As way of introduction to our Scripture Readings, I shared the following quotation from Martin Luther King's Christmas Sermon on Peace (1967), that reflects on the incredible interconnection our lives have with others who are sometimes half a globe away ...
It really boils down to this: that all life is interrelated. We are all caught in an inescapable network of mutuality, tied into a single garment of destiny. Whatever affects one directly, affects all indirectly. We are made to live together because of the interrelated structure of reality. Did you ever stop to think that you can't leave for your job in the morning without being dependent on most of the world? You get up in the morning and go to the bathroom and reach over for the sponge, and that's handed to you by a Pacific islander. You reach for a bar of soap, and that's given to you at the hands of a Frenchman. And then you go into the kitchen to drink your coffee for the morning, and that's poured into your cup by a South American. And maybe you want tea: that's poured into your cup by a Chinese. Or maybe you're desirous of having cocoa for breakfast, and that's poured into your cup by a West African. And then you reach over for your toast, and that's given to you at the hands of an English-speaking farmer, not to mention the baker. And before you finish eating breakfast in the morning, you've depended on more than half of the world. This is the way our universe is structured, this is its interrelated quality. We aren't going to have peace on earth until we recognize this basic fact of the interrelated structure of all reality.
Then I offered the following sermons:
This past week I read a book about the growing divide between rural and urban Canadians, and the immense pressure being applied to the rural residents, particularly food producers. The author noted that farm families face incredible challenges that were simply unheard of 20 years ago. The economy of scale and market pressures on small farms push them into a “go big or go home” mentality that makes it more than challenging for new farmers to enter the market. Quota systems, regulations, taxes, spiralling input costs, flat lined sale prices and a myriad of other factors come into play and place ever increasing pressure on farm families ... but perhaps one of the greatest pressures being placed on rural farm families is the rural idyll that has been created over the last twenty years.
Folks move to the rural areas to buy thier piece of ‘heaven’ – a rural get away where they can escape the pressures of the city. They can be free of the traffic, the sound, the smells, and the busy-ness of the city by buying an old farm, or an acreage and just getting away ... then their neighbour starts spreading manure, or the wind blows from the wrong direction and carries with it the aroma of the manure pile, or the barn, or the late night combining disturbs their serenity ... The list of tensions found in across Canada where the urban and rural expectations meet and classh is long and at times baffling ...
As a culture we’ve become removed from our roots – figuratively and literally, and the effect is at times profound ... Most Canadians who are descended from early settlers are descendents of the farm families who came and opened up the country by clearing forests and breaking land. Whether we’re from here in Southern Ontario, or elsewhere, somewhere in our background lurks a family history grounded LITERALLY on a farm. The first people who came to this country came to farm. They were given their plot of land and sent out into the vast tracks of wilderness to hack down trees, break the grasslands, and start farming ...
In Canada we don’t have the myth of the Pilgrims who faced the adversity of the new country and would have perished had it not been for the gracious care of the First people who taught these strange new comers about the generations of knowledge they had on farming and finding enough food ... I remember sitting with a West Coast native elder who commented that the mistake the First Nations leaders made way back when was actually helping the pilgrims ... “we never shoulda helped them” he commented, “we shoulda let them figure it out for themselves, or starve.”
It is an interesting aside to study the history of settlement in places like the BC coast. Over and over you hear stories about people facing starvation while living right on the coast because they wouldn’t lower themselves to eating like the “natives.” I once heard the story about a family who came fresh from Britan and set up a homestead on the shore and almost died the first year because the various crops they planted didn’t do well in the sparse coastal soil. Yet a stone’s throw from their feeble attempts at gardening was a tidal zone full of nutritious, delicious food – food that was different from anything they had eaten before, but food that would have carried them through the winter.
Over and over, settlers refused to entertain learning anything from the first people who had for centuries lived and prospered by harvesting and utilizing what was around them. A similar tale comes from the North, where European expeditions faced incredible challenges and many perished because they were unprepared for the brutality of an Arctic Winter. Few of the explorers equipped themselves adequatedly to face a winter there, and fewer still tried to emulate the ways of the people who for millenia had survived there ... one could argue there was an arrogant pride that came into play when the pioneering spirit faced adversity. The notions of “I’ll do it myself” lead to some foolish and foolhearty choices being made by the new comers to the land.
Fortunately, over time sense prevailed and lessons taught and knowledge was exchanged and our pioneers survived and prospered. And their stories became our stories.
But today in Canada we’ve lost connection with that past. Most Canadians have no direct family connection with a farm. My last connection with farming ended several years ago when my father’s last brother had to retire from the family farm that had been ours since the 1860’s, and it was sold to someone else ... Today the massive 170 year old wooden bank barn sits empty and under used because the new owners work in town, and rent out the fields rather than try to eck out a living. The out buildings have all been bull dozed and the apple orchard has been cleared, and food production is no longer the priority. It’s a rural get away ...
And so over and over, all across Canada the ideal of rural life faces the reality of rural life ... and often that strain leads to conflict and it the rural farmer and the rural way of life that loses ... what is needed in this moment, not just here in our community, but across Canada is a reclaiming of our history and our heritage – a reclaiming of the story of how we, as a people and a nation came to be, and what it is that made us who we are ... The urban centres for all their exictement and activity are not where the roots of our country lie. Our roots lie in countless small towns and villages from coast to coast where people clutered around the farm to create a new life and earn a living from the produce, crops and animals they raised there ... but over and over we can find example after example of how disconnected we’ve become from our rural roots.
In Saskatchewan a few years ago there was a study of children in schools and they found that the majority of kids in urban schools had no connection to a farm at all through their extended family, and most troubling, the vast majority of children didn’t understand that the food they ate every day originiated on a farm at all ... to them the Sobey’s and Loblaw’s stores were the provider AND the producer of food ... the meat on the stryofoam tray was diconnected from a living animal ...
Ironically, the ancient Hebrews understood this disconnect thousands of years ago when they addressed it liturgically. The story from our Old Testament reading is about offering up thanksgiving to God for the bounty of the harvest by saying the words – “a wandering aramean was my ancestor ...” and giving to God the tithe of crops, animals and produce. The intent was to underscore the importance of honouring God by returning a portion of the blessings we enjoy, but more importantly, the action right down to the proclamation, was intended to remind the people of their heritage and thier history, and it was to underscore the interconnectedness of ALL people in Israel by honouring Abraham and his rural ways.
A wandering Aramean was my ancestor is a proclamation of rural life ... Abraham was a farmer ... his children whether they are rural or urban were to honour and remember him every year – they were to re-enforce the ties to the land by reaffirming the heritage of the people that was not about the majestic stone temple that towered over the city of Jerusalem – the heritage of the people laid in the hills and valleys outside the city walls – in the country side.
Without the rural farm families who tended flocks, and vineyards, harvested crops and raised animals and so on the people in the city would quickly starve ... so, every year an affirmation of rural as more than ‘not urban’ was enacted in the temple as people gave thanks to God for all that they had ... it acknowledged where food came from, it acknowledged where they came from, it affirmed the interconnectedness of life, and more than that, it affirmed the importance of not taking for granted the food on our table, and the intricate web that got it there in the first place ...
This interconnectedness is the heart of our Thanksgiving season – we can give thanks for the stuff of life, but ultimately the challenge – the calling, is to give thanks for life in its abundance. Our family, our friends, our food, our shelter – all those things that are part of the milieu of life – things that we can’t put an adequate monetary value on, and yet are things that life would be lacking without ...
Thanksgiving is not about gluttony and over-eating. It is ultimately about standing quietly and considering what it is that fills our life with meaning and giving thanks for those connections that root us in our heritage, our history, and in the land we call home ... Thanksgiving is about giving thanks for life and all that it offers ...
May it be so, thanks be to God, let us pray ...
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