September has arrived! I have a bit of a love/hate relationship with September. I’m reluctant to let go of the more relaxed pace of life I’ve been enjoying through July and August. On the other hand, I know deep down I’m ready for a fresh start. I’m ready to get back into more routine and the rhythm of the teaching year.
A few weeks back, I took a long bike ride down Red River Drive. The intention was not “a trip down memory lane”, but that’s what ended up happening. In the spring of 1997, the Red River valley experienced what was later dubbed ‘the flood of the century’. It was, in fact, the worst flooding since 1852. At its peak, around 26,000 Manitoba residents were evacuated from their homes and the river was being called “the Red Sea” – 710 square miles of southern Manitoba were under water. You can read more about the flood here. Winnipeg sustained minimal damage compared to many other communities due to the floodway which diverts river water around the city. We have Duff Roblin to thank for this engineering marvel which has protected Winnipeg numerous times since its construction. My family and I lived inside the floodway and Winnipeg’s perimeter highway at the time; we were in no immediate danger. Still, a sense of foreboding permeated daily newscasts particularly after the flooding and fires in Grand Forks, North Dakota.
My bike ride that July day took me into flood territory. Oh, now it’s quite high and dry! But there are still things that point back to 1997. Many homes along that stretch of road are now surrounded by ring dikes with a driveway opening that can be easily closed up with sandbags if necessary. They seemed to be mostly on the west side of the road, away from the river. On the east side of the road, the river side, I occasionally rode past driveways leading nowhere. I don’t know for sure, but I suspect that these driveways once led to homes whose owners chose not to rebuild after the ’97 flood. Maybe there was too much damage or too many bad memories. Rebuilding could have been physically and emotionally overwhelming. It was easier to move on – to get a fresh start somewhere else.
I’ve been thinking about all this in relation to hymn singing and worship. I think there are hymns that have ring dikes around them. We treat them a little like the line in the old Sunday school song, “I shall not be, I shall not be moved.” Those hymns become hallowed and I’m not sure they all deserve that pedestal. (I’m not going to name any; they’ll be unique to each congregation.) Like the homes on the river side, maybe it’s time to let go, to move on and get a fresh start. Is there a hymn that you think of as a ‘fresh start’?
