Just as soldiers who went to fight did not hear of the Holocaust until after they returned, so we who were raised in Canada were never taught the story of residential schools. Watchers will know that, in a moment, we saw both our church and our nation through a new set of eyes. So it was on the second of June that Canada got a chance to see into itself, into its own history, as it had never done before. The Truth and Reconciliation Commission delivered its report. The poignant words and the magnetic voices of Justice Murray Sinclair and Marie Wilson spoke in real time, which was at 8 a.m. here on the Pacific. Some had to have their feet on the floor three hours earlier in order to be with the 350 that gathered, fully hushed, to hear the report.
The previous Sunday, 800 of us had gathered at an ecumenical service for Anglican, Presbyterian, United, Roman Catholic and Baptist congregations. Rev. Mary Fontaine, a minister who is both Presbyterian and First Nations, together with three of her native elders, extended to all the welcome of the Coast Salish peoples. St. Andrew’s-Wesley United Church, Vancouver, the building housing the service, is on “the unceded territory” of the Coast Salish people. In other words, the land on which the building sits was never purchased from its first residents.
We were a never-before-seen mixture and a far larger crowd than usual. Both a Christian understanding of God and a First Nations feel for the spiritual nature of the earth were combined in such a way that both were honoured. Nothing of worship was same-old, same-old; the experience was re-orienting. It was a sacred celebration of something that was going to burst upon all of Canada two days later.
It is an awakening experience to see your country (a nation that can evoke deep pride) and your church (a place that seems so reviled of late) in a way that demands a rethinking of both.
Before the service began, people gathered in a sunny courtyard across the street in the complex of a business tower that represents the city’s secular power. It is said that the downtown area of Vancouver is the most densely populated square mile in our country; it looked it that day. The sacred fire was lit, hidden not in a building but burning for the city to see. There were several hundred witnesses, some of whom were passersby on the busy sidewalk.
In the Aboriginal heart, the sacred fire evokes the sunshine warming Mother Earth. It calls forth a time for healing and a space into which the four winds can blow, reconfiguring relationships.
After the ecumenical service, the people returned to the city square. They participated in what’s called the blanket exercise. Narrators tell the story of how First Nations people experienced the advent of European settlers. Blankets are used to help visualize territory. Slowly their available land diminished—their wealth!—and then they began to diminish, no longer needed by the new people.
Most of the participants were of European stock; some were Asian. In their faces one could see the horror of a dawning realization. There was not a sound from the few First Nations people who were there, but I saw a handkerchief go to the eye from time to time and an arm reach out from one to the other in embrace. The pain was palpable. Now, at last, I get it!
On this day of reconciliation, two constructs were dashed. The one was how I see and relate to the “Indian” I meet. It used to be that I met him or her on the street. Today we are in a church whose doors, we’d both been convinced, we’d never ever darken!
The other construct is how the downtown churches of Vancouver were transformed as they responded to the need for the reconciliation of insiders and outsiders. They were, themselves, changed. Never in my life had I imagined that these self-contained downtown worshipping communities would ever mingle during the act of worship. In 2015, it has happened.
The gargantuan proportions of what flowed out of the Truth and Reconciliation Commission made denominational politics look so very petty, yet the larger reconciliation also changed the churches that participated in it.
The Church is often portrayed as a ship. Anyone who lives on the coast knows the experience of travelling aboard a vessel on the wind-swept sea. It can blow so hard that one must grasp the rails with both hands, fearing that hair and clothing may be torn from the body. It stirs primal fears and primal thrills. During that hour in St. Andrew’s-Wesley, there was such an uncovering. One could be blown overboard.
Maybe that’s the upset that all those crowds in the ancient land experienced when Jesus spoke to them.
It is a fearful thing to fall into the hands of the living God.
