Peace/Spirituality

Same-sex Marriage Vote

Posted on by stephen t berg / 0 Comment

Two huffish press releases over the recent parliamentary vote on same-sex marriage, one from Real Women, and the other from Canadian Family Action Coalition, fail to place responsibility for the lost vote.

If Stephen Harper and the majority of conservatives were as serious about defeating same-sex marriage as they had all along been indicating, well, they could have used the notwithstanding clause and pointed to National Post/COMPASS poll that apparently says 64% of Canadians want a review of current legislation. It didn’t happen. new-banner

So what intrigues me is seeing CFAC and REAL lay blame everywhere except at the soles of Stephen Harper. Their man was at the helm and all he did was call a hollow and pointless vote. You have to think that under the diversionary blame they felt betrayed.

For Harper of course the same-sex cocktail needed a twist of expediency. As in, "How can I assuage these more fundamentalist elements without jeopardizing my "progressive" support and ultimately a chance at re-election.

But for CFAC and REAL this is one battle lost, not the war. As C. Gwendolyn Landolt crumped,

Elitist political leaders apparently believe that Canada is still in the twentieth century, where political parties ignored the opinion of the voting public. However, in todays technologically advanced world, a well-educated public must be allowed to participate in setting government policy, and especially so on the same-sex marriage issue — the most important issue of this generation.

new_banner_copyFor the rest of us, hopefully, we’ll eventually accept the same-sex marriage legislation as a good thing, as heralding equality and fair-mindedness, and carry on. Even Liberal Joe Comuzzi who quit Paul Martin’s cabinet last year, in order to vote against gay marriage last year, voted against Harper’s motion.

And now, the work of addressing the hidden and unconscious exclusion of any people/group continues, not the least of which, our gay-lesbian neighbours.

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Christianity/Spirituality

Advent and Waiting

Posted on by stephen t berg / 0 Comment

When I was 10 or 11 years old I ordered a soldering iron out of a Lafayette Electronics catalogue. The Lafayette store was in Chicago and I was a world away in rural Saskatchewan.

I waited five weeks and the package came. When I opened it I saw that the ceramic molding had broken around the metal soldering post. It was no good. And I was devastated.

My mother helped me pack it up and send it back. I waited another 5 or 6 weeks until another parcel postmarked Chicago came. That was the year I soldered down everything in the house.

Rilke says that your strongest attachments are to a couple toys you had when you were a child. It’s true. I still have the soldering iron. But I know that in this case, beyond being fascinated by soldering copper wires together, my attachment grew out of what seemed an endless horizon of waiting.BathroomCandle

Waiting strangely becomes us. It hones and perfects a longing within us. A longing that orients us outward toward others, toward something transcendent.

This is what Advent is about. It’s waiting, expecting…preparing. And the waiting is the preparing.

A sculptor I read about walked by the same stone everyday for ten years before he was able to see the bird inside. And what could that mean about who we are and what we do and how we see those around us and the refining process of waiting?

Happy Advent!

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Politics/Violence

Redemption and Stan Tookie Williams

Posted on by stephen t berg / 2 Comments

I watched “Redemption” last night. It’s the story of Stan Tookie Williams, co-founder of LA’s Crips gang.

Redemption shows how Williams, (played by Jamie Foxx) while serving a couple of decades on death row turned his life around and became an anti-gang activist. He wrote a number of anti-gang children’s books and for all of his work endorsing non-violence was nominated for the Nobel Peace Prize. It’s a compelling story.Stan Wilson

In one scene Stan Williams is telling Barbara Becnel, co-author of his books and his spokesperson, that he “learned early in life that violence works and the more savage the violence the better it works.” Later Williams explains his thinking in the founding of the Crips. “I thought I could cleanse the neighborhood of all these, you know, marauding gangs. But I was totally wrong. And eventually, we morphed into the monster we were addressing.”

I recall reading a quote by (I believe) the Israeli Minister of Defence that went something like: We need to create an environment where Palestine understands that the cost of any aggression towards Israel is simply too high. Israel, like the USA, like all warring countries and factions believe that heightened violence is conclusive violence. This is what Stan Tookie Williams once believed.

But the wisdom of the “redeemed” Stan Williams is that he recognized that through violence, he became, with his gang, the “monster they were addressing.” This is wisdom lost on Israel and the USA, so far.

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Christianity/Religion

Status of Women

Posted on by stephen t berg / 2 Comments

The Conservative government is shutting down 12 of 16 Status of Women offices across Canada by April of next year. Ostensibly the money to keep these offices open will go directly to women in need. Perhaps to shelters and so on. If that happens, well and good. And if there can be some tuning within the department, fine. (It amounts to a 5 million cut from a 23 million dollar budget.)

But having done a bit of checking consider this: REAL women, (REAL meaning that all other women and especially feminists are hereby declared as somehow fraudulent and fake?) were one of the only groups that were given an audience with Status of Women minister Oda this past summer.

REAL Women have long called for a legislative return to Judeo-Christian values. And this of course has traction within the Harper government. For example, the Prime Minister’s Chief of Staff, Ian Brodie, said that REAL Women raised interesting points that warrant close inspection. Well, here we are a few months later and Status of Women department is being de-constructed.

It is possible of course that Status of Women’s best days are behind them. And of course the department needs to address the perception (a perception it wanted but is ultimately damaging because it isn’t true) that they speak for all women. This will always rankle. So maybe there needs to be a resurgence, a refocusing of some kind within Status of Women. I don’t know.girlsarestrong

What I do know is that traditional Judeo-Christian values are what women don’t need. What we understand as traditional values are clearly and firmly patriarchal. And so I’m at a loss as to why REAL want to return to something that is principally anti-Christian. I’m not throwing out everything REAL stand for. They have a place. But their anti-feminist stand is a at best a curiosity. Because if it wasn’t for the feminists they would not only be dismissed, they would not exist.

It was a tenacious feminist element that managed to gain entrance to certain spheres of government that lead the charge for women’s equality, while the church and its traditional Judeo-Christian values, assumed, excuse me, a piano-tied-to-the-government’s-ass role. I know, I was part of that church.

We Christians carried our NIV’s to church, read the overarching charter of equality outlined in Paul’s letters, saw within the gospel text how explosively Jesus lived out the new emancipation of all, women particularly, and then promptly vetoed any budge toward say, having women as pastors. Exactly where they’re needed.

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