“Now What?”

It’s Saturday afternoon, November 19^th, and I’m sitting watching a sappy Christmas movie and I’m weeping yet again. The movie is about caring, love, respect, inclusion, acceptance, joy – and the true Spirit of community. Why am I weeping? Because of what it feels like we’ve lost, and are yet to lose.

Since the election in the US almost two weeks ago, I’ve been going around feeling punched in the solar plexus.  I’ve realised something in the aftermath of the election, particularly watching the reactions of my white friends south of the border, and the total shock they are dealing with, and the intense grief. Something they thought was an intrinsic part of the US turned out not to be quite true. Part of me empathises.

But the other part of me thinks “Didn’t you realise this? It’s always been here.” I realised this week that as a result of marriage, I am now both white and non-white. Forty-six years ago I married a Japanese, a person of colour, and in those forty-six years have seen a fair bit of the racism and bigotry which has always lived in North America.  I was twenty-five when I married him, and entered into an inter-racial marriage and another culture and language altogether.  My life is divided between the two – both in Japan and here. In the years of our marriage, we’ve become acculturated – he to my culture, and me to his. And I think it’s the ‘me to his’ part which comes into play here. I am now just as Japanese as I am Canadian, maybe more.

My husband watched the election just about every minute of the day. He has been devastated by the result. But his devastation is different  - travel to, even through the US, is no longer an option. He has a target painted on him just because of colour. So do our children and grandchildren. Oh it won’t be tomorrow or next week, but already it’s beginning. Problem is, it’s been emboldened here in Canada as well, as we are seeing. And it’s coming out of the shadows in other parts of the world as well.

And I realise that my white friends can’t enter into this experience.  I’m in between.  I’m them and I’m not. White and not white. I think that’s the part that hurts the most – there’s this gulf. But they can take this seriously. Now more than ever.

Yesterday, outside the church, even as the leaves on the trees have gone and the flowers in the church garden are brown, I took this picture. Tiny blooms in the still-green grass. I’m not feeling all that hopeful at the moment; but maybe this is a sign.

That Moment When

Ministry is one of the strangest and  most varied callings in the world. There are those days (had a couple this week) when we wonder why on earth we are really doing this. What were we thinking when we went for ordination? Working with congregations is usually a lot like herding cats – and as much as I am a cat person, it really isn’t quite what one hopes for in an occupation.  Individually every person is a good person – and we come to love them even with their foibles and even if they drive us nuts. And we remember that we have our foibles too, and sometimes we drive them squirrelly. We know there are the parking lot meetings, the people who can’t let go of whatever, the resisters and the ones who get excited by changes. They think we don’t know, but pssst! Yeah we do. It’s a sixth sense clergy develop over the years. Remember how we thought our mothers had eyes in the backs of their head? Clergy do too, and ears. 

Part of getting old in ministry – and maybe just part of getting old – is that some things cease to be issues any more, and other things become more important. As we get older, we think about these things more, too.

Back in about 2007, I was minister in a Scarborough church whose musician finally had to give up playing –  illness and age finally caught up. In the process of searching for a new musician, a young man came to us almost fresh out of his Masters degree in music. One Sunday he arrived with his girlfriend, who turned out to be an incredibly talented soprano. When they got married, they asked me to do the ceremony. At the wedding were two other young people, best friends of the wedding couple, who were also musicians.  Several years later, when they got married, they also asked me to do their wedding.

We haven’t seen each other a lot, but have kept in touch and followed each other on Facebook. Tonight they came to the congregation to present an evening of music. Everything from serious opera to ‘Jesus Christ Superstar’, to ‘Les Miserables’, operetta and comic opera –and for an encore “Three Little Maids from School”, from Gilbert and Sullivan’s “The Mikado”. 

I was close to tears a couple of times. Telling myself it was the music – like ”Bring Him Home”, the prayer of Jean Valjean in Les Miserables. Always makes me cry. The truth? Much more than that.  Had I not been in in ministry in that church at that time, I would not have met any of them. It’s called serendipity. And it’s that moment when the lightbulb flashes on again, and we know why we do what we do. Because we are privileged to meet, know, work with and form lasting relationships with so many people in so many ways. The maudlin bit? That I am so incredibly grateful to whatever forces in the universe, that I have lived long enough to meet such talented people, and hear such wonderful voices, that it literally makes me cry. And to be able to say “I know them.”