9/8/2009
VMM missionaries are therefore listeners. Our witness will be seen
when God's Spirit is so strong within us that it is visible in our
lives and actions. Christ was available to all, and reached out to
the poor, the sick and the rejected. His mission is now ours. It is a
call to be wherever there is injustice of any kind.
Spirit and Lifestyle
It is hard to be a listener. Our "beliefs" or "what we want to
believe" prevent us from hearing, from listening. For our last
presentation on board of the Clipper Adventurer, our two Inuit
resource staff, Bernadette Dean and Andrew Qappik, invited the three
resource staff who while residents of Nunavut are from the south. for
a panel discussion of the Inuit "problems." The first two panelists
spoke in a language that is not their mother tongue, in their usual
quiet, non-forceful way. Bernadette spoke of loss of culture and
language. While studying law she read Paulo Freire's Pedagogy of the
Oppressed. While her tongue couldn't get around "pedagogy," she knew
that answers to the Inuit problems wouldn't come from the south. She
knew generational oppression from experience. On April 1 1999,
Nunavut became Canada's newest territory. At 770,000 square miles,
Nunavut comprises one-fifth of Canada, making it the largest native
land claim settlement in history. The Inuit received direct title to
136,000 square miles, an area equal to the size of New Mexico.
Before the land claim, explained Bernadette, there was a moratorium
on mining and other non-traditional uses of the land but now there is
a lot of exploration happening. I know, she said, that the products
we use come from mining but mines drain rivers and lakes, damage the
land, and only last so long. Uranium mining is going ahead. There is
a massive iron ore project and high copper prices will revive
interest in the mineral. The proud grandmother of six affirmed: "I
want the land to be the way it is for my grandchildren." She wants
the local governments to say "no" to mines and "yes" to life and
environment.
Social and economic conditions in the Arctic are depressing. Before
we were never without food, asserts Bernadette, but now you need
money - money to pay the rent in public housing, gas for the ATVs and
Skidoos, cable. When the price of seal skins and fox skins plummeted,
there was no money. The price of food in the stores is 2 to 5 times
what it costs in Edmonton. Before food from the land provided a
healthy diet but now there are fewer animals and because of climate
change, less ice and less predictable climatic conditions. Many
communities have been relocated to areas where the land cannot
provide food for the population. Diets have changed. As we got ready
to go up the Coppermine River by zodiak, the store manager came to
ask if the ship had extra soft drinks on board. They had run out and
were ready to exchange Arctic char for cans of pop.
As can be expected, there are many problems. Houses are crowded. The
youth are bored. Suicide rates are high. School attendance sporadic.
Early pregnancies high. Many communities lack health care services
and nursing staff may change every 6 weeks. And much more.
But many of the southerners were too busy blaming, accusing, offering
solutions, to LISTEN. To listen requires emptying the mind of OUR
thoughts; it requires listening with the heart.
I felt truly ashamed to hear one of the residents from the South say
- not once but twice - that the Inuit should be grateful to the
Canadian government.
We were running out of time. Bernadette got the last word:
"Canada is lucky to have Inuit people up here."
See www.pauktuutit.ca and www.isuma.ca
Bernadette also spoke of a wonderful program called Somebody's Daughter
We are truly lucky to have Bernadette and Andrew (a gifted artist and
wonderful person)!
Cecily
9/15/09
"Whenever there are people in need of food and drink, clothing,
housing, medicine, employment, education; whenever people lack the
facilities necessary for living a truly human life, are afflicted
with serious distress or illness, or suffer exile or imprisonment,
there Christian love should seek them out and find them."
Quoted in Spirit and Lifestyle from Apostolate of the Laity - a
Vatican II document, 1966
I really can't write anything after reading this. Let's just reread
it, reflect and pray on it, and imagine our world if all Christians
took this seriously.
Cecily
9/22/2009
"Whenever there are people in need of food and drink, clothing,
housing, medicine, employment, education; wherever people lack the
facilities necessary for living a truly human life, are afflicted
with serious distress or illness, or suffer exile or imprisonment,
there Christian love should seek them out and find them." (Apostolate
of the Laity - Para. 8:4)
The majority of our world lives in hunger and want deprived of the
most basic necessities to live a decent human life. Impelled and
driven by the Spirit of Christ, we do not stand by unresponsive to
the needs of our brothers and sisters. They must have the tools to
enable them to develop and be free. They need the skills and the
expertise to bring out their own resources and gifts.
It is not simply a matter of handing out money, food or equipment. It
calls for more than that. Our response is to share who we are as well
as what we have.
Spirit & Lifestyle
Yesterday, I attended an Edmonton Chamber Music Society concert which
featured the Manitoba Chamber Orchestra - 22 musicians, plus a woman
as music director and conductor, and a special guest, a percussionist
- also a woman - who is the first person in musical history to
successfully create and sustain a full-time career as a solo
percussionist. I had read the passage from Spirit and Lifestyle I
would use for today's reflection and noted how the program notes on
Mirage?, a work written by Christos Hatzis (b. 1953), echoed my
reflections on the passage.
Hatzis writes: "Mirage? was composed during the winter months of
2009. It was a time when the world was entering an economic downturn
which has often been compared with the Great Depression of the 1930s.
This dark period was preceded by years of greed, selfishness,
political and economic opportunism and plain disregard for basic
human rights all over the world, which necessitated the present
period of cleansing and testing so we can hopefully reclaim our
humanity and faith through the trials and tribulations of today's
economic and geopolitical crucible.
"Looking back at the previous period of careless and callous
accumulation of wealth by the few at the expense of many, one wonders
if the exorbitant life-style which we, the residents of the developed
nations, managed to sustain for several decades at the expense of the
developing world and the underprivileged among us was real or a
mirage: sweet, lovely and seductive, but a mirage none-the-less...
"I don't know if the music of Mirage? answers any of these questions,
but these were the questions that led to its being. Perhaps there is
still hope, that is hope for human solutions before God and nature
take matters into their own hand, but during the days of composing
this work that too seemed like a mirage."
I feel that today it is possible to work for and with our brothers
and sisters of the Majority World without stepping out of our
community. I think of Food Justice, of extraction of resources from
the Global South, of justice in trade relations, of climate change,
of wars, of refugees and immigrants, of use of poisonous chemicals
and getting rid of our toxic wastes in the Third World, our lack of
support for UN programs and meager resources for development aid.
We still have to go to the South - and the North (see reflection of
September 7) - to be converted, motivated, to find love and enlarge
our hearts. We need all of this to write our own music.
Let us keep in our prayers this week Gabe Hurrish and his family.
Below is a story about one of the organizations with which Gabe
volunteers in Rome. It has an Edmonton connection!
http://www.edmontonjournal.com/life/People+Priest/2000801/story.html
Cecily
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