Professors of Funk! And many happy people dancing and swinging and laughing a lot! I have not danced like that in a very long time!
it took some persuasion on my part!
Very strange look on my face - but I am laughing!
My heart is full to overflowing with a few of the experiences we had today. It began with a Sunrise ceremony. The bus left the residence at 6:00 a.m. - kind of an early start after dancing so much! However, well worth the effort. It was led by Elder Cliff Standingready - a very gracious, honest, articulate story-teller, who made us all laugh and feel very welcome. He told us that the ceremony wouldn't actually be over until we ate our breakfast back at the residence - usually they would end the ceremony with a feast. So instead he invited us to make every bite a prayer to Creator for the food and for the sustenance it was providing to our bodies. For the last 20 minutes, it rained on us - actually rained quite heavy by the end - so we did our best to stand there and be thankful for the rain on earth that was really in need of the water. But the warm shower back at the residence was truly a blessing! Anyways, here are the photos showing our elders, and my happy face back on the bus!
The opening worship was very moving. It began with a ceremony called In from the Edge, where the Elders from the community led a group of visitors into our worship space as way of recognizing and honoring the gift it is for us to be gathered in this Territory, on this land. I loved the sound of the singing and the lovely dance/walk as they came into the worship space. Our preacher was Rev. Miriam Spies. She has Cerebral Palsy, so the whole text of her sermon was on the screens so that we could more easily follow along. However, I actually could hear her quite clearly, and loved watching her animated face as she spoke incredible words of wisdom to us. Her sermon reminded us that our call is to move out, trusting that we have enough and that we are enough to truly feed the world around us. This is a picture of Miriam being greeted after the service:
We had several opening motions to vote on this afternoon. It was a bit of a learning curve as we figured out how use our electronic voting devices - but very cool to immediately see the results of the vote up on the screen. We voted in support of enacting all of the 8 remits that congregations and presbyteries also had voted in support of. So now the proposals that have been sent in that depended on the outcome of whether those remits were passed or not can move forward in terms of being considered by this Court.
One of the major proposals that was passed today was the Calls to the Church from the Indigenous community. Tonight the presentation was around how to truly move forward if we take those Calls seriously. The main presenter was Michael Redhead Champagne, who lives and works in the North End of Winnipeg. He was truly amazing - spoke from his heart - connected straight to our hearts. I will be processing his words for quite some time I am sure, but a few of his comments rang out loud and clear. He spoke about how we need to know and to remember that inter-generational love needs to be spoken about more often so that the inter-generational trauma doesn't loom quite so large in people's minds. He is quite clear that he wouldn't be where he is today if he didn't have the love of his birth family, his adoptive family and his chosen family - and then he went on to describe each one of those families to us. Plus he reiterated that we are actually all related to each other and that one of the quotes that says it all for him is: "there is no such thing as other people's children." One of the moments that I really loved was when one of the elders on the panel spoke about how the change is going to take a long time - and that a "better world" likely won't happen in her lifetime. He immediately challenged her and said "with respect - don't say that ever again! Cause if you speak those words, it will come to be. And we young people - we need the change to happen soon - and we need to believe that it is going to be a better world for all of us tomorrow! So believe in the hope - and be the hope - so that we can truly build a better world for all our relations." Powerful, eh? Here is a picture of Michael:
My roommate at this Council is Marlene Britton - a strong and wise woman from Thunder Bay - a fellow diaconal minister and a kindred spirit. She and I enjoyed being at worship together where our hearts and souls were truly fed - a nice treat for a Sunday morning. We both love the work that we do, and the people in our home communities with whom we worship - but today we enjoyed just being able to sing and to pray, beside each other...
No comments:
Post a Comment