kar0ling

ርሑስ በዓል ልደትን ሓድሽ ዓመትን። Flight into Egypt (coptic icon from the Church of Saints Sergius and Bacchus (Abu Serga) in Cairo) Smells and bells, indeed! The semi-dismissive and half-affectionate description of high ritual churches came unbidden to mind as I stepped into the sanctuary at St Mark’s Coptic Church for the Feast of the Nativity, known in Winnipeg as Ukrainian Christmas. We were a few minutes late for the beginning of the service, but so were the majority of the other worshippers, and the room was already filled with a haze of incense. Stand, sit (mostly stand), while a crowd of male persons of all ages chant liturgy from the front. TV screens mounted at intervals around the sanctuary present the text in English, Coptic, and Arabic. (Or they try to. The person running the display seemed a bit lost for the first hour when perhaps he or she was replaced with someone better acquainted with the liturgy.) I’m unfamiliar with the extra letters Coptic added to their use...

Do you have nightmares about not knowing what to do? Is the thought of not knowing when to stand or sit paralyzing? Are you uncomfortable when you don’t know what to say? Usually, I’d say yes to all of those, but when it comes to spiritual tourism, I’m reasonable blasé about the whole thing. It’s not my tradition. I’m there to experience the service and to worship alongside as well as I can. That’s enough for me. But I was struck at the difference it makes without a bulletin/program. The prolific paper output required for their multi-page handout at the Anglican churches I frequent is always slightly disturbing from an environmental point of view, but I greatly appreciate being able to follow along with the above variables. However, at the cathedral tonight, there was no program. So I just stood quietly when the mass mumbling arose (except for the Lord’s Prayer where I’m always thrown that Catholics stop before “for thine is the kingdom....”). The song numbers were listed on a...

“All my relations.” It is a key phrase for indigenous people. It could be a key that opens Mennonite hearts to warm to Indigenous stories, for Mennonites love their genealogies. (“The Mennonite Game” is what we call it when we spend the first few minutes with a new acquaintance figuring out how we’re related to each other.) “Treaty is so much more than $5 a year,” said Niigaan Sinclair at CMU’s Face 2 Face event on the Mennonite Privilegium and Indigenous land in Manitoba. “It’s about how we share space together.” It’s about bonding ourselves together as family – meaning unhookable – not merely friends. We ought to know that too, as Mennonites. We ought to understand the sense of covenant from our reading of the Bible, and the importance of relationships with each other from our theology of community. But perhaps it has been too eroded by capitalism and the market economy. Mennonite historical land settlement patterns were done in a communal way, said Hans Werner. One reas...

Please stop using refugees as an excuse to offload the old and buy new. I shudder slightly at how easy it is to collect used stuff for poor people. Everyone is happy to help (themselves) by getting rid of old/worn-out/uncool/low-tech/dowdy objects so they can replace them with something newer and better. And how convenient for these “needy” people to make the whole transaction guilt free because it was for charity! It’s not that it’s so wrong to do this, but I daresay it IS wrong to call it virtue rather than convenience. If you really want to be generous, keep the old thing for yourself and donate the new one instead.  Please stop repainting that church in Mexico. It is waning, but I still hear of church groups going on the classic “mission trip” to Mexico where they have great fun painting a church, usually getting as much paint on each other as the building. They have such a great time and the people were so grateful . Except the people are polite is what they ar...

Antshillvania was my breakout performance: a seven-year old flower who brought the wrong colour tights and had to stand out in front of everyone white-legged instead of brown in my green plantsuit, head bewigged with oversized yellow petals, but I gave my “Go away!” to the marauding weeds on cue, projecting and enunciating with as much expression as I was able, despite my shame. Theatre of some sort – much of it wooden and prosaic, rotely recalling lines and following stage directions – was my constant extra curricular pursuit til my college years. A college professor with a long history as a jock who joined our little band of supposed creatives (on my part) surprised me with his observation that in all his years of team sports, he’d never experienced as profound a sense of team as in doing theatre. I’m not sure if my lack of understanding was due to an over-hyped ideal of sportsmanship bred by inspirational movie scenes, or my familiarity with theatre, or perhaps my failure to ...

*warning: half baked moralizing to follow.* “___ did what?!?! How could s/he....?!?” Oh, the outrage. You can’t turn around with finding something or someone to be outraged about. First off, I’m guilty. Secondly, there actually is plenty to be genuinely upset about. However, I don’t respond well to being yelled at. I don’t like the worst being assumed of me. I don’t appreciate being judged on the basis of very little information. And it’s probably fair to assume others feel the same way. There are plenty of injustices and just plain bad practices in the world worthy of being remarked on.  But quite possibly it will be more constructive if we stay calm, avoid insults, and try to understand the motivations behind the actions we are quick to denounce. I daresay we might find a bunch of teachable moments – for all of us. So, I’m trying to learn to check my instinct for indignation.  What is being reported and by whom?  What other perspectiv...

“I’m trained in poetry and rap; it’s all about brevity,” said Shad. His formal contribution to the Slater Maguire lecture series at St Margaret’s was probably the shortest speech one of their presenters had ever given, but it left much time for questions and a bit of a relaxing evening left over. No need to belabour the matter. Brevity may have also led Shad to his catchy title for the talk...which he confessed to having later realized may have sounded threatening. “What are you afraid of?” wasn’t mean to be a belligerent challenge but a gentle call to examine whether the things we fear will kill us or disappear as illusion. After offering the answer “everything” to the first question, “mostly imagination, to be sure,” is my answer to the second. But that doesn’t make the fears any more surmountable. It’ll either kill you or free you, he says. Cold comfort. Sometimes freedom is as frightening as death. The safety of shackled mundanity does not easily relinquish its grip. ...