Chaplain's Corner

As a school boy, Thanksgiving was all about Pilgrims and Indians and the beautiful cooperation that enabled the Pilgrims to make it through the first winter of their stay in the New World. Sadly, in just a few years that cooperation grew into fear and suspicion and Miles Standish a leader in the immigrant community, murdered two First Nations leaders after luring them to a home under the pretense of negotiation; so much for the happy cooperation of the first Thanksgiving.

But this narrative is not new; it is as ancient as our race itself. Jealousy, greed, fear, distrust and the lust for power have turned brother against brother and people against people from the earliest times. Acquisition trumps relationship, power trumps care, and a sense of superiority trumps compassion.

The same exists now, all over the world, all over Canada and throughout the south-eastern part of Manitoba, right where we live and work. Every generation has its example or perpetuates the realities of the last. In the United States many thought the election of a black president would help heal the wounds between Blacks and Whites in the States. Instead, racial tensions have deepened and erupted over and over again during his tenure and his rhetoric has done nothing to quiet them. If anything they are worse than they have been in years.

This past year has seen some of the same erupt in this area as proponents of inclusion and diversity surrounding sexual identity pressed the members of the community whose moral compasses would not allow them to approve. Each community struggled to make space for the other, each struggled to respect the other and many lost something precious in the encounters. How hollow are victories that create even deeper fear, anxiety, suspicion as diverging world views, values and beliefs collided.

As we reflect back over the year that held these and many other experiences, some are sad, others feel victorious, others mourn the relatively harmony of the somewhat homogeneous community that once was. As we reflect we remember our own inner struggles, the media attention that for some was wanted and others rebuffed and we wonder if the New Year, just three months away will hold progress or regression, depending on our point of view.

This year I am once again grateful that I live in a nation that allows for these differences, even though those holding the different perspectives believe that the others are dead wrong. I am grateful that I don’t live under a repressive regime that demands that everyone spout the party line, regardless of what is in their heart. We could have been born in North Korea, where the freedom of belief has been repressed either by imprisonment and torture or the fear of the same.

Freedom has a cost. One of the costs is that I must learn to live and work with people whose beliefs offend me; just as I recognize that my beliefs may offensive to them. That is the nature of freedom and the demand of faith. Freedom gives us the privilege of holding our beliefs openly, whatever beliefs we embrace. Faith, even those Faiths that are more exclusive in scope, requires that one must embrace the faith willingly and that faith not be imposed. In a nation like ours, the tension exists in that space between people that believe differently, that believe things that are diametrically opposed to one another. Any attempt to silence – is freedom robbing. Any attempt to impose is likewise freedom robbing.

It is this that I am grateful for this year: the only fear I need experience to hold my faith and its implications on current trends and events is the fear that someone may not like what I believe. I celebrate this precious freedom and gladly accept the disapproval that comes with it.