Sunday June 27 7296 Telegraph Trail, Langley V1M 2M6 at 6.30pm and 8.30 pm please RSVP asap by email at [email protected] The Rose Gellert String Quartet (Will Chen, Llowyn Ball, Peter Ing, and Ben Goheen) has been together since 2015 and is the quartet-in-residence at Langley Community Music School where they provide outreach concerts for people who may not normally have the opportunity (care homes, low-income schools, etc). We're really excited to bring this program entitled "Locomotif" that explores the theme of transportation in music and includes a wide variety of genres from jazz to rock. Featured on this program will be Dvorak's "American" string quartet, which was inspired by the rhythms of the steam engines on his visit to the USA in the late 19th century. We're sure there will be something for everyone to enjoy! This will be an Outdoor COVID-conscious gathering, limited to 50 guests: 1) Please walk, or bike. Vehicles park in the pasture to avoid parking on Telegraph Trail. 2) Bring your own lawn chair, pillow/pad, blanket 3) As always, follow physical distancing guidelines and stay home if you have any COVID-19 symptoms 4) Washrooms will not be available (the program will be about an hour in length!) 5) We ask that you don't arrive too early or leave too late out of respect for the neighbours. 7) Admission by donation -suggested $25 per guest. Pay ahead by e-transfer or in the donation box on site. 8) Please arrive no more than 10 minutes before the concert time. Attachments area ReplyForward Swallowfield Farm is pleased to be hosting The Rose Gellert String Quartet this Sunday June 27at 6.30pm and 8.30 pm please RSVP asap by email at [email protected] The Rose Gellert String Quartet (Will Chen, Llowyn Ball, Peter Ing, and Ben Goheen) has been together since 2015 and is the quartet-in-residence at Langley Community Music School where they provide outreach concerts for people who may not normally have the opportunity (care homes, low-income schools, etc). We're really excited to bring this program entitled "Locomotif" that explores the theme of transportation in music and includes a wide variety of genres from jazz to rock. Featured on this program will be Dvorak's "American" string quartet, which was inspired by the rhythms of the steam engines on his visit to the USA in the late 19th century. We're sure there will be something for everyone to enjoy! This will be an Outdoor COVID-conscious gathering, limited to 50 guests per concert: 1)Vehicles park in the designated pasture to avoid parking on Telegraph Trail. 2) Bring your own lawn chair, pillow/pad, blanket 3) As always, follow physical distancing guidelines and stay home if you have any COVID-19 symptoms 4) Washrooms will not be available (the program will be about an hour in length!) 5) We ask that you don't arrive too early or leave too late out of respect for the neighbours. 7) Admission by donation -suggested $25 per guest. Pay ahead by e-transfer or in the donation box on site. 8) Please arrive no more than 10 minutes before the concert time. Take some time in the next three days to watch The Wisdom of Trauma featuring Dr. Gabor Mate'. The documentary is very well done and you can follow that with some of the other online interviews of Mate' with the likes of Esther Perel and Eve Ensler. Really enlightening and challenging. Limited time only for free. Breath:The New Science of a Lost Art is a really great read and maybe I was just primed for it, mostly by one of my daughters-in-law who knows that I have quite a reputation for snoring, as does one of my grandsons. My father was a legendary snorer. It’s not that I didn’t know this reputation about myself, though I did come to this knowledge late, mostly because my wife is rather long-suffering. I have tried a few remedies, like the little horseshoe shaped clip that sits in your nose when you sleep, but Breath takes this discussion up to another level. I must confess I don’t think too much about breathing, or about my nose and only when it’s plugged or Jenny is nudging me to turn over in my sleep, does it get much attention and yet it plays a rather big role in keeping all of us alive and healthy. James Nestor is a very entertaining science writer with great anecdotes to keep the reader engaged and though he may be short on the scientific intricacies, the book did have more than a ring of truth about it. For one, I immediately started to pay attention to my breathing and continue to, even a week after I closed the book. I have even tried some of the anti-snoring suggestions in the book, so far with limited success. Nestor ends his book with an Epilogue that has these suggestions: Shut your mouth, breathe through your nose(inhale for 5.5 seconds in, exhale 5.5), exhale, chew, breathe more on occasion, hold your breath, how we breathe matters. An interesting read and possibly very important. “Most men need a spirituality of the cross. Most women need to experience resurrection.” Fr Richard Rohr Aaron Niequist writes “Fr Rohr’s simple observation paints with a broad brush, but it contains a profound truth. So many of us men (especially white and middle class) were taught to step up, speak up, and occupy our space in this world. This isn’t entirely bad, but without the self-emptying path of Christ, we men often become destructive in our self-oriented confidence. Those of us raised to see ourselves at the center must learn how to die every day. Overwhelmingly, women don’t experience the world in the same way. From a young age, many women are taught to play small, defer to the loudest dude, and hide their power. This toxic messaging has caused so much damage—in them and in the world. Which is why the resurrection of Christ offers such a needed and healing invitation. A new and divinely empowered life is possible. This dynamic can play out in any imbalance of power. Those who have been on the upside are invited to follow Christ to the cross, and those who have been on the underside get lifted up in resurrection. And because many have experienced both realities through overlapping identities, the difficult work of discernment is usually required. We are rarely just one thing. But above all, in the unsearchable Wisdom of God, the ultimate goal is the same: being conformed into the loving image of Christ, as part of a new humanity, for the sake of the world. As a white, straight, middle class, Christian male, I don’t share this lightly. So much of Christ’s invitation to me is about the cross. Kenosis. Losing in order to find. I can see it but I struggle to live it out with any regularity. May God mercifully guide us all into our next right step in the Way.” How many of our schools have graveyards? On Friday evening we attended a vigil for the 215 indigenous children whose bodies are buried next to the Kamloops Indian Residential School. Approximately 200 people gathered at the Derek Doubleday Arboretum to hear the voices of intergenerational survivors even as the country tries to come terms with what this means for moving forward in a good way with Canada’s Indigenous peoples. The bones of the little ones cry out for justice! Will we ever know the full extent of the stories behind each of the deaths of these children who were forcibly taken from their mothers and fathers, brothers and sisters aunties and uncles and grandparents, from their language, their food, their villages, their places of safety and security. From home. And this happened for over 100 years. And we were silent or ignorant. We were complicit. At the event I spoke with the key organizer, Cecelia Reekie who is an intergenerational survivor. I had the privilege of working with Cecelia for several years on the interchurch committee that has been organizing a Walk for Reconciliation with Residential School Survivors for the past six years. Cecelia is a courageous and tireless worker for justice in this area. It’s not that long ago that she met her own birth mother and First Nations birth father who was also a school survivor. After that reunion she was able to more fully connect with the person she is at heart, the place she comes from and the struggle of her people. You can hear her tell her story given at TEDx Langley a few years ago. Cecilia said to me, that she feels like this discovery at the graveyard and the ones that will surely follow is the last chance for something to fundamentally change in Canadians, for Indigenous people to see justice done with regard to this genocide, with regard to land claims, and in relation to the many injustices that must be addressed. It was said with hope but also with some weariness. We cannot waste this moment in our history. When asked how much we have taken or learned from the pandemic, a UK imam in a conversation with Dr. Mohammed Abbas Khaki on an Al Jazeera short documentary Faith on the Covid Frontline tells of a meme he saw online that goes something like this, “Satan is mocking God, and says, ‘I closed all of your places of worship.’ Yeah, but God says, “Now I’ve made every home a place of worship.” I really love the perspective underlying that. This conversation is part of a larger one that follows Dr. Mo as he is known to his patients, as he talks about his experience as a Muslim medical doctor and a visible ethnic minority in the UK at this time in its history. Britain has left the EU with Brexit and has swung towards much more restrictive measures when it comes to migration and refugees. The irony of this is that this leaving came at the time of the pandemic in which a disproportionate share of medical care fell to newcomers and visible minorities who are on the frontline of essential services, senior’s care, food and farm services, etc.; many paid with their lives. The short documentary gives one pause, especially considering the senseless murder of the Afzal family in London, Ontario. What is the source of the hatred? How different is this response from the rise in hate crimes against Asian Canadians when we allow ourselves to be drawn into talking about the “China Virus?” Where does that kind of talk lead? At the heart of the short documentary is the contradiction. We follow Dr. Mo as he lives out his Muslim faith as doctor on the frontlines of Covid, a volunteer to various charitable causes and one who pursues the cause of the marginalized even as we emerge from a pandemic. Will the world we return to be ready to take up the root causes of systemic racism and work for justice and change or close in on itself and wall ourselves off from that ‘other world?’ Peace by Chocolate by Jon Tattrie recounts the journey of Syrian refugee family, the Hadhads, from war torn Damascus through Lebanon and on to Antigonish, Nova Scotia where they picked up the pieces of their previously successful chocolate business by starting Peace by Chocolate. Many Canadians are familiar with this particular story Peace by Chocolate: New Beginnings because of the attention that family received from Governor General David Johnston upon arrival, the Prime Minister who briefly told the family story at the United Nations meetings on refugees, and son Tareq’s meeting with Barack Obama. This is a happy story because the people of Antigonish are what a caring community can be. But it strikes me that this is not enough. I am happy that the Hadhads settled in Antigonish where it seemed everyone in the small town did their best to make this new family feel that this was their new home, that they could feel comfortable wearing a hijab, where they could worship freely, they could start a new business, go to school and have friends, and feel like there was a hope filled future. But what about you and me? The Hadhad family members are also in the bank queue ahead of you in your town, talking Arabic to each other. Their daughter works at Tim Hortons and mixes up your order. Their son plays on the same baseball team as my grandson and doesn’t know the rules. The mother is ahead of me in the grocery checkout and can’t get her bank card to work in the credit card reader and the clerk is getting annoyed. Are we still in Antigonish or are we somewhere else entirely? When we strive to be Antigonish the world is transformed. Salaam/Shalom is possible. On day three of our 6th annual Walk for Reconciliation with Residential School Survivors we were walking through Mission’s Heritage Park toward the buildings of what used to be St. Mary’s Residential School. The school was started by the Roman Catholic Missionary Oblates in 1862. Over 2000 students attended the school over its history, which was later taken over by the federal government and finally closed in 1985. All of these students experienced abuse of one kind or another. The weight of this year’s walk was heavier than previous years in that the news story about the discovery of 215 child graves at the Kamloops Residential school had just broken the Friday morning. Our walk begins across the river from the Kwantlen nation on Friday evening. We start out our walk along River Road, and it is not lost on any of us that one of the prominent landmarks on the reserve is the often-photographed little white Church of the Holy Redeemer. Many of the Kwantlen elders who live in the shadow of the church, attended residential schools and their stories are heartbreaking to hear. Our annual walk has always ended on the Sunday at the former residential school site and this time as we approached the school on the rise we were met by a circle of Indigenous Women who were holding a prayer vigil for the children of Kamloops Residential School who never returned home and for the children of St. Mary’s. The work of finding those graves has yet to begin. The women generously welcomed us into the circle, smudged each of us as they continued to tell their own stories and sing, pray and drum. We walk as the united churches of Langley in the spirit of Reconciliation. It seems so inconsequential in light of these terrible discoveries. The road of reconciliation is long and lined with sorrow. |
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