First: let me apologize to all commissioners gathered at Redeemer University last night for General Assembly’s opening worship and First Sederunt: I didn’t realize till later that my flash was in perpetual test mode and as I turned my camera towards you I didn’t realize I was attacking you with a strobe effect. A few of you, kindly and politely, made jokes about it; a few of you gave me dirty looks. But, it was only one lady who came right up to me and told me she didn’t appreciate the strobe lighting. That’s when I realized there was a problem.
So my apologies.
Now, let me introduce you to a few Presbyterians; all of whom you probably know already, and if you don’t, you really must:
Al Clarkson
Al has been, he thinks, to about 25 general assemblies. He was a Young Adult Representative, has been a commissioner a couple of times. For the other occasions? “It’s family,” he says. Its getting so, it wouldn’t be general assembly without Al.
He volunteers at the Presbyterian Museum and can be seen each year at its booth. He does have a day job but he doesn’t let it get in the way of his interest in the Presbyterian Church in Canada.
Oh, and if you were on the Redeemer campus last night and saw a corrected sign, you know it was Al: the sign said Presbyterian Church of Canada; Al took out the pen and made the correction.
Remmelt Hummelin
There’s a very good novel in Remmelt’s life story. Coming of age in the Sixties, he was a young man on a mission in our church. He was very active in the PYPS movement then, helping raise its profile. He was on the ground when the first Young Adult Representative were introduced to General Assembly, forty years ago.
Flash forward to the Seventies and he worked in the national church’s communications department, telling stories of the church.
Remmelt returned from Afghanistan a year or so ago. He was working there on a development project — work he has done around the world for thirty years. Work which is in many ways an expansion of the work he first did as a much younger man for this church. He is not a commissioner but he came for the opening worship.
Ken Craigie
It suddenly occurs to me I’m making a list of some of my favourite people in the church; folks I’ve been privileged to know over the years. The last time I spoke to Ken was about a week ago; half way through our conversation he told me he was lying in a hospital bed. But, nothing keeps a good man down. He’s an elder at Rosedale today; and his PCC story is classic: he came up through PYPS and has been an active presence in our church for at least thirty years.
Charles Deogratias
I first met Charles in the mid-Nineties. He had just arrived in Canada and a civil war had broken out in his native Rwanda. I interviewed him for my church (Gateway Community, Toronto) newsletter.
He moved from Toronto and went to Presbyterian College, Montreal. He is now a padre in the Canadian Armed Forces and was most recently in Afghanistan. Charles’ life would make a vast sweeping novel: it is a story of our times, of the darkness and light that co-exist in humanity and of this great country in which we live but our too shy or reticent to raise in song and voice.
Charles’ story begins with civil war in Rwanda in 1949. His grandparents are murdered, his family’s estate is stolen and the family shoved to a refugee camp in what was then Tanganikya. That’s where Charles was born and grew up. And that’s where he learned to praise God for his glory and his grace. He arrived in Canada just as another civil war broke out in Rwanda.
By the time he graduated from PC, Montreal, Charles had lost almost two dozen members of his family. He returned to Rwanda — return is the wrong word, he arrived there for the first time — in the late-Nineties. He was now Rev. Deogratias, Canadian. He performed a mass burial/funeral for his family. And then, with his father in tow, he returned to the family estate. His father hadn’t been there in forty years. Those who had murdered the grandparents and stolen the farm were still there. The Diogratias’ hugged and forgave the family. For them it is much more important to understand, to contemplate, the darkness in humanity than to fret over property. As Charles said last night, he tries to explain this to his children, that they must understand. He quoted St. Augustine: “To love those who love you is human. To hate those who love you is demonic. To love those who hate you is divine.”
