The past week or two has been an eye-opener for many of us in the Christian tradition. We, and the world, are reeling from the discovery of unmarked graves and the horrors inflicted on Indigenous children forced into Canada’s residential school system.
Yes, the church as we know it has been in decline for some time now and this latest news, along with the refusal of the Pope to offer an apology for the role the Roman Catholic Church played in this injustice has added more fuel to the fire of declining interest in faith and belief. Both the Anglican and the United Church did apologize, but how can words heal such an abysmal wound without committed and concrete action to the 94 recommendations contained within the final report of the Truth and Reconciliation Committee?
In reading one of Richard Rohr’s daily meditations, I found the following thought which I would like to share:
“Institutions and cultures are durable partly because they obey the law of inertia. Even if you think you’ve exerted a strong external push and knocked a moving object or an entire institution off its set course, wait. Just wait. With barely a nudge, the object will drift right back to its original path.
Think of your own experience. When you see a crack, what’s your first instinct? Push the pieces back together and patch it over. Eventually a contractor comes with the bad news: there is deep damage here, and if you don’t address it, before long the whole structure will be fundamentally compromised. You sigh and negotiate. I don’t know about you, but I have a surprising capacity to delude myself about how broken the structure is. With enough duct tape and rope, I will get back to normal. [I call this “rearranging the deck chairs on the Titanic!”]
So it is for a nation and a church. In the midst of displacement, destabilization, and decentering, Americans and church folks have been tempted to replace, restabilize, and recenter. (Saying to each other) Let’s return to the building. Let’s encourage the protesters to come off the streets. . . . Let’s move past division. Let’s re-establish majority American Christianity in its former, privileged cultural post.
Or we could acknowledge the unraveling, breaking, and cracking as a bearer of truth and even a gift. Perhaps, as [Alan] Roxburgh suggested, the Holy Spirit has been nudging and calling Christians “to embrace a new imagination, but the other one had to unravel for us to see it for what it was. In this sense the malaise of our churches has been the work of God.” . . . A church that has been humbled by disruption and decline may be a less arrogant and presumptuous church. It may have fewer illusions about its own power and centrality. It may become curious. It may be less willing to ally with the empires and powers that have long defined it. It may finally admit how much it needs the true power and wisdom of the Holy Spirit. That’s a church God can work with”.
(Richard Rohr, OFM (born 1943), is an American author, spiritual writer, and Franciscan friar based in lbuquerque, New Mexico. He was ordained to the priesthood in the Roman Catholic Church in 1970. PBS has called him "one of the most popular spirituality authors and speakers in the world.")
As I read these words, my thoughts kept returning to the words in Isaiah 43: 19 “See, I am doing a new thing! Now it springs up; do you not perceive it?”
For those of you who may be sharing the pain I am feeling, perhaps we can find solace that God may indeed be doing a new thing and say “let it be so, Amen”
If you are interested in the Truth and Reconciliation Commission’s 2015 recommendations regarding the residential school system, a small excerpt is attached. To date, these recommendations have gone unheeded.
The full report can be found at http://trc.ca/assets/pdf/Calls_to_Action_English2.pdf
Pastor Beryl, DLM
Missing Children and Burial Information
71.We call upon all chief coroners and provincial vital statistics agencies that have not provided to the Truth and Reconciliation Commission of Canada their records on the deaths of Aboriginal children in the care of residential school authorities to make these documents available to the National Centre for Truth and Reconciliation.
72.We call upon the federal government to allocate sufficient resources to the National Centre for Truth and Reconciliation to allow it to develop and maintain the National Residential School Student Death Register established by the Truth and Reconciliation Commission of Canada.
73.We call upon the federal government to work with churches, Aboriginal communities, and former residential school students to establish and maintain an online registry of residential school cemeteries, including, where possible, plot maps showing the location of deceased residential school children.
74.We call upon the federal government to work with the churches and Aboriginal community leaders to inform the families of children who died at residential schools of the child’s burial location, and to respond to families’ wishes for appropriate commemoration ceremonies and markers, and reburial in home communities where requested.
75.We call upon the federal government to work with provincial, territorial, and municipal governments, churches, Aboriginal communities, former residential school students, and current landowners to develop and implement strategies and procedures for the ongoing identification, documentation, maintenance, commemoration, and protection of residential school cemeteries or other sites at which residential school children were buried. This is to include the provision of
appropriate memorial ceremonies and commemorative markers to honour the deceased children.
76.We call upon the parties engaged in the work of documenting, maintaining, commemorating, and protecting residential school cemeteries to adopt strategies in accordance with the following principles:
i.The Aboriginal community most affected shall lead the development of such strategies
.ii.Information shall be sought from residential school Survivors and other Knowledge Keepers in the development of such strategies.
iii.Aboriginal protocols shall be respected before any potentially invasive technical inspection and investigation of a cemetery site.