In the beginning when God created the heavens and the earth, the earth was a formless void and darkness covered the face of the deep, while a wind from God swept over the face of the waters. Then God said, “Let there be light”; and there was light. And God saw that the light was good; and God separated the light from the darkness. (Genesis 1:1-4)
For years, sports journalist Michael Landsberg has been the host of a show called Off the Record on TSN. It is said that on the air he “asks his guests tough, thought-provoking and controversial questions on the day’s hottest sports topics.” He has interviewed NHL stars like Sidney Crosby and Alexander Ovechkin, and NFL greats like Terrell Owens and Tony Dungy.
That successful, high powered career was all sports, all the time. Then, on October 15, 2009 everything changed.
On that day, NHL hockey player Stéphane Richer was scheduled to be a guest on Landberg’s show. As he was getting ready, Landsberg read over his notes and saw that Richer –a two-time 50 goal scorer and two-time Stanley Cup champion –had suffered from depression. On a whim, he thought it might be interesting to ask him about it during the interview. Landsberg asked if they could talk about it on the program as “something we have in common.”
“Fifteen minutes later,” says Landsberg, “I asked him about his depression on the air. We spoke for perhaps one minute about it. [That was] the best and most important 60 seconds of TV in my life”.
Minutes after that brief chat was broadcast a few dozen people emailed the show. The letters were from fellow sufferers and from relatives of people with depression. “People had instantly felt less lonely,” he says. “And men in particular who had never told a soul about their depression felt empowered to do so.”
Those few emails were just the beginning of a process that would alter Landsberg’s life. “I have learned from my own battle with depression that talking and sharing were vital keys to finding my way out of darkness toward the light,” said Landsberg. “[Now] I am passionately committed to talking about depression and mental health. I hope that by opening up and sharing our struggles, we can find ways of coping –and take away the stigma of depression.”
The trickle of emails he received at the beginning turned into a deluge, and he corresponded personally with each person who had written. “How could I not?” he says, “A person writes ‘I have never told a soul about this…’ and what am I supposed to do. Ignore it? Send a form response…? Maybe an autographed picture? I don’t think so.”
That one minute word exchange about depression and the response that followed led to the creation of a documentary called Darkness and Hope: Depression, Sports and Me. It aired in January of this year and featured not only Michael’s journey, but the journey of several high profile athletes.
“Clara Hughes is arguably the greatest amateur athlete in Canadian history,” said a CTV press release for the film. “Her Olympic success (including six medals in cycling and speed skating) has brought her countless awards, including the Order of Canada. Yet, at the peak of her success, she was being pulled apart by a deep, internal pain.
“And then there is Darryl Strawberry…one of the most talented prospects in baseball. He won four World Series titles – one with the New York Mets and three with the Yankees…until his life-long battle with depression led him down a path of drugs, alcohol and destructive behaviour.
That film was part of Bell Let’s Talk campaign—a campaign that uses words to raise awareness and money in support of mental health. On February 12, 2013, Bell will once again lead the conversation to reduce stigma by contributing five cents to mental programs for every text message and long distance call made by Bell customers that day.
It was just a few words on a television show, but it has already changed the lives of countless people.
Words are not just sounds. They are not just printed characters on a page. Words share information, but they also evoke emotion, conjure up memories and shape our self understanding. When the kids at school say “Sticks and stones may break my bones but words will never hurt me,” it is a lie. Words do hurt. Words also heal and teach and inspire. Words –whether we analyze them, sing them, hear them or read them –are powerful.
When the book of Genesis was first written, this was fully and completely understood. To say something out loud was to give it authority and life. Words that came from the mouth of God were especially powerful. They had divine energy, irrefutable power, cosmic significance. Those words were a big deal. They would make things happen.
And indeed they did. In the beginning, God addressed the cosmic void and in speaking, he changed it very essence. Words uttered into darkness created something new and altered the course of the universe. It was the beginning of a story that would be full of love and mercy, war and infidelity, struggle, hope, failure and redemption.
Michael Landsberg did little more than utter a few words, and yet in doing so he echoed God’s speech on that first day of creation. People who suffered understood that they were not alone. Light broke into the world’s darkness.
God said, “Let there be light,” and it was a proclamation that changed everything.
Presbyterians are blessed to have summer camps all across the country. As a kid, I went to Camp Iona, a tiny wilderness camp near Bala here in Ontario. As a teenager, I had the opportunity to work on staff and loved everything about it—being surrounded by trees and lakes, singing around the campfire, and being away from my parents for two whole months.
But one of the best things was the people that I not only met, but got to know incredibly well. There is an intimacy that a camping experience offers. When you brush your teeth side-by-side, paddle through white water together and are completely unplugged from TVs and video games, you share a certain bond. I still have those friends that I met when I was sixteen.
One person I remember was a girl named Paska. She arrived during staff training one year, with a small suitcase and a strange accent. She was the only brown-skinned person to work there that year. She was also very quiet and rather mysterious. We knew that she lived in Scarborough, but that was all. She managed to deflect all of our questions about her school, her friends, or even her family.
That summer we fell into our usual rhythm of canoeing and swimming and Bible study. Children came up to camp for ten days at a time, staff worked hard, and Paska remained quiet. As we lived together day in and day out, however, we slowly began to learn things about her.
For one, she didn’t do laundry like the rest of us. In between camps, most of us would bundle up huge bags of clothes that smelled of smoke and mosquito repellent, and haul them to the Laundromat in town. We would spend almost an entire day hanging around waiting for the cycles to finish, doing little more than talking and eating candy. When the washing and drying had finally ceased, we would stuff our clothes back into our bags and head to camp again.
But not Paska. For starters, she didn’t have the big, huge suitcases of clothes that we did, since much of the time she simply wore a large piece of fabric wrapped around her as a skirt, or a dress. She didn’t take her clothes to the Laundromat, either. Instead she would take her small bundle down to the beach and bend down at the edge of the water. There she would carefully scrub each item using only her hands before rinsing them, and wringing them out. When she was finished, she would hang everything from a line at her campsite until it was dry.
We didn’t know why she did this, and we thought it was odd, but she was happy enough. Each time she refused to join us on our trip into town, we scratched our heads and wondered at this girl who didn’t seem to need a washer or dryer.
Laundry wasn’t the only thing we noticed about Paska.
Camp Iona did not have running water. Instead, we had a well and a hand pump located at one end of the lake. Part of our daily routine was taking five gallon/23 litre jugs to the pump, filling them with water, and carrying them back to our campsite.
This was no easy task, and it was always hard to find volunteers to do it. Paska, however, never seemed to mind the difficult jobs. The first time we needed water, she quietly set off with an empty water jug in hand. We were concerned about how she would manage the heavy load, but she returned soon enough. We were shocked to see that she was striding along the path, comfortable and happy. The blue jug that most of us could barely manage to lift was on her head, balanced with just one hand. We were in awe.
Try as we might, the rest of us never learned how to carry things on our heads the way she could. She would try to teach us, but then shake her head and laugh. With a certain degree of sympathy, she would shrug and say, “Oh, you just needed to start learning when you were six years old.”
Every time we gathered around the campfire, the people with guitars who were leading the songs would ask what everyone wanted to sing. Most often, we would request things with crazy words like Brown Squirrel or choruses like Seek Ye First. By the time we reached the end of the summer, song leaders didn’t need to ask Paska what she wanted to sing—it was the same every time: The Old Rugged Cross. Here we were singing rambunctious camp songs and she wanted a traditional hymn. That summer we all learned all the words to every verse.
Paska’s faith had a different intensity from ours. She was a great Bible study leader, but more than that she offered her campers a running commentary on how God was present in their day. She was gentle but encouraging, and vehement about living in ways that honoured God. I had never seen anyone who loved their Bible so much.
Yes, Paska was different, and I was blessed to know her in such unique and intimate circumstances. It was not until much, much later that I discovered the whole story of where she had come from and why she was at camp. Watching the news one evening, I saw her face, and listened as she was interviewed. She had been a child soldier in Uganda, she explained, suffering through a life of hardship and violence after being abducted as a child. She came to Canada and was adopted by two Presbyterian ministers, Glen and Joyce Davis, who had helped her build a new life. We met her when she had only been in the country for a few weeks.
Although I didn’t know her story at the time –none of us had any idea –Paska illuminated a great deal about the way we thought and lived. It had never dawned on us that there might be people who didn’t use electric appliances to wash their clothes. We had no idea what hard work really was, or that it could be done so willingly and efficiently. We thought all teenagers rolled their eyes at traditional church hymns.
We were sheltered, middle-class teenagers. But Paska’s presence in our tight knit community showed us that our way of doing things was not the only way, nor was it always the best way. The arrival of God’s light can be like that.
The world was a formless void, it says in Genesis, until God decided that there should be light. And nothing was ever the same again. The darkness was banished. The chaos was ended. A new way of doing and being began.
Millions of creative moments like that have happened since. Light has entered into darkness, enlightening what no one could see before. Paska was a bearer of God’s light at camp that year, and the rest of us stood in her radiant pool that illuminated our blessings and our biases.
God said, “Let there be light,” and it was not just a proclamation but a gift.
(Unlike most of you) I remember my first computer. I had finished university with nothing but a typewriter and a girl across the hall who knew how to use it. I was used to taking all my notes by hand, I wrote letters to my friends in big messy handwriting and I was totally fine with the whole arrangement.
Then I began a new degree at U of T and a friend of mine who was already a student there doing a doctorate in engineering said, “You don’t have a computer? Are you kidding?”
I didn’t like the idea –it seemed like way too much trouble when I already had a typewriter –but I went out and bought a little Compaq sub-notebook anyway. That little piece of plastic and metal changed everything.
Most of you were born into a world with computers. You have always had screen in front you, and a huge digital world all around you. You have always worked on and played at and created with technology. Power Point, Mario Kart, and YouTube are basically essential to your lives.
I don’t know if you’ve heard about Hélène Campbell, but she typifies the way many of you are using technology. Hélène is a young woman from Ottawa who was hiking last July when she suddenly collapsed. She was later diagnosed with “Advanced idiopathic pulmonary fibrosis,” a chronic and progressive disease that scars the lungs. In Helene it developed quickly, leaving her with only a fraction of her lung capacity available. She found it difficult to breathe and had trouble just keeping up with everyday life –she couldn’t dance, couldn’t speak for any length of time and couldn’t even stand up long enough to have a shower.
Eventually, she was placed on a list for a lung transplant. While she was waiting, she started a blog to keep her family up to date and to keep her own spirits up. She also thought it would be a good idea if more people knew what it was like to need an organ transplant, and how hard it was to wait a long time when there are so few available.
Her first goal was to talk to friends and family about it. (While that sounds like an easy thing to do, it must have been a little uncomfortable. Because to talk about organ donation is to talk about people dying, and no one wants to talk about that.) Then she decided that the conversation needed to get bigger. What happened next was crazy.
On January 16, Hélène released a video on YouTube. The goal was to get as many people as possible to “tweet up a storm” requesting the help of Justin Bieber using the hashtag #BeAnOrganDonor. Eventually, Justin Bieber did hear her story and he responded by tweeting: “@alungstory I got the word . . . You have amazing strength. I got u. #BeAnOrganDonor.” That tweet reached his 16.5 million followers.
That might have been fantastic enough, but Hélène was just getting warmed up. Next she sent a video to Ellen DeGeneres about the Dance Dare contest that was happening on her show. The contest challenged viewers to take video of themselves dancing in public places, preferably behind unsuspecting strangers. Helene loved the idea. The problem was that much as she loved dancing, she could barely stand for any length of time, never mind groove to her favourite song. So her video told Ellen about how she –and other people waiting for transplants –wouldn’t be able to join the fun until they received a donor organ.
Ellen was so moved by the whole story that she contacted Hélène via Skype in a surprise call, where the two of them talked about organ donation in front of more than a million viewers. Since her successful double lung transplant this spring, Hélène has appeared on the show once more, and there are plans underway for her and her mother to fly to California for a live taping of the show.
It all started when Hélène wanted to shed light on an important issue that can save lives. Unlike any generation before her, however, she used technology and social media to get the word out and in the end, the results were incredible. Not only did people start talking about it and seeing the story on the news, but the Ontario Trillium Gift of Life Network said that they have been overwhelmed by the response.
Because of Hélène Campbell and her public campaign, the organization has received more than three thousand new organ donation cards, and has seen a significant increase in registered organ donors through their web site, www.BeADonor.ca. And that is only one province. There is no telling how many lives are being saved because of Hélène.
You know how to use technology. What I like is that many of you, like Hélène Campbell, are using it to do good in the world. You are using everything from Skype to YouTube to bring hope and laughter and light into this world of ours that has some very dark corners.
All of it started with those first words in Genesis: In the beginning…God said, “Let there be light;” and there was light.
Sometimes people read the first chapter of Genesis as a sort of play by play that explains how the world was made. But I think that the story of how the world came to be isn’t really about “how” at all. It is more about “what”, and even more precisely “who”.
Even in these few lines from the very first book of the Bible, we discover a great deal about the “who” that is our God. Our God was there in the beginning—present even before time itself. Our God is active –ready to engage in ways that are powerful and productive.
Our God also reveals that he is innovative. “In the opening verses of Genesis God exhibits a certain creative style,” writes one commentator. This God of ours didn’t copy something that was done before. He imagined entirely new ways of being and building.
I find a clear parallel between “Let there be light” and the story of Hélène Campbell. She was able to shed light on a taboo subject in a way that no one else has done before, and in doing so, she echoed God’s creative, innovative style.
God said, “Let there be light,” and it was not just a gift but a calling.
And now here we find ourselves, at the beginning of a new CY, on the threshold of a new experience, a new adventure. Here we are with the chaos of packing and travelling still fresh in our mind. And God has words for us today: Let there be light. This is a proclamation. It is a gift. It is a calling.
This week will be full of words. They will be spoken and sung, heard and read. They will be offered by presenters and advisors, preachers and participants. And while some words will have more power than others, they will all have power. By speaking, you will reveal who you are. By speaking, we will share ideas. By speaking, we will break down walls, build up the body of Christ, and reshape this world that we live in. Our words –echoes of God’s very first words –have the potential to light up one another’s lives with joy and hope.
This week you will not just meet new friends, but to live in community with these brothers and sisters in Christ. Look at the people sitting to your right and to your left and know that in the coming days you will worship together and eat meals together. You will greet one another when you are still rubbing sleep from your eyes, talk about those things that are most important to you, and listen to stories and ideas that are far different than anything you have ever encountered. A bond will grow between you, and God’s light will shine among you and you will have the privilege of receiving that gift.
That is not all. This week you will be inspired. You will learn and grow, your opinions will change, your heart will be transformed. You will play games that make your heart race and worship in ways that make your spirit soar. You will be challenged to think in new ways and given the tools to ask questions that you cannot even dream of tonight. You will be given the gift of God’s brilliant and beautiful light, and equipped to share that light with a world that has in it some very dark corners.
This is all because in the beginning, God said, Let there be light. So go out into this week, ready to live out God’s creative and powerful words. Go out ready to proclaim, ready to receive, ready to share. Go out into this fantastic week blessed, called, and radiant. God out into this week and Let there be light!
Amen.
