My mother is in a nursing home and the doctor just gave her six months to live. But when he found out she couldn't pay her bill, he gave her another year. Last night after spending some time with her, the thought hit me: If I stay in peak physical condition, I will live long enough to be a drain on the medical system. And so I have uncovered three ways to ensure this does not happen.
It was fitting that the Marketplace Court at the Forks in Winnipeg should be the last stop in our national Aboriginal and Church Leaders' tour. For it was here, at this traditional stopping place at the junction of the Red and Assiniboine rivers, that Aboriginal peoples gathered for centuries to meet, to share food and medicine, to discuss issues of common concern and to trade. It was here, too, that new inhabitants of Canada met with the Aboriginal peoples and shared their cultures, thereby offering an opportunity to grow together as peoples and become enriched as individual human beings in building bonds of friendship and new understanding.
“We are appealing to the general public to talk to their Members of Parliament, their legislators … to encourage them to get the Prime Minister of Canada to formally apologize for the atrocities that occurred at the hands of the governments of the past,” Chief Lawrence Joseph of the Federation of Saskatchewan Indian Nations said to the 500 people gathered at the Saskatoon Western Development Museum.
Sunday, March 2 was the launch of Remembering the Children, a cross-Canada tour promoting the upcoming Truth and Reconciliation Commission on Residential Schools. Aboriginal and church leaders gathered along with a colourful collection of singers, dancers, musicians and children in the Grand Hall of the Museum of Civilization in Ottawa. This enormous hall, designed by Aboriginal architect Douglas Cardinal, is home to six reconstructed Native houses from coastal British Columbia and 43 totem poles, the largest collection in the world. Through the three-storey windows, you can see across the river to Parliament Hill. It proved an appropriate backdrop to a dramatic evening.
I Believe in the Holy Ghost, the Holy Catholic Church, the Communion of Saints, the Forgiveness of Sins…'
Rev. Dr. Hans Kouwenberg told Assembly Council, at its pre-General Assembly meeting in March, that the Aboriginal and Church Leaders' Tour on which he represented the Presbyterian Church was “one of the most phenomenal experiences of my life.” The Church's healing and reconciliation animator, Lori Ransom, reported that the turn-out for all four stops along the Canadian tour exceeded expectations (with about 1,500 people attending). There was strong Aboriginal participation, and it was a true step forward in having these two groups “walk together.”
Earth Hour, March 29, 2008: People across the world turned off their power for one hour. KAIROS: Canadian Ecumenical Justice Initiatives, an NGO supported by the Presbyterian Church, held an event at Holy Trinity, Toronto, where the gathered signed a petiition to Prime Minister Harper to redirect oil and gas subsidies to more sustainable energy sources.
Dr. Richard Allen is frustrated. “Canadians have the means and opportunity to learn and keep current about the situations of various countries and peoples in the world, but unfortunately they often remain uninformed,” says the Sarnia, Ont., native who has been working with the Presbyterian Church in East Africa since 1994. “One would hope that the fairly wide reporting in the media of the present Kenyan crisis will encourage Canadians and others in the future to follow similar world problems more closely.”
Denominational lines are changing. In recent years, they've become more porous than ever, where people easily move through quickly dissolving boundaries, searching for the right fit. And it's not only members who migrate throughout and within this post-denominational society; ministers are doing the same. This migration may simply be the natural order of things, or it might also be dependent on theological issues, like gay marriage and ordination, or on other very personal reasons.
Want to know what's going on in the world and how you can help? Go to www.presbyterian.ca, click on Our Mission, in the top left hand corner, click on Presbyterian World Service and Development, and from the menu on the right side click on Emergency Appeals.
“We have to re-formulate our identity,” Rev. Daniel Cho told the Life and Mission Agency Committee in March. “And how it is articulated and communicated to ourselves and others, because that perception will reflect and influence our work.”
ENI – The moderator of the Church of Scotland, Rev. Sheilagh Kesting, has warned that anti-English bigotry in Scotland is akin to sectarianism and should not be tolerated. She stirred a recent heated debate in the Scottish press when she said that anti-English banter during sporting events between the two countries could be harmful and might lead to more sinister behaviour.
ENI – Australian Prime Minister Kevin Rudd apologized to the “Stolen Generations” – Indigenous people removed from their families under old policies aimed at assimilation – in February. Church leaders applauded the apology and called for practical steps to address Indigenous disadvantage.
ENI – “The fact that a newspaper needs a short sentence, or that radio stations have only a few minutes in which to report, often does not fit in with how we talk in church. A sermon lasts at least 15 minutes, and a theological lecture at least 45,” German Lutheran Bishop Margot Käsmann said in a speech at the Protestant Media Academy in Berlin.
Congregations can become aware of their environment and reduce their dependence on oil and fossil fuels with the help of KAIROS' Re-energize Campaign. Supported by the Presbyterian Church, KAIROS has created an initiative to educate, inspire and assist congregations, groups and individuals to take action. One of the most practical – and fun – suggestions is a 100-mile congregational meal.
When the Glenview, Toronto, congregation decided to support Evangel Hall's Campaign Dignity in the fall of 2004, there were a few individuals wondering whether the congregation had taken on more of a commitment than it could handle.
I am not sure if it was all the unresolved pastoral concerns we were leaving behind, or if we were all burned out from months […]
ENI – At 2.25 per cent, Jehovah's Witnesses in the United States experienced the largest percentage increase in membership among the top 25 denominations, according to the US National Council of Churches' 2008 Yearbook of American and Canadian Churches. Jehovah's Witnesses are the 25th largest church in the States with 1,069,530 members.
About a year ago, a group of female students at Presbyterian College, Montreal were discussing how we managed our lives outside of school. We shared our experiences of answering God's call by meeting the demands of student life while also being wife or mother, single woman or friend, and in many cases, living far away from home in order to do so. We laughed and groaned as we swapped stories. Yet as we witnessed a new sense of solidarity emerging, we learned that we were not alone.
Forty years ago I remember doing elementary school projects on pollution, cutting out pictures from Time and the other news magazines that came into our house.