BEHOLD!

Hanns F Skoutajan

There are times when, at least to me, this world seems old and worn out, its people aged and exhausted. Our environment is threatened and devastated. Nation wars against nation and  peaceful solutions do not seem imminent. It is a rather negative assessment and no way to invite a readership.

This, I suppose is nothing new. 100 years ago the Great War began with a shot in the streets of Sarajevo. A devastating war followed in which thousands lost their lives in battles that seemed to gain nothing until an exhausted Germany and Austria pleaded for amnesty. Twenty years later they did it all over again.  Margaret McMillan called it The War that Ended Peace.

But even much longer ago the world, at least as it was known then, seemed problematic. Empires clashed, refugees even then wandered the globe. St. John the Divine to whom is attributed that last and most enigmatic of biblical writings known as The Revelations of St. John the Divine, pictured God sitting on his throne and announcing renewal, “Behold I make all things new,” Revelations 21: 5, inspired by the words of Isaiah 43: 18 - 19.  I have long felt that these words ought to be set to music, and indeed, they have been. 

For a time in my ministry I dabbled with music for worship. Nothing I composed made it into Voices United, the new United Church hymn book or its successor, More Voices. 

I was looking for a tune to accompany St. John’s words. Then one evening I attended a concert at Roy Thompson Hall in Toronto. The Czech Philharmonic orchestra performed the tone poem  My Fatherland by Smetana. Best known of that musical cycle is The Moldau which describes the river as it springs in the mountains and forests of his homeland and makes its way to the sea. 

Another less well-known segment of that composition is called In Bohemia’s Forests and Meadows. As I sat, listening and enjoying the music from my land of birth, I was suddenly aware that one of the themes of that piece suited itself to the words of St. John: Behold I make all things new.”

On coming home that evening I found the vinyl platter of Smetana’s composition and discovered the bars of music that had so moved me. I scribbled some notes which I then took to my amiable and gifted organist Roger Hobbs and together we came up with a tune based on that theme.

I am not sure whether lyrics beget tunes or is it the other way round, but having a melody to work with I soon came up with meaningful words:

Behold I make all things new, the bread, the wine and you,

The kernels fall to the ground, there they must die, 

and bring forth new shoots of hope, food for all folk, they’ll hunger no more.

Behold I make all things new, the bread, the wine and you.

The grapes are plucked from the vine, give forth their blood, and

slake the hot pain of thirst, gladden the heart and bring forth new life.

Behold I make all things new, the bread, the wine and you.

If you would come after me, take up your cross and

follow the path of love, justice and peace proclaim, and rejoice.

In other words, renewal always comes with sacrifice. Unfortunately humans are too prone to attempt to bring in new eras by means of strife, the rich enriching themselves at the cost of the poor and ravishing the environment to the detriment of all living creatures.

Perhaps I am naive to hope that it can be otherwise, that humans can learn that to live together as peaceful people in a clean environment requires sacrifice. To me that is the predominant message of a true religious faith.

Many years ago while visiting Isreal/Palestine I encountered Faisal Huseini, the leader of the Palestine Liberation Movement. He had just come home from an Israeli prison, Without bitterness he said to me something that I shall never forget. “Israelis and Palestinians must get rid of a hope and a fear, hope that they can have all this to themselves, and fear that they will be pushed out into the desert or the sea.” 

These words had a profound affect on me because they apply to all the world, not merely the much troubled Middle East. The citizens of the world must banish the hope that they can have it all their own way, and the fear that they will be overcome by the enemy.

  

  Spirit Quest 06/07/2014

A MUSICAL QUEST

Hanns F Skoutajan

There is one regret, well at least one, that I have in my life and that is that I never

became proficient in playing a musical instrument. I had a hopeful beginning when at

six years of age I began taking piano lessons from a wonderful blind teacher. It amazed

me that, although he could not see my fingers on the keys, he was always aware when I

did not use the correct fingering.

Mother and her sister were the musicians in the family. My aunt played the piano in an

orchestra while mother much later in life and on another continent played the piano and

at times the organ in our little church.

I loved music and was exposed to opera and concerts in our wonderful opera house in

Aussig, now Usti nad labem in what was then Czechoslovakia. That exposure was

dramatically terminated when in the fall of 1938 were were forced to flee our homeland

from the invading German army. For a number of years we were deprived of the sound

of music while living in a remote area of Saskatchewan without even a radio.

I recall the day that mother and I left the farm. In town before boarding our train for the

east we had lunch with friends. They turned on the radio and we only briefly heard the

beginning of the broadcast of the Metropolitan opera. Mother gasped and then broke

into tears. Unfortunately we had to leave for the station to catch our train.

My appreciation of music is something like what the late meistro Sir Thomas Beecham

is said to have accused the British of : they don’t understand music but like the sound it

makes. I also love the sound, the rhythm and emotions music conveys.

I was absolutely delighted when my daughter Karla became proficient on the clarinet

and performed with the band of North Toronto Collegiate. My son Stephen followed in

her footsteps in percussion. He achieved the Bachelor of Music degree in performance

at University of Toronto. For a time it seemed that this was to be his chosen profession

but that changed although he continues to perform with a band.

Music, mother told me early in my life, is a universal language. True, different ethnicities

and cultures have different genres of music , but good music comes from the heart.

In my most recent Spirit Quest I referred to Dvorak’s Symphony From the New World, it

is undoubtedly one of my favourites. Many of you who have responded and agreed with

my taste.

Religious faith without music seems incomplete. I have been highly privileged to have

had an excellent choir and a most accommodating organist and choir master at St.

James-Bond United Church where I served for 16 years. He was always able to capture

the theme of worship and apply it musically. Thus it was that when my father died I

discussed the music with Roger the organist and chose the Largo from Dvorak’s

symphony : Going Home. But then I had a desire to use as a recessional the marching

song of the Sudeten Social Democrats of which my father had been a leader “back

home.” I could not find the music so I hummed the tune to him and he quickly picked it

up and transcribed it. I suggested that the first verse be played as if by a distant

trumpet, the second verse would be enhanced and the third, well, he could pull out all

the stops and let the organ roar.

Among those attending the service were some of my father’s compatriots for whom this

song was very familiar. At the third verse they rose to their feet and sang the words as

they followed the casket out of the church. It was a very moving experience for me and

my family. It made me very much aware of the power of music to motivate and to tell the

story, to raise the spirits.

Although I am unable to play a musical instrument I did attempt to write alternate lyrics

to be sung to familiar hymn tunes. Among them is a refugee hymn I titled Sanctuary.

The choir of the Church of St. John the Evangelist in Ottawa recorded the hymn to be

used in the documentary film “Hitler’s German Foes” which is based on my book

“Uprooted and Transplanted”

The following are the words of hymn: Sanctuary

Where is home, the land familiar, where the village known so well,

where the mountains and the river, where the forest and the sea,

where the city thronged with people? Land of birth remember me.

Long the journey’s search for freedom, hiding, running through the night,

seeking refuge among strangers, begging help, a place to hide,

strangers seeking safer havens , often hated, seldom loved.

Some there are compassionate people, knew their master also fled,

from mad Herod’s purge of children, waiting for that storm to pass.

Willingly these offer shelter , brothers, sisters, Christ their host.

In God’s realm there are no boundaries, no barbed wires, trenches, walls,

where there are no racial ghettos, all are welcome none are lost.

Peace and justice is their charter, fear deported, love enshrined.

SQ 18/06/2014A MUSICAL QUEST

Hanns F Skoutajan

GOING HOME

Hanns F Skoutajan

“Homesickness” can be a devastating emotional experience. I have never been stricken by this malady but I have observed my mother suffering from this “illness.” I was only a child when my parents and I were separated from our Czech homeland just before the outbreak of war. Perhaps she was not so much missing the land in which she had been born and raised as pining for her family, her mother, sister and brother whom she had left behind.

Our homeland is a beautiful country. At a recent performance of Dvorak’s New World Symphony by the National Arts Centre Orchestra of Ottawa, I was made aware of the nostalgic beauty of Bohemia, also Dvorak’s homeland. 

The New World Symphony was composed by the preeminent Czech composer during his visit to America in 1892. Undoubtedly this visit made a tremendous impact  on him. He wrote several other compositions , The American Quartet, Opus 96; a String Quartet, Opus 97 and The American Flag - a rather nationalistic, musical evocation. 

There is some controversy about the New World Symphony, how much of it was really written in the new world. People like myself who have Czech blood in their veins, recognize some Czech folk melodies embedded in the score while others recall that Dvorak was deeply inspired by the poem Hiawatha by Longfellow, and particularly  

by the scene of Minnehaha’s funeral in the forest. Dvorak had read the poem in it’s Czech translation before coming to North America.

There is very little similarity between North America  and the Czech countryside. Otakar Sourek has written much about Dvorak and his art and describes Bohemia as a land  “of deep sighing pine forests... and the broad, fragrant fields.” I can well appreciate that Dvorak experienced a sense of homesickness. The rough farmland of northern Saskatchewan where we were settled and expected to survive had no similarity to the hills, rivers and  the city that we had left behind.

A strange thing happened to me on my first return visit to Czechoslovakia in 1968. I spent a day in the city where I was born, walking and visiting places familiar to me, that I had left behind 30 years earlier. In the centre of the city is located a beautiful baroque opera house which had been spared the allied bombing where I had often attended concerts and operas  with my parents. In front of the opera house and in many other places around the city, I saw large posters advertising the next concert : Ma Vlast, the beautiful and well-known tone poem by Smetana. The Czech words mean “my fatherland.” And so it seemed that I was constantly reminded that I was indeed in my fatherland, as I walked the streets, to my school, the house where I had lived for the first 9 years of my life and also the birthing centre where in 1929 I first opened my eyes to the world. No wonder I have a feeling of nostalgia when I hear music that evokes such memories.

No, I have never suffered from homesickness as I observed in my mother, but I have a deep appreciation of the land of my birth. Although I cannot speak Czech the very sound of that language like the music of its composers makes a significant impact on my emotions.

In the repeated Largo of Dvorak’s symphony which contains one of the most famous themes in all classical music, is the well known song “Going Home.” Does it refer to a negro spiritual or to his own nostalgia, perhaps both? When choosing music for my father’s funeral I prevailed on my organist and choir to perform the choral rendition of “Going Home.” I am afraid I was not being very gentle on mother’s emotions in the process.

It is a universal theme for we are all on a homeward journey. I am now past my 85th birthday and also aware that I am coping with a terminal illness. I am getting closer to home, I am reminded, as I read the daily death notices in the newspapers noting the passing of contemporaries.

I have not, nor do I believe that there is any empirical evidence of what transpires beyond that last frontier. I simply prefer to believe that I am going home. That conviction animates what I do en route. 

SPIRIT QUEST  08/06/2014 

    

MAP QUEST

Hanns F Skoutajan

When I was a teenager I developed a great interest in maps. A friendly neighbour who had heard of my interest introduced me to topographical maps - 1 inch to 1 mile - of the county in which I lived. I soon learned to interpret the brown contour lines to indicate hills and valleys and  then took to my bicycle to explore the territory first hand, identifying the farm houses, the rural schools and churches, the ponds, creeks and rivers that dotted the county that were indicated on the map.

Next I expanded my interest beyond the immediate environment of Hastings county. Whenever I went to Belleville I dropped in at the James and Texts stationery store where I found a large variety of topographical maps. My maps soon covered the whole area from Oshawa to Kingston, north to the outskirts of Ottawa and west along the southern border of Algonquin Park. 

As time passed some of these maps became obsolete. None of my maps showed

Highway 401 as it stretches west from Toronto to Montreal. Towns and villages changed radically as suburbs mushroomed on the outskirts of these communities following the end of the war. Roads changed their course, were straightened and went around communities rather than through them as a main street. Railways such as the one running north from Trenton through the beautiful Trent Valley to Maynooth, disappeared when the iron ore near Marmora ran out  So did the line from Kingston to Pembroke and from Perth west to Peterborough. Their right of ways can still be identified. Some have been transformed into bike or hiking trails

I am still vey much interested in maps. Our bookshelves are loaded with atlases. The Internet has made maps very accessible. By means of Mapquest I am able to transform paper maps into areal photographs. I enjoyed the photography of Chris Hadfield from outer space as they revealed our whole planet showing mountains  and mighty rivers, shorelines as well as all sorts of terrain such as deserts and large urban areas. I was particularly fascinated by maps of the world that revealed the lights of civilization as they lit up large sections of the globe. They also showed the damage that humans have visited upon this planet as can be seen in pictures of the oil sands of Fort McMurray, Alberta or the strange tint of the waters of the Gulf of Mexico. 

Our world is indeed fascinating but also a worrisome place. Viewing this terrain one wonders what will become of it. How can we rehabilitate the damaged areas? The question presents itself - have we gone too far, has our greed pushed us beyond the brink of viability?

From time to time I open the box of these old maps and remember what it had been like in the days of my youth. Undoubtedly there have been some vast improvements but we have also left what seems like irreparable damage.

I don’t want to live in the past but I also do not want to bequeath a despoiled environment to my granddaughter. These old maps raise in me a great sense of responsibility for new generations. Will the maps and photos of today be incomprehensible to the people of the future?

The national anthem of the Czech Republic, the land of my birth, begins with a question: “Where is my home, my fatherland?” It then goes on to describe the beautiful countryside, its mountain and rivers, waterfalls and forests. The question is appropriate for our time and place. Are our lakes and rivers still able to sustain life? Has our thirst for resources, oil and minerals, so transfigured our homeland that the question leaves us frustrated?

The maps of today may soon become obsolete as we transform our environment for better or for worse. What is needed is a sense of responsibility and imagination for what might yet be.  There is little time to wait.

SQ  01/06/2014

    

TO PRAY

Hanns F Skoutajan

“To clasp one’s hands in prayer is the beginning of an uprising against the disorders of

the world.” So wrote the late Karl Barth, the eminent Swiss Reformed theologian. Time

magazine placed his picture on the cover of their weekly news magazine on April 20,

1962 and referred to him as the most important theologian of the 20th century.

Barth was born in Switzerland in 1886 and died there in 1968. He taught theology in

several German universities including Muenster where I did postgraduate studies albeit

long after his time. His magnum opus : Church Dogmatics (13 large volumes) was

required reading for any theological student in Germany.

But Barth was no mere academic he was also deeply involved in the political situation of

his time. He is said to have insisted that the preacher mount the pulpit with the Bible in

one hand and the newspaper in the other. He is well known to have called upon prewar

German Christians to give allegiance to God rather than the state, which of course

annoyed Hitler and his followers and made him a marked man. He was deeply involved

in the formation of the Confessing Church along with Dietrich Bonhoeffer, a movement

that stood against the fascist ideology of the time.

In 1935 Barth left Germany for his native Switzerland. Many theological students from

around the world both before and after the war came to him to sit at his feet. He was

quite open to students, indeed, a friend of mine, a great admirer of Barth visited him in

Basel. Quite unannounced he found his home, knocked on the door and spent a goodly

hour with him discussing theology. After the war he also lectured in American

universities.

While professor in Basel he was a frequent preacher in the prison chapel in that city. His

collected sermons were called Liberty to the Captives. To read them helps one to

understand his theology from a very practical point of view.

“The Disorders of the Time” were well known to him. Prayer, however, was no mere

pleading with God to change the world but a call to those who dare to clasp their hands

in ritual to involve themselves in the uprising as Barth had dared to do in prewar

Germany.

These disorders are of course still visible in every part of the globe, on every continent .

To pray, therefore, means to be involved in the struggle against what the Apostle Paul

called “the principalities and powers , against the rulers of the world of this darkness.”

Ephesians 6:12

In a letter published in the Guardian UK (April 10, 14) Bishop Desmond Tutu calls upon

Christians and others to stand against those who would despoil the environment for

profit. He begins his letter, “ Twenty five years ago people could be excused for not

knowing much, or doing much about climate change . Today we have no excuse. No

more can it be excused as science fiction, we are already feeling its effects.” He

continues, “Throughout my life I have believed that the only just response to injustice is

what Mahatma Gandhi termed ‘passive resistance.’”

The hands clasped in prayer are to be employed in an uprising that is non violent but

nevertheless powerful as it was in India in the latter 40s, and in the struggle against

Apartheid in the 90s.

To dare to clasp ones hands in prayer, therefore, means to stand in solidarity with the

poor, the disenfranchised, the least of these, the exploited of the world. In our own

country it certainly means to stand with the aboriginals, the first people of this land.

When the preacher on Sunday announces “Let us pray” what is demanded are no mere

pleas for God to intercede on our behalf but to seek to understand what is God’s will

and to become involved in the struggle against the disorders of our time.

MYQUEST

May 20 2014

CELEBRATING EASTER, THE SEASON OF HOPE

Hanns F Skoutajan

Its Easter time, my favourite season of the year. That basket of beautiful coloured eggs  once again adorns our dining room table. Not only are those eggs beautiful but they are now over 55 years old. I bought them from a vendor on the Old Town Square in the heart of the city of Prague in April 1968 on the occasion of my first visit after my mother and I had fled our homeland in 1938.

Prague was in a festive mood when I visited. The simple red, white and blue flag fluttered from every tower and mast throughout the city.  The picture of Thomas Garrigue Masaryk , the first president of the newly created Czechoslovakia after the end of World War 1, adorned many store windows and homes. It had been absent during the dark days of communism after the Second World War .

It was spring but more than that it was the Prague Spring when Alexander Dubcek had brought new hope to the people of the republic that the dark days of communism were over, that there was now a socialism with a human face. Unfortunately those day were not to last. In August of that year the tanks and soldiers of the Soviet Union and its allies rolled through the cobblestone streets of that ancient city and most of the country and the old totalitarian dictatorship was reinstalled. The pictures disappeared from the store windows and drabness and fear returned.  It would take another twenty years before another revolution, “a velvet revolution” would take place under the leadership of Vaclav Havel. I have often wondered whether Havel would have been possible without Dubcek  to lead the way and bring hope for a better future.

Certainly the beautiful Easter eggs had something to do with it.  Hope could not be extinguished in the hearts of a people.

Shortly after the Prague Spring I had the privilege of hosting Milan Machovec, a Christian Marxist philosopher  who had taught at the Charles University in Prague. He had been out of the country teaching in Vienna  where there was greater freedom  to explore the Christian significance of Karl Marx. Both in the West and in the East Machovec raised eyebrows. Neither Marxists nor democrats agreed with him.

When Jan Palach, a student of Machovec, immolated himself on Wenzeslaus Square, Machovec was deeply troubled and he told me that he must return  to be with his students no matter what the consequences for him. As I saw him off at the Ottawa airport he confessed that he was not going home directly without first visiting Jerusalem, as he said, “ to walk where the Master walked” where Jesus was crucified and resurrected and from where his movement for peace and hope emanated. However dark the days that followed the aborted Prague Spring there was a hope that could not be extinguished. The colourful eggs were a symbol of that hope. 

I live in hope. Without hope there would be no life worth living. I live in the hope that the tension between the Ukraine and Russia can be resolved without recourse to war. I live in the hope that Canada can once again become a peacekeeper rather than a worrier nation ( read the book Worrier Nation by McKay and Swift ) I hope that Tom Steyer, the American billionaire and environmentalist and opponent of the Keystone XL Pipeline who recently visited Canada, is right, when upon visiting Alberta he said that “ your country can survive without the oil patch” ( Doug Saunders in the Globe and Mail, April 19) It is my hope that English  and French and Aboriginals and all the many newcomers to our land can live together and build a responsible and prosperous nation without being the world’s greatest source of pollution.

Hope has to be broad. Those Easter eggs remind me of that many faceted hope without which there is not hope for a happy future for the next generation, for my granddaughter Sophia and her friends. Hope springs eternal. Spring is my favourite season because it is a season of hope.

Spirit Quest 19/ 04/ 2014

Dear Friend and Reader:

I AM BACK .....WITH A VENGEANCE!

Many moons have passed since I last accosted you with my Spirit Quest.

Some of you have enquired whether I have dropped your address from the

roster of my correspondents. Others have suggested that I have decamped

to a warmer clime, not a bad suggestion for this winter. Neither is the

reason for my truancy, rather, I confess that I have been dealing with a

health issue that has deprived me of some of my writing energy and ideas.

Nine years ago on a sunny spring day I stood by the banks of the Ottawa

River and observed the water running over the stones. It was very soothing

and pleasant, however, there was something else sitting on my mind. In an

hour or so I would have to present myself at the hospital to hear the result

of the urologist’s investigation of my prostate gland.

“ We have discovered cancer cells on both sides of the gland.” It wasn’t

quite the blow that I had imagined, there seemed no indication that the

cancer had spread beyond the gland itself. I was recommended to an

oncologist for further investigation and treatment.

Nevertheless, as I left the office I was conscious that I was hosting an inner

battle. Over the next months and years I would always be aware of this

malaise. I comforted myself that I had no pains or discomforts, that my

symptoms were all statistical.

Since then I have undergone radiation and hormone therapy and more

lately with a rising PSA rate had to undertake what I had vowed to myself I

would never accept: chemotherapy. It was in reaction to this invasive

therapy that I recently spent two weeks in hospital. The therapy had worked

wonders, my PSA had come tumbling down to below the normal level but

there was a price to be paid. My immunology had suffered. My white blood

cell count had dropped dramatically and I felt unwell. Cancer in all its forms

is the body attacking itself. My natural defences had in fact turned against

me.

The McMurtrys are a well known Toronto family. Among the four sons is

Robert a medical researcher and John a professor of philosophy at the

University of Guelph. Some years ago when their mother came down with a

form of cancer these sons spent much time thinking about her condition

and the nature of her disease.

Robert with his clinical knowledge was of course concentrating on the

human body and its vagaries but John became aware that what held true

for the physical body had parallels for the body politic. In other words there

was much evidence that the very forces that ought to assure a just and

equitable society had a way of being turned against itself. He compared the

behaviour of corporations in the economy to the conduct of biological

cancer cells. He tells about it in a book called “The Cancer Stage of

Capitalism.” Ed Finn, editor of the CCPA Monitor recently wrote the

following about it:

“To invade and multiply in the human body, a cancer virus has to overcome

the body’s natural defences. A strong immune system has a good chance

of beating back the virus invaders, but someone with an immune system

weakened by poor nutrition and environmental carcinogens can’t stop the

cancer from spreading .

The unchecked cancer doesn’t win, of course . This is battle in which both

sides ultimately lose, because soon after the cancer kills the host, it also

dies. But that’s the only way it can function.

Its the same with corporations . Their CEOs are also programmed to

maximize profits, which means spreading and growing by any means - by

cutting jobs, battering unions , evading taxes , corrupting politicians ,

exploiting sweatshop labour , clearcutting forests , pillaging natural

resources, increasing poverty and contaminating the environment.

The corporate cancer is doing what comes naturally to all cancers : it is

growing; it is feeding on its hosts.”

Austerity, privatization,, cut backs in social programs, education and health

care have been very much in vogue as a means of restoring an economy to

profitability by means of structural adjustments, which have done great

damage to economies. They affect the non wealthy class while enhancing

the status of the rich and corporations whose incomes have vaulted beyond

recognition. The public is assured that its the only way

Our own country is a case in point where the petroleum industry with

promises of jobs and wealth have released a cancer that has all but

destroyed the ecology of northern Alberta. No warnings have been

sufficient to deter further extraction and shipments of petro products. Like a

cancer it spreads exponentially bringing about climate change.

Our government who ought to be in the forefront of protecting our country

and its natural resources are way out ahead in propagating more assault

on the natural environment. Few are allowed to stand in its way that are not

denounced as foreign interference.

Cancer is writ large not only on the bodies of our aboriginal people who live

in close proximity to the tar pits and the rivers polluted by them. Seeing the

photoography of Edward Burtynsky is a shattering exeperience.

Can cancer in all its forms be beaten? The motto of the Canadian Cancer

Society assures that it can and indeed there are many cancer survivors, but

the disease in all its various forms is almost of epidemic proportions.

Similarly the corporate attack on the body politic is devastating particularly

to the middle and lower classes and indeed the economic heath of nations.

Finn concludes : “Some environmentalists envision our planet as a giant

living organism . They call her Gaia, and they lament all the wounds

inflicted on her seas, forests, ecosystems and diverse living creatures.

They are still confident that Gaia will survive the corporate cancer

onslaught but fear that many of its life forms - including humankind itself -

will not. The battle for survival is on!

Hanns F Skoutajan

SPIRIT QUEST : March 29, 2014