Canada

On the first Sunday of Advent, our pastor spoke on the first eighteen verses of the gospel of John. It has many intriguing references to light and encompasses creation, the new creation and the source of life.

I am a strong believer in the amazing and complex interconnectedness of our life here on earth. For that reason, I sometimes have a difficult time analysing the challenges of creation care without trying to see how it fits together with things like material wealth/poverty and racism.

Sometimes I feel it,

the green fuse that ignites us,

the wild thrum that unites us,

an inner hum that reminds us

of our shared humanity.

Belonging by: Rosemerry Wahtola Trommer

Do you sometimes feel it too?  Our interconnectedness? The way when ‘one part suffers the rest suffer with it?’  It’s this interconnectedness that makes reconciliation and belonging so important.  

I’m both a person with multiple disabilities, and a good worker. The problem with holding those two concepts in tension is my distinct lack of efficiency. I can do the things I’m skilled at regularly – in church contexts, I can pray, preach, receive and count offering, sing, and not only assist in but help to celebrate the Eucharist – but, when I do them, all those tasks are slower and more deliberate than they would be when done by able-bodied people. Moreover, all those tasks may have small pieces missing.

When speaking with a ministry colleague a few years ago about the complexities of serving individuals who are being commercially sexually exploited, they wondered aloud how we can expect someone to leave their exploiter when the person’s immediate needs are taken care of through exploitation. This ministry colleague reflected on a situation in which a woman living in dire poverty in another country was faced with the decision between being sexually exploited or letting her children go hungry.

"I pray to God—my life a prayer— and wait for what he’ll say and do. My life’s on the line before God, my Lord, waiting and watching till morning, waiting and watching till morning." - Psalm 130:5-6 MSG

A quick survey of First Nations, Metis, and Inuit people brings about the realization of the truth of the situation. The Indigenous people of North America are over-represented in poverty, unemployment, child welfare, education system drop-outs, addiction, sex work, correctional services, and the like. Tent cities line inner-city streets as many of the occupants of these make-shift communities use illicit drugs to numb the pain of the reality of this world. Be careful not to judge, or you will be judged by the same measure.

Over the last few years, my own teaching and discipleship has been most inspired by theologians and practitioners from the Global South and First Peoples’ communities around the world.  These thinkers, writers, leaders, teachers, and artists are broadly connected to the movement of decolonization and post-colonial theology, in which people of faith from the Global South and First Peoples’ communities around the world – including my own, here in amiskwacîwâskahikan (what is now known as Edmonton) - are challenging the legacy of largely European, colonial church traditions.  

Recently, I had an opportunity to meditate on Luke 10:25-37, the passage on the Good Samaritan. Since I was commemorating the National Day for Truth and Reconciliation, I read it from the Indigenous people and white settlers' relational lens instead of the first century Samaritans and Jews relational lens. When I read it through this lens, the parable spoke so much truth to our current reality and through this blog, I am sharing three insights that I was able to glean.

“Hope is what you get when you suddenly realize that a different worldview is possible, a worldview in which the rich, the powerful, and the unscrupulous do not after all have the last word.”
― N.T. Wright

Updates from Ukraine

A Russian fighter plane has crashed into a residential building in the southern Russian city of Yeysk, near Ukraine killing 4 civilians. Footage on social media, which has been verified by BBC News, showed a large fireball erupting from what appeared to be a multi-storey building.

I am both a person with multiple disabilities, and a faithful servant of Christ. I’ve been trying my entire adult life to be paid something like equity for the accessibility-advocacy work that I do in the church…and happily, sometimes I’ve succeeded! I have a few thoughts about economic equity for believers with disabilities. So, in this short post, I want to connect part of Paul’s “household code” in Ephesians 6:5-8 to the need for believers with disabilities to experience economic even-handedness. We need to be paid properly for our work!