An old Reader’s Digest classic for you holidays:   

     “Under a cultural-exchange program, Alan Abramsky and his family in Roanoke, Texas, were hosts to a rabbi from Russia at Christmas time. They decided to introduce him to a culinary treat that was probably not available in his country: They took him to their favorite Chinese restaurant.  Throughout the meal, the rabbi spoke excitedly about the wonders of North America in comparison to the bleak conditions in his homeland. When they had finished eating, the waiter brought the check and presented each of them with a small brass Christmas-tree ornament as a seasonal gift.

      They all laughed when Abramsky’s father pointed out that the ornaments were stamped “Made in India.” But the laughter subsided when they saw that the rabbi was quietly crying. Concerned, Abramsky’s father asked the rabbi if he was offended because he’d been given a gift for a Christian holiday. He smiled, shook his head and said, “Nyet. I was shedding tears of joy to be in a wonderful country in which a Buddhist gives a Jew a 

Christmas gift made by a Hindu!”

For most of us our attentions will be drawn to the Christmas part of December’s holiday season.  If not by choice, at any rate by the music playing in most any store or elevator we enter!  Others of us will focus more on the Winter Solstice and the turning of the season to official winter – though unofficially it’s clearly here.  The Earth will have tilted to it’s full 23 degrees so that on the day of the Solstice we will experience the shortest number of hours of daylight.  It is a day that calls our attention to the power of the universe and the earth that is our particular neighbourhood.  The Reader’s Digest story, a magazine I was practically weaned from the bottle to! Is a lovely and poignant expression of the increasing smallness of our earth’s neighbourhood.  Indeed, a “Buddhist gives a Jew a Christmas gift made by a Hindu”.  May we remember all these interdependent seasons and meanings, peoples and each of their own holidays, if not at this time of year, as each of us celebrates as we are accustomed.  There are tears of joy in such truth.

See you soon AND next year!  In faith and all the blessings of the season, 

Rev. Christine

 

Well, it took a year and a half but finally on October 19 Art Brewer, member of Toronto First and Chair of the CUC Gender and Sexuality Monitoring Group, a man willing to drive four hours on a Sunday morning for a contribution toward the cost of his travel, spoke to us on one of the subjects of his heart. Early in my sabbatical time in the first five months of 2007 Art called me and asked if he might some time speak at Olinda. I thought it a great idea, having considered the possibility in my own head already! I responded that some time after the beginning of the next church year would be good and we decided on a date after the depths of winter would be best so that he wouldn’t have as much chance of driving problems; we chose March 9, 2008. As luck would have it, one of the biggest snow storms of the season was THAT week-end and Art only made it as far as Woodstock (or should I say Woodstuck?) where he spent the night and then turned around to drive in even worse weather back to T.O. The weather that stopped him also stopped Olinda from having any service at all even though I had Art’s manuscript to preach myself – this decided after meteorologists were suggesting we might have a problematic week-end. Blessedly, October 19 only brought falling leaves and they are generally no problem to drive through. For me it was a wonderful scene to witness Art walking through Olinda’s parking lot toward the church building!

Art not only spoke on a subject of his heart but he spoke of it from his heart, teaching us how we might think of gender and sexuality in fresh ways, informing us of the lives of the GLBT (Gay, Lesbian, Bi-Sexual and Transgendered) communities in Canada (including examples of terrible occurrences in the GLBT world in communities close to us), and giving us a good insight into the process of working on the program “The Welcoming Congregation”.

As we sang Holly Near’s words together, “We are gay and straight together” that morning and listened to Art Brewer’s fine words, we learned more of the intricacies of being gay and straight together. As Olinda begins the work of this program, we’ll learn more about the being a community of welcoming everyone. So may it be that we also learn the deeper arts of being welcoming in all ways, as singer/songwriter tells us – “young and old together”, “a land of many colors”, gentle, angry and loving and always “singing for our lives”.

In faith, Rev. Christine