Giving up Servants for Lent

I don’t know about you, but when I think of Lent, I think of people giving up something that they generally know isn’t great for them but would ordinarily lack motivation to stop. I think of people giving up coffee, or Facebook. I have friends who gave up electricity at home. Last year my wife and I gave up meat, another year it was sugary desserts.

Or people take on something good. Maybe they commit to spend a specific time in prayer. Maybe they take up some form of exercise. Whatever it is, it’s usually: give up a negative, take on a positive. Do something that makes space for God. Sounds simple, right?

I’m wishing it were.

That’s because this year, Lent feels different. Despite encouragement to take on some form of Lenten practice by my church’s priest, I was unable to. No meat fast, no extra times in prayer, no daily journaling, or whatever else. In the spirit of the Facebook meme, upholding a Lenten discipline = FAIL.

This year, God brought Lent on me.

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I have spent the last eight years of my life in relationship to Servants Vancouver, an intentional community in the Downtown Eastside. Feeling drawn to life in intentional community among the poor, I came to Servants straight from college. I wanted to learn what this life in intentional community is all about – what skills it takes, what rhythms, how it forms a person. More than that, I was seeking stability, a way of being in the world that could anchor me after a childhood of repeated and constant transition. I wanted to find a people committed to one another and to a place, so I could finally put roots down into the world.

Interning with Servants was amazing. I saw the Kingdom of God present in remarkable ways among our neighbours. I was venturing into an alternative, radical way of living, present among the sort of people it seemed like Jesus would spend time with. I had found others who shared my sense of mission. I felt passionate. I felt alive.

But I also discovered that intentional community was no harbour from transition. After a year of repeated physical and emotional upheaval, moving multiple times and seeing several close fellow community members leave, I was significantly destabilized and unhealthy. I panicked, and I hastily left the team, leaving others in the community confused and hurt.

What followed was one of the darkest times in my life. I had been living the dream, and now it was gone, sabotaged by my own lack of self-awareness. That winter I was filled with anger, hurt, despair. Yet I continued to join in Servants community dinners – Tuesdays, Thursdays, and Fridays. As spring arrived, I found work at a local urban farm, work I would continue for the next five years. I also began to pursue a relationship with a girl I had met during my internship with Servants. We dated. We got married. Anna had been taken on as the administrator for Canadian Servants sending office, and through her involvement I was invited to join her at Monday night team-only dinners.

For the next couple years, we struggled with a sense of being involved yet peripheral to the team. We were in the neighbourhood and shared the same sense of vision, but we weren’t considered full team members - like that party you never quite got invited to. When a family that had been part of the team for the last six years started preparing to move away, it seemed like our opportunity – finally - to get involved.

So we re-joined the team, and we moved in, six years after I first joined as an intern. After a period of wandering in the desert, not sure where I belonged, I felt like the Israelites finally coming home to the Promised Land. I was joining my people again. I dreamed of being like Allan and Jeanne Howe over at Reba Place Fellowship, who had lived their whole adult lives in thick intentional community, proving that it wasn’t just a life for young idealists.

But it appears that life had other plans. Our re-entry into community was rocky, troubled by differing expectations between us and others on the team. From the beginning, Anna and I responded in very different ways. After my previous struggle in community, this time I knew what I needed to thrive. And, for the most part, I did. I felt more able to shrug off unhealthy expectations of myself and live at peace with my limitations. I saw the tensions of community as inevitable opportunities for growth. And I felt, as before, alive.

But for Anna, it was different. From the very first months, she struggled repeatedly with feeling like she was failing to meet others’ expectations. She didn’t feel wired the way it seemed like you needed to be for Servants’ relational ministry. She felt unable to bring her full self to the table. I encouraged her to persevere, to see it as a chance to grow and learn to take care of herself. But the struggles continued. Eventually, she found work doing admin with a local street outreach priest, which helped her self-confidence. But it still wasn’t enough.

Finally, the time came to discern a renewed commitment to the team. I wanted to stay. Anna wanted to go. Yet we had to make a call. For Anna’s sake, it was clear that we needed to make a change. I didn’t want to, but there it was.

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Enter Lent.

It was just before this season of penitence and reflection began that my hopes of continuing to live with Servants shattered. I began the season with an overwhelming sense of loss. I told my priest, “It feels like God is tearing strips off me.” And it was true. This community I had discovered in Servants, locally and internationally, would no longer be my community. They’d be friends, of course. But it wouldn’t be the same.

Intentional community was how I understood my presence in the world. Being rooted in the DTES, alongside folks who have experienced marginalization and tremendous suffering, was how I understood what it means to follow Jesus. I had argued for and cast the vision for our way of life in Servants Vancouver for years. And now it was gone.

It would be nice if that were all. After informing the team in early March of our decision to leave, we were supposed to begin a slow three-month transition out, giving us, the team, and neighbours a chance to adjust to the changed reality. But as Anna’s mental health continued to decline, it was evident we needed to act quickly. Our curiosity about what housing might be available was almost immediately rewarded by the discovery of a promising, relatively affordable (still more expensive than Servants – it is Vancouver, after all) home in neighbouring Strathcona. The problem? It was opening up at the end of the month.

It felt like divine provision, but it wasn’t how things were supposed to go. We brought it to the team, needing to make a decision by the end of the weekend. They acceded, we applied to rent the house, and, with gratitude to God, we were accepted. But the resulting strain has been difficult. Three months of conversation, decision-making, and emotional processing have been forced into two weeks. Our teammates have felt shaken by the news, pained after we had worked so hard and agreed together about what a good transition should look like. Anna has already bowed out of team responsibilities, as she begins to re-discover how to take good care of herself. And after leaving so poorly years before, I’m struggling with how history has repeated itself again.

It’s different this time, I know. This decision wasn’t just for me, but for someone I love. But still: it feels far too familiar. Old scars have been re-opened, and I find myself walking around feeling like a raw, seeping wound. Leaving Servants, if it had to happen at all, was supposed to happen like a graceful, gradual death, not the sudden, violent spasm these last weeks have been.

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Of course, the fact that all this has taken place during the Lenten season has been far from lost on me. It’s forced me to ask uncomfortable questions, vulnerable questions. Like: have I been attached more to Servants than to God? Has it fed a moral superiority with which I don’t know how to function? What does it mean to be God’s beloved, before and after any so-called “radical” way of life?

Beyond that, what does it mean to be faithful to my wife when it means the loss of a dream? As Bonhoeffer declares in Life Together, the person who loves their dream of community in fact destroys community. Was my love for the ideal Servants represented actually destroying my wife?

I hadn’t thought I was too attached to the dream, but then that’s just it, isn’t it? You don’t realize how dependent you are on something until it’s gone. That’s the whole point of Lent. We intentionally strip ourselves of something that tempts us to rest our identity on it instead of God. And, as I have discovered... sometimes God does the stripping for us.

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I know the Easter story. I know resurrection is coming. But that doesn’t change the fact that death is still death. Messy. Violent. Tragic. Agonizing. Everything this departure feels like it’s been so far.

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Today is our last day as part of the Servants Vancouver community.

Today is also Good Friday.

Today, 2000 years ago, Jesus died.

Today I die with him.

Love Beyond the Line

Two stories.

     The first, just over three years ago.
     My wife Anna and I are sitting in the back courtyard of the Servants houses, enjoying a long summer evening's descent into twilight. A friend who co-led the church community I have been part of for the last two and a half years drops by, an irregular but welcome guest to our community dinner. We catch up on life a bit, now that we don't see each other every week. She tells us she has news to share, then drops the bomb: she is planning to marry her best friend, another woman, I feel blindsided, disoriented. I had no idea.
     For the greater part of the next year, as their wedding date approaches, I am intensely conflicted. I know she loves Jesus, I know her as a gracious and hospitable person, deeply committed to creating welcoming spaces for our more marginalized neighbours. Yet I can't reconcile this with my understanding of Scripture. If Paul and other early Christian writers understood sexual intimacy outside the bounds of marriage between a man and a woman as sinful, how could I support my friend's decision? How could I stay silent in their ceremony while the pastor asked if anyone knew a reason why they should not be wed?
     I couldn't. I knew it. It would violate my conscience, demand that I behave in a way that did not accord with my beliefs. So with much fear and trembling, I arranged to meet with my friend in a local coffee shop. We talk about plans for the future. We drink tea. I tell her how much I value her as a friend, how she inspires me by the way she has always made me and others feel safe.
     Then I tell her I can't come to the wedding.
   
     The second, July 31 of this year.
     It is so bloody loud. There are at least three floats within thirty feet of us, each blaring music at volumes that make my eardrums want to permanently secede from my body. The nearest float is a pirate ship, with shirtless men and bandanna-wearing women dancing unrelentingly from at least an hour before things even start. The nearby contingent from the Green Party is carrying bundles of green balloons that look like sea anemones floating placidly over their heads, unaffected by the noise (blessed creatures!).  Wads of paper towel in the ears work slightly to damp the noise, but not quite enough...
     Finally, a float up ahead starts to move. Our group turns the corner onto Thurlow, then another turn onto Robson. Then, people. Masses of them, completely lining the sidewalk, A tide of applause and cheers, ebbing and flowing from this ocean of humanity as we continue through the downtown core. It's exhilarating, overwhelming, even intoxicating. Gradually, I pick up a groove in my step from the music of the float directly ahead.
     I am marching in the 38th Vancouver Annual Pride Parade. Anna and I have joined a group from the Anglican Church of Canada, who has within the last two weeks voted to approve same-sex marriage. The bishop is with us. We have come with the folks from St. Brigid's, and a a sign hangs around my neck that they made the week before, declaring "Jesus loves you", with the Y and U made from bright rainbow tape.
     I may actually be having fun...

     So what happened?
     Some will offer their own answers for this. They might say we've "gone liberal", that we've left the pure revelation of Scripture behind for a pick-and-choose, watered-down cultural distortion of Gospel truth. They might say that affirming same-sex relationships is just one more step along a slippery slope of sexual promiscuity and immorality. They might note all the little steps taken to erode a solid foundation of biblical teaching, then lament that another Christian has crossed the line into error.
     Five or six years ago, these were my answers. But however right or wrong they might be - and not being God, I don't claim to have all the facts - they are not my answers now.

     My answer might start with another memory: I am sitting at the desk in my room, reading an e-mail from the same friend who had shocked me with her news just weeks earlier. She has written, asking for prayer for her and her future spouse as they "come out" to friends and family. For a time, something in me vigorously resists, refuses -"it's sin! how can I pray blessing for them?" - and then I see it...The juxtaposition within myself: blessing given freely, a opening of the heart to my friends as they are; or defenses built and a retreat into fear and anxiety. A verse comes to mind. "Perfect love drives out all fear." The decision is so simple: love or fear. So, with uncertainty and a certain disbelief at myself, I  pray for God to guide and support them. Leave it to God to work out the details...
     That moment sticks with me. Not because my opinion changed immediately - I still chose not to go to the wedding - but because it was perhaps the first time I had been summoned to respond to two people whom I loved, both committed to Jesus, yet making a decision I could only understand as sin. My choice had been set before me in the clearest possible terms. I wanted to love, but in order for it to be love, I had to set aside my agenda for what God should do in their lives, press through the discomfort, and be ready to journey with them in what God was actually doing. 
     To do that, I had to understand what was actually happening. So over the next years, I listened to more stories, stories that broke my heart. Stories of people fighting to change their "sinful" sexual orientation and failing, of far too many contemplating suicide, of finding surprising grace where they thought there would be none. I saw my newly married friends continue in their commitment to extending the healing hospitality of Jesus to those on the margins. I heard anew the longings of a gay friend for companionship - not simply for unbounded sexual gratification, with which LGBT people have at times been caricatured. I watched affirming Christians who held their opinion, not with strident legalism and judgment of those more conservative, but with grace and humility.
     My heart grew heavy. Had the Church placed a yoke upon the shoulders of the LGBT community that we were not willing to bear? Although I knew the arguments - "marriage between one man and one woman is difficult for everybody, gay and straight alike" - I began to suspect some dishonesty here, an underlying refusal to acknowledge a real difference in experience: straight people get to marry someone they are attracted to, while gay people have to marry someone they do not.
     And where could LGBT people go to worship, to encounter Jesus, to exercise their gifts? There was so much fear, ignorance, and anxious hospitality with strings attached. There were so many stories of feeling unwelcome in churches, or of keeping one's sexuality hidden for fear of being rejected or - depending on the church - dismissed from responsibility and controlled. You couldn't teach, preach, take any public leadership - or, in one church, even work the projector. Yet for the myriad of reasons why they might feel like the Church had no place for them, there were a surprising number who had not given up on the Church. Like the Samaritan woman who was willing to be treated like a dog if only she could eat at the Master's table, there were a surprising number of LGBT people willing to put up with all the fears and restrictions if only to hear the transforming Word and encounter Jesus in the community of his disciples.
     Finally, heart furrowed, pommeled, laid bare by the stories, my defenses broke. I decided I could no longer have an agenda. Or rather, that I required a changed agenda: the real flourishing of the LGBT people I knew, whatever that meant, however it looked.
     But there was still Scripture. I was unwilling to play fast and free with the text, to arbitrarily and autonomously pick and choose which passages were and weren't relevant. Several years earlier, I had read Robert A. J. Gagnon's The Bible and Homosexual Practice, a thorough, well-studied conservative interpretation of the Biblical witness on same-sex attraction and relationships. I had come away convinced (and would still recommend it). But however powerful and cogent an argument it offered, it no longer seemed to fit with the stories I had heard.
     I wanted to find something that took Scripture and people's experiences seriously. After looking for recommendations, I found James Brownson's Bible, Gender, and Sexuality and read it as Anna and I journeyed through the States last winter. Brownson raised possibilities for understanding the text I'd never considered, asked questions I'd until then felt unnecessary. Is the Genesis creation account about gender complementarity? Or is it about the more fundamental need for human kinship, belonging, community? When the Biblical writers speak of a particular sexual behaviour as immoral or impure, why? Is it because of the identity of one's partner and an inability to procreate,or is it the refusal to anchor sexuality within the bonds of relational fidelity, instead using others for one's own pleasure? Could the trajectory of Biblical revelation allow space for loving, life-long committed same-sex marriage? To me, Brownson offered a diligent, thoughtful, even if at times unsettling, approach to Scripture; a nuanced wrestling with the interplay between the eternally inspired Word and the time-bound vicissitudes of culture.
     I am well aware that not everyone would feel comfortable with such questions, or with Brownson's conclusions. To re-examine and challenge traditionally held interpretations of Scripture is no light matter; it may seem foolish, arrogant, dangerous even. Yet what has driven me is a love for Jesus - his welcome of the marginalized, embrace of the outcast, his resistance to all that oppresses and crushes the human spirit. He was continually reaching out to those whose behaviour or condition classified them as unclean, immoral, or unworthy. He was astonishingly, uncomfortably quick to offer grace and forgiveness.
     And so I can not help to think: even the longest-held tradition, with all its dots and tittles, must continually be brought back to be illumined, invigorated, re-imagined, and yes, sometimes even euthanized, by the person of Jesus. Is mixed-gender marriage one of those traditions? Perhaps. In all honesty, I don't know, but I am committed to sitting and wrestling with the question. Maybe affirming churches have only capitulated to the sexual mores of a liberal, godless culture, and in time will be proven wrong. Or maybe the Spirit of justice is finally uncovering and dismantling the homophobia which has underlain Western society for centuries. All of us, wherever we find ourselves on the liberal/conservative spectrum, wrestle and question and argue from within the dark night of history. We see in part and know in part. We labour and groan for a wholeness we can only glimpse.

     So this is my story. No more, no less. Please don't disrespect me by discarding it as mere foolishness and sinful deception. God is in it; I hope you see that. But don't elevate it so highly either, that it becomes the only story, brushing aside or glossing over the stories which challenge and interrogate it. The diversity of ways with which God-fearing people have wrestled and continue to wrestle with this issue is bewildering. People's stories, when we choose to listen, rarely fit the ideological mold.
    And maybe that's the point. Maybe it's less about who has the right opinion, and more about the way we relate to one another in this time of seismic cultural change. About whether we can listen. About whether we feel each other's pain. About whether we can be honest about our need for each other's perspective to help see past our own blinders. About whether we can regain our God-given humanity against the seductive, spiritually soporific pull of demonization and objectification. Maybe a disagreement like this is why Jesus presses his new commandment upon us, and why Paul counsels the Roman church to stop condemning each other, reminding that "each of us will give a personal account to God". Gay, straight, liberal, conservative; it makes no difference. God is judge.
     Far from frightening, that is the best news I could think of. It means that the final word is not up to us, feeble, vindictive, short-sighted as we are. No; it is in in the hands of One who is wholeness, compassion, mercy, justice, and truth. If that is so, then in the words of Daniel Berrigan, Catholic poet-priest-activist and a personal hero, maybe it is all about:

      "Love, love at the end".

Atticus and the Climate

     Atticus Finch teaches me much about climate justice.

     Recently I was thumbing through new releases at our local library, and I came across the much-heralded sequel to Harper Lee’s To Kill A Mockingbird, entitled Go Set A Watchman. At times endearingly humorous, at times profoundly serious, I found the book to be a fascinating and compelling read. For many readers of Harper’s original work, lead character Atticus was one of those heroic figures we could rely on to do the right thing: a white man defending a black man against false charges in the heart of a prejudiced South. Go Set A Watchman, however, complicates matters. The story follows Atticus’ daughter, Jean Louise, as she returns from New York to her Alabama home, only to find her community - and most shocking of all, her father - complicit in a climate of intensified racism. Her moral universe implodes, and readers join with her as we struggle to pick up the pieces again.

     In many ways, the book could not have come at a more appropriate time. As has come to light in the last months, culture wars are being waged across the United States and beyond with echoes of the struggles depicted within this novel. A black woman pulls down the Confederate flag, catalyzing demonstrations and intense debate over what it actually stands for. The Supreme Court issues a landmark decision legalizing same-sex marriage, with some rejoicing at new strides made for equality while others vow civil disobedience. It’s clear that the South Jean Louise re-enters into is the not-long-distant ancestor of the one today.

     Alright, you say:  interesting thoughts. But what does this have to do with the climate?

     Well, directly - perhaps only a little. But observing Jean Louise and Atticus is instructive for me as I wrestle with what it means to work for a more sustainable, equitable relationship with the rest of creation in the midst of a Christian church which has tended to find “care for the earth” peripheral to its concerns at best and even heretical at  worst.

     The first thing it teaches me? Things are not always as they appear. In Go Set A Watchman, Jean Louise sees her father sitting on a citizens’ council, next to a man spewing racist slurs, yet apparently unfazed. She is so appalled by what she sees that she’s ready to cut ties with everyone in her life to separate herself from it. In the midst of her heated accusations, Atticus chides Jean Louise for judging a situation based on its appearance rather than the intentions of those involved.

     How easy is it to do this? I’m reminded of fellow Canadians who go to work in Alberta’s oil sands. Although many may be drawn for the opportunity to make big money quick, that isn’t the case for all. Some just want to support their families. Some can’t find work in their own communities. Some enjoy the hard labour. A good friend of mine from the Downtown Eastside struggled with addiction for years, finally cleaned up, then went to work in the oil sands, where he’s found the support of a loving church community. He’s done better over the last few years than he has the last decade. If we’re going to fight for clean energy and a sustainable economy, we can’t afford to alienate people like my friend. He’s not the enemy. The system is.

     Which leads me to almost the reverse point, another take-away from Go Set a Watchman: good people do bad crap. The struggle for climate justice, or any sort of justice, would be so much easier if all the kind, generous, thoughtful people lined up on the side of the greater good, while all the mean-spirited, cruel, bigoted folks lined up on the other. But reality just doesn’t work like that. Atticus seems in many ways a respectable man, committed to upholding the law, raising his kids to know right from wrong. Yet he also holds deeply racist opinions about the differences between black and white. He remains blind to the manifold systems and justifications crushing black people, blaming them for their own poverty and lack of education. He refuses to seek understanding or build bridges across his hometown’s widening racial gulf, feeling no responsibility when Jean Louise relays her disturbing discovery that Calpurnia, whom she as a child remembered fondly as housekeeper and nanny, has now moved away and is markedly cold and distrustful of her and other whites.

     As I look around today, there are many fellow Christians who would go the distance to invest in the children in their neighbourhood, or invite a stranger into their home, or visit a prisoner - you know, all the stuff Jesus said to do. But when it comes to taking an active concern for the effects of our way of life on the planet, their eyes glaze over and they say: “Well, isn’t it all going to burn anyway?” Just because a person may seem decent in most situations doesn’t mean that they are above justifying the basest of actions. Think church-run residential schools in Canada’s recent history, or political leaders who pass welfare reforms one day then order a drone attack the next. Conversely, just because a person has a good analysis of systems of oppression doesn’t mean they are gracious, patient, or a fun person to be around! There are anti-capitalist environmentalists who are thoughtless, disrespectful, and self-righteous. Observing Atticus reminds me that human beings are complex: darkness and light often intermingle in the same soul.

     Finally, Go Set a Watchman challenges me to the need for humility and compassion. It’s said that fish don’t know they are swimming in water; in the same way, it’s hard for someone raised in a culture to see that culture as anything other than right and normal. Even Jean Louise, raging against her hometown’s racism, is a product of that culture and evidences some of its assumptions when in a debate on interracial marriages. In the same way, it can be hard imagining more sustainable alternatives when all you know is sprawling suburbs, gas stations ever few blocks, and food shipped from halfway around the globe. This is true even for us activists: I ache and work for the day when our society no longer relies on fossil fuels, but I do so in the midst of and benefiting from that system. I am no spotless saviour, clean of the stain of ecological sin. I too need to be saved from my own blind spots and self-justified prejudices.

     Maybe one day people will look back at our time with incredulity and disgust, the same way we look at the Deep South in the 1950s. How could they have justified such blind racism? How could we have justified such soulless exploitation of the earth? History may judge none of us guiltless, but the reverse is also true: Every one of us can have a part to play in making history. Every one of us can make choices for a better world. We may all be struck with partial-blindness, but together we can chart the unknown waters of a future in which all things flourish. The land, the water, and air. “The fish of the sea, the birds of the air, and every living creature that moves along the ground.” The Calpurnias and the Atticuses. And yes, the secular radical ecosocialists and the Christian gas corporation CEOs.

     Yeah, maybe even them too.

A Christian's Road to Civil Disobedience

Last Saturday I got arrested.

It's not the usual behaviour expected from a white, middle-class, at times quite conservative Christian. Growing up in the evangelical church in North America, getting arrested was something that happened to Christians in other countries, not here. Maybe believers reading their own Bibles in the Soviet Union-that was a good way to get arrested. Or persecuted Christians in China-they were role models of faith and endurance for people "like us", people in "free" countries who don't have to experience the same hardships. Or especially in the Muslim world- there Christians were understood to be in a place of great opposition, a reality recently underscored by the the rise of ISIS and its brutal targeting of Jesus-following "Nazarenes" and other religious minorities.

I do not make light of their struggles. They are real, and these brothers and sisters deserve our committed thoughts and prayers. It's just that somewhere between the suffering of others in foreign lands and the relative comfort many experience here in North America, I'd begun to wonder if something got lost.

One response to this experiential disparity is to thank God for life here. We thank God that we live in a democratic country, that we are free, that we have so much. God has blessed us, so shouldn't we be grateful and enjoy what we've been given?

Well - maybe. But there's another response, and to be honest it's one I resonate with far more. It means digging deeper, and it's more unsettling. It's about asking: how do we have what we have? And who is "we" in the first place? The more I've learned about my own place here in Canada, the more I've become convinced that the "we" may be a particularly white, middle-class "we". And the "how" is far more nuanced and often darker than a simple divine blessing.

To take one example: Vancouver's Stanley Park. Countless thousands of people flock through this park every week, admiring the lush forest and serene coastline so close to a bustling city center. I have often biked around its seawall, picnicked there with friends, hiked through its heart...and loved it. It's a place that restores souls and relieves tensions. But it's also a site of great tragedy, as indigenous residents of the village of Xway Xway, on the area's eastern peninsula, found themselves gradually displaced. They were not consulted when the land was made into a military reserve in 1859, or when roads began to cross through the village, or when the land was finally given its park status in 1886. Did they have any reason to be thankful for the gift of "Stanley Park"?

Recently I've been wondering - what would have happened if settlers had stood alongside the indigenous people of Xwayxway? If they had told the government that it couldn't just decide on the fate of a place without taking seriously the people who called it home. If they had been in the way, settler and Native standing arm in arm, when workers came to demolish homes for a road no Squamish person had ever asked for. Maybe things would have turned out differently. Maybe there'd still be a Xwayxway. And since the law was made and enforced by a government that wanted to solidify its hold on the region, maybe in the process, somebody might have gotten arrested.

I don't know. It's all conjecture, right? We can't change the past.

But we can, and should, learn from it. What I learn when I hear stories like that of Xwayxway is that my comfort comes at a price. What I have experienced as a blessing someone else may have experienced as a curse. But disturbingly often, the fault lines between the two strike through rift valleys of race and class. The police may protect my freedom, but what if I was poor and black? Or Native and a woman? Or homeless and undocumented?

As a Christian, this presents me with a choice. I can live satisfactorily enough with the privileges of my race and socio-economic background, thanking God for being where I am, who I am, for systems that more often than not work for my benefit. Or I can take the plunge into the realities of that Other not so far away, letting my welfare be tied up in theirs. I can choose to suffer, weep, struggle alongside those who have experienced discrimination in the same places where I have known acceptance and power.

Isn't this what it means to follow Jesus? The Most High God, taking on flesh, becoming utterly vulnerable so that we might know God in the depths of God's (and our) powerlessness and suffering. One who died on a cross he didn't deserve, revealing injustice and evil for what they are, and in so doing overcoming them-"leading them in a victory procession", to use Apostle Paul's words, Liberating from the law by submitting to it. It didn't simply end with Jesus; it's a way of being that we have been invited to join in and adopt as our own.

There's a danger here. Many white, middle-and-higher-class, often male folks like myself like to paint ourselves into Jesus' role on earth. We like to see ourselves as saviours, offering the solutions the world so desperately needs. In so doing, though, we neglect to see how God is already present in those who are different. We refuse to affirm their leadership, using others' places of pain to boost our own ego. I am no doubt guilty of this at times. The reality is, too, that we can never fully dissociate ourselves from the privileges we grow up with. No matter how I try, I will still likely have more money, freedom, and social capital at my disposal than the oppressed neighbour I seek to love. We need to remember that the goal is not abandoning privilege for its own sake. The goal is walking in deeper solidarity with one another, letting my neighbour's pain and struggle become my own, and finding a deeper freedom together.

For me, this has meant a journey of deepening in knowledge and concern about my indigenous brothers and sisters. The story of Xwayxway is only one example of a relentless assault their nations across this land have endured, experiencing language, culture, land, children all stripped away. I can not change what has been done, but that is no excuse for inaction. I am impelled by conscience and, I believe, by Christ, to become a part of ensuring that the future is different from the past.

Last weekend, this journey took me to Burnaby mountain. There pipeline company Kinder Morgan has been seeking to triple the carrying capacity of an existing pipeline, the Trans-Mountain, by constructing a parallel one, transporting raw bitumen and refined oil from Alberta's oil sands to the Burrard Inlet, where it would be shipped to overseas markets in China and east Asia. Compared to the extensive review process Enbridge's Northern Gateway has endured, KM's pipeline consultations have been scant, with important parts of the review process hurried over and bypassed (check out former BC Hydro president Mark Eliesen's reasons for disengaging as an intervenor: http://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/british-columbia/kinder-morgan-pipeline-hearings-a-farce-says-former-bc-hydro-head-1.2822299). Many in Burnaby and along the route feel that this project would pose an unacceptable risk to their land, water, and livelihood, not to mention the climate impacts of continuing to expand fossil fuel infrastructure amidst increasingly dire calls for clean, renewable energies.

Beyond the lack of democratic input and the ecological risks, though, there is another reality. Indigenous people are saying no. Despite centuries of attempts at colonization, assimilation, and usurpation, indigenous nations are still very real and still take their responsibility to the land very seriously. More often than not, they are on the forefront of land defense, the first impacted and the first to respond when a company or government acts with ecological hubris. Whether the Grassy Narrows sounding the alarm on mercury poisoning in Ontario, the Mi'kmaq resisting fracking at Elsipogtog, or Fort McKay's efforts to publicize the cancerous effects of the oil sands on their community, indigenous people are fighting to protect their nations and the ecosystems which sustain life for all creatures.

It's no different here. The three nations on whose unceded land the city of Vancouver rests-the Musqueam, Squamish, and Tsleil-Waututh- have all declared opposition to the Trans-Mountain expansion. The Tsleil-Waututh have filed a lawsuit against Kinder Morgan on its failure to treat them as a sovereign nation and acquire consent. Yet Kinder Morgan plows on, with the express backing of the National Energy Board. In a country that has, slowly and rather reluctantly, signed on the United Nations Declaration of the Rights of Indigenous Peoples, treating indigenous nations as if they are simply another interest group to be heard or ignored is just not good enough.

I can not change Xwayxway. But I can change this.

So last Saturday, there I was on Burnaby mountain. The courts had upheld Kinder Morgan's injunction against protestors who got in the way of their exploratory drilling. Police were out in force. A zone had been cordoned off with with yellow tape, surrounding KM workers. At the bottom of the hill, a diverse group of ordinary folks had assembled, ready to bear witness to the injustice happening just up the road. A little after 11 in the morning, we walked up the road, chanting, "No pipelines on stolen Native land!" Then, after one man spoke about his concern for his children's future and the future of the planet, about sixteen of us crossed the police tape and broke the injunction.

We were promptly arrested, packed in a paddywagon, and shipped down the mountain, where we would spend most of the day at the local police station, waiting inside holding cells to be processed. The police were quite respectful, joking with us at times, even bringing us water and granola bars as we prepared to enter the station. Spirits were high as people sang and laughed along the way. We carried that feeling of integrity, having married our beliefs to action.

As I said, though, we can't dissociate ourselves from our privileges. Earlier that week, a group of women had crossed the line in the evening, and their experience of the police was much different. I certainly believe that violence begets violence, so I'm not completely surprised when angry protestors yelling abusive names at the police tends to draw a more forceful reaction. But I'm also aware that, as a tall young white male, it might be harder to mistreat me than an elderly Native woman-for instance-especially when the media are swarming in droves. I have a social perception of power working for me, and I need to be responsible for that.

So on one hand, our stand was small. I was charged with civil contempt of court, a charge that has since been dropped. After six or seven hours in a bare concrete cell, I was released on conditions that I wouldn't violate the injunction again and I would agree to appear in court. Really, all I suffered was a few cold, boring hours in the jail cell and a small police record. Compared to the ongoing struggles of indigenous people and the much more serious consequences they often face in resisting the multiple systems organized against them, it was little more than a drop in the ocean. But even so, it was no less real, and it was not taken lightly. Besides - to quote a fabulous line from the movie Cloud Atlas, "What is the ocean, but a multitude of drops?"

Talking with my fellow arrestees, all of us felt this was one important way to take responsibility for the privileges we've been given-a beautiful land, fresh water, a family to protect. For me,though, it was more than that. It was also a step of Christian faith, part of learning the "cruciform way of Jesus". Like Apostle Paul, when he wrote those thousands of years ago, I want to know Christ, identifying with him in his suffering, and through him my suffering brother or sister. Then, and only then, will we together see the power of resurrection.

A Walk to Remember

     Every once in a while, we experience something that brings Scripture alive. Its Story becomes a dynamic, ongoing reality to participate in rather than simply a dry textbook of history or theology. In those moments, you realize the Story holds you, yet in a mysterious way you have a role to play, choices to make, significance in how it will unfold...

     Last weekend was one such time. On July 5-6, I joined around five hundred other people from across Canada and the US at a campground just twenty minutes south of Fort McMurray, Alberta. We came from all sorts of different backgrounds-white, Native, Buddhist, agnostic, Christian-but we shared a common concern: the Alberta tar sands. Lying under a swath of boreal forest covering an area the size of Florida, the oil sands (called "tar" sands because of the tar-like quality of raw bitumen) have seen massive investment from Canada's government and industry over the last decades. They have become essential to Canada's plan for "Jobs, Growth, Prosperity", providing often lucrative work for people all across the nation, many unable to find adequate employment in their own communities.

     But they have a high cost. Huge swaths of forest have been converted into desert and massive tailing ponds filled with toxic waste, with an estimated 11 million litres leaking from these chemical-infused lakes every day. Air pollution significantly exceeds even less stringent standards for quality breathing air. First Nation peoples in the region have seen higher levels of cancer, thousands of violations to their treaty rights, and ever-diminishing access to their traditional territories. And with proposed plans to grow, the tar sands alone will far outweigh other reductions Canada is making in its greenhouse gas emissions.

     So this past weekend, hundreds of ordinary people like me gathered for a revolutionary act: prayer. Concerned about demonizing tar sands workers, among whom are many of their own people, Native elders had counselled this as the best way to shed light on the ongoing destruction at its source. No protest signs, no banners - just feet to walk, eyes to see, and a spirit in prayer. After a pipe ceremony and a brief press conference, we would walk 14 km around a loop of road through land mined by oil company Syncrude. Four times throughout the walk, we would stop, turn toward one of the four directions, and silently pray. 

     We looked over forest turned by human hands into lifeless desert and prayed healing for land, water, and air. 

     We looked over apartment blocks as cold and sterile as prison barracks and prayed for the husbands and sons living in them, displaced from their own families and communities. 

     We looked on as Native elders wept before the Creator, and we cried for freedom from our society's self-destructive bondage to oil. 

     We looked over large lakes full of toxic tailings an thought of loved ones stumbling from their rich cultures into a soul-sucking morass of money and drugs. And as we walked, we shared our stories, the burdens for and experiences of injustice which had brought us to this place. Standing in solidarity with those amongst us feeling most directly the destructive impacts of this gigaproject, love was working to heal, in such a small, unfinished way, the terrible wound of being alone and unheard in suffering.

     Our walk had begun in both celebration and lament. We had rejoiced upon the delivery of a new life into the world, born onto a buffalo skin in a teepee at our campsite the midnight before everything had begun. A great-grandchild of one of the elders who had started the Walk, the baby was like a sign of hope from the Creator. The words of Isaiah resonated through my mind: The people walking in darkness have seen a great light; on those living in the land of deep darkness a light has dawned...For to us a child is born, to us a son is given.

    Yet we grieved as we set off, as well, alerted to the likelihood of an oil spill travelling down the Athabasca river even as we walked. We were all too aware of the recent headlines: "Ghost train carrying crude derails in Quebec, causes explosion", and of numerous other recent oil-related accidents, reported by the media or not. Elders had told us how Mother Earth was weeping when she had so recently flooded the streets of Calgary, and we wondered if it was no coincidence that all the major oil companies working in the tar sands were headquartered in that deluged city. Could it be? Was the God of the Bible, who used droughts, locust, fire, and flood to stir His people to obedience, speaking through the Creation today? And if so, would we listen? Would we turn from the allure of money and power to choose life for all God's creatures?

     The walk was long. Fourteen kilometers dragged on and on, our legs grew heavy, our mouths thirsty, and some developed headaches from breathing in the bad air. But we endured, and as we loaded on buses to return to our campsite for a traditional feast, we knew that somehow, some way, what we had just undertaken mattered. The smokestacks still chugged their poisons, the land was still scarred...But something had moved in the realm of spirit. We would one day see just how.

     Was it a coincidence that, when I returned to Vancouver, I learned that one of my housemates had just quit his job in the oil fields to stay here and reinvest in his church and friendships here at home? Maybe. But in the words of Sir William Temple : "When I pray, coincidences happen, and when I don't, they don't."

Humble beginnings

Let's call this an experiment, shall we?

I enjoy writing, but I've tried writing regularly on various issues and it's tapered off quickly. What do I write about? Where do I start? Who do I write to? Eventually the questions get to me, and I let my lofty aspirations drift away on a breeze....

Maybe that will happen again, maybe not. But my hope is to use this blog to write about what is close to my heart, and if it stirs up anything in anybody else besides me, that's great! I'm resolving to put little pressure on myself, at least right now. If I feel a need to write, voila!-here's a venue for it. If I don't, life goes on, and this blog can accumulate a little bit of virtual dust. Either way, what do I lose?

So...here goes something...