ALL ABOARD!

Hanns F Skoutajan

“Air Canada Flight 251 is in its final boarding process. All passengers should now be on board.” The line-up at the gate had dwindled to a mere trickle as one after the other passengers pass by the check-in desk and enter the passageway to the aircraft.

Then a loud shout could be heard. Racing down the hall trundling their carry-on cases two more passengers wildly waving their boarding passes and passports rush for the gate  - just in the last moment. Behind them the door closes and the flight is ready for departure.

I mentioned to my oncologist that I suspected that I am in my “final boarding process.”

He chuckled but  didn’t want to make any rash predictions about my date of departure. He did, however, remind me that  people of my tender years  are all in their final boarding process. Departure might not be imminent. It isn’t in my case.

As we approach the end of the year there are also speculations about the future. We live in a turbulent world, armed to the teeth, some of them weapons of mass destruction. Wars, as in Syria and South Sudan, are devastating the people and country. There are serious questions as to how we shall feed the billions that are crowding this planet.  How much time have we left  -  has civilization left, - has this planet Earth left?

There are those religious fanatics who take pleasure in end time conjectures, who like to remind everyone of those biblical visions of the end, in the Old Testament in Joel 2 : 10, but also in the New Testament in Matthew 2 : 24 - 29, about the sun being darkened and the moon losing light, the stars falling from heaven being shaken by the last turbulence.  Among them is Harold Camping, a broadcaster in the United States who stirred consternation , ecstasy and complaints to the U.S. Federal Communications  Commission. He predicted twice in 2011 that the end of the world is nigh. But he beat the world to its demise as he died on Dec. 15th in California, of course. He is just one of a host of other prophets of doom. 

Astrophyisicists also speculate about the end  as they do about the beginning, the Big Bang and the Big Crunch and perhaps another Big Bang and “deja vu all over again.” Hans Küng, the noted Tübingen (Germany) theologian, writes in his book, The Beginning of All Things : Science and Religion,  that “in around 5 billion years from now the Andromeda Galaxy  will collide with the Milky Way and billions of stars will be hurled around the universe. At the same time, the sun will swell into a red giant. Then all life  on our Earth will die out.”

5 billion years seems like a lot of time for a final boarding process.  Rather than being obsessed with End Times, biblical or astrophysical, the dwellers on this planet need to be concerned about the quality of life of all its inhabitants.

My oncologist and I discussed what therapies we should take to preserve quality rather than quantity of life. We all love life, I do, and want to have as much of it as possible , but what kind of life?

Thus as we stand at the portal of another year I cannot help but wonder what is to come  not just for my earthly body but for the world that our bodies inhabit.

Unfortunately many of those dwellers of time and space are desperately avaricious. We are determined to mine the earth’s resources ignoring the havoc caused as can be seen at Fort McMurray and surroundings. Quality of life, it seems, is constituted by the bottom line. Living responsibly  and sustainably is trumped by accumulation. We like to forget that we are indeed in a final boarding process.     

For me quality of life has everything to do with my family, just as humankind needs to think about its human family, about living in peace and harmony with one another and with this God-given environment. The final boarding process is not meant to be a time when we hoard up what’s left. Our carry-ons can hold  just so much.

Whether you believe that there is something beyond the boarding gate is not the point. 

Testifying to his faith, Küng, does not believe in the “dying of the light” but entering fully into the light of God’s love. He has wagered his life on that belief  but admits that he is aware of the abiding risk of this wager.  “But I am convinced, “ he affirms, “ that even if I lose this wager in death, I will in all events have lived a better, happier, more meaningful life than if I had not had hope.”

It is with this conviction that we need to approach the departure gate whether that be in the new year or in some time to come.  The final boarding process is nevertheless upon us . Be not afraid. Live lovingly.

Happy New Year!

SQ 27/ 12/ 2013

WISHING YOU A BLESSD CHRISTMAS AND A HAPPY NEW YEAR

S P E C I A L   C H R I S T M A S   B L O G 

Its the Gospel Truth!

When the time came for her to be delivered, Joseph and Mary, great with child, set out for Bethlehem because they were of the house and lineage of David. 

At the outskirts of Jerusalem they were stopped at a security wall because they had the wrong papers, expired papers or no papers at all. The youthful guards snickered about a “virgin birth.” Thus they waited by the roadside for some Good Samaritan to come along. And she did.

Meanwhile Wise Men from the East set out to follow their unlucky star. They had no problem getting to Bethlehem because they had Israeli government tourist visas for Holy Land visitors.

When they got to manger square there was some confusion. The stable was empty. A cow was contentedly finishing the hay in the manger. Sheep baaed disconcertingly, Goats brayed annoyingly. Shepherds looked sheepish. Angels fluttered about singing hallelujahs off-key. And finally the star blinked out.

When nothing happened the royal trio cashed in their gold and myrrh and frankincense at the nearest Western Union office in Jerusalem and booked rooms at the King David Hotel. They laid in a supply of trinkets, mostly sandalwood carvings of the manger scene as it was supposed to have been, to prove to friends that they had been there and done that.  Then they headed home “by another route ”

Mary had her baby at a home for unwed mothers run by UNWRRA in Ramalla. When they were fit to travel they took the donkey express to Nazareth, and the rest is history.

“The baby grew in wisdom, stature, in favour with God and man.” And isn’t that how it ought be.

Written and misinterpreted by Hanns F Skoutajan

SQ 20/12/2013

Other writings may be found at  MYQUEST

NB new address: fj735@ncf.ca

“MADIBA” 

HANNS F SKOUTAJAN

The tumult and the shouting dies,

The captains and the kings depart,

Still stands thine ancient sacrifice,

A humble and a contrite heart.

Lord God of hosts be with us yet, 

Lest we forget, lest we forget.

 Recessional by Rudyard Kipling

On a beautiful day in October 1998 I stood on the tarmac in front of the main building of the infamous Dachau concentration camp. Even at the tender age of 8 I had known the meaning of KZ,  the German initials for Konzentrazionslager or concentration camp.  That word even looks like barbed wire . Dachau did not conjure up for me a pleasant brewery town a few kilometres north of Munich but sent shudders down my spine in those difficult prewar days. 

I was part of a small delegation of Canadians all of whom knew someone who had spent time in this prison camp. We somberly  toured the museum and then assembled in front of the memorial to a lay a wreath in silence. 

As I stood there I was very much aware that my own father, an ardent antifascist activist in the Sudetenland of Czechoslovakia, a marked man, might have been among the  inmates lined up to be counted, tortured and starved. Had it not been for Doreen Warriner,  a British Quaker and her compatriots raising money, putting pressure on the British government to issue visas and make travel arrangements for as many of the most endangered such as my father he would have been apprehended and marched under the arch bearing the slogan Arbeit Macht Frei, (Work Liberates). Mother and I would also have been caught behind the lines. Life for me would have been entirely different than it is today. I think about it often.

Concentration camps did not originate in the twisted mind of Adolf Hitler. History has assigned that honour to Britain who in the Boer Wars (1899 - 1902) set up camps not just for men. 35,000 women and children perished largely of starvation in these camps. 

A British journalist, W T Stead, wrote:

"Every one of these children who died as a result of the halving of their rations, thereby exerting pressure onto their family still on the battle-field, was purposefully murdered. The system of half rations stands exposed, stark and unashamedly as a cold-blooded deed of state policy employed with the purpose of ensuring the surrender of men whom we were not able to defeat on the field.”

See their pictures on Google and you will be reminded of what the US GIs saw when they liberated Dachau in 1945. 

A few days ago the people of South Africa joined by many others throughout the world mourned and celebrated the life of Nelson Mandela, their beloved Madeba. He had experienced first hand, life, if one may call it such, in the prison on Robbin Island. He was incarcerated for 27 years and lost a goodly portion of his life and health.

Leaders from all over the world including Canada gathered in South Africa to pay tribute to this truly remarkable person who, although scathed in body, remained unscathed in mind and spirit by this ordeal. 

It is only too easy to point fingers and play the numbers game, to plead innocence or to maintain that our atrocities were much less than those of Iran, Israel, China or North Korea to name just a few countries that hold political prisoners. Blood is on the hands of all wherever vested power is threatened.

Guantanamo stands as a black mark against the United States who prides itself as the home of the free and the brave. Nor is Canada lily white, indeed, one may say that our residential schools were a type of concentration camp for aboriginal children.

The name Nelson Mandela has gone down in history and will be a memorial for those who have survived hardship at the hand of oppressive regimes. After more than two and a half decades he walked out free to lead his country out of Apartheid into a better future. True his country has a long way to go before poverty, a persistent apartheid, is removed. 

Shortly after his liberation he came to Canada where he was received with great acclaim. I saw his entourage in Toronto. He was made an honourary citizen of Canada. The vote in parliament would have been unanimous had it not been for one MP who like the former US vice president Dick Cheney continues to insist that he was a communist and terrorist.

It is my hope that as our Prime Minister stood by his bier he will have had second thoughts about continuing to insist on the incarceration of Omar Khadr, a child soldier cajoled by his father to join the Afghan terrorists and then further cajoled to confess to killing one American soldier. 

It is my hope that as Jean Chretien stood with the other dignitaries he will have borne in mind that it was under his watch as PM that Maher Arar underwent extraordinary rendition and sent to Syria to be interrogated under extreme duress.  How many more languish in our prisons with charges held in secrecy?

It is my hope that Mandela’s name shall never be trivialized but continue to be a reminder of man’s inhumanity to man, to persuade people to work to  bring freedom and to stand for peace and justice.”

Nelson Mandela is dead: Long live Madiba

SQ 12/12/2013

Other writings may be found at MYQUEST

NB new e mail address is: fj735@ncf.c 

WRITING, PREACHING AND ORGANIZING FROM THE LEFT 

   

Hanns F Skoutajan

    

It was a relatively uneventful crossing from North Sydney to Port aux Basque, Newfoundland.  On one occasion I saw what resembled a piece of flotsam  a short distance from our ship. And then it blew a blast of spray and I knew  that I had sighted my first whale. There were many more to come.

What amused Marlene and I most was the entertainment in the lounge,  a small band accompanied a singer who often repeated the chorus line: “ Ah knows it, ah knows it!” It was our introduction to Newfoundland culture and lingo. Later we enjoyed Emil Benoit and the Figgy Duff in a pub in St Johns. 

After we docked we made our  way to a nearby campground. It was the first of July and water was rushing down the gutters. Some workers came by to clear the flow. Pointing to one of the hills where there was a remnant of white stuff I asked one of the men whether that was snow. He replied, “ Yup, she be thar till she come again.” For me it was quintessential  Newfoundland.

Over the next two weeks we travelled the length and breadth of the province and  fell heavily in love with this “ come by lately” province and its people. At St. Anthony Marlene bought a beautiful parka trimmed with fur. We toured L’Anse aux Meadows, an early Norse settlement. We climbed Gros Morne with almost disastrous  results. Visited Twillingate and enjoyed their partrige berry pie and other home made goodies. Of course we had to drop in at Harbour Grace and Carbonear ( Oh Take I dar, Oh take I dar!) where we had to have our muffler fixed, a victim of St. Anthony’s roads. Finally we ran out of  land, well rock to be honest , and stood at Signal Hill.

Of course, I had met lots of Newfoundlanders before  One of them was Herb Pottle who had worked with Joey Smallwood and then split with him over Smallwood’s decertification of the woodworkers union. He became the director of communication for the United Church of Canada while I was director of the refugee resettlement program during World Refugee Year, 1960. Herb was very well educated and enjoyed speaking German with me. He could have done the same in Latin - well he, not I.

I recall all this after having attended  the book launch  by Ed Finn of his recently published book called Ed Finn: A Journalist from the Left. It was a rich evening where I met lots of other writers and activists “ from the left” such as Murray Dobbin and Maude Barlow of the Council of Canadians. 

In his book, this leftist journalist who had his beginning on the west coast of Newfoundland ,  tells the story of the struggle of the working people, the loggers, the railway workers, the fisher folks on the outports and the labourers in the paper industry. Their battle was against great odds, particularly the stranglehold that corporate power or individual oligarchs had on information. Ed’s writing, his editorials in the Cornerbrook’s Western Star challenged this onesidedness and of course in time left him unemployed. He became deeply involved with labour unions across the country. He also worked with Tommy Douglas to bring Medicare to Saskatchewan and even served as “the cat among the pigeons”, or as he put it  “ the pigeon among the cats” at the Bank of Canada for a term. His final crown was, of course, editor of the Monitor, the organ of the Canadian Centre for Policy Alternatives. Concerned and activist Canadians ought to subscribe and read the CCPA Monitor. I can’t see how I could do without. 

Throughout my ministry it has been hinted from time to time that I should to stick to the gospel. Well, what’s that? I have been made aware of this by some of my congregations. One Sunday while I was well into my sermon I noticed a well dressed parishioner making his way out of the pew. He did not look happy as he left the sanctuary. I don’t think I ever saw him back nor was he open to discuss the subject. 

I can’t remember what it was that I had preached about. It could have been a number of issues, Canadian corporate support of Apartheid in South Africa, the war in Vietnam, the farm workers in Mexico and California or the plight of First Nation Fishermen on Georgian Bay.

I was always careful to couch my political views in biblical/theological terms. My sermons were not meant to be political speeches. I stuck to the gospel and its implication for life in the world.

Jesus was a man of the people. He noted that these people were exploited not only by Romans but by the Jewish elite. Long before his time there had been prophets such as Amos and Hosea who denounced greed and violence. They advocated turning swords into ploughshares.  Can the church in our day ignore those spiritual initiatives?

Of course, the churches have had their prophets, such as Dorothy Day and the editors of Catholic Worker, evangelicals such as Jim Wallis. In my own denomination , the United Church of Canada, I supported church leaders such as Clarke MacDonald who grew up with the coal miners in Cape Breton. I could go on. But my advocacy  was never left unchallenged from the right   both in the church and from without. 

As I look back on my ministry I regret that I was at times a bit too cautious in my  call for peace and social justice. However,I do have some evidence that my sermons  and prayers did not go unheard and I rejoice.

My ministry as such is over  and I am pleased to be able to express my thoughts and convictions through the Internet. Many of you have responded most positively. Thank you!

I believe strongly that there is a spirit that calls for peace, love and justice. It has frequently found a voice from the left.  “ Ah knows it, ah knows it!”

SQ 4/12/2013

Other writing may be found at MYQUEST 

             

AS BROAD AS ALL OF LIFE

A recently published Spirit Quest set in motion a discussion/debate/dialogue, you name it, with a highly respected friend of mine. He challenged some of my religious  beliefs/assumption that I expressed in that story. Our letters have crisscrossed and may continue to do so for some time.

What this controversy has revealed to me is the breadth of faith understandings among religious denominations. There are of  course a variety of opinions in almost all faiths. Certainly that is the case in the three monotheistic  religions. In Judaism there are all sorts of gradations and shades of understanding or misunderstandings among the Hassidim and the Reformed and everyone in between.  It may seem less so in Islam, but that is probably  because the fundamentalists have stolen the headlines while there are other such as Irshad Manji, a woman, an outspoken Canadian author, professor, and advocate of a reform and progressive interpretation of Islam.

In the Christian faith there is a vast difference of opinion from those of the Unitarian faith, some of whom prefer not to be called Christian and those who inhabit the Bible Belt of our neighbour to the south. Within the Catholic Church there are significant differences, indeed it was among catholic scholars that biblical criticism developed in the 19th century - but very quietly.  

My own upbringing was not in the Christian church as I have explained in other columns. My parents who had been Catholic and Lutheran in their youth left  their respective churches to become politically active. Social democracy, human rights and economic justice was their spiritual motivation. 

Somehow or other I made my way into the church, probably through the ministrations of a Czech expat who ministered at the Church of All Nations in Toronto. Henry Vaclavic became a kind of  role model and mentor for me.

I decided to become a minister of the United Church  whose activism I and my parents admired. Soon after becoming a candidate for the ministry  I had occasion to visit the church headquarters on Queen Street West in Toronto. While there I had a conversation with one of the church leaders who sent me to the book store to buy a book by Lewis Dunnington called Something To Stand On. He probably sensed that my religious foundation was a bit wobbly.    

Dunnington was a Methodist minister in a college town in Iowa. In those days, the forties, students flocked to churches on Sundays to hear interesting and uplifting sermons and meet some nice young ladies and gentlemen. Dunnigton put a question box in the lobby and invited students to put their queries into it which he would attempt to preach about.  He later turned these sermons into the book with chapters such as  Hell: A Place or State of Mind, The Fall of Man: Fiction or Fact? and Miracles and Universal Law. He did not believe in a corporeal resurrection of Jesus. I would love to have been in his pews.

I devoured the book. A light went on in my mind: did I really not have to believe in the Sunday School stories I had heard? Later I showed the book to a fellow student who was appalled by it. Questioning anything in the bible left it open to doubting all of it, he told me.

But for me it was a faith saver.  Dunnington “believed that the simple, loveable, dynamic personality of Jesus has almost been buried beneath a load of theological dogma.”  He felt that, “ the evidence should be examined with an open mind  so that Christians may return to Him.” It was time that the boulder be removed from his tomb. 

I suppose the same may be said for other faiths, Jews and Muslims, who seek to probe deeper into their religious beliefs rather than memorize verses, leading them to dispute what had been held as sacrosanct. 

I can recognize something of this in the recent declarations of Pope Francis that have made the  news. He wants his church to change, to become a servant church as was the founder, willing to get its hands dirty as it seeks to help the poor  and downtrodden. He questioned the “trickle-down” theory of economics so dear to corporate fundamentalists. For too long the church has stood on the side of the rich and powerful unlike his namesake Saint Francis. A change is imperative if the church is to be faithful. 

I am getting old and within me are the seeds of my demise. For me, however, death is not the extinguishing of the light, nor is it a transmigration to another realm of time and space. I am faced with a mystery as big as all of life.

Bishop Spong, whom I have both met, read and quoted and whom I much admire, has written the following in his latest book: Eternal Life: A New Vision. “The goal of all religion is not to prepare us to enter the next life, it is a call to live now, to love now, to be now and in that way to taste what it means to be part of life  that is eternal, a love that is barrier-free.”

It is the joy of living that is inspired by such freedom that I aspire to even in my dying days

Hanns F Skoutajan

SQ 28/ 11/ 2013.

LORD I BELIEVE, HELP THOU MY UNBELIEF

Hanns F Skoutajan

“Scientists prove God exists? Two scientists say they have.” So announced the headline  in the Science and Beyond section of the Epoch Times. I pick up this interesting weekly publication at my local coffee emporium. 

“The theory says,” The Times quotes two German scientists, “that God, or a supreme being, is that for which no greater can be conceived. God exists in the understanding.  If God exists in the understanding, we could imagine God to be greater by existing in reality. Therefore God must exist.”

Hmm!?

It reminded me of the occasion when I visited my cousin Gerhard, an international tax lawyer who lives in Germany. One evening we were sitting on his balcony enjoying a glass or two of Rhine wine (Bad Durkheim Feuerberg). Pleasant music was emanating from the spa down in the valley. It created a stimulating background for this evening of reminiscing and conversation. Much of it had to do with our lives before war separated us.

Suddenly my cousin eyed me seriously and he almost spat out the question as if it had been waiting on his tongue for a long time, “ Hanns, do you believe in God?” I was shocked, to say the least, at this turn of our conversation. Gerhard, if not an atheist is certainly an agnostic, not unusual for a revenue attorney, I suppose. 

Gerhard had experienced a hard life, had been conscripted into the German forces, the medical corps for he had had plans of becoming a doctor. He thus managed to avoid active service working in a naval hospital. After returning home to Czechoslovakia  at the end of the war he was forced to work in a coal mine where he became quite ill. Subsequently he and his parents were among the 3.5 million ethnic Germans being expelled from their Czech homeland. By freight train they and a few possessions were taken to a war devastated Germany, the US sector, and temporarily put up in an  empty school building. The Red Cross had set up a soup kitchen and provided sustenance for these many expellees. At wars end 14 million ethnic Germans, mostly women, children and old people, men were either imprisoned or dead,  were on the move in the largest voelkerwanderung in all history. In time Gerhard managed to go to university where he excelled. Instead of medicine, the faculty was full, he studied law which suits his intelligence and temperament perfectly.

I relate all this to give you some sense that my cousin had experienced life at its worst and now at its best. He has a beautiful home on a hill overlooking the spa town of Bad Durkheim and travels the world a great deal.

We are very close and we hold each other in high esteem. His query about my belief was not facetious although he is quite capable of that.  For my first nine years of life we virtually grew up together.  Twenty year after our parting we met again. I had finished my theological studies and been ordained a minister and now was doing post grad studies in Germany. What difference had our life experiences made in our beliefs, is a good question.

I parried his verbal assault, “ Before I can answer your question I must know your definition of God.” But Gerd persisted in true courtroom interrogation style, “ Hanns, yes or no, do you believe in God?”

Because we are good friends the vigour of his cross examination soon abated and I admitted that I believed in a God but not the kind that Goedl and Benzmueller, the two German scientists who believed they had proved the existence of God wrote about. God is not dead, they insisted as Nietsche their fellow countryman  had averred many years  earlier, but is  “a being  for which no greater can be conceived.”

Their argument had some similarity to that of Paul Tillich, the German American theologian, who called God the Ground of All Being. John Shelby Spong, a retired Episcopal bishop in the United States, who is my mentor, agrees with Tillich but goes beyond. He grew up in an evangelical family and church and then through hard biblical and theological studies reached a new enlightenment. By his many books and lectures in the United States and Canada and elsewhere this theologian became the voice of progressive Christianity. To many he seems to have gone too far, but not for me, he makes perfect sense.

In a recent article in the United Church Observer, (November ’13) Ken Gallinger, a well known minister and personal friend, announced that he had left the ministry and indeed the United Church of Canada.  He quotes from a conversation he had with a member of one of his congregations. Roy had challenged him, “ Why have you lied to me all my life? You ministers knew this stuff ( biblical criticism). Why haven’t the ministers of this church had the courage to go into the pulpit and share what you knew with us dumb lay people?” Gallinger thought long and agonizingly about this challenge and wrote, “ So like many others, I lost my church. But lost my faith?  Not so much.

On the previous pages of this excellent magazine, Rev. Gretta Vosper,  minister of West Hill United Church and Rev. Connie denBok of Alderwood United Church in Toronto dialogued about their beliefs. Vosper who calls herself a Christian atheist, scarcely uses the word God in her worship while denBok is much more traditional in her worship, indeed I would call her an evangelical. Both are highly intelligent and honest people of faith, though their faith differs significantly. Vosper is a great admirer of Bishop Spong and I can only imagine that denBok disagrees with his radical theology. All this points to a lively debate within the denomination.

In his book Why Christianity Must Change or Die ( Harper Collins 1998) Spong concludes: “I am first and always a believer. I define myself as a believer in exile. I have lived and worshipped as a believer. I shall continue to do so and to be so until the day I die. When that moment comes, I expect to enter even more deeply into the reality of the God in whom I have lived and moved and had my being.” In these words he expresses my own radical/progressive faith.

His God is a mystery but also very personal. God is within, not above or beyond creation. It is not a God that science can prove or disprove. Nor can I affirm this God with a yes or no  as my cousin had demanded. God is to be lived. 

SQ  15/ 11/ 2013

More writings can be found at MYQUEST   

  

A SOBER SECOND THOUGHT

Hanns F Skoutajan

“Go Sens, Go!” the popular cheer of the fans of the Ottawa Senators NHL hockey team, has taken on a new political poignancy and relevance. This is especially so as the Supreme Court of Canada is conducting hearings into the nature and purpose of the Red Chamber. Given our present political situation I feel it is incumbent on me to add my voice to those addressing the matter of senate reform or abolition. 

 

The drama of Mike Duffy ( is he now growing spuds in his home province?), Pamela Wallin, (no shy little prairie maid,) and Patrick Brazeau, (is he taking boxing lessons again?) have riveted  the attention of Canadians from coast to coast. Mike Duffy’s oratorical skills have left the public  as well as his senate partners and all politicians  breathless. Since his historical speech, in which he reiterated that, “....and there is more!”  Canadians including our prime minister have sat on the edge of their chairs. What has he up his toga besides a lot of flesh?

The senate has a long history  which in our country may or may not come to an end  in the near future. The word senator comes from the Latin senex which means old man. Old age has often been identifies  with wisdom, though  the present scenario has cast some doubt on this assumption.

In Rome it was considered  that decision making was best performed by the older and experienced leaders. Indeed in many societies, for instance in aboriginal communities, elders are held in high esteem and always consulted. This also holds true for the churches. In  the Roman Catholic Church there are few young cardinals. In Protestant denominations the role of elder is pivotal  in the governance of the church.

In Canada the senate is considered to be a court of sober second thought. Legislation passed by parliament  is sent to the red chamber for careful consideration. The senate, like the House of Commons, has committees where bills are discussed before they are brought before the full chamber for a vote. A majority in the senate can overturn such legislation and send it back to the House. 

The senate is meant to be an independent body although they are appointed by the prime minister who mostly picks them from his own party. Their life-time tenure might assure that they can survive the government that appointed them.

 

As a court of sober second thought this body is of great value to the country. Their independence, however, has been much questioned. Indeed, just as in parliament they sit according to party affiliation and tend to reflect  the policies of him who has appointed them. In this system much of their independence  and wisdom has been put in question. At present the senate is composed of a majority of Conservatives,  of Liberal leftovers from a previous government and the occasional independent. New Democrats, the Bloc and Greens, either by their own choice or circumstance,  have no representatives in the senate.  Harper during his term in power has endeavoured to paint the red chamber blue.

To-day, everyone from the prime minister down  feel  that there is a disfunction in the Upper House, no doubt about it. Stephen Harper has called on the senate to reform itself while New Democrats and others such as the premier of Saskatchewan, a Conservative, call for the abolition of the senate altogether.  However, that may be easier said than done. 

The question that Canadians confront is whether the senate can reform itself . Is the parliamentary ruling party, especially the prime minister, prepared to allow a chamber whose second thoughts may be contrary to his opinions? Can the senate be liberated from party politics and be free and independent? We await the advice of the Supreme Court.

To the west of the capital city, near Kanata, Canada’s first planned city, there is a huge sports complex known as the Canadian Tire Centre. It is the venue for many battles on ice between teams of the National Hockey League and others. Ottawa citizens largely cheer for their home team, The Senators. However, on their jerseys is emblazoned a crest with  a stylized picture of  a Roman centurion, not a senator, as the name would suggest. 

Those Roman legions were a tough force that held the empire together. They were despatched “on the double” to any hotspots on the well known Roman roads. It was those centurions who supervised the execution of Jesus, a convicted rebel, who also guarded his final resting place from grave robbers , albeit unsuccessfully. They were also the force that levelled Jerusalem including its magnificent temple in AD 70 and ended Jewish life in that troublesome country until the present time.

It would seem to me that our hockey team would be better identified  by these battle hardened soldiers than senators in Rome or Ottawa. Roman senators wore long white togas which are totally inappropriate for battles on land or ice, though back-stabbing is not out of the question then or now. 

Thus there are two suggestions that I wish to leave with you.  The first is that they change the name of the hockey team to anything but senators. The second is  to liberate  the senate from party control or if impossible do away with them altogether. Undoubtedly the latter may deprive our system of governance of a source sober second thought although we don’t seem to have much of that now. A fat chance on both accounts. 

SQ  13/11/2013

More writings can be found at MYQUEST        

REMEMBER!

Hanns F Skoutajan

I know its time for Remembrance because my wife after rummaging in her dresser drawer has found her favourite lapel badge. It is a black square  with a white dove carrying a palm branch in its beak. The message on the badge says : To Remember is to End All War. Humanity has had much time to remember the horrors and wastage of war.

I have recently been immersing myself in Margaret MacMillan’s tome  with the title , The War that Ended  Peace: The Road to 1914. It is a  recent book, out just in time for this season of the year. It calls to mind  that it is now 100 years  since the European powers  prepared for the Great War. I don’t know what was so “great” about it , except that thousands upon thousands of soldiers perished on its battlefields. Pilgrims still flock to the military cemeteries of Belgium and France to get some sense of the sacrifices committed by both sides in the wars of the 20th century.  Thousands more bore the marks of the war throughout their lives. In one of my congregations I ministered to a gentleman as he suffered and finally died of  emphysema having been exposed to mustard gas in “The Great One”.

As a child growing up in prewar Czechoslovakia it was not unusual to see men on crutches, blind or legless, victims of “the war to end all war.” I was well aware of the ravages of man’s inhumanity to man. 

In my book The Road to Peace: Memories and Reflections Along the Way I reflected on an incident in the spring of 1938.

“The shadow of an aircraft like a dark cross floated across the valley. It moved slowly for it was a World War 1 vintage machine, a double decker whose engine produced a sputtering sound. We heard it long before we saw it approach  the military encampment that housed various units of the Czech army on exercises just north of my hometown  not far from the German border.

My mother and I, along with many other people had taken our places on the grassy slope  overlooking the valley. We had come to see something of the military might of this  modern army, albeit in 1930 terms. 

The German border, our enemy, was not far up in the hills where I had learned to ski. Times were tense as Hitler turned up his rhetoric calling on the unification of all Germans which meant the surrender of the Sudetenland of Czechosloivakia to which Britain and France acceded at Munich in Septenber 1938.  

The public had been invited to come and observe the military exercises from the vantage point of the surrounding hills. Below us on the football field were rows upon rows of dark green tents and beyond that the military equipment, horse drawn gun carriages, even several tanks and armoured cars and other accoutrements of war. For me, admittedly a bit of a timid child, there was something ominous about this “death-dealing” array of power.”

What impressed me most,  ... well, alright, scared me, was that one airplane cruising over the encampment. It made my skin crawl, as it, like an evil omen, a shadowy cross, presaged war. This picture has lived with me all those years and I have been eternally grateful that my parents and I managed to escape to another continent and avoided that war altogether.

Following The Great War there came a respite of 20 years . I have a cartoon  that pictures death in the form of a skeleton astride a bass drum which he is beating vigorously and announcing, “..... and after a brief intermission we shall be back for more of the show.”

The Second World War was certainly different with many more battlefields besides the ones in Europe’s east and west and south, but also Africa and the Pacific. Civilian casualties in the Great War were relatively few compared to the Second War in which cities in Britain and Germany were set alight, to say nothing of the bombing of Hiroshima and Nagasaki.

Each year our veterans march and stand solemnly at the cenotaph in Ottawa and most other cities and towns across the country. We gather to “Remember” and to pray that wars might cease. 

Reading Macmillan’s book I learned that in the decades before the war there were many statesmen who disparaged of the efficacy of war - it was too expensive they believed. Today, however, in his book Dirty Wars: The World is a Battlefield, Jermy Scahill writes about the privatization of war. Dick Cheney, then defense secretary and later as Vice President  in the Bush government, strove to privatize as much of the military as possible as a way of creating another barrier to civilian oversight. War and war production was not unaffordable but good business for large corporations producing military equipment. That administration and its acolytes believed war and war production was supremely profitable as long as the taxpayer was sufficiently scared to pay the bill. In our own country we need only think of the jet fighters that our government was willing to spend billions of the citizens’ dollars to acquire. For what purpose is a fair question.

Ian McKay and Jamie Swift in their book Warrior Nation: Rebranding in an Age of Anxiety write “Once known for peace-keeping, Canada is becoming a militarized nation whose apostles - the ‘new warriors’ - are fighting to shift public opinion.” 

Linda McQuaig commenting on this book  writes that, “With our federal government determined to glorify war and eradicate our enduring attachment to Canada as a promoter of peace, this engaging and highly readable book alerts us to what’s at stake  - the very soul of our nation.” Can we afford to be so changed?

In my mind I can still see and hear that lone aircraft  trailing its black cross over the valley .... and the world to come. Dare we remember  and strive for Peace and end all war?

SQ 07/11/2013 

DEFENDER OF THE FAITH

Hanns F Skoutajan

Pictures of the christening of the young Prince George have raised in me memories of the times when I, like the Archbishop of Canterbury last Wednesday, took babes in my arms, touched them with water and baptised them “In the name of the Father and the Son and the Holy Spirit.”

The Globe and Mail (October 24)  commented that, “falling birth rates  and rising secularism have meant that fewer people are going to church and fewer children are being baptised across nearly all Christian denominations.”

The baptism  of baby George at the 16th century chapel of St. James Palace had particular significance . Some within the church hoped  that this act  by the Duke and Duchess of Cambridge and all the royal family would once again set a trend, which they have often done in many other respects,  and encourage a return to the church and its beautiful rituals. It might but I doubt it in the long term. 

I always enjoyed my role in this ancient ceremony of the church. It has also been observed  that I had a quietening affect on the young subjects. I scarcely ever remember a “burn out” at the font. 

Indeed, on one occasion I discussed with the parents  how we might handle the logistics  of the sacrament with their child who “made strange” with anybody except the mother and had no compunction about expressing his feelings vociferously. He had good lungs. Our decision was to allow the baby to rest in his mother’s arms during the ceremony.

All went very well so that when the time came his mother surrendered her charge to my arms , and nothing happened. He looked at me with some puzzlement but I wondered what would happen when I sprinkled water on his head. But once again “ all was quiet on the western front.”

It was my custom after baptism to carry the child down the aisle and back. Once again there was no objection on his part. When I returned the child to the parents they stood there in total disbelief at what had transpired so peacefully.

It seemed that a corner had been turned and I take no responsibility or credit for this change. Nor did the child henceforth “make strange” with others. I am happy to say that he has now graduated from university without making much of a fuss.

Within the churches the sacrament of baptism has been much discussed. The most noted Protestant theologian of the past century, Professor Karl Barth of Basel, Switzerland, did not believe in infant baptism but advocated that only when candidates are old enough to understand and decide for themselves should baptism take place . He was not a Baptist but a Reformed theologian.

I myself was not baptised until I was 24 years of age and well on my way to ordination as a minister of the United Church of Canada. How could this happen? Both my parents had left their respective churches before I was born, my mother the Roman Catholic Church because it seemed too archaic for her time, and father the Lutheran Church because it was too German nationalistic when that really mattered. Thus I was never baptised. Only after coming to Canada and attending Sunday School with my friends was I drafted into the communicants or church membership class. It was simply assumed that we had all been “watered down” and thus were duly confirmed. 

Later as a theological student I began to think about this omission. I discussed the matter with a fellow student, a professor/mentor  and the minister of a local congregation whom I highly respected. We decided that although my eternal salvation was not in jeopardy I should nevertheless undergo the rite. Thus on a Saturday morning in an empty sanctuary but in the presence of a few friends the deed was accomplished and I was regularized, so to speak. 

To my mind and in the thinking of my rather theologically progressive denomination, baptism doesn’t do anything to the eternal destiny of the soul.  Having just read Son of A Certain Woman by the quintessential Newfoundland writer Wayne Johnston, I was made aware of the pressure some have undergone to submit to baptism for the rescue of their souls from eternal damnation and thus to gain entry to the realm of the blessed departed and the divinity itself albeit after a time of purgation.  It also gained Browny Points for the persuaders.

I believe that this rite is rather an acknowledgement that the individual at any age  is a member of the family and household of God. 

The baptism, or christening as Anglicans prefer to call it, has a particular significance. Prince George, as future king, if indeed the monarchy still persists, will become Defender of the Faith and Supreme Governor of the Church of England, a mighty responsibility for any shoulders.

In a day and age when many, if not most, by word and deed affirm that “God is dead” does it much matter who defends the faith? We have become more like the ancient Romans and Greeks who worshipped many gods.  The Apostle Paul on visiting Athens said the following , “ As I passed by, and beheld  your devotions, I found an altar with this inscription ‘To The Unknown God’..., him I declare unto you.” (Acts 17 : 23) Like those people of long ago we worship many gods, among them  Mercury , a god who specialized in communication, and dare I suggest for our time god of the Internet, in whom we invest much time, money and trust.

It is my hope that the future King George will defend faith in a God not only of the Church of England or any other denomination or religion but the God of Love and Peace and Justice in the very difficult times that lie ahead for all humankind. 

God bless young George and all his family.

SQ 24/10/2013

Other writings may be found at MYQUEST     

THEN AND NOW

Hanns F Skoutajan

“Parting is such sweet sorrow.”  Having done lots of parting and perhaps not enough partying I can well attest to the truth of this adage.  I have experienced both the sweetness and the sorrow that is so much a part of living.

But I have also met some who have never experienced ‘the move.’ In my former congregations there were always some who had been born and lived and died in the same community. I particularly recall two spinster sisters who had never left the ancestral home or each other. I marvelled, envied and pitied them.

True enough, they had seen change  in all around them, saw their community metamorphose from a small incestuous hamlet to a commuter community. It was gradually populated by newcomers who wanted changes  - utilities that were totally lacking in the earlier lifetime of these women. 

Their outhouse still stood, somewhat rakishly, in the backyard of their property. On the kitchen counter rested a small pump that had supplied wonderful water from a well  down below. It was no longer in use but remained as a kind of memorial to an older way of life. Parting with pump and outhouse, was it a sweet sorrow?

One of their weekly outings was to the funeral home up-street “to visit the dead,” as they referred to this ritual. They had after all been their contemporaries with whom they had grown up, gone to school, all eight grades, met daily at the general store and the postoffice to get a few pieces of mail but also to exchange neighbourhood gossip. They never missed going to church, though I often wondered what they made of my progressive theology . 

The newcomers had little knowledge of those “good old days.” It was a sad occasion when the village cop, who had also grown up in this community, was traded for the services of the OPP, which doubtless was more efficient but who were strangers who didn’t know the territory or its history. 

The two siblings lived to a ripe old age and their departure came only months apart. Their house was sold, then demolished, to be replaced by one of those modern bungalows with plastic sidings. Children played in the driveway, also new. A basketball hoop hung over the garage door but a clothesline was missing out back. TV dishes came and went. 

I have always enjoyed the study of history. Invariably it is the account of partings and arrivals, a tale of sweetness and sorrow and of course the excitement of discovery as well as the terror of war. In my lifetime I have experienced the sorrow of walking from my childhood home with a backpack and a small suitcase clinging to the hand of my mother. There was nothing sweet about our departure for an unknown future. As the train pulled out of the station I took careful note of the cracks in the concrete of the platform and wondered if and when I would walk on them again.

Those two venerable elderly citizens of small town Ontario had no comprehension of my story. Leaving home and kindred was totally out of the realm of their experience or imagination. Our lives were worlds apart.

I do not denigrate their lives. They had known departures, not theirs, but their neighbours, the boys, and some girls, who left to fight for “king and  country” in not one but two world wars, some of them never to return, a war that was fought thankfully far from their doors. They also knew the hardship of the depression when life was difficult and their income as seamstresses covered only the barest of necessities. 

They didn’t change, everyone in the community would vouch for that.  But life all around changed. Stubbornly resisting the new they were nevertheless swept along as with the periodic flooding of the nearby river. 

Today change is everywhere and constant.  My own neighbourhood is undergoing change  as modern dwellings, as much glass as brick, are replacing venerable gracious  old homes with “centre hall staircase and gumwood trim” as the realtor reminded prospective customers. A recent devastating fire on main street left room for a multi-story, mixed commercial and residential development that will change the street, hopefully for the positive. “The  village will never be the same,” is an oft repeated commentary of the locals. 

A week ago I wrote about the rediscovery of my treasure trove of old Geographical Journals (1938 - 48). One of the things that fascinates me is not only the black and white photos and accompanying articles but the ads that betray the way of life back 70 years ago. They also advocated change but from previous ways to a new and different future, one much to be desired, better cars and milder cigarettes. The whiskey is still the same. 

It seems that we are in race with time. What concerns me most is that my granddaughter, who will be subject to many and constant changes, may not have time to experience and savour the sweetness and sorrow that is so much a part of history.

I fear that we have become so preoccupied by change that we forget the past and miss its lessons. High expectations as well as a plethora of newfangled gadgets with short life expectancies, that each of us can’t afford not to have, have carried the day.  Old values and ways of life are forgotten or frowned upon. In no way do I advocate a return to the good old ways, which is of course an impossibility, but rather to learn from the past, blemishes and all.

The speed of life accelerates. The moon and  stars are no longer familiar sights in the night sky to be known by their constellations but are looked upon as destinations to be mined or even  visited. Some are buying one-way tickets to Mars with no prospect of a return. Sweet sorrow!

What I am pleading for is the fostering of a sense of time, its passage from the then to the now, and the patience to learn from what has gone before, its sweetness and its sorrows.

SQ 10/10/2013

Look to MYQUEST for previous stories.                  

OUR GEOGRAPHY - OUR HERITAGE

HANNS F SKOUTAJAN

A bundle of Geographicals, some three years accumulation of my favourite mag, provided me with a seat in the back of the truck. We were moving our few possessions to our new home about 100 miles east of Toronto in the summer of 1942. I was then 13 years of age and curious about my new homeland. Shortly after leaving the suburbs a light  drizzle descended on us and the driver arranged a rickety tarp over me and our meagre  possession.  It managed to keep us dry,  particularly my precious magazines.  

The Canadian Geographical Journal, as it was then called, was my favourite magazine from which I would not be parted by rain or snow. Over the years  since our arrival in Canada in April 1939 at Halifax’s famous Pier 21 after our flight from the Nazi scourge, the monthly editions have brought us a plethora of information and pictures about every part of our country but also of places beyond our shores.

We came by the Canadian Geographical Journal  in a novel way. Our group of families were settled on very marginal land on abandoned homesteads in northern Saskatchewan after freeing the German takeover of Czechoslovakia in 1939. People at the University of Toronto became interested in our plight. We were probably the first immigrants to receive second hand clothing from sympathetic people half a continent away.  The clothing was usually dumped in an empty granary to be picked over by our people. My mother acquired a very nice fur coat, muskrat I believe, in that way. 

One day, however, the shipment consisted of reading material. Our benefactors had properly surmised that ours were not only material but intellectual needs. We poured over the mound of books and mags like hungry ants. I salvaged a copy of Two Little Savages by Ernest Thompson Seton, a classic which dealt with a boy about my age who had contracted TB and for his recuperation was sent out to a farm to benefit from the fresh air. He befriended another boy and together they undertook many adventures. It also contained a good deal of nature and “Indian” lore . I learned how to make a bow and arrow and to identify a variety of wildlife. That copy still rests on a place of honour on my bookshelf. 

My father garnered several copies of the Canadian Geographical Journal . He had the audacity  to write to the editor to explain our impoverished circumstances but  also our interest in this new homeland. Soon afterward we received a bundle of back copies and a five year subscription gratis. When it ran out we subscribed and have continued to do so until this day, 75 years later.  

The  September 1939 edition carried an article and photos of the city of Warsaw, Poland . A few weeks later the German armies laid waste to this world-class city and its wonderful architecture. Luckily carefully secreted plans surfaced in the postwar years and the city was able to be restored to its prewar splendour.

During the war years the magazine brought information about Canada’s war effort. Among them was an article about the British Commonwealth Air Training Plan (July 1940). In those years  our country not only produced guns and tanks and aircraft but the soldiers to maintain and man them on the battlefields, on land, at sea and in the sky. Canadian industry built the famous Lancaster bomber among other war planes. I used that article for an essay which I had to write for Grade 6 at Regal Road Public School in Toronto  and then presented it as an “oral composition” to the class. So rich in information was my essay that my teacher took me aside and questioned me whether my father, still a foreign national, was a spy.

Following the war I was particularly interested in a story about Imperial Airways  that flew flying boats, the Caribou, Cabot and Golden Hind, as the first trans-atlantic mail and passenger service. Those huge four engined aircraft with ship shaped hulls to land and take-off  from  water, flew from the St. Lawrence River at Boucherville, east of Montreal to Southampton, Britain.

The magazine also carried stories about the development of Canada’s northland . I was enthralled by the pen and ink drawings of transportation on the Mackenzie and Coppermine Rivers  where barges were pulled manually by rope harnessed crews on shore.

This truly Canadian publication not only enriched our understanding of our new environment but also of the world. Its stunning photography, first in black and white and after the war in full colour, was truly a window on the world. I well remember my first viewing of the art of the Group of Seven in stunning colour on its pages.  

Recently we have had to do some downsizing of our possessions - too many books for sure - in the course of which I came upon a bundle of Geographicals which we had first acquired on our pioneer farm.  When I showed them to a friend he suggested that I list them on E Bay, where they would fetch a good price from a collector. I refused, they are priceless to me. I hope that my granddaughter will value this archival treasure as I do and recognize it as part of her personal heritage.

I sincerely hope that the Canadian Geographic will not fall to the economic hammer as have so many publications but continue to publish informative and colourful articles and pictures about this land and our global environment and history. 

Thanks Canadian Geographical Journal  and your more recent incarnation the Canadian Geographic. As they are wont to say in Ole Limey, “Carry on Canada!.”

SQ 0410/2013