Memories Are Made of Ads

A current ad for a resort on Lake Simcoe, “Friday Harbour,” has as background the song “Sunny Days” by the late somewhat-lamented Canadian rock band, Lighthouse. They were immensely popular in the early 70s when they blasted past the weed-masking flags in university residence windows from Dual turntables and Kenwood speakers into campus pathways. Hearing the music evokes all kinds of memories. Which is why, I guess, music is such an important tool used by therapists in the whole not-much-heralded field of music therapy. 

A number of my classmates from Western (then University of Western Ontario) music class of ‘75 went on to graduate training in music therapy. I observed in pastoral visiting, in my many, many visits with seniors over the years, that the mere mention of some bit of music can change a person’s demeanour and make an opening for delving into important, maybe even healing avenues. So maybe when we hear the next nostalgia-driven musical background to some otherwise-unworthy product or service, we can consider what connection we might make, that we may have been overdue in making, with those who might share the experience, in spite of grievances or silly ideological niceties.

Feeding My Mind for the Next Level

If someone could read my mind, I would be embarrassed. No, not for reasons you might now be thinking. I would be embarrassed at how selfishly mundane my thoughts are at any given time. They would go, “Boy, I could really use a nap.” Or, “I wonder what I should have or lunch.” Elevating stuff like that.

Probably more out of my concern for creature comforts than for social/contemporary issues, I noticed a report this morning that Metro, the grocery chain, is reporting a 10 percent increase in sales from a year ago. I’m happy for them and their employees. It is said to be a sign that during the pandemic people have been eating more at home. I immediately think that’s a good thing, but then, yeah, the restaurants and service industry workers, what about them? Nothing is simple.

“Give us this day our daily bread,” Jesus said we should pray in one way or another (Introducing what we call the Lord’s Prayer he said this is how you should pray, meaning, I think, we shouldn’t be just repeating it without taking it as a kind of template). However we go about it, it seems God wants us to be fed. At the plainest level, God doesn’t want anyone going hungry.

Since we never look at any bit of Scripture in isolation, we recognize that this comes right after, “Your will be done on earth as it is in heaven.” Tellingly, Jesus does not get us then to say to the Lord, “And good luck with that.” No, he then says we should pray for our daily sustenance. Implication, as I would take it: God is ready to equip and sustain us for having part in seeing that God’s will is done on earth. Taking an even higher elevation view, we see this is part of the Sermon on the Mount, which begins with the Beatitudes and  their character of compassion and peace-making and love of neighbour on earth.

When I answer my idle mind with its prompting to check what’s in the fridge, I resolve to be reminded what I am really being sustained for — especially with much of what passes for Christianity these days consuming itself with us-and-them-ism.

In Praise of Doing Our Best

Lacking perfect solutions for pretty much anything, most of us do our best. With a new school season upon us, parents, teachers, everyone involved is striving to do what is best, in spite of, in some jurisdictions, politicians who obviously are just doing their best to look out for their own interests. In fact, they don’t give a poop about anything else.

Church leaders I know are doing their best. In most situations I am aware of, churches are going slowly and very carefully in opening their buildings again, even though they are allowed to, with certain conditions. Meanwhile leaders who are not at all familiar with the technology and new approaches are learning new ways. I admire that. They are doing their best.

Speaking of church, in that setting you may have encountered people with pet ideas or projects or worship elements they have an interest in that you recognize right away really do not fit with your organization’s stated mission. They may say, “Well, God can use it.” Yes, God can. But this is what I call a “sun is hot” argument. You know, someone arguing something says, “Would you agree that the sun is hot?” You say, “Uh, sure.” They say, “Well then, you must also agree that …” Silly? Sure. But there are persuasive, influential persons who get away with this kind of argument all the time. 

We are to offer our best, not just count on God to make the best of what we do. That is an insult to God, and to people who are really struggling to do their best in very trying circumstances.

This is no time for an “Oh well” attitude, or “I guess this will do” approach to anything. You are doing your best. It’s worth it.

But What Does That Really Mean?

The news is exhausting. Not just all the pain and stupidity. It’s that everything requires interpretation. Even if and when someone in public is being straightforward in their speech, we might be forgiven for suspecting they are not. We are not unjustified in assuming everything we are hearing is spin.

You may find you suffer from this same sort of fatigue from dissembling, obfuscation and manipulation at work as well. I sure hope not (been there, and it’s awful). We would pray and work at, for sure, not wanting this kind of experience among those we count as friends, and most certainly not family. But it happens.

We can at least all resolve to let what people experience in us be authentic. In another, I will take flaws, oddballness, even monumental screw-ups over interpersonal dishonesty or double-speak.

Jesus said, “Let your word be ‘Yes, Yes’ or ‘No, No’; anything more than this comes from the evil one” (Matthew 5:47 NRSV). People had debased the practice of oath taking by using it in an attempt to cover their insincerity and deceitfulness. Better to just speak plainly.

Save us, Lord, from spin narratives with one another. We see enough of it on the news. May we not devolve into a world where everyone has to guess about everyone else.

Collective Craving, Shared Hope

So as of this coming Friday, July 17, most of Ontario will enter Stage 3 of reopening, meaning, while still socially distanced, we can dine in restaurants, go to the gym, and more. Along with more practical reasons for happiness at this, there is probably an expel-a-long-breath sense of relief at being able to be a bit closer to other specimens of our species in something like a more everyday sort of way.

Maybe at some level there is a similar appeal, even craving, involved in a flurry of extra terrestrial connecting. Three nations are launching scientific missions to Mars this month (there’s a window for that now). And some of us are excited about comet Neowise, visible in the early morning sky.

If as a species we go to some lengths to explore possible proximity (relatively speaking) with other parts of the universe, it seems really not much of a big deal to do the very simple things that will help move along to being closer to one another again right here: You know, the distancing, masking, hand washing. How can any of this be an issue?

Some basic efforts about basic things are worthwhile, in all kinds of ways. I for one want to keep this in mind in a world where it easily can seem that only selfish, I-am-my-own-little-cosmos evil-influenced people succeed.

Mitigating Chaos

It’s easy enough to do. It is easy enough to fault powers-that-be for not being powers- that-do when it comes to being prepared for foreseeable trouble and acting on it. Not to excuse anything, but it is also true that the powers-that-be exhibit human geared-for-failure traits that we share. Or I know that I share.

There is the present. In the present there is this reality, global pandemic, that for decades, decades, has been predicted clearly, plainly, and loudly by highly competent and credible people. Will we humans learn from this? There will, after all, be another one. 

There are other threats, so it is said. They can all be prepared for, or at least mitigated in their impact. The chance of an inadvertent nuclear exchange can be lessened if the people who can do so would pull back even a bit from their readiness for intentional insanity. Or so I hear (via Economist podcast). Some put at 50/50 in this decade the chance of solar activity that would down satellites, and fry world-wide communications and power, maybe for years. Maybe forever. Even with that, it is said, there are things that can be done to lessen the impact (though it will still be horrible).

There is, however, little will to do anything about “low probability, high impact” events, even when the probability isn’t really low, and even when the cost of doing something now is relatively cheap.

There is this human thing, isn’t there. We will ignore or deny facts until the last possible instant, and maybe not then. Instead, deny, blame, make excuses. And everyone around the denial goes down with the denier.

That podcast I referenced made mention of three simple steps we can encourage (which really might mean instilling some courage) our leaders to do to help be prepared for disaster. First scan for present and potential danger. Second, develop a plan. Third (it has to be said), have the will to enact the plan.

Those, it seems to me, are good steps for all of us when it comes to work, the organizations we are part of, family and personal matters. Scan and plan. I say this as one who knows too well the impact of my own failures in such things.

We can lift one another in such realities as, or before, they arise, with a “You can do this” kind of genuine en-couragement.

Movie Theatre as Prism

Apparently Cineplex is looking to reopen as early as July of this year, if, when, and where it may be allowed to do so. Seems they plan to march on after an apparently failed takeover deal, and have measures planned to make visiting their venues safe, including reserved seating.

I don’t suppose there is anything they will do to prevent there being some person a couple of rows ahead who insists on looking at their phone throughout the movie.

Anyway, there is the simple escapism of it, and if you care for films at all there are some you just need to see on the big screen along with the big sound. Sometimes there is even artistic merit, with something to be gained for the mind and heart.

There is always the chance this mode of expression — even seeing the same content as we would experience on a home theatre system — will awaken us to some human connection, insight or beauty we would not otherwise have apprehended. One might look forward to a return of live theater for the same reasons.

If and when it can be done safely, I just might visit a movie theatre again. Truth is always seeking ways to be revealed. 

A Gift to One Another

There is a movement afoot to rename a well-known Toronto street, Dundas, because this particular Mr. Dundas is known to have worked, back in England, to obstruct the abolishment of slavery. It is one of a multitude of instances we are all seeing of the re-assessing of the appropriateness of names attached to streets, monuments, various buildings and places. Good.

We might also take an evaluating look at the practice of naming things after people in the first place. There is, of course, the potential that the person being honoured in this way might turn out not to be quite as honourable as thought, even as another time might judge one to be honourable.  It may even suggest to some that this is how you live on. You become successful and you live on as a street or a shiny building.

Silly? Maybe to you and me, but I wouldn’t discount it. Especially when a long-standing pandemic in this world is a lack of self-worth over against a world of material obsession. Consider the first thing we think of when it is asked what a person’s worth is.

There are thoughtful people who sense that our being is tied to something much bigger than anything our memory could be tied to, that our consciousness is tied to a reality beyond ourselves. More specifically and personally, there are those who live in confidence of a promise that is  more reliable than anything we experience as reality: “I am with you always, to the very end of the age” (Matthew 28:20b).

Each of us has the power that is to be found in its relinquishing–relinquishing power, that is. We live instead by grace, accepting–in contrast to much of the spirit of the world being protested against–that we are a gift to one another, and we live in anticipation, by that grace, of a greater, more enduring community to come.

Yes There Is Hope

Parents and day care operators in Ontario are struggling with permission for day care centres to open again tomorrow (June 12) with all that it takes actually to be ready for that. Also, here in Ontario, the government  has announced plans for postsecondary schools to open in the summer for students, particularly this year’s grads, to complete their school year, schools having closed in March. 

Beyond the logistics involved in these developments, it strikes me there is a common concern between the near end of schooling and care before it even begins: How to have healthy, whole humans, equipped for a world that will very quickly–again and repeatedly–become unrecognizable?

The specific knowledge and skills carefully and thoroughly to be developed need bearing in the special vessel of our acknowledged interdependent humanity.

Signs of hope among some leaders of today: Mayors Keisha Lance Bottoms (Atlanta) and Muriel Bowser (District of Columbia), Prime Ministers Yacinda Ardern (New Zealand) and Mette Frederiksen (Denmark), Dr. Bonnie Henry, Provincial Health Officer for British Columbia, and (take note of the name for future reference) Chika Stacy Oriuwa, 2020 University of Toronto medical school valedictorian. Note that even to this white male retired pastor from an agrarian patriarchal religion, it is women who come to mind.

There is hope in such leadership, and for each of us. I (still) find it expressed: “Do not conform to the pattern of this world, but be transformed by the renewing of your mind” (Romans 12:2a).

Something New in the How of Things?

There are two very different kinds of alliances revealed in recent times. 

1. Alliance in Support of Power

My impression is that there is one set of alliances at work to support certain interests existing in small towns and the chalets of the ultra powerful. Their core value and raison d’etre: white supremacy. They work through political channels and the workings of familiar social media and unfamiliar (to most of us) dark net sites. And they have prominent hiding-in-plain-sight agents. 

The point: The function of one set of alliances is to promote survival strategies of an elite who believe in and work for a very narrow and ultimately oppressive idea of what it is to be a human being. 

2. Alliance in Support of Principle

There is another alliance we have seen at work–on the streets of the United States, around the world, in big cities and small rural towns. It is a disparate alliance working not for power interests, but for principle. That principle seems to have to do with the equality and dignity of all humanity. And, not to over generalize or principle-ize it, it is focused on the very specific, long-standing, and supported-by-the-powerful, systematic abuse of blacks. It is making headway.

Dare I hope that not only is this specific thing being effectively addressed, but that something new is happening in the how of things? Real change seems to be coming, and it is not through conventional politics and its power-wrangling found everywhere from cabinet rooms and legislatures to too many town and church councils.

It is necessary to remember, however, that the best-intentioned alliances consist of human beings. This is both a strength and a vulnerability. It is essential, therefore, that in this, as in everything, we support the best in one another.