Constitutional rights of conscience, religion, thought, belief, opinion, expression and association – but only if your conscience toes the ruling party’s line?

From the age of sixteen, I have spent summers working. I worked in St. John’s that first year, dividing my time between the Newfoundland Institute of Cold Ocean Science and the Department of Fisheries and Oceans. The next year, I worked for my town, doing everything from community fundraisers to cemetary maintenance to cleaning the fire hall to supervising a kids’ dance. Then, it was answering phones and greeting visitors to what was then known as the Department of Indian Affairs and Northern Development (now called Indigenous and Northern Affairs). The following two summers were spent doing grunt work for Newfoundland’s Forestry and Agrifoods Agency. I got an excellent tan. All of these jobs were available to me because of government support for student employment. In addition to broadening my work experience and honing valuable administrative, leadership, social and life skills, they were a great help in getting me through school, along with student loans, and – of course – the Bank of Mom and Dad.

Fast-forward more years than I care to dwell on: at mass yesterday, the priest read a letter composed by Bishop Douglas Crosby of the Diocese of Hamilton. The letter was about two camps that are supported by the parish – one a mentoring-and-leadership camp that is affordable even to those whose families can’t afford to send them to camp, and one for children with mobility challenges (for example, spina bifida and cerebral palsy) who need physical assistance to participate in the camp activities typically enjoyed by able-bodied children. These camps have traditionally been assisted by government funding to hire students to help run things. Many tasks, from janitorial and cooking duties to supervising the children, are completed by students. The campers gain positive, relatable role models. The students gain experience and skills. If it’s like any other summer camp I’ve heard of, everyone gains great memories and increased confidence. These camps are now, apparently, at risk because they have been denied public funding for student positions. Why? Because the Catholic church would not deny its convictions and attest to its support for abortion. If you feel that a church’s position on abortion and a church-supported camp’s ability to hire a lifeguard ought not to be connected, you’re not alone.

The federal government’s recently introduced policy of denying student job funding (via FSWEP, the Federal Student Work Experience Program) to groups who refuse to attest to their support for abortion rights has been controversial. In addition to camps like the ones mentioned above, churches have always been a solid support for vulnerable and marginalized communities through everything from food banks to youth centres to sponsorship of refugees to breakfast programs to charity shops to hospices – and more. The students hired by churches are not being paid to protest abortion rights. They’re being paid to help the parish carry out these vital services to the community. Many churches are trying to put their money where their mouth is, as is the Diocese of Hamilton, by collecting donations from members. But the charitable giving of most churchgoers is already high. The additional burden of funding programs that were once covered by government grants will likely result in money being stretched thinner across more surface area. Previously robust initiatives may suffer, and newly supported initiatives may not be able to survive.

The struggles of churches and church-supported programs are probably not going to attract much sympathy or even interest. Reactions might even include some ill-concealed glee. If there’s one thing people love to hate these days, it’s religion – and, by extension, religious institutions and religious people. Abortion rights is a very hot topic with strong feelings on both sides. However, regardless of whether you like churches and churchgoers, regardless of your position on abortion, what should attract a great deal of interest is the government’s infringement on the constitutional right to freedom of conscience, religion, thought, belief, opinion, expression and association.

Abortion is legal. This means that any woman who wants one has a right to seek one. Canada has gone one step further and made them publicly funded, so money is no obstacle. This is not likely to change – Canadians have, for the most part, accepted the reality of living in a country that supports and pays for abortion. Many Canadians have longed for that right, and actively promoted it. However, constitutional rights are enshrined. I cannot change the law, but I don’t have to like it or support it. In fact, constitutionally, I should be allowed to hate it – and say so – and be a member of an organization that condemns it. Furthermore, if my constitutional rights are being properly upheld, I should still be granted full access to the same publicly funded programs as those who cherish the right to abortion on the taxpayer’s tab.

The Trudeau government took its first step down a very slippery slope when Justin Trudeau declared that pro-lifers could not run as Liberals. Many people were disturbed by his apparent desire to surround himself with yes-men, and his refusal to entertain any viewpoint other than his own, on such a controversial topic. In true Justin style, he steamrolled over these concerns and moved on. The issue of whether people whose conscience will not allow them to support abortion rights should be considered for student employment funding will probably not be treated any differently.

As I said, a slippery slope. What’s next? Will public servants have to sign their support for things they don’t agree with to keep their jobs? Will there be a new checkbox on social assistance applications that allows Canada to make sure it isn’t providing financial aid to people with unpopular views? What about student loans for people who don’t agree with abortion? Will those be affected? These examples may sound extreme, but it’s all public money – just like FSWEP. People who don’t agree with the Liberal party’s policies or even Canadian law are still Canadians – many of whom pay for FSWEP and other such programs with their taxes. As Canadians, they should be entitled to believe whatever they like, and say so, with no fear of it affecting their access to public funding and programs. Anything else – in this case, the hypocrisy of a government that claims to uphold the rights and freedoms of all of us while making second-class citizens of people who don’t hold or support approved views – is unconstitutional.

 

My thoughts and prayers should not be the focus of your anger right now.

Another day in America, another school shooting  A little over a week ago, Nikolas Cruz (a troubled former student of Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School in Florida), opened fire in the school, killing 17 people and wounding many others. We’re shocked and horrified – again. We’re holding our children just a little tighter – again. We’re angry that such violence is allowed to exist in our world – again. Families are still burying their dead, and Americans are searching for answers and solutions – again. We Canadians are peeking through our blinds at our neighbour’s latest domestic disturbance, feeling both sorry for, and superior to, them. Social media is awash with sorrow and outrage on behalf of the families terrorized by the daily possibility of a school shooting. And rightly so: there were 65 of them in the US last year. They’re on track to beat their own record this year – it’s only February, and there have already been nearly 20 occurrences of a live round being discharged in a school building or on a school campus. Another common theme – at least, in my newsfeed, anyway – is smugness. We’ve got gun control, so we don’t have school shootings. Yay, Canada! Again, rightly so: I worry about lots of things when I kiss my kids goodbye in the morning, but a school shootings – nearly non-existent in Canada – are very low on the list.

Over the past few months, I’ve been seeing another theme emerge: screw your thoughts and prayers, you useless hypocrite, and do something.

 

In my opinion, memes like these are judgmental, patronizing, insulting and presumptuous. How do you know that the person who’s praying isn’t doing anything about the problem? You don’t. You just assume. How dare you judge someone else’s sincerity or try to censor their reaction to what is happening, just because their response is not like yours? How arrogant of you to decide that a person is lazily ignoring all possible solutions in favour of prayer and meditation, when all you actually know about the person is that he or she shared a thoughts-and-prayers meme.

Even worse, people share memes like this one, which implies that people who pray are worse than useless – they’re using their prayers to feel like they’re doing something productive so they won’t feel guilty about not doing something:

Again with the presumption, judgement and insult.

Clearly, if you are sharing memes like the examples above, you don’t believe in praying. You believe that it has no value – and, indeed, no place in the life of any intelligent human being. However, there are millions of people who do not feel that way – myself included. I have known, all my life, that I am surrounded by prayer. My grandparents prayed for me faithfully. So did my father. So does my mother, and my mother-in-law, my husband and my children. So do some of my friends. Does it change things in my life? Maybe – but, again, you don’t believe it. So I guess that’s my personal leap of faith … Does it make me feel better about pretty much everything? Yes. No matter what comes my way, no matter how low I feel, knowing that someone is praying for me – loves me enough to hit their knees on my behalf, and wish me the best – is like receiving a strong hug from invisible arms.

When a child falls and hurts themselves, one of the first things most people do is hug them and speak gently to them. It won’t mop the blood from their knees or heal their bruises, but it will be comforting. It will show the little one they’re not alone, and that someone is watching and cares. When a friend comes out with bad news, most of us will hold that friend and tell them we are there for them. We can’t lift them out of debt, fix the struggles of their children, or bring a dead spouse or parent back to life. But they will draw strength from the warmth of our touch, the emotional caress of our concern. They will know someone sees their pain and gives a damn.

Imagine, now, that it suddenly became trendy to mock that response.

“Hey, you – it’s adorable that you can give hugs instead of making actual change.”

“Oh, look, you kissed her boo-boo! Now it’s going to magically disappear … Or not. Because science.”

“Hug away, selfish asshole. At least now you won’t have to actually help somebody, because you’ve made yourself feel like you already have.”

“Oh, sure, listen to her whine, then tell her you’re there for her. ‘Cause that will totally cure your friend’s cancer.”

Most people wouldn’t do that. That would be insensitive, crass and just plain mean. But so many seem to have no qualms about trampling on heartfelt wishes and bone-deep beliefs, offered by people who are just trying to get through life with a little grace and kindness. I have no control over American politics. I can’t raise shooting victims from the dead and give them back to their family. I can’t banish the nightmares of the survivors. My earnest desire that things will get better, my terribly inadequate shreds of sympathy, my prayers – are sometimes all I have to give. And, frankly, if they never do an ounce of good, at least they’re positive and unifying. That’s alot more than can be said for mean-spirited memes.

Walk by faith, wherever your faith lies.

I love Maclean’s magazine. I’ve been a subscriber for years. A flip through any issue yields a number of interesting, well-written pieces on a wide range of topics. Recently, an article appeared in Maclean’s called “Did Jesus really exist?” The article was centred around the work of Bart Ehrman, a New Testament scholar. I read it, wondering if there might be anything new on the subject. There wasn’t. Alot was said about the concepts of false memory, social memory, and the fact that tales grow in the telling. The children’s party game of telephone was mentioned to illustrate how a message can change each time it is repeated. Apparently, there are some dates that don’t line up, and there is some confusion over whether Jesus’ death warrant was signed by Pontius Pilate or King Herod. Some of the gospel accounts differ on a few details, or focus on different parts of Jesus’ life. The apostle Paul’s lack of interest in the life of Jesus is mentioned to support the idea that he never really existed. There is a possibility that some of the documents supporting Jesus’ existence were forged by zealous early Christians.

Basically, the same things people have been saying for years – and the same things people could say about many famous ancient figures. Ramses, Homer, Confucius, Plato, Alexander the Great, Julius Caesar, Cleopatra, Genghis Kahn, Eleanor of Aquitaine, Marco Polo, Christopher Columbus, William Shakespeare …. How do we really know any of them existed? If they did, how do we know they really did what we think they did? Oral memory is sketchy. Forgeries are possible. Not all historians agree on what happened and when. Shall we use this to drum them out of the annals of history, or will we keep telling stories about them? Does every detail matter? A human being is not simply a superbly designed machine. There is head – and there is heart. There is more to this life than what we can see.

We struggle to quantify and prove what is important, and we demand evidence of everything – but it’s never been so easy to forge everything. Photographic evidence isn’t even reliable anymore, thanks to technology that can seamlessly blend images and change any detail of any picture – and filters that convincingly mimic many different time periods. Statistics show that more and more of us see ourselves as secular and cynical. Yet, we live in an era in which we are increasingly walking by faith and praying for miracles – whether we know it or not. We’re a global village, and the next pandemic or terrorist attack is always just around the corner. Some very unstable people have access to weapons that could destroy us all if they ever decide to use them. Our planet is heating up and drying out. Many of us are plagued by anxiety, and feel like we’re not safe anywhere. Yet we make a daily decision to walk out the door into uncertainty. We keep making art and poetry and music and plans for the future – and babies.

Why? Because we are believers even when we don’t know what we believe in. Because we have decided to keep walking, however dark the path ahead. At the core of all of us, though it may not be acknowledged or even recognised, there is faith. Faith in science, faith in humanity, faith in ourselves, faith in love – and, for some of us, faith in Jesus. Did he exist? Does he, as Christian tradition teaches, still exist? I’m not going to try to prove anything or persuade anyone. I’m just going to give my opinion. Partly because this is a subject dear to my heart, and partly because I just love giving my two cents to everyone on everything all the time. I have chosen to believe he does exist. I feel his presence whenever I talk to him. I see his face in the faces of everyone I love. I see his hands in the kindness people show each other in times of trouble – in Mister Rogers’ oft-referenced helpers. I hear his voice urging me to push through my fear and keep going, to share what I have, to reach out to others who need a friend, to show love to people who have none for me. I use the stories of Jesus to guide me when my faith is low or I don’t know what to do. When I’m disappointed in myself, I remember that he knows me well and loves me anyway, and that his grace is freely given to me every day in the form of second, third, tenth chances – and I forgive myself because he does. Whatever does that for you, whatever gets you though the frightening, beautiful mess of being alive, hold onto it. You don’t need proof that it exists, and you don’t need experts to agree with you. People can speculate all they like on whether he’s real – he’s real to me, my faith in him compels me forward no matter what I have to walk through, and that’s enough for me. Happy Easter, whatever you believe!

Serendipity

I adore the Saturday paper …. It’s thick and wordy, filled with all sorts of things that could not be fully enjoyed squeezed into a Monday or Thursday – things that need to be savoured under a blanket on the couch, with a fresh cup of coffee and an unfrazzled mind. A weekend mind. Yesterday, there was an article about staged proposals, complete with hired photographer who tails the couple from a discreet distance and takes a picture of the event. The fellow featured in the article not only hired the photographer, he also hired a dog. A celebrity dog named Jiff, to be exact. For $600, Jiff made a custom video for the lady, walking on hind legs while wearing a tiny shirt that read “Lauren, Jiff thinks you should marry Jeff!” For $400 more, the photographer snapped the perfect shot – the now-fiancé on one knee, bling sparkling, Lauren reaching for the box. Their engagement cost more than the clothes worn by our entire wedding party, my dress and Ryan’s rented tux included.

It seems appropriate that this article appeared in the paper this weekend, as today marks twelve years since Ryan popped the question and I said yes. Ryan had been toying with asking me to marry him, though he hadn’t decided how or when. We went skiing. He had never been skiing before, and I tried to teach him how. I did it in my usual bossy, impatient manner. He took his first run having learned very little, but possibly having decided that he’d rather go hurtling at breakneck speed down a hill than listen to my well-intentioned harangue any longer. As I watched him go, it occurred to me that he was not going from side-to-side – he was going straight. He just might kill himself. I sped up to catch him, and we met at the bottom of the hill. We almost fell over, and we righted each other as other skiers whizzed past us. He babbled for a few seconds about how his first ski run was an amazing experience and he loved it – “and I want to marry you, will you marry me”. There may or may not have been a breath between sentences. Tears of surprise and delight freezing on my face, I said yes. We went back to the lodge to call our families. Because we hatched an idea of Ryan calling my mother and me calling his parents, their first thought was that he broke something (or, perhaps, his whole self) and that’s why it was the ski lodge’s number on their display and my voice on their phone …. Brilliant. Later, we went ring-shopping, and settled on a date about seven months down the road. There was alot of work to do in a short time, but we didn’t want to put off our big day any more than we had to. A waitress at Dunn’s took a picture of us at brunch the following Sunday, which was used in our engagement announcement in the Hamilton Spectator. A photo from a previous trip to Montréal was chosen for the one that went in the Nor’Wester. We framed the Camp Fortune ski passes.

It was the opposite of staged. And I’m glad it was …. Because if any great amount of thought had been put into it, it probably would have been scotched. For one thing, we were the first of our friends on either side to even consider marriage. Ryan was 24, and I was 22. The average age of marriage of people in our generation is somewhere in the late twenties, with children following in the early thirties. We had only been together a year and two months. That’s about the length of your average engagement these days. Ryan proposed during the second half of January, widely agreed to be the most depressing part of the year. Debt. Weight. Bad weather. The holidays too far in the rear-view mirror to cheer us up any longer. Weeks and weeks of winter still to go. Every year, somewhere between January and February, I turn into my own version of Mr. Hyde. He didn’t know that then, thankfully. Then, there are personal factors …. My father had died months earlier, and I had gone home to Newfoundland for Christmas. It was the worst Christmas before or since. The only way it could have been worse would have been if someone else had died during it. I returned heartbroken, bruised, bleeding – and ready to fight with a lamp post if it had looked at me the wrong way. We argued more than once in the days leading up to his proposal. If he had taken that information as any kind of indicator, he would have run in the opposite direction. He certainly would not have asked me to be his other half. But he did, and everything since then has been the rich harvest of that hopeful, ridiculous seed. Our road trips. All those laughs. All the times we’ve leaned on each other. Fiona and Bridget. This house. This life.

I don’t have an axe to grind, or even a point to prove – which makes this different from alot of other BethBlog posts. I just want to enjoy a moment of deep gratitude for the fact that heart was driving the bus on January 18, 2003, and head took a night off. For leaps of faith. For serendipity, whispering “do it – you won’t be sorry”. Here’s to taking chances!