SOCIAL STUDIES - Published Monday June 23rd, 2008
Are the Beijing Olympics a good or a bad thing?
I am having trouble keeping track. Forty-six days to go before they start and I am not sure anyone has answered that most basic of questions: are we in favour of this, or opposed?
Opinion has it that there were members of the Olympic Committee who decided to hold the games in China because it would force them to "clean up their act." While others suggest that China took the positive nod as a carte blanche acceptance of China and all things Chinese.
Neither side was on the same page from the get go; and since then we have had to contend with Tibetan protests, Olympic Torch Relay Riots, and possible boycotts; none of which are actual Olympic events, yet.
In China there have been some blackouts of information, and Human Rights Watch reports that migrant labourers are being forced to work in extreme conditions to finish the "re-building" of Beijing while demolition of their shanty town villages continues. Street people and criminals are being deported to outlying regions while foreigners and even citizens are facing harder and harder visa restrictions on their travel.
And there is so much being foisted onto China in the name of "preparing" for the Olympics -- first they have to give Taiwan and Nepal back, then they have to free all the prisoners from the Tiananmen Square riots of 20 years ago, stop selling arms to Zimbabwe, reduce the pollution of Beijing by some incredible amount. . . it is a wonder that China is bothering with us at all.
Don't get me wrong -- I am 100 per cent in favour of better human rights, of cleaning up the environment, of responsible and good government, even of more realistic trade understandings. What I am not in favour of is taking an event like the Olympics and saddling it with a political agenda that is quite different, and perhaps even contrary, to the hopeful spirit of unity that the games are supposed to engender.
It is not as if the Olympics have not been used as a political platform before. Three come to mind almost instantly: the 1936 Berlin Olympics in which the National Socialist Party of Germany built monolithic structures and tried to demonstrate Aryan superiority; only to be beaten at every turn by the African American Jesse Owens. Then there was the Palestinian attack on Jewish athletes at the 1972 Munich Olympics. Both of these events managed to open the eyes of the world to things we were blatantly trying to ignore -- the racism of the Nazi party and the violence of the PLO. The last one in my mind is the USSR Olympics of 1980 which were boycotted by 65 countries in protest of the, ahem, invasion of Afghanistan.
In the last century the games were cancelled three times as well, Once during the First World War and twice during the Second World War.
So yes, the games can be political -- but what we are talking about here is having the true nature of the games hijacked for political purposes by outsiders. The reason I am confused as to what to think about Beijing is that something else entirely has been going on; the games are actually being used as social engineering to change a country.
Who made this decision?
And with what level of arrogance was the decision made?
How can the Olympic Committee decide national policy for a hosting country, and how can they ignore the thousands of lessons learned by our imperialistic attitudes over the last 1,000 years in the process?
By social engineering I simply mean that outsiders are using an event and the attention generated to force their own principals and ideals onto another culture. This almost always goes horribly wrong -- as the entire continent of post-colonial Africa readily attests.
We have used it ourselves, by creating residential schools and reservations for our aboriginal population to "make them more like us". Then South Africa used our system to try and make their aboriginals more "Dutch." In every case what we have mainly done is to destroy vibrant and important cultural heritage in favour of forced harmony, which in turn only lasts as long as we have sufficient security forces.
Back to China . . . In "giving" the games to Beijing the International Olympic Committee was hoping to change China -- instead they have forced China to attempt its own social engineering in one city at an accelerated pace which has caused more problems, resentment, and xenophobia than you can possible imagine.
All of this on the back of an idea that is about celebrating sport, and unity of purpose and the spirit of competition -- the powers that be have actually changed the purpose and destroyed the original intent. The only ones that will pay the price are the young competitors who have poured heart and soul into preparing for something that they thought was about sports and who end up sidelined by politics.
I guess I will continue to be in support of the games, as I am in support of Chinese culture; and at the same time, I will continue to speak up against injustice to the poor and dispossessed wherever we find them, as I continue to hope for a better world filled with hope and harmony and cooperation.
In the words of Pierre de Coubertin who first wrote the Olympic motto for the modern games and then got the idea for a creed from this phrase from a speech given by Bishop Ethelbert Talbot at a service for Olympic champions during the 1908 Olympic Games:
"The most important thing in the Olympic Games is not to win but to take part, just as the most important thing in life is not the triumph but the struggle. The essential thing is not to have conquered but to have fought well."
Tuesday, June 24, 2008
Tuesday, June 17, 2008
The story has changed; healing can begin
Published Monday June 16th, 2008
"I will tell you something about stories. . . They are all we have, you see, all we have to fight off illness and death."
These are words from the book Ceremony by Aboriginal writer Leslie Marmon Silko.
In the wake of Stephen Harper's apology for perhaps one of the darkest legacies of our imperialistic culture, the Indian residential school system, these words have certain poignancy.
Now I have heard cynicism abound since our current and even antecedent government spoke the words which very clearly laid guilt upon their shoulders. There are those who believe them to be hollow, those who believe that there is no possible way to move from "words" to "action" in any meaningful way, and of course, those who wonder what this has to do with them.
This is what it has to do with each and every one of us.
In the words of Chief Phil Fontaine, two "sins" were actually named on the floor of Parliament, "white supremacy" and "colonialism"; and whether we like it or not, we are complicit in these sins, we are the bearers of all of the animosity, all of the racial hatred, all of the stereotypical archetypes which separate our two nations. When I was young we played Cowboy and Indian -- when I was older we made jokes. We would say or do anything to make us feel righteously superior.
Now, I happen to have had the honour to be in a room with Ched Myers following the apology. Ched is an American who among other things does "truth and reconciliation" work. He was involved in the reconciliation work between white supremacists' and blacks after the Greensborough Massacre of 1979.
As an American who was deeply moved by what he saw our government do, he made this observation: the only time that he could imagine his government acting unanimously, moving beyond partisan differences, would be in the decision to bomb a country. He could not possibly imagine a time when native leaders would be allowed on the floor of Congress, much less be able to talk about white supremacy and colonialism.
The largest civil uprising in the history of North America was the Los Angeles Riots of 1992. In the midst of the chaos that ensued there was a slogan, and that slogan was "No Justice -- No Peace."
I would like to suggest that we have already taken the tentative steps towards addressing the issue of justice.
First of all we have the Residential Schools Settlement which is the largest legal redress suit ever in history.
Now we have a formal apology and a truth and reconciliation process very similar to what they had in South Africa.
This is ironic as it is widely held that before setting up the Apartheid system in South Africa their government came to Canada and studied our Indian reservation system.
And while we are talking about South Africa, there was another friend of mine in the room after the apology, Russ Daye, who went to South Africa in the midst of their process and interviewed people about it.
He tells the story of the day when Nelson Mandela was inaugurated as president. He was standing on the dais when five fighter jets soared overhead. As Russ tells it, he looked around to see many of the people cringe and cry out -- a coup -- the military was taking over.
And then the jets let out coloured smoke in a rainbow streaming above Mandela's head. It was at that moment, some would later recall, that they knew everything was going to be all right.
Phil Fontaine has said about the apology, and I paraphrase; now we know that we will never disappear -- now we know that everything is going to be all right.
And don't underestimate the power of words; the power of Harper's statement as the person who speaks for each and every one of us. When people do work with victims of sexual abuse, there comes a time when no more healing is possible until someone simply acknowledges the reality of the situation: "You were abused."
Harper said clearly, you were taken, you were neglected, and you were abused. There is power in those words -- there is healing in those words; there is freedom in those words. In telling the story truthfully, in admitting that it happens, we are giving everyone the power to engage the story, to take it seriously, and to feel the pain.
I opened with a quote from Silko, and the reason for that is simply that I believe words to be important -- very important. Shakespeare once commented that the pen is mightier than the sword, and for good reason -- we live life, we understand life, by telling stories, by sharing stories -- the narratives that warp and weave their way through our understandings give us the strength to take those next tentative steps.
Now the story has changed. Now we are equals. It might not alter the fabric of our lives immediately, but it is a start. This new story will soak its way into our subconscious and we will be guided by it.
Now, we need to be faithful to our own truth telling.
"I will tell you something about stories. . . They are all we have, you see, all we have to fight off illness and death."
These are words from the book Ceremony by Aboriginal writer Leslie Marmon Silko.
In the wake of Stephen Harper's apology for perhaps one of the darkest legacies of our imperialistic culture, the Indian residential school system, these words have certain poignancy.
Now I have heard cynicism abound since our current and even antecedent government spoke the words which very clearly laid guilt upon their shoulders. There are those who believe them to be hollow, those who believe that there is no possible way to move from "words" to "action" in any meaningful way, and of course, those who wonder what this has to do with them.
This is what it has to do with each and every one of us.
In the words of Chief Phil Fontaine, two "sins" were actually named on the floor of Parliament, "white supremacy" and "colonialism"; and whether we like it or not, we are complicit in these sins, we are the bearers of all of the animosity, all of the racial hatred, all of the stereotypical archetypes which separate our two nations. When I was young we played Cowboy and Indian -- when I was older we made jokes. We would say or do anything to make us feel righteously superior.
Now, I happen to have had the honour to be in a room with Ched Myers following the apology. Ched is an American who among other things does "truth and reconciliation" work. He was involved in the reconciliation work between white supremacists' and blacks after the Greensborough Massacre of 1979.
As an American who was deeply moved by what he saw our government do, he made this observation: the only time that he could imagine his government acting unanimously, moving beyond partisan differences, would be in the decision to bomb a country. He could not possibly imagine a time when native leaders would be allowed on the floor of Congress, much less be able to talk about white supremacy and colonialism.
The largest civil uprising in the history of North America was the Los Angeles Riots of 1992. In the midst of the chaos that ensued there was a slogan, and that slogan was "No Justice -- No Peace."
I would like to suggest that we have already taken the tentative steps towards addressing the issue of justice.
First of all we have the Residential Schools Settlement which is the largest legal redress suit ever in history.
Now we have a formal apology and a truth and reconciliation process very similar to what they had in South Africa.
This is ironic as it is widely held that before setting up the Apartheid system in South Africa their government came to Canada and studied our Indian reservation system.
And while we are talking about South Africa, there was another friend of mine in the room after the apology, Russ Daye, who went to South Africa in the midst of their process and interviewed people about it.
He tells the story of the day when Nelson Mandela was inaugurated as president. He was standing on the dais when five fighter jets soared overhead. As Russ tells it, he looked around to see many of the people cringe and cry out -- a coup -- the military was taking over.
And then the jets let out coloured smoke in a rainbow streaming above Mandela's head. It was at that moment, some would later recall, that they knew everything was going to be all right.
Phil Fontaine has said about the apology, and I paraphrase; now we know that we will never disappear -- now we know that everything is going to be all right.
And don't underestimate the power of words; the power of Harper's statement as the person who speaks for each and every one of us. When people do work with victims of sexual abuse, there comes a time when no more healing is possible until someone simply acknowledges the reality of the situation: "You were abused."
Harper said clearly, you were taken, you were neglected, and you were abused. There is power in those words -- there is healing in those words; there is freedom in those words. In telling the story truthfully, in admitting that it happens, we are giving everyone the power to engage the story, to take it seriously, and to feel the pain.
I opened with a quote from Silko, and the reason for that is simply that I believe words to be important -- very important. Shakespeare once commented that the pen is mightier than the sword, and for good reason -- we live life, we understand life, by telling stories, by sharing stories -- the narratives that warp and weave their way through our understandings give us the strength to take those next tentative steps.
Now the story has changed. Now we are equals. It might not alter the fabric of our lives immediately, but it is a start. This new story will soak its way into our subconscious and we will be guided by it.
Now, we need to be faithful to our own truth telling.
What would Jesus do?
RELIGION TODAY - Published Saturday June 14th, 2008
It seems like a bit of an inane question; but it has caught the attention of the Christian world over the last few years.
You can buy bracelets that put the acronym WWJD front and centre on your wrist, hoping to force you to consider this most serious of questions as you reach across the counter with your debit card. There has even been a whole rash of spin off questions -- what would Jesus drive? What would Jesus eat?
When you stop and think about it, these are nonsensical questions. Jesus would have driven, at best, a donkey. Jesus would have eaten some fish, some pita, a few olives and wine. Jesus would have walked around a lot and asked questions.
In the first place, this is called context; historical context to be exact. Jesus was a Jewish peasant raised in a backwater Jewish town who had Jewish disciples and went to the Jewish synagogue. Three generations later when someone decided to record the story of his life, it was a Jew who wrote the book of Mark, and it was written for other Jews to read.
The best answer you could hope for if you were literally asking the questions I started with is this: Jesus would have interpreted what he saw and the questions he was asked from the point of view of Torah, of Jewish faith, and he would have tried to make his listeners understand the very Jewish principle of God being actively present in the lives of the faithful.
The Apostle Paul, in all of his writings, only tells us three things about Jesus: he was crucified, he celebrated the Last Supper with his disciples, and he was buried and raised by God from the dead. Everything else is interpretation that was written some 30-70 years after Jesus walked the face of the earth.
So much for the literal answer to our question; luckily that is not where the power of the question lies. "What would Jesus do?" is in the end not really a question about the Jesus of history, it is a question about the faith response of the people who continue to follow his teachings.
I have the very distinct honour to be at a convention this week in Truro -- The Atlantic Seminar in Theological Education. I am here with lay and clergy from the United, Baptist, Catholic, Anglican and Lutheran churches to listen to and interact with two essential interpreters of Biblical faith: John Shelby Spong, retired Episcopal bishop and author of any number of books challenging us to see our tradition the way it was meant to be seen; and Ched Myers, a scholar, author and social activist who wants to bring ancient wisdom back to life in our modern context.
And this is what we are about -- reclaiming the real answers to the question: What would Jesus, the Jewish, religious, political activist from rural Palestine, have us do?
And believe it or not there is a quick answer. In Luke 10 the rich young ruler comes and asks Jesus point blank "Okay, what do I have to do?" And Jesus answers: "What does the Bible say? How do you interpret it." And we end up with the golden rule of faith, love your neighbour. As much as this guy tries to wriggle out of it, Jesus keeps him coming back to the realization that it really is that simple.
Love will change the world. Even if your neighbour were a liberal, or a fundamentalist, or a French speaker, or an Iraqi -- which is, by the way, the very literal definition of Samaritan -- if you love them, and love everything God loves; which includes the entire world, every plant animal -- even you; then you will be on the right track.
That is a fundamental faith decision; and not an easy one to make when on average we are bombarded by 1800 radio, print and television ads every day telling us just the opposite. But if we are ever going to get it together -- this will do it. Love.
It seems like a bit of an inane question; but it has caught the attention of the Christian world over the last few years.
You can buy bracelets that put the acronym WWJD front and centre on your wrist, hoping to force you to consider this most serious of questions as you reach across the counter with your debit card. There has even been a whole rash of spin off questions -- what would Jesus drive? What would Jesus eat?
When you stop and think about it, these are nonsensical questions. Jesus would have driven, at best, a donkey. Jesus would have eaten some fish, some pita, a few olives and wine. Jesus would have walked around a lot and asked questions.
In the first place, this is called context; historical context to be exact. Jesus was a Jewish peasant raised in a backwater Jewish town who had Jewish disciples and went to the Jewish synagogue. Three generations later when someone decided to record the story of his life, it was a Jew who wrote the book of Mark, and it was written for other Jews to read.
The best answer you could hope for if you were literally asking the questions I started with is this: Jesus would have interpreted what he saw and the questions he was asked from the point of view of Torah, of Jewish faith, and he would have tried to make his listeners understand the very Jewish principle of God being actively present in the lives of the faithful.
The Apostle Paul, in all of his writings, only tells us three things about Jesus: he was crucified, he celebrated the Last Supper with his disciples, and he was buried and raised by God from the dead. Everything else is interpretation that was written some 30-70 years after Jesus walked the face of the earth.
So much for the literal answer to our question; luckily that is not where the power of the question lies. "What would Jesus do?" is in the end not really a question about the Jesus of history, it is a question about the faith response of the people who continue to follow his teachings.
I have the very distinct honour to be at a convention this week in Truro -- The Atlantic Seminar in Theological Education. I am here with lay and clergy from the United, Baptist, Catholic, Anglican and Lutheran churches to listen to and interact with two essential interpreters of Biblical faith: John Shelby Spong, retired Episcopal bishop and author of any number of books challenging us to see our tradition the way it was meant to be seen; and Ched Myers, a scholar, author and social activist who wants to bring ancient wisdom back to life in our modern context.
And this is what we are about -- reclaiming the real answers to the question: What would Jesus, the Jewish, religious, political activist from rural Palestine, have us do?
And believe it or not there is a quick answer. In Luke 10 the rich young ruler comes and asks Jesus point blank "Okay, what do I have to do?" And Jesus answers: "What does the Bible say? How do you interpret it." And we end up with the golden rule of faith, love your neighbour. As much as this guy tries to wriggle out of it, Jesus keeps him coming back to the realization that it really is that simple.
Love will change the world. Even if your neighbour were a liberal, or a fundamentalist, or a French speaker, or an Iraqi -- which is, by the way, the very literal definition of Samaritan -- if you love them, and love everything God loves; which includes the entire world, every plant animal -- even you; then you will be on the right track.
That is a fundamental faith decision; and not an easy one to make when on average we are bombarded by 1800 radio, print and television ads every day telling us just the opposite. But if we are ever going to get it together -- this will do it. Love.
Tuesday, June 10, 2008
Looking on the bright side dispels many fears
SOCIAL STUDIES - Published Monday June 9th, 2008
The difference between a weed and a flower is intent.
This is a fact that I believe deep down in the bottom of my heart. Have you ever really stopped to look at a dandelion? Have you ever driven by a field of bright, vibrant, sun drenched dandelions, the fluffy clouds floating overhead as the radio beats time to the road noise?
They are honestly a very pretty flower.
I found something blue growing in my backyard which I am almost certain would not have been there if I had ever got around to mowing it. It was very pretty and I decided to dig it up and stick it in the corner of our flower garden. This could in fact justify my whole "not mowing the back for such an extended period of time" behaviour -- the flowers are that nice.
I am choosing to call this act of random transplanting "recycling". For the record, my wife says they are "forget-me-nots," which is funny because I originally wrote that they were pink and then went home and checked; they are blue -- and curiously forgettable.
Now just so we are clear, I am not writing this column about gardening, and I am not writing this column about recycling, I am not even writing it about my lack of lawn care incentive. Instead I am working on a variation of the theme "bloom where you're planted."
We've all heard that, have we not? It is a short form way of saying we should make the most of wherever we find ourselves; or a long way to repeat the Boy Scout motto "Do your best".
Rarely, however, do we apply it to the way we view the world.
What I want to talk about is the fact that not only is the glass half full; there is probably a pitcher of refills.
When you look at those dandelions, do you see a weed or a flower? When you see the rain falling are you angry you can't go golfing or do you find an old pair of rubber boots and jump in the puddles?
When you stop to think about it, attitude is 90 per cent of everything that happens to us. The easiest route to happiness therefore, is through a change in attitude.
I am a big advocate of re-framing situations so that what seems like a negative can be made into a positive. This can be done for almost everything from weather to sickness. I am not a Pollyanna type of person, trust me. I don't think that everything is wonderful and there is no pain, quite the opposite. I find that there is so much pain in the world that we should celebrate each and every pain free second we get.
To put these two thoughts together, I think that life is meant to be understood as a worthwhile journey filled with opportunity -- and what often gets in our way is the perception that it is "too" painful, or "too" scary for us to handle; and then we begin to expect the worst, and approach everything fearfully, and actually look for the negative instead of the positive; which is the quickest way to find it.
Take the "War on Terror", or the "Environmental Crisis", as examples of negative stereotyping which seem to force us to see the world through dark glasses. There is a very real need to communicate information, and there is a very real need to make people aware that things have to change, but is change best accomplished by fear?
It has never been my experience that scaring people for the purpose of motivation is a good idea. There are a whole lot of folk sayings which back me up: "You get more flies with honey than vinegar" or "better the carrot than the stick," to cite two.
And yet, America chooses to use sacrificial rhetoric about punishing the oppressors as a cause for war instead of moving towards saying that we need to make the world safer.
Media and experts spend their time telling us that our children are all going to die of starvation instead of encouraging us to grow our own food. New Brunswick is thinking about carbon taxes to offset our bad behaviour instead of tax credits for buying a hybrid.
Why does public policy assume that nothing is going to change and that disaster is the only natural outcome?
Why have we changed to a "stick" way of motivating people?
In essence this just disempowers us and makes us capable of bad judgements.
The cynical side of me says that we as a people are easier to control if we are afraid. We are certainly more willing to spend money on big ticket items like military spending and border security. Which will neither make us safer nor more secure.
As an aside I have lived beside quite a few border entries in my time and always find it funny that beefing up security means more guards at the waypoint when all you have to do is walk half a kilometre away and walk through the woods, but I digress.
My point is that more solutions are found by approaching things from a positive fashion, Thomas Edison made thousands of faulty light bulbs and it was because he believed it was possible that it finally worked.
Or as Monty Python put it in their movie, The Life of Brian, "Always look on the bright side of life. . ."
The difference between a weed and a flower is intent.
This is a fact that I believe deep down in the bottom of my heart. Have you ever really stopped to look at a dandelion? Have you ever driven by a field of bright, vibrant, sun drenched dandelions, the fluffy clouds floating overhead as the radio beats time to the road noise?
They are honestly a very pretty flower.
I found something blue growing in my backyard which I am almost certain would not have been there if I had ever got around to mowing it. It was very pretty and I decided to dig it up and stick it in the corner of our flower garden. This could in fact justify my whole "not mowing the back for such an extended period of time" behaviour -- the flowers are that nice.
I am choosing to call this act of random transplanting "recycling". For the record, my wife says they are "forget-me-nots," which is funny because I originally wrote that they were pink and then went home and checked; they are blue -- and curiously forgettable.
Now just so we are clear, I am not writing this column about gardening, and I am not writing this column about recycling, I am not even writing it about my lack of lawn care incentive. Instead I am working on a variation of the theme "bloom where you're planted."
We've all heard that, have we not? It is a short form way of saying we should make the most of wherever we find ourselves; or a long way to repeat the Boy Scout motto "Do your best".
Rarely, however, do we apply it to the way we view the world.
What I want to talk about is the fact that not only is the glass half full; there is probably a pitcher of refills.
When you look at those dandelions, do you see a weed or a flower? When you see the rain falling are you angry you can't go golfing or do you find an old pair of rubber boots and jump in the puddles?
When you stop to think about it, attitude is 90 per cent of everything that happens to us. The easiest route to happiness therefore, is through a change in attitude.
I am a big advocate of re-framing situations so that what seems like a negative can be made into a positive. This can be done for almost everything from weather to sickness. I am not a Pollyanna type of person, trust me. I don't think that everything is wonderful and there is no pain, quite the opposite. I find that there is so much pain in the world that we should celebrate each and every pain free second we get.
To put these two thoughts together, I think that life is meant to be understood as a worthwhile journey filled with opportunity -- and what often gets in our way is the perception that it is "too" painful, or "too" scary for us to handle; and then we begin to expect the worst, and approach everything fearfully, and actually look for the negative instead of the positive; which is the quickest way to find it.
Take the "War on Terror", or the "Environmental Crisis", as examples of negative stereotyping which seem to force us to see the world through dark glasses. There is a very real need to communicate information, and there is a very real need to make people aware that things have to change, but is change best accomplished by fear?
It has never been my experience that scaring people for the purpose of motivation is a good idea. There are a whole lot of folk sayings which back me up: "You get more flies with honey than vinegar" or "better the carrot than the stick," to cite two.
And yet, America chooses to use sacrificial rhetoric about punishing the oppressors as a cause for war instead of moving towards saying that we need to make the world safer.
Media and experts spend their time telling us that our children are all going to die of starvation instead of encouraging us to grow our own food. New Brunswick is thinking about carbon taxes to offset our bad behaviour instead of tax credits for buying a hybrid.
Why does public policy assume that nothing is going to change and that disaster is the only natural outcome?
Why have we changed to a "stick" way of motivating people?
In essence this just disempowers us and makes us capable of bad judgements.
The cynical side of me says that we as a people are easier to control if we are afraid. We are certainly more willing to spend money on big ticket items like military spending and border security. Which will neither make us safer nor more secure.
As an aside I have lived beside quite a few border entries in my time and always find it funny that beefing up security means more guards at the waypoint when all you have to do is walk half a kilometre away and walk through the woods, but I digress.
My point is that more solutions are found by approaching things from a positive fashion, Thomas Edison made thousands of faulty light bulbs and it was because he believed it was possible that it finally worked.
Or as Monty Python put it in their movie, The Life of Brian, "Always look on the bright side of life. . ."
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