Sharing Land & Hope
Being a roommate is hard!! Especially if the process of “being assigned” that roommate is beyond our control. And yes.. for sure.. if something happens in that relationship that breaks the trust or causes us to doubt the heart of the person we are sharing space with.. well that’s when things can get down-right ugly. The sad probability being that most of us likely have at least one story of that one guy/gal we lived with back then that made the time almost unendurable.
This is, at best, a rather shallow metaphor for the much more complicated and pain-filled reality that we as Canadians & our Indigenous brothers/sisters have been dealing with for the last 300 plus years of sharing space here on “Turtle Island”/North America. And indeed to try and makes sense of.. or a dint in.. the frustration, humiliation, fear, dependency, damage, etc. etc. etc. that the legacy of that often unhealthy history has wrought upon us all, can feel just this side of impossible most of the time. (And is certainly more complex than any short newsletter article can dare hope to address.)
In the very least however.. we do know that - whatever comes next - there is going to need to be some incredible doses of humility, compassion, understanding, and intentionality from us all. It is in an effort to encourage some of this humility and understanding that the council of Bread of Life has chosen to give echo to the increasingly common practice of sharing the acknowledgement of our land’s history on our letterhead, in our bulletin, and as a pre-amble to our Welcome Statement. Initially this came to us as a request from our ministry partners at ICF (Indigenous Christian Fellowship - once IMCF) and as a result of our common experience of hearing a similar acknowledgement at many public gatherings these days. (As of today ouracknowledgement reads .. “We are privileged to gather today in Treaty 4 territory and the traditional homeland of the Metis.”). As a council we felt that this was a natural expansion of the welcome our RIC status & our congregation have pledged us to.
If you have any questions/concerns about the nature of this inclusion PLEASE speak to any member of the council or to Pastor Stewart. We would be happy to listen..
- Pr. Stewart
