Members of the Primate’s Theological Commission celebrate their last meeting together. (L-R, from back) Archbishop Fred Hiltz, Bishop Linda Nicholls, the Rev. Jamie Howison, Bishop Benjamin Arreak, the Rev. Paul Jennings, Dr. Walter Deller, the Rev. Dr. Lisa Wang, the Rev. Dr. Joanne Mercer, and Bishop Stephen Andrews. Not present: the Rev. Dr. Trudy Lebans, Dr. Robert Moore, The Rev. Dr. Gary Thorne, and Madeleine Urion.

I don’t much like meetings and I am not a big fan of committee work. I do, however, love the theological enterprise.

So when then-Primate Michael Peers invited me to accept an appointment to the Primate’s Theological Commission in 2003, I didn’t hesitate.

In the weeks before the commission’s first meeting, however, two things began to register.

First, while many of the commission’s 12 members were actively engaged in the academic world, my theological work was parish-based, expressed primarily in preaching and occasional writing. Yes, I read all the time, but would that be enough?

Second, it dawned on me that I had signed on for meetings—seven years of semi-annual meetings.

In the week prior to our first gathering, I visited a friend and theological mentor, Robert Farrar Capon. During his ministry in the Episcopal Church, Robert had certainly done his share of committee work, and while he was entirely sympathetic to my qualms, he suggested I might inject into this particular group a reminder that theology is, among other things, “a joyful lark.”

“Theology is a serious discipline,” he added, “so serious we can’t afford to let ourselves become too serious about it.”

His words made a strange kind of sense.

A few days later, I arrived at St. Michael’s House in Oakville, Ont., feeling nervous and excited, carrying a commitment to really en-joy this work.

And what did I discover? That everyone sitting at the table basically shared my nervous excitement and intuitively sensed our work could be joyful, fun, and invigorating. Who knew?

Now, our seven-year term completed, I am delighted to say we never really lost sight of our shared ground, even in the midst of some tough deliberations that produced The St. Michael Report and The Galilee Report. There were moments when we strained—really strained—to hear each other, and when the seriousness of the theological task did press us into close corners.

Yet we discovered our task was never insurmountable, this challenge of doing theological reflection together.

In our recent round of closing sessions, we considered why this had been the case and agreed that, in rooting our work in the eucharist, daily prayer, and Bible study, a solid foundation had been set.

We also shared meals, coffee and tea, walks, fresh air breaks, and late-night social times. How could one sit defensively in a theological corner when you had heard someone tell a great story or share a significant piece of life?

Many of those pieces of life were transformational, even poignant.

Over seven years, three of us struggled with major health concerns, including cancer, and one became a first-time mother. A book was published, a doctorate awarded; jobs and ministries ended or began. One member was ordained priest, another as bishop. Two people left; two others joined us midstream.

And for whatever wondrous combination of reasons—and certainly by the grace of God—this particular group was characterized by a willingness to truly listen, right from the beginning. Marked by a spirit of respect and trust, it was oh-so-natural that we quickly came to befriend one another.

This doesn’t mean our differences weren’t real or our perspectives not passionately held.

But, in our friendship in Christ, we had a small taste of what it means to be together, participants in the Body of Christ, and from that place to “do” theology in community.

For all that we responded to the church’s invitation to produce various official reports and statements, perhaps the most substantial thing we can offer is our experience of life together, in the midst of our differences, passionate in our enjoyment of this faith, bound together as members of one Body—not a bad thing to offer to a church often deeply aware of its divisions.

Gerry and Bruce Melville pose with friends outside of the Canon Andrea Mwaka School, Tanzania. Photo contributed.

In July 2007 my wife, Gerry, and I boarded a plane and began our journey to the city of Dodoma in Tanzania, east Africa.

We spent the next year and a half teaching at Canon Andrea Mwaka School, which serves children from nursery level through Form 4 (Grade 11) and is operated by the Anglican Diocese of Central Tanganyika.

Our life in Africa is described on our blog. In this article, though, I’d like to focus on our return home.

Our work in Dodoma over, we came back to Canada on Christmas night 2008.

In the winter weeks that followed friends would say, “It must be quite an adjustment getting used to these temperatures after the heat of Africa.” Or they’d ask, “So, have you been able to warm up yet?”

While acclimatizing to winter, having just boarded a plane in Dar es Salaam in 38°C heat, was indeed an adjustment, it was small compared to acclimatizing to life in the “developed” world.

Have you heard the expression, “seeing something again for the first time”? That phrase once held little meaning for me.

But since returning from Tanzania, I have come to see many things again for the first time—for instance, Thrifty Foods, a large grocery retailer here on Vancouver Island.

My first post-Tanzania trip to Thrifty Foods was unsettling. This once fairly ordinary store now seemed so unreal, with row upon row of over packaged products. I was struck by how processed the products were and how distant from their source they were.

By contrast, in the Dodoma market, other than rice sold out of large sacks and spices from Zanzibar that had been dried, ground, and bagged, all produce was straight off the plot or out of the ground—tomatoes, potatoes, beans, ginger, pumpkins, bananas, and so on. The chickens in the market were still alive.

The grocery store presented a staggering range of choices, with dozens of types of any one product, from salad dressing to chocolate chip cookies. Of course, we have been led to believe that choice is somehow indicative of progress and vast choice is necessary to maintain our lifestyle. From the point of view of consumption, life in Tanzania, where there is little or no choice, was charmingly simple and uncomplicated.

Not long after my Thrifty Foods experience, I was pleased to walk into the once-familiar McPherson Library at the University of Victoria. But the sheer magnitude, modernity, and affluence of the facility set me back, and I had to step outside for a moment to collect myself.

In Dodoma, the capital city of a country of 40 million people, there are two small universities, both recently built—the University of Dodoma, a government institution, and St. John’s University of Tanzania, a project of the Anglican Church of Tanzania. The library of either institution easily could fit into half the space occupied by the coffee shop at the McPherson Library.

Quite possibly, having lived in Tanzania for a year and a half, my responses to visiting Thrifty Foods or stepping into the McPherson Library were predictable. But I would never have predicted I would come to see my Aboriginal brothers and sisters in a completely new light.

While Tanzanians live in a post-colonial situation, having established their own republic in the 40+ years since their independence, Aboriginal people in Canada have not had the same opportunities. They are still trying to find their place.

In Tanzania, even in this day and age, I could see how easy it is for well-educated Westerners to slip into the role of superior colonialist among the often less educated, and less confident, local people. And, while Tanzanians justifiably take great pride in their government, I also could see the local people, in response, slipping into a dependent role.

I wonder how often we Canadian non-Aboriginals find it easy to slip into the colonist role and whether Aboriginal people allow themselves to become dependent?

Perhaps it’s true that, to learn about one’s country, the best thing is to leave home, so that you can see it again for the first time when you return.

Liz Arsenault and Lorna Martin prepare name tags for Bible Study at St. Timothy’s Church, Hatchet Lake, N.S. Photo contributed.

Forty-something Melody (not her real name) walked timidly through the church door for the first time one morning. During worship, her eyes welled up with tears. At the end I invited her to join us on Wednesday night for adult study. She did, and shared that her common-law partner had just left her, and the province, with major bills.

Over the next few months Melody discovered the love and grace of God. She found comfort, and healing, in a faith family, then joyfully took on ministries in music and program leadership. “This is such a safe place,” she often said.

At St. Timothy’s and St. Paul’s, a parish located in a bedroom community near Halifax, our leadership has come to appreciate that “people don’t care what you know until they know you care.”

The parish has always helped with social needs—as stewards of an emergency food bank, for instance, or providing Christmas hampers or taking a turn at the soup kitchen downtown.

But we felt we could be doing more—for singles, couples, and families, in terms of nurturing their faith lives and creating a loving Christian community.

In the last few years our focus of ministry has been young working families, especially those from the Prospect Road area, which includes Hatchet Lake and our larger church, St. Timothy’s. Here, many career couples with small children work for the Canadian Navy, universities, hospitals, and government offices. Most have moved from Newfoundland, Cape Breton, Yarmouth, and other places, and so have few friends or extended family.

We decided to fill the gaps of friendship and support.

We began with a Wednesday night Alpha course, offering a “sanctuary” for adults to explore their faith without judgement and to encounter healing. Participants are welcome to ask any question and to share their private struggles. The course helps members affirm their faith foundations and articulate what Christ means to their lives. Alpha grads are then encouraged to invite their friends and neighbours to join us.

We’re always very respectful and never pressure anyone, but our ultimate goal is disciple-making and helping people develop a personal, life-giving relationship with God.

Next we started up a Date-Night Couples (marriage) course, featuring jazz, romantic lighting, delicious four-course meals, and video teaching. Couples privately discuss the materials, strengthening their relationships. To encourage newcomers to plug into worship, we invite them to a renewal of marriage vows, a liturgy during our Sunday evening rock music service.

Then came Divorce Care, for those struggling with the pain of broken relationships. Options include worship rites, such as Unction (healing), Reconciliation, and At the Ending of a Marriage (Occasional Celebrations, ACC).  Leader and parish vocational deacon, the Rev. Cheryl  Rafuse, remarks, “With each session we witness healing and growth.”

A depression support group sprang up, facilitated by Ms. Rafuse.

And this winter, with four schools and two busy daycares in our area, we decided to kick off a 12-session parenting course.

Additionally, we provide space for an AA group and occasionally host sessions on topics such as dying and death, parents and tots, and body image and self-esteem for young teens.

Success and challenges

We attribute our success to several factors.

First, every year we offer the Alpha course and run it according to the prescribed “recipe.” We pull out all the stops on hospitality.

Second, we train all our leaders and helpers annually. Training includes the pastoral care of members and how to facilitate discussion. We now have more than 20 people ready to serve in this ministry.

Third, for small group discussion, we insist on confidentiality. We encourage open sharing, including asking hard, even hostile, questions about God and the church.

Our leaders and helpers know that support of hurting participants is a priority. Frequently we offer the ministry of healing prayer, the laying-on of hands and anointing with oil.

Challenges involve encouraging participants to consistently attend weekly worship and programming. People want to be involved, but are overwhelmed by long work hours, a frantic schedule of children’s activities, and visits “home” every once in a while to see grandma and grandpa. So we’ve shortened our sessions and worship time.

Increasingly we find many cannot attend on Saturday or Sunday, but are open to a week-night “window” of two hours.

Although the ministry of compassionate care is demanding, our efforts are widely appreciated. Recently we were contacted by the Minister of Legislative Assembly, Bill Estabrooks, to help grieving family and friends of a local teen who had committed suicide.

We are seen as people who actively love those around us.

It’s true—“People don’t care what you know, until they know you care.”

Celebrating unity at an interfaith peace consultation, Henry Martyn Institute, Hyderabad, India—a partner of the Anglican Church of Canada. Photo contributed.

Part of my work involves meeting with church leaders in the Anglican Communion in Asia, the South Pacific, Africa, Latin America, the Caribbean, and the Middle East. Together, we attempt to discern opportunities for relationship in God’s mission, not only for programs of the General Synod but for the whole church.

For decades, the General Synod has carried within its mandate the commitment of Canadian Anglicans to proclaim the gospel of Jesus Christ in words and action, through prayer, song, and solidarity, alongside Anglicans, Episcopalians, and other Christians everywhere.

We have nurtured the faith of new and lifelong believers through partnership with many provinces of the Anglican Communion. We have sought to transform unjust systems and structures, provided resources to those in greatest need, and strived to safeguard the integrity of creation and to sustain and renew the life of the earth.

Indeed, since 1984 these marks of mission have guided our Partners in Mission and Ecojustice programs.

Our church today

A new day is dawning. Parishes and dioceses are seeking fresh ways of being church, with each other and the General Synod, and with local civil society and social service partners. Together, as if for the first time, we are exploring mission paths and wondering, Who are we as church in the 21st century in Canada? How will we continue to be faithful witnesses to God’s call to prophesy, reconcile, and heal?

Some also wonder: Where in our pews and programs are there spaces and energy for continued companionship with provinces and Anglicans around the world? In what ways will those relationships be supported? How can Canadian Anglicans become more outward-looking beyond the demands of local and national issues?

Together

Global church partners remind us these are not our questions alone; they personify the mutual need to become one in Christ, to see in each other the image of God, and to act as if we believe it.

Gone are the days of “shopping” tables between the churches of the global South and North, wherein projects and programs of importance to southern provinces were funded by northern church mission grants. Certainly some funds still flow in this way, especially—and importantly—in response to humanitarian and environmental crises. Yet high-level project lists have all but disappeared at the insistence of partners that many, and more meaningful, alternatives in relationship are possible.

As two Anglican Communion partners in the Philippines recently urged: “Involve us in what you are doing.  We will do the same.

“You have much to teach, as we do, about Indigenous Peoples and the Anglican Communion. You have much to teach about open dialogue on human sexuality, which we too now need to begin. We offer you lessons learned in our struggle toward self-reliance and financial autonomy; lessons in patience, resilience, assertiveness, optimism. Let’s continue working together on issues that connect us as disciples of Christ.”

“Do not hold back”

I am humbled by the witness of Anglicans and people of all faiths throughout the world, knowing that God has travelled ahead of me, continues to do so, and works in others who are differently alive and situated.

I am inspired by the resilience and grace of women and men struggling to survive catastrophic loss, and by the courage of those willing to speak truth to power; in the streets of Port au Prince and Cotabato City, Mindinao, in the Vanni and the Irrawaddy Delta, in Beit Sahour, Harare, and Juba.

Such is my privilege, to carry in small and imperfect ways the promise of partnership into the wider Anglican family, and to be welcomed and thanked for this, and to seek with others more meaningful relationship between the peoples, structures, and systems of our churches for God’s mission in the world.

It is Partnerships’ prayer that we continue to hear and respond to the invitation of Anglicans and others worldwide to venture forth from the familiarity of our perspectives, to be reminded of our common humanity and reawaken to the cross and resurrection at the centre of Christian life. We are invited into journeys of prophesy, reconciliation, and healing to share what we know as a light to others, to listen and be amazed.

May we embrace the magnanimity spoken by the prophet Isaiah (54:2): “Enlarge the site of your tent, and let the curtains of your habitations be stretched out; do not hold back; lengthen your cords.”

Photo by {link:http://www.flickr.com/photos/auyuchuco/3010766101/}VC Geist{/link} on Flickr.

Here in the Solomons, many Anglicans are now pursuing the long-held dream of a local university. Now retired as a diocesan bishop, I am supporting this project. With the Archbishop of the Anglican Church of Melanesia (ACOM), I co-chair the John Coleridge Patteson University Taskforce.

In the 19th century, new Anglican dioceses in Canada, the U.S., Australia and New Zealand often established universities. One thinks of King's College, Halifax; Bishop's College, Lennoxville; Trinity College, Toronto; and Huron College, London, to name just a few in Canada. The aim was the development of local higher education in a Christian (indeed, Anglican) context for the human resource needs of the emerging new countries. One factor was also economic, that is, alleviating the high cost of sending young people back to England for their university education.

At the same time, university-trained missionaries were going out to places like Melanesia, engaging with new cultures, new languages, and new social settings. Education was also an important part of mission, but it started at "the bottom" and worked up—first, literacy in the convert's own language so that he or she could read the Bible, sing hymns, and participate in the Liturgy, then (often generations later) advanced secondary and tertiary education.

Education in the Solomons

In the old Diocese of Melanesia, the church and government schools did not offer secondary education until the late 1960s and only then did a few local people begin to go overseas for tertiary training as teachers, doctors, and theological educators. Fifty years later, that pattern continues, though there is more secondary education available and many now go overseas to study.

Currently Solomon Islands has no university of its own. There are branches of the University of the South Pacific and the University of Papua New Guinea in Honiara, the capital, but usually the teacher is a video screen only. Good secondary school graduates must go on to do their university education in Fiji, Papua New Guinea, Taiwan, Australia, or New Zealand.

This situation is very costly and Solomon Islands overseas students frequently complain that the government does not send them their allowances or pay their tuition, so they are evicted from their apartments and without food or books and stationery needed for their studies. Fiji and Papua New Guinea are also sometimes unstable or violent, and stressful places to live. Students frequently want to come home when coups, strikes, and violence disrupt their studies. In short, the time has come for Solomon Islands to have a university of its own.

Why is the church involved?

But why should the church rather than the government take on this project? It is widely believed in Melanesia that education and Christian faith belong together. For example, the Anglican Church of Melanesia operates some half-dozen secondary schools, as well as a number of primary schools. They are the schools that everyone hopes their children will attend. Unfortunately, the government schools, with their more secular ethos, are plagued with student and teacher discipline problems, poor financial support, overcrowding, corruption, and often a poor quality of education.

The government's record with its diploma-level tertiary institution, the Solomon Islands College of Higher Education (SICHE), is not very good. It has enormous arrears, staff and student morale is poor, the place is rundown and many of the courses are of a low quality. There are frequent threats of student strikes and demands to dismiss faculty members.

Thus, many in the Solomons believe that higher education would stand a better chance of success if it were in the hands of the churches. Both the Anglican Church of Melanesia and the Seventh Day Adventist (SDA) Church have separate university plans underway. The SDA Church already runs a successful university in Papua New Guinea, Pacific Adventist University. The success and high quality of Divine Word University, a Roman Catholic institution in Papua New Guinea, proves that the Anglican Church of Melanesia's dream can be fulfilled.

“An enormous act of faith”

The General Synod of the ACOM has approved the formation of John Coleridge Patteson University, consisting initially of two faculties, Theology and Education (including social sciences). The existing provincial theological college, Bishop Patteson Theological College—now operating a degree program (the only degree programme in the country) and too big for its present site—will become the Theology Faculty.

Already, before there is any new infrastructure in place, the task force is organizing a teachers' training program that we hope will begin in July using existing church facilities. There is an enormous need for teachers' training in the Solomons as there are hundreds of untrained teachers (having only some secondary school) teaching in primary schools and few places in SICHE to train them.

Future faculties under consideration include Nursing, Technology (to replace all the fly-by-night computer schools that dot the Honiara landscape), and Management (including development studies and project management). A research institute is also envisioned as part of the university.

The ACOM has purchased a large and beautiful upland site of 182 hectares east of Honiara. For the last two years we have been working on the project proposal which will soon be ready. The project has a full-time coordinator, architect, and education coordinator (to get the teachers’ training off the ground). The Education and Children's Services Faculty of the University of Chester has offered to be a partner in the development of the Education Faculty. We are considering officially launching the project with a fundraising consultation around Bishop Patteson's Day in September this year.

JCPU is an enormous act of faith as no donor has yet made a financial commitment to the project. The Solomon Islands government has been supportive but often they do not have the money they promise. (One complication is that Solomon Islands has no higher education legislation so we are working with the government to develop that.) However, local fundraising has begun, and we hope the quality and nature of the education we are proposing will attract funders. And we shall start small, like the early universities of Canada.

A hoop dancer from the Summer Bear Dance Troupe shows his skill at the Winnipeg stop of the Remembering the Children Tour, March 2008. Anglican, Presbyterian, and United churches organized the tour to herald the Truth and Reconciliation Commission. Photo contributed.

Anticipation is in the air. Preparations for the first national event of the Truth and Reconciliation Commission (TRC)—June 16 to 19 in Winnipeg—are underway.

This national event will be a communal gathering in Manitoba, a province where Aboriginal children were removed from their homes and communities and sent to any one of 15 residential schools operated by churches on behalf of the federal government from the late 1800s to the 1980s.

Residential school survivors and descendants, Indigenous Peoples, church persons from the pews and the cathedral, government policy persons, legal counsel, and inhabitants in Canada who desire a new future—all will come together at the forks of the Red and Assiniboine Rivers in June. It seems as if we all are holding our collective breath in anticipation of being shaped and transformed in this encounter.

The head of the Truth and Reconciliation Commission, Justice Murray Sinclair, invites all Canadians to the gathering—the many residential school survivors who will speak of their experiences for the first time, and all of us to come, listen, and speak of what we need to say as well.

People of faith and the TRC

Antjie Krog, who witnessed the South African TRC, observed that in places where unspeakable acts have been directed by powerful people against communities and individuals, the role of truth telling forums is to change public language and memory—although the forums do not necessarily lead to changed behaviour or institutions. This change is the responsibility of people in governments, churches and other faith communities, and educational institutions.

What language shall we use as people of faith in these forums? Indigenous peoples urge us to speak to and respond from the heart. According to National Indigenous Anglican Bishop Mark MacDonald, “The growing spiritual movement among Indigenous Peoples will challenge us all to reconciliation and renewal. The land we live in, its ecology and life, will be understood to be a living part of our community of faith. To be a living church, we must attend imaginatively to each other.”

Will our church apologies, lived out, be found wanting? Can we find anew the courage of not giving in to easy justice, but go deep and seek day after day to live out our most cherished values? Overcoming alienation and estrangement—between humanity and God, between peoples, between peoples and the creation—is central to our faith story, writes missiologist John de Gruchy. We have a solid ground for hopefulness and are invited to live in expectation of the Spirit’s transformation.

No shortcuts

There is a coherence to public truth and reconciliation that includes certain elements:  truth telling; apology and claiming responsibility; building a transitional justice framework; finding ways to heal; and embracing forgiveness, according to Canadian theologian Russell Daye. Will we commit to paying close attention and not take shortcuts through the field of truth and reconciliation?

What would truth-receiving look like if we all—individually and communally—held to the ethics of believing and trusting the victims, treating them with the most tender respect? How do we bring all of our authentic idioms—traditional, Christian, secular, Jewish, Muslim, Hindu—to the hearing of the truth and the taking back of it to our respective communities?

The factual and moral truth telling and retelling doesn’t end with the TRC. For it to take root in our hearts and minds, it must become a growing part of our public discourse because we are all treaty people. When the treaties were negotiated, they bestowed rights and responsibilities on both First Nations and Euro-Canadian settlers.

Let us not squander the moment that June 16 to 19 offers. Let us strengthen the call for Canada to sign on to the United Nations Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples. And then let us not stop there, but as global Christians join the new call for an international spotlight on truth commissions in approximately 50 countries around the world throughout a proposed decade of reconciliation. Can you hear the voice of the Spirit say, “Come”?

In this short video, delegates explain why they get excited about this yearly gathering.

Click here to view the embedded video.

Video created by Kate Smyth and Stephanie DeForest.

The Rev. Canon Maylanne Maybee (second from left) celebrated her 60th birthday by hosting a total of 60 friends for dinner throughout the year.

I was talking about my impending birthday with a friend who had spent time in China, and he told me that a 60th birthday is considered very special in Chinese culture. In fact, the Chinese traditionally do not pay much attention to birthdays until the 60th, which they usually mark with a big celebration. Sixty years is regarded as the completion of one life cycle, and 61 the beginning of a new life cycle. Not only was this heartening, but it had special meaning for me. I like to tell people I was “made in China” (though born in Toronto) and I’m as old as the People’s Republic of China. As a reminder of my origins, my parents gave me a Chinese name with an Anglicized spelling, “Maylanne,” meaning “beautiful orchid."

In taking inventory of my life at this stage, I was aware of how precious my family was becoming to me: my parents, siblings, their offspring and mine, even my “exes”—my former husband, my brother’s former wife. I was aware too of the many friendships that had blossomed over the years through my justice work at Church House—in Toronto, across Canada, and overseas.

On the other hand, as workload increased and resources decreased, I was also aware of the absence of Sabbath time in my life—time for rest, for re-creation, for being creative, for nurturing these friendships, and showing friends and family the gratitude I felt for their support and hospitality. I started thinking of how to involve them in celebrating my jubilee year.

I played with the idea of a kind of cross-Canada progressive dinner—borrowing kitchens and dining rooms and hosting friends and family for meals on my travels from Victoria to Halifax. Then I thought of having 60 friends for dinner over “a month of Sundays”—four or five weekends in February and March. But both plans seemed too ambitious.

Eventually, the idea dawned on me to celebrate a diamond jubilee year, and invite 60 people for dinner in various sittings over a 12-month period. I considered who should be invited with whom, and worked out a nice chart of 10 dinner parties with six friends per meal, evenly spaced from February to February, with time off in the summer.

I decided to start my dinner project with people I had known the longest—people such as Michael and Dorothy Peers, whose wedding I had attended when I was 15 years old; Alyson Barnett-Cowan, who entered Trinity College as an undergraduate the same year I did; Kate and Helena, who were divinity classmates; and so on.

What I soon learned, however, was that even with four weeks’ notice, or more, it’s impossible to coordinate everyone’s commitments. So I just assembled a company of friends as best I could. I had determined that with limited space and cutlery, eight people, including me, would be the maximum I could handle. But, surprise! At that first dinner in February, 10 people sat at table: a couple who had been out of town phoned the morning of the party and said they’d love to come. I used every leaf in my dining room table and sat two at each end. It worked fine. (This was good practice for another dinner at which two people showed up when we were about to sit down—I’d forgotten they were coming!)

What did I serve?  I’m no great cook, but I can follow recipes and do fine with step-by-step menus that are timed by the day and hour. I decided to start with oxtail soup, in keeping with the Chinese year of the Ox when I was born. I researched cook-ahead menus on the Internet and served pork, vegetables, salad, and a lovely peach desert. My Sinophile friend had told me it was a Chinese tradition to serve foods with auspicious connotations on a special birthday: “long-life noodles,” eggs, and “peaches”—a dessert of steamed wheat in the shape of a peach with a sweet filling.

Later in February, I hosted a dinner for 12 family members in Picton, about midway between Ottawa and Toronto, two cities where most of them live. It was a lovely postmodern occasion that included ex-spouses and new partners. For the meal, I hired Deb—a friend who boarded with me while studying theology and had been a chef in her former life. At the end, I made a little speech about my love and appreciation for every family member, new and old. This had a healing effect and became a feature of my monthly meals.

As the weeks went by, I soon learned that, as someone once pointed out, when we make plans, God laughs! Certainly planning to have six people a month for 10 months was a laugh! In April, Holy Week and Easter came, and in a clergy household, a birthday dinner was out of the question. In May, my father died, aged 90—a sorrowful, intense, yet exhilarating event that took every ounce of my energy.

No dinner for two months, then three, then four, then five. June was conference month, and I didn’t have one weekend at home. In July, I left for four weeks of vacation, and in August my son got married. I hosted a wedding rehearsal party—cooked and served by the intrepid Deb—but didn’t count it as a jubilee dinner. As the year progressed, my motivation was waning, and I wondered whether I should quietly drop the whole idea.

I was saved when I found an unexpected companion for the journey in Julia Child, who arrived in my life late August when I went to see the movie Julie and Julia. Until then, Julia Child’s name was only faintly familiar to me, but her ebullient personality, portrayed by Meryl Streep, leapt out from the screen and filled me with delight. All that feasting and drinking with friends looked wonderful!

Along with the rest of the world, I bought a copy of Mastering the Art of French Cooking. In September I organized two birthday dinners in quick succession. I ventured to make the boeuf bourguignon for one, coq au vin for the other. It was a thrill to replicate these recipes, even in the most modest way, and serve them in my own little house.

I began to realize that there is a certain economy of hospitality that goes beyond mere reciprocity. Friendship begets friendship. One dinner companion invited me to her graduation—42 years after she had begun her degree. Another was inspired to organize a neighbourhood reunion of friends I hadn’t seen in 30 years (see picture). Yet another gave me a copy of My Life in France, Julia Child’s story of becoming a chef, cooking teacher, and hostess extraordinaire. Reading about her life breathed joy and spirit into my own modest little jubilee project. It was these moments, rather than the stress of the workplace, that began to form the reality of my life.

At the time of writing, I am almost at the end of my jubilee year. I have had eight dinner parties and served 55 friends. I’m thinking of a prize for the sixtieth person who comes through the door!  My only regret is that I didn’t have people sign a guest book, and I didn’t take pictures. I’m now looking forward to gathering friends just for the joy of it. And I’ve signed up for cooking classes in this year’s “Winterlicious” festival to build confidence and expand my culinary repertoire.

I’ve learned that it takes a lot of time and effort to find a date that works, invite friends, plan a menu, shop, prepare, and clean up. Sometimes the dinners have taken place right after a long trip or an intense conference when I’d rather wear my pyjamas, watch a movie, and eat popcorn.

In My Life in France, Julia described one occasion when she and her husband, Paul, were supposed to visit close friends in Provence, but it began to seem just too inconvenient and bothersome. She remembered a favourite saying, though, that had carried them through their diplomatic days: “No one’s more important than people!”  “In other words,” writes Julia, “friendship is the most important thing—not career or housework, or one’s fatigue—and it needs to be tended and nurtured.”

This “sixty for supper” experience has given me new insight into the Jewish understanding of the Sabbath, closely associated with the notion of Jubilee. In his book The Sabbath, Rabbi Abraham Heschel writes, “Six days a week the spirit is alone, disregarded, forsaken, forgotten. Working under strain, beset with worries, enmeshed in anxieties, man [sic] has no mind for ethereal beauty…. Then comes the sixth day. Anxiety and tension give place to the excitement that precedes a great event.”

So it is with these birthday meals—the day before is spent in a fever of marinating and moving furniture. Then the guests arrive, the candles are lit, the wine is poured, and life stops for a minute. It’s a tiny glimpse into the seventh day when God rested from all that he had done in creation and said, “indeed, it was very good.”

Children from the San Juan Apostol parish, Chichicastenango, Guatemala. Photo by Emilie Smith.

I love Guatemala. I have loved Guatemala for 25 years and now I am living here, come from our mountains in Vancouver, to these great, majestic mountains in the Department of El Quiché. Here I am, an Anglican Volunteer in Mission.

My view on mission is that we shouldn't engage in it at all unless we are clear that we are God's servants, and servants of God's people, and that we know almost nothing, and are not the carriers of faith to those who haven't yet received it. I consider myself a pilgrim and servant, and am grateful for the hospitality and the kindness with which I have been received in Guatemala.

Let me share a few words about how my heart is being undone, and re-done, in the shadow of the crucifixion. For Guatemala is a land of great suffering, of terrible poverty, of obscene violence. It is also a holy land.

A holy, broken land
The reason Guatemala is holy is because Ajaw, the creator of heaven and earth, made this land, alive with its forests and mountains, its endless fields of corn, its holy and sacred people, who have kept the days and the stories of their ancestors. The Maya have lived on this land for 10,000 years, and they have kept the count of days, tended the land, and fed their families sacred corn of the four colours from the four corners of the earth.

Five hundred years ago strangers arrived in this holy land, strangers bearing firearms and Bibles, riding horses, and—worst of all—carrying dread disease. Human geographers estimate that 90 per cent of Central and South America’s Indigenous population was decimated in the 100 years of epidemics that followed the 1521 Spanish invasion.

More recently, during the Central American civil wars of the 1970s and early 1980s, Guatemala suffered the worst genocide our hemisphere has known in recent history. Over 200,000 people—men, women, children and the elderly—were murdered. Another quarter million fled the country, and a full million, one in every nine Guatemalans, were internally uprooted and displaced.

In 1996 a peace treaty was signed, but little true healing, and no justice has occurred since then. In fact, levels of violence and poverty remain virtually unchanged. In some rural areas of the country, 80 per cent of Maya children suffer from chronic malnutrition.

The church, both Catholic and Protestant, has been both a faithful witness to this crucifixion, and a blind participant in it. The church has been both witness to the resurrection, and perpetrators of the ongoing violence. Current levels of violence in Guatemala are shocking and terrifying, and levels of poverty are heart-breaking and obscene.

Where my heart is supposed to be
With this history in its heart, the Guatemalan Episcopal Church (a small but strong faith community) has begun a new ministry—the creation of a new diocese in the Western Highlands of Guatemala, to attend to those areas most devastated by the history of violence and poverty. I have been invited by the church and its bishops, Guerra and Lainfiesta, to participate in this holy ministry, and I am delighted to say “yes!” to the church in Guatemala, and to God. So that is how I have ended up here, priest-in-charge of San Juan el Apostol, in Chichicastenango, assistant to Bishop Lainfiesta. I have also been invited to begin a mission in Santa Cruz del Quiché, 15 kilometres up the road, where I will live.

After a month’s travel from Canada—by bus, train, and pickup truck—I arrived, at last in this holy land. As I write this, I’m resting, while Bishop Lainfiesta goes back to the city for a week. I am left here, it is raining endlessly, and all I do is pray and think.

Yesterday a man appeared in the yard, and I went out to greet him. He is Miguel, Akiel in K’iche’. His Spanish is rough, but my K’iche’ is practically nothing, and I find out that he is the husband of Reverenda Pascuala—my ministry partner at San Juan. Joy! We talk for a while, as best we can, and he corrects my pronunciation, and I think that I will learn K’iche’, if I throw myself in the deep end. K’iche’ words sound different in his mouth, but I’m not a bad parrot, and I have a good ear. After a few tries it sounds okay. My heart swells in happiness, and he tells me that later la Reverenda will come by and say evening prayer. She’s busy right now, he says. She has two ladies about to give birth. La Reverenda Pascuala is a midwife, and a healer, and a priest. I am deeply grateful that we are working together.

Later, Akiel comes back and brings me three pears, little sweet fat pears that taste like candy. For my welcoming he says, and I grin, like a fool. Matyox! Thank you! And then la Reverenda comes by, and three, then four, then five children, neighbours they are, and we file into the church. Glory be! Church is church, and prayer book is prayer book and evening prayer is there, and the Magnificat, Mary’s song and God’s promise that the hungry will be filled with good things, and I pray, and try not to cry (again) but I cry mostly because I’m so happy, and I can’t explain it, but in this dusty, drippy, plain, yellow church, here with these people, my heart is where it is supposed to be!

And after the book service we kneel and La Reverenda Pascuala prays in K’iche’ and I know that it doesn’t matter what language you use, because fierce Ajaw, mother hen, mother bear, mother earth, has laid a great banquet before us, to share.

I cry, as I kneel in the yellow church, because I read before Akiel came that Guatemala has reached the level of the fourth country in the world with the highest rate of chronic malnutrition. The highest in Latin America. That goes too with the useless number that Guatemala has the most unequal land distribution in the Americas. Does that have anything to do with the legacy of the unacknowledged genocide, the quarter million dead and buried in these cornfields that surround me? My tears are falling on the wooden kneeler, that Oscar the young boy who read out the gospel (Jesus not loved in Nazareth) put down for us to share.

So friends, the rain comes down and no one can stop it. God is the lord of heaven and earth, no one else is, and he is a God of Justice. I don’t know exactly what my life here will be like for the next two years. Challenging. An unfolding blessing. I think it was Akiel’s pears of welcome that assured me, a hot-headed pilgrim, that here too, is my home.