We're in the Yellow: What does it mean?

After spending the winter as a Covid-19 Red Zone, and a brief stint in Orange, as of last Monday Montreal is a Yellow Zone. Sounds good, but what does it mean exactly?

The main change is in the numbers of people who can gather and where. If outdoors, gatherings can be up to 8 people, and they can all be from different households. A higher number is allowed if they only come from 2 households. So a family of 5 can meet another family of 5, but they cannot meet 5 people from 2 other households.

Indoors, you can still only have members of two different households, but with no restriction on the number. Precautions such as distancing are still recommended.

Restaurants are bars are open, even indoors, but restrictions are still in place. You have to arrive with your mask, and the restaurant must keep a register. Only people from two households can sit together.

As for churches, here’s what the government says we can do in a yellow zone:

  • Places of worship

A maximum of 250 participants are allowed in a place of worship. If the place of worship occupies an entire building, the limit applies to the building.

A distance of at least two metres is maintained between people, even when they stay in their seat and do not move about, unless they are from the same private home or the equivalent.

A procedure mask or face covering must be worn. The procedure mask or face covering can be taken off when the person is in their seat, is silent or speaks only in a low voice.

Weddings and funerals in places of worship are limited to 50 people.

Now, obviously our church can’t accommodate 250 people at the best of times. We have been allowing 25, and might be able to push that to 30 and still maintain comfortable social distancing. Note that there is no mention yet of going back to eating and drinking together in church.

The guidelines mention weddings and funerals but leave out baptism. For now, SouthWest will continue to hold baptisms separate from Sunday worship, in order to keep numbers lower.

All in all, it’s still a Covid-19 world out there. Even if soon we are able to move into a Green zone, very little will change. “Green” sounds like it would indicate everything was back to normal, but it does not. It is just the lowest alert level in a province still under emergency measures. Only when the state of emergency is officially lifted will we know that things are finally back to normal.

No one in the government is saying exactly when that will happen, but the way to get there is through vaccination. As of June 15, 78% of the Quebec population had had a first shot. 15% had had a second. Let’s keep going!

 Amy

Here is the latest version of the re-opening chart from our Nakonha:ka Regional Council:

Beryl's Blog: Father's Day

As we think back on the roles played by our fathers, grandfathers, uncles or even single moms, we often become nostalgic and teary when we realize that, so often, we did not appreciate their place in our lives.

I am not saying that every father was the perfect role model.  I have had many friends without their biological dad in their lives.  Some did not even know where or who their dad was. Nonetheless, they were loved by stepdads who saw them as their own.

I have also had friends whose dads did not return from WW2 and the role was taken up by other family members, often by moms who were grieving their own loss.

We cannot choose our dads, anymore than we can choose the color of our skin, hair or eyes.  Things like this are beyond our control – in the hands of genetics and a greater power.

As Sunday approaches, I would like to share with you some words from “momcafe” written in June 2013. 

To all the fathers who…

 Stepped up, plugged in, held on, forged ahead, committed to, learned how, embraced all, encountered much, battled through, held tight, loved soft, never quit, backed off, let loose, braved courage, faced fears, prayed for, tightened up, loosened reigns, remembered when, helped often, inspired much, led forward, stayed true, taught morals, found strength, said yes, valued life, reasoned well, gave in, made time, had fun, helped out, played fair, took care, provided plenty, let go, stood up, swallowed pride, changed paths, took risks, dug deep, went easy, pushed forward, fought for, carried burdens, kept going, dreamed big, never quit, shed tears, forgave often, found patience, shined light, suffered pain, made dates, had faith, showed respect, wrote notes, held hands, stayed safe, laughed loud, lost sleep, slowed down, tackled chores, tried hard, let win, chose right, opened up, gave grace, got involved, gave your all… I commend you. *For the true integrity of a man is measured by such things*

As I read the last line, I remembered words from my own dad which have shaped my life.  He said “Beryl, a man is only as good as his word.  Choose yours wisely and make sure they are beyond reproach.  Once out of the bottle, they cannot be put back in.”

I hope this Sunday you will take a quiet moment, perhaps light a candle, and find a wonderful memory, or words of wisdom from whoever fathered you. 

Happy Father’s Day to all who stepped up!

Pastor Beryl, DLM

Sunday Service, June 13, 2021

Third of Pentecost

The focus reading is from Mark 2 – New International Version

Jesus Forgives and Heals a Paralyzed Man

2 A few days later, when Jesus again entered Capernaum, the people heard that he had come home. 2 They gathered in such large numbers that there was no room left, not even outside the door, and he preached the word to them. 3 Some men came, bringing to him a paralyzed man, carried by four of them. 4 Since they could not get him to Jesus because of the crowd, they made an opening in the roof above Jesus by digging through it and then lowered the mat the man was lying on. 5 When Jesus saw their faith, he said to the paralyzed man, “Son, your sins are forgiven.”

6 Now some teachers of the law were sitting there, thinking to themselves, 7 “Why does this fellow talk like that? He’s blaspheming! Who can forgive sins but God alone?”

8 Immediately Jesus knew in his spirit that this was what they were thinking in their hearts, and he said to them, “Why are you thinking these things? 9 Which is easier: to say to this paralyzed man, ‘Your sins are forgiven,’ or to say, ‘Get up, take your mat and walk’? 10 But I want you to know that the Son of Man has authority on earth to forgive sins.” So he said to the man, 11 “I tell you, get up, take your mat and go home.” 12 He got up, took his mat and walked out in full view of them all. This amazed everyone and they praised God, saying, “We have never seen anything like this!”m

A Message to People of the United Church of Canada

Grace and Peace to you.

Since the announcement of the discovery of the undocumented and unmarked remains of 215 children on the grounds of Kamloops Residential School, we have received many messages of sorrow, concern, and outrage from members of the church.

We share these feelings.

We have also been asked many questions about the United Church’s intentions regarding burial sites and missing children, about the sharing of our residential schools records, and about our response to the Calls to Action of the Truth and Reconciliation Commission.

Many biblical passages remind us of the importance of working together for peace and justice. We would like to take this opportunity to answer your questions so that together we can honour all those affected by the residential schools system, and live up to our obligations as a participant in it.

The United Church of Canada operated 15 of the residential schools covered by the Indian Residential Schools Settlement Agreement (IRSSA), accounting for approximately 10 percent of Indigenous children who were forced to attend them. A history of our involvement is available at the website The Children Remembered(opens in a new tab), created by the United Church Archives.

Since 1998, our response to the role we played in this system has been guided by the wisdom of residential school and intergenerational survivors. In 2003, the Residential Schools Steering Committee (later the Committee on Indigenous Justice and Residential Schools) established six principles of reconciliation, which continue to guide this work.

Among them is the principle of whole community involvement, the “acknowledgement that [the impacts of residential schools] are communal as well as individual and that they are intergenerational.” The committee also acknowledged that “the children and grandchildren of survivors are also living people who carry with them the burdens of the residential schools system.” The discovery at Kamloops, and the pain and trauma that it has reignited, make it clear that residential schools are not simply part of a historic event; it is also why we have been doing the difficult work of reconciliation, and must continue to do so.

United Church Response to the Kamloops Discovery

The principle of community involvement guides how we are responding. Indigenous Ministries Executive Minister Murray Pruden and the Moderator issued pastoral responses, along with a call to mourn and remember. This time of respect is required in order for any other actions we take to go forward in a good way.

As The United Church of Canada, we stated our commitment to the Calls to Action of the Truth and Reconciliation Commission when they were issued in June 2015. This includes Calls to Action 73‒76, which deal with burial sites and missing children. We have already worked with communities in commemorating known gravesites in Brandon, Edmonton, File Hills, Red Deer, and Regina.

These Calls to Action state very clearly that the Indigenous communities most affected must lead in the development of such strategies, and that their protocols must be followed. We are aware that unmarked graves may be found on United Church properties, and we are committed to working on them, and on known burial sites, following the principles laid out in the Calls to Action.

The General Secretary is convening a table of current and former staff to develop our response, and the ecumenical parties to the Settlement Agreement will also be meeting to discuss how to respond together to an issue that affects us all. The National Indigenous Council and Elders Council also continue to meet to discern the needs and response of the Indigenous church. These meetings are taking place in the next few weeks, and we will share more information with you as it comes forward.

We are grateful for the actions you are taking in your own contexts, whether they are vigils, times of prayer, support for Indigenous agencies, or donations to The Healing Fund. Please know that any donations made to The Healing Fund in this time will be held until the Indigenous church, which oversees The Healing Fund, decides how best to share them given the needs that emerge in Indigenous communities.

Sharing of Documentation

It has been widely reported that many institutions have not fully shared their residential school records. This has understandably raised questions about what the United Church has shared.

During the Truth and Reconciliation Commission, United Church General Council and Conference Archives staff went through all records that were related to residential schools and created a substantial Guide to Holdings Related to Residential Schools(opens in a new tab). These materials are available to researchers.

The materials were also turned over to the Truth and Reconciliation Commission for its research. They have since been transferred to the National Centre for Truth and Reconciliation, where they are available for research and have contributed to projects such as the National Residential Schools Memorial Register(opens in a new tab).

We are currently undertaking a similar discovery process regarding our role in Day Schools, and will continue to turn over relevant material if and as it emerges.

United Church Response to the Calls to Action

We track United Church work on those TRC Calls to Action(opens in a new tab) directed to the churches and the Parties to the Settlement Agreement in this document(opens in a new tab), which is updated annually. We also support and participate in advocacy initiatives identified in other Calls to Action, such as those concerning child welfare and missing and murdered Indigenous women and girls.

As we do this work, we often find ourselves reflecting on this passage from 2 Corinthians 5:18–19: “All this is from God, who reconciled us to himself through Christ, and has given us the ministry of reconciliation; that is, in Christ God was reconciling the world to himself…and entrusting the message of reconciliation to us.”

With this trust comes the onus to first seek and speak the truth. At this time, we recommit to truth-telling, to education, and to taking action for those things for which we hold responsibility. May God be our helper.

The Rt. Rev. Dr. Richard Bott
Moderator

The Rev. Murray Pruden
Executive Minister, Indigenous Ministries and Justice

text from The United Church of Canada

Beryl's Blog: Letting Go of What Used to Be

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.

 

 

A July Break

As you all know, this has been an extremely challenging time world-wide. However, by the Grace of God, we have been able to continue in worship here at SouthWest United. 

This has not been without some sacrifices on our part; we have faced times when in-person worship was prohibited resulting in YouTube services, times when worship has been (and still is) limited to 25 people (still providing YouTube for those who cannot attend), the inability to sing our favorite hymns and, perhaps what has been even more challenging, the inability to gather after worship for social interaction and refreshments.

Throughout all of this, church has continued.  The office has remained open in a reduced fashion, our Music Director has adapted services to accommodate the “no singing” rules, and our officers and elders have stepped up to the plate to ensure that things have remained as normal as possible.

Having said this, a well deserved “time off” is needed.  In 2020 we closed the church for the month of July.  This year, in conversation with officers and elders, the decision has been taken to once again close for the month of July.  This will give everyone involved the time needed to recharge their batteries and come back in August refreshed, renewed and revitalized.

We sincerely thank you for your understanding and hope you will continue to support SouthWest financially throughout the month of July.

  

Dennis Brown,                                     Pastor Beryl Barraclough,
Acting Chair of Council                          Designated Lay Minister

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