A sign of the times ...

The other afternoon a wise voice said simply - "we live in a time of great fear ..."

She went on to illustrate her point by saying our society, our communities and even our church is filled with and even driven by fear ... fear of change ... fear of the unknown ... fear of decline ... fear of uncertainty ... fear of losing ... fear of ... well, that's just it - with the kinds of fear we are confronting, there is seemingly no end to the list of what it is that we fear ...

In the church the fall back position has been to entrench the powers and principalities and adhere religiously to the "Law" ...

I remember sitting in a meeting on the west coast listening to a native man who HAD been abused in a Residential School - his story still brings tears to my eyes ... he said softly - "through all of the court proceedings the only thing I wanted was to hear the words - 'I'm sorry' but they never came ..."

A National Staff person stood up and said - "I wish I could say those words but ..." and he went on to cite the Church's legal standing and the lawyer's recommendation that we can't say "I'm sorry" without culpability, legal, financial, moral and otherwise ...

It struck me then that such a stance by a CHURCH of all institutions was simply cowardly ...

Then this fall I sought an apology for the mis-steps of people who should have known better, and in response I was told that I could use a legal remedy within the church rather than those who had erred simply saying the two words - "I'm sorry!"

Such is the state of the modern church ...

When our fear so paralyzes us that we no longer can say "I'm sorry," for mistakes and misdeeds and what we have done wrong, there is a problem ... and when that paralysis is found in the one place where fear should have no place our problem may be momumental ...

There should be no room in the church for fear, yet too often it is fear that stands front and centre and colours everything we are about ... If the lesson of Residential Schools have taught us nothing else, it should have taught us that me MUST start doing the right thing and STOP being afraid ...