I Was Born into the Wrong Culture

It was fun to watch an African woman cross in front of my car at a red light. Underneath her Canadian winter jacket, she was wearing a long skirt of beautiful Kente cloth. The colours brightened up the grey Toronto intersection of cement sidewalks, hydro poles and pavement. There she was with her creamy coloured head wrap, orange, green, gold and red swirling around her legs.

Just look at your wardrobe, or take a subway ride. How much black, grey and navy do we really need to see in a Toronto winter?

I should have been born in Kenya.

Black women everywhere, African or American, somehow scored permission to be admired for being round and wide. Here I am, rounder and wider with every passing year, feeling repulsive in a culture that idolizes thinness.

I should have been born black.

At two funerals I attended recently for well-loved men, the crowded church sanctuaries were quiet but for occasional discreet sniffing. The only other sign of pain in a room full of breaking hearts were some red eyes as we filed out of the service. One adult daughter of the deceased couldn’t stop weeping fresh tears when each mourner greeted her and I heard a surprised comment on the quantity of her tears, a comment tinged with a disapproving tone, no less.

On TV I’ve seen bereaved Mideastern women in black who throw themselves across the casket, ululating in grief.

I should have been born an Arab.

I once told a psychiatrist that I was feeling so introverted and depressed that I didn’t always feel like saying “Hi” to people on my neighborhood streets as we passed each other. She looked at me in horror, “Why would you think you needed to greet strangers on the street?!”

I should have been born in the Southern States.

In most church worship, whether Roman Catholic Mass, Anglican ordination, or Evangelical songfest the congregation is expected to behave. Sit quietly in the pew, stand when the choir stands, sing when the organ plays, clap self-consciously if someone else starts the clapping, control yourself.

Have these polite worshippers ever watched the hilarious frenzy of two squirrels chasing each other in mad circles around a tree trunk until they’re both exhausted? Have they ever enjoyed the way four year olds wiggle and jump to the sound of drum music? Have they, themselves ever screamed, leapt to their feet with their arms in the air when their team scored?

Do church folk forget who created squirrels, little kids, music, our human bodies and emotions?

I should have been born a Jamaican Pentecostal Christian. They know how to dance and shout their joy.

It’s very cool that the world has immigrated to Toronto where I was born, because I was born into the wrong culture.

Fall Leaves

We all notice when there’s a gorgeous blazing sunset, but every day Earth is like an outdoor gallery full of  installation art pieces.

Stepping out of the car this week, I noticed a brilliant rose-coloured leaf in a small pile that the wind had blown into a corner of my driveway’s retaining wall. Even though it was a cold, rainy day, I had to pause for a closer look.

There, set against the charcoal-grey asphalt background was a freeform sculpture. Two red-pink pointed ovals from a neighbour’s bush lay among buttercup-yellow heart shapes and curled rusty maple leaves. The intensity of rose and yellow contrasted deliciously with the darker shades of maple.

My eyes widened as they focussed on a surprise in the background. The biggest leaf, about three inches long and surf-board-shaped, was a luscious brown; it looked like leather, flat and smooth without a hint of withering. I stood up and looked around to see what tree held such leaves. No use. They must have flown some distance, a wild ride on the gusty day.

Some small ginko leaves added to the beauty, their summer green now fading to ecru. Ginko leaves are shaped like perfect fans, complete with stem handles.

The Artist who composed this installation is so prolific and wealthy that I’m sure She won’t mind; I scooped up two hand-fulls of the leaf sculpture, carried as much of it inside as I could, and re-installed it haphazardly on my kitchen window sill.

Sunny yellow, burnt orange, chocolate brown and brilliant rose; are these the colours of death?

I’ve two funerals to attend this week. 

Both are for men who were not elderly and who, before cancer appeared, filled their lives with adventures, with laughter and with family love. One was an engineer and stand-up comic, the other an accountant who dressed as a clown for the Santa Claus parade. It hurts to imagine the pain left for one man’s 12 year old daughter and the other’s five little grandchildren... his aging mother… his widow.

Surely the Creator who designed joyful colours to be revealed in Fall’s dying leaves meant them as a metaphor. Even in the face of death there is hope. The clues are everywhere that death is not the end. This is, however, a truth easy in the saying; in practice, bitterly hard can be the wait for spring.

Occupying Toronto, Part IV: Signs

It felt weird to walk up my quiet suburban street, solo, holding at my side a hand-made protest sign. I avoided people’s eyes but could see that everyone I passed curiously scanned the upside down text on my piece of cardboard. Have you ever been on a protest march all by yourself? On your own block? Embarrassing.

At the subway entrance, I hoisted the sign over the turnstile, scooted down to the platform and when a train stopped, leaned the sign against the train’s doorway wall, out of people’s way. I slunk from one side of the car to the other (with my sign) so that I could stand in the doorway opposite the one where riders were exiting and entering.  As usual, multiple passengers offered the old lady (me) their seats. This time I pointed at my sign-on-a-stick as I smilingly refused their kind offers. Now they think I’m crazy as well as old.

St. James Park was week-day quiet, still filled with tents and guarded by police on bikes. I walked around reading chalk messages along the sidewalks. Beside these on the grass were piles of cardboard signs. “People aren’t for sale”, “We are the 99%”,

I noticed a group of teenagers. Their teacher spotted my sign and said to them, “Look at this. It’s a bible verse” They obediently looked over, with that killer teenage stare.

“ACT JUSTLY,

LOVE MERCY,

WALK HUMBLY WITH GOD”

Micah 6, the Bible

They weren’t impressed.

The sound of drumming started and I found a few First Nations guys gathered nearby. They had a couple of Indian flags and a megaphone. After a song and a speech the leader started off to march to Bay St. A small group followed.

Since nothing else was happening, I figured I’d join in.  I shortly found myself dodging both the leader who was using the megaphone to share his political harangue with stunned passersby and some tall man wrapped in a cannabis flag, carrying a sign that read, “Hemp will save the world”

Oh dear. I did a u-turn and headed back to the park.

In my head someone’s singing an old 60’s song , “Signs, signs, everywhere a sign,  blockin’ out the scenery, breakin’ my mind”.

(check it out www.youtube.com/watch?v=T3_2wjRk02s&feature=related )

I remembered one more sign on the grass at St. James. I didn’t write it, honest. In big letters on brown cardboard it said “ God is here”.

Occupying Toronto, Part III

St. James Park on King St. was full of tents. Smack up against the most “establishment” church in Toronto, hundreds of young adults have hunkered down to live out their own values and make their own rules. St. James is the Anglican cathedral (head church), and in the history of Toronto, Anglicans used to call the shots. This is the church that mayors (maybe not Rob Ford) and Premiers still attend on Christmas Eve.

It also welcomes the Queen and other royals any time they’re in Toronto on a Sunday. This is where, if anywhere, the ultra rich are likely to worship among their friends. It was a hilarious and wondrous sight to see a rebel campsite in the side yard of the huge, old stone building, its spire long a landmark for our city.

I wandered among the tents seeing handmade signs for First Aid, Media, and Information.

There were roughly crafted signs everywhere, leaning against tree trunks, stuck in the ground, taped onto people’s chests, or laid in rows under another sign that read, “Signs”, ready for the next street march.

I could see a couple of the usual union banners but  few people over forty.

As an aside, people are very kind to anyone with white hair like mine. They assume we’re fragile and decrepit, offering me seats on the subway so frequently that I’ve given up saying I prefer to stand. White hair is a perfect disguise for a rebel.

I was warmly welcomed and asked if I was going to join the march. I said, “Sure” and could hear surprise in the young guy’s voice, “Great!”

A covered bandstand was serving as a stage for speakers. I didn’t understand what the crowd was saying in unison until I got closer and witnessed something intriguing. Maybe the technique is common in poorer countries but it was new to me. 

The speaker had no microphone, so, as if he were working with a translator, he would first shout “Mike check” and then begin his speech or announcement. Without a real microphone, those near enough to hear the speaker would loudly repeat what he had said, so that people further back could get the message. It worked brilliantly. 

When the speaker  was trying to tell the crowd where any volunteer leaders would be meeting and pointed to  a meeting tent, the crowd repeated his words and his gesture.

I spoke to a couple of young women beside me who had come in from London, Ontario. According to them, these speeches, by anyone who signed up for a turn, had been going on for three hours. Somehow a commitment had been made for consensus decision-making and they had spent hours trying to agree on their next steps. What a refreshing change from the usual cynicism of politicians and corporate executives! Impractical and inefficient, sure, but glorious to see.

Occupying Toronto, Part II

Today I heard God speak on TV.

A television reporter was standing at the Occupy Toronto encampment in St. James Park and wanted to find someone to answer the anchor desk's question about how these campers could afford to stay in the park for days on end. 

The reporter pulled in the nearest protestor.

Here's the short interview with young “Elijah”.

Reporter: “How can you afford to do this?”

Elijah: “I quit my well-paying job as the operations manager of a woodmilling shop.  I moved out of my apartment . We’re going to stay here until world peace is achieved.” He looked into the camera, raised his hand in the peace sign and said, “Welcome to freedom.”

Again, I admit, the naivete is breathtaking, but...

Elijah is the name of a Jewish prophet who lived many centuries ago. He is honoured by Jews, Christians and Muslims. He is famous for conducting an outrageous experiment to show his contemporaries that there is only one God worth recognizing, the God who created us and wants justice and mercy for all of humanity. He tells the people to to stop giving honour, time and money to false idols. 

The folks who are occupying world cities are speaking out against the false idols of wealth and power. They are calling us all to love justice and mercy, to share power and to lift up the poor.

Jesus said to the rich man who wanted spiritual salvation, “Sell everything you have and give it to the poor”. Like all the other preachers who explain this bible story, I’m sure Jesus didn’t really mean what he said (!), but a few people take his words seriously.

Some of them are camping out in our cities and marching through our streets. Instead of scoffing, we should cheer them on and help them find their way.

We oldsters who watched in amazement as the Berlin Wall was torn down, we know that the unimaginable is possible.

Occupying Toronto, Part I

After my neighbour called me out for being at home doing a crossword on my front porch instead of joining the protestors downtown, I decided to head for the subway. She never attends such marches and rallies herself, but knows that I’m a demonstration junky. I joke that my favourite part is getting to walk in the streets shouting my head off. It feels great yelling chants like, “Hey Mister, Mister! Get your hands off my sister!” or the favorite call and reply chant, “Whose streets?” “Our streets!”

In truth, I am always interested in what issues motivate people, and often they hit the streets for reasons that matter to me, too. However, I hadn’t been moved by this new “occupy” action immediately, probably  because economics makes my head spin. I’m allergic to numbers, spreadsheets and anything else that reminds me of Grade 10 math, the last year I took that lousy subject. Apparently fate thinks it funny to watch those of us who snobbishly scorned the highschool courses in typing, scrambling desperately, decades later, to learn keyboarding. Likewise with math. I was chagrined to hear a leading feminist preach that if we wanted to change the world for girls and women in particular, we had to learn how the world economies work. Doggone it.

So I have learned about micro-businesses and made myself listen to some of the reports on Bernie Madoff and his evil colleagues. I’ve watched documentaries explaining how the mortgage mess happened in the U.S. and others that tell sad stories about clueless home buyers who are now homeless. Once in a while I even open the Business Section of the newspaper.

Lately there’s been enough broadcasting about occupying Wall St. that despite the appearance of disorganization and lack of clear goals among the protestors,  I do recognize values in common. I suspect that the Spirit of God has provoked many to take a stand, even without offering solutions,  against the unfair distribution of resources and profit. They are protesting a capitalist system and unionism that are both unchecked by any concern about their abuse of power and endless greed. 


Yes, the ‘occupiers’ are a ragtag bunch, unable to identify exactly what they want or exactly how fundamental changes to our economic norms can happen (don't ask me). But the movement may be, at least partly, an expression of a God-given insight that we are living in a deeply unhealthy culture, where some among us need reality TV shows to rescue us from buying more stuff, and others rob and murder as a twisted response to hopeless poverty. 


My own story of occupying to follow.

Baby God

She bounces into the cottage kitchen first thing in the morning, white-blonde baby hair frizzed by sleep into dreads and ringlets. Her pyjamas are a pink flannel one-piece. My granddaughter.

Although she has wakened all of us an hour earlier than I usually get up, my heart races when I see her on this new summer day. Anticipation floods me. I open my arms and she runs toward me.

I know that one day this pattern will change, but for now 2 yr.old Amelia Charis runs into my arms every time we greet each other.

With my widest grin and raised brows I bend down and scoop her up so that we’re face to face, with her whole length flat against my chest and belly. She clasps my upper arms as far round as her baby arms can reach, and tucks her head inbetween my neck and shoulder. I feel our bodies, so disparate, melting into each other’s warmth. Her relaxation is as complete as mine. I stand motionless as she lies against me in a full embrace, both of us lost in the feeling. For some reason, she doesn’t squirm in my arms to be put back down on her toddler feet, feet that have already learned the pleasure of running and dancing.

She is still.

I close my eyes so that I can focus on sensation. Quietly, I hum and murmur tunelessly, rocking a bit. I whisper, “I love you, Amelia”.  

She rests.

It feels like prayer to me.

Eventually, she lifts her head to look into my face. Our eyes meet and we gaze full on, soul to soul. I drink in her perfect, fresh-born face haloed by wisps of blonde, her flawless complexion and clear blue eyes. I forget what she is seeing, skin that blotches and sags, and my aged eyes.

She doesn’t turn away.

I wonder what she’s thinking.

Wordless, we hold each other and look long at love personified.

Ecstatic Union.

Mystery.