BRING OMER KHADR BACK TO CANADA

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I think that the United Church is doing the right thing asking people to urge the Federal government to request the U.S. to send Omer Khadr back to Canada. The Guantanamo Bay military justice process is so flawed that few people expects that justice will ever been done.

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The military judge at Guantanamo Bay was right when he threw out the evidence obtained under duress. It gives me a ray of hope to hear this news from a questionable process which many people dismiss as a sham designed to convict the accused rather than to render justice.

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Another strong argument against obtaining information by torture is: it is unreliable. (The Economist, July 19 Special Report on al-Qaeda, p.10) It is no use as a information gathering method. Many people would say anything just to get out of agony. I know this: I was there. No, I was not tortured, but it was enough to guess what is likely to happen in the mind of a person, who is being tortured.

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In 1971 during Apartheid days, I was detained at Johannesburg Airport (then was called Jan Smuts Airport) for three days. At a passport control counter, the officer looked at my passport and at some kind of a list, and asked me to follow him. I was taken to a bed room in a building adjacent to the terminal and told me to wait. He locked the room and went away. Nobody came back for three days except a scared looking black man who brought stale food from time to time. There was a washroom. There was a window but it faced a brick wall. It was not a prison cell, but it could have been albeit a comfortable one. No radio, no TV, nor anything to read.

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I had no idea why I was kept there. I went mad. I was most worried about my seven year old daughter who was waiting for me to make supper at home. Her mother went to a conference and I was to look after her from that afternoon. I would have said anything just to get out. I am not a coward but not brave enough to withstand such a mental torture. I guess most of the ordinary people are like me. So, what’s the point of forcing people to say anything? They would say anything just to get out of the situation. Torture is not only illegal, but it is useless.

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After three days, I was told to pick up my car parked at a friend’s house and get out of South Africa in two hours.

Re: Violence in South Africa (Gwynne Dyer, Page A8 of the Lethbridge Herald, May 25, 2008)

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We just came back this weekend from one month trip to Lesotho, Southern Africa, where I taught at a university for seven and a half years during the seventies, and South Africa, which kicked me out forty years ago. I wanted to look up former colleagues and students and old friends. (Desmond Tutu and Njaburo Ndebele now Vice-Chancellor of the University of Cape Town, amongst others. I could not see them because there were too busy understandably.) They and many others have done so much for the country and are well respected. South Africa is a success story. Transformation is remarkable. I could not recognize Soweto, for example.

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Because the country’s economy is thriving, many foreigners are pouring in. And the government is very generous and does no stop them. Many VIP’s are remembering the days when all African countries accepted all South African refugees during the Apartheid days. Industries love them too, keeping the wages down. The cook of the guest house we stayed in Johannesburg was from Malawi, and the guide who took us around Soweto was a former priest from Congo, etc. They are about four million people in a country of 47 million. They make poor South Africans angry, because they think they rob them of government funded housing and welfare money. But the country itself and industries are not unhappy with them. This is why Thabo Mbeki, President, apologized to the foreigners last Friday. Doesn’t it sound familiar in many other well-to-do countries?

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It is true that HIV-AIDS scourge is serious. But unlike our media bias letting us to think that the government is avoiding the issue, the campaign against the pandemic is very vigorous. All in all, South Africa is a success story. I’d love to go back.

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May 25, 2008

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Lethbridge, Alberta

CHEAP FOOD THAT KILLS

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I am old enough to remember the days in Japan where "you are fat" (Kappuku ga yii desune) was a great compliment. Few people could afford to gain weight so much during those days. "Kappuku" was a rare physical feature only successful people were able to acquire. Nowadays the buzz is about the menace of obesity. An alarmingly large percent of people are officially obese, and obesity causes many killer diseases. At the same time, tens of thousands of people die everyday elsewhere in the world because they don’t have enough to eat. What is going on?

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The basic problem is: some people eat too much because food is cheap. Only rich countries in Americas and Europe can produce food cheaply because of factory farming. But industrial farming has destroyed self-sufficiency in food production in Africa, as well as our own family farms in Canada. In the process of making foods cheap, they have become tasteless and unhealthy, even poisonous. That’s why there is more obesity among poorer people who can afford only cheap processed foods.

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Making food cheap may be a good idea, if it produces high quality foods and makes them accessible to all income groups. But this hasn’t happened. If it makes you eat too much and eventually kills you, what’s the point.

I REJECT THE WAY SOME PEOPLE USE DARWIN’S THEORY OF EVOLUTION TO JUSTIFY EXPLOITATION OF THE DISADVANTAGED AND THE WEAK

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I must confess I have not actually read "Origin of Species" by Charles Darwin. But , according to what I heard of his theory of evolution, I do accept that the present form of life and universe came into being as he explained it.

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Some Christians reject the whole of Charles Darwin’s idea, because it is not the same as the way the Book of Genesis described the origin of the world. But I accept Darwin, and I consider myself to be a Christian. Our difference comes from two distinct ways the Bible is interpreted: some people read it literally and others do it metaphorically. I for one do not think that the writers of the Bible never intended their writings to be history nor science. But the disagreement among Christians does not bother me that much. The world is here and I am here, and we are doing just fine, thank you very much. We can debate the different understandings of how the world came into being as long as we want, so long as it does not harm the present. It is like: when I use computer, I don’t know how it is made and how it works. But I know how to use it, and that’s just fine with me. I don’t care even if you say that a monkey made it, so long as my computer works and does what I want it to do.

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However, some people use the dictum of the theory of evolution, "Survival of the fittest" to justify unrestrained use of market force for the benefit of the rich and the powerful. Darwin was a biologist, not an economist. You can not apply the theory of evolution to justify exploitation of the disadvantaged and the weak, because they are less fit. This is why I reject an unrestrained application of the principles of the market. I believe that the disadvantaged and the weak must be protected from the tyranny of the rich and the powerful. In the same token, we have to stop the destruction of nature by an unfettered use of science and technology. Many people who do not accept the danger of global warming say that it’s a cyclical phenomenon: it comes and goes. The universe has gone through that many times, hot and cold, extinction and survival/emergence of new species. We will go out of existence eventually and someone else takes over. It’s the law of nature, they say. I don’t accept that. We believe in compassion. Compassion rejects "survival of the fittest" as a norm for society. It is the shared value of many religions and humanists.

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Tad Mitsui

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1264 8^th Avenue South, Lethbridge, AB, T1J 1R1

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May 27, 2007

TORTURE IS NOT AN EFFECTIVE WAY TO OBTAIN INFORMATION

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In 1972, I was detained for three days before being expelled from South Africa. It was during the bad old days of Apartheid. From that experience, I can tell a few things about what North American and Western European countries are doing in the name of national security nowadays.

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Information given under duress is unreliable. I was not tortured. But extreme anxiety alone was enough psychological torture. My 7 years old daughter was waiting for me alone at home without knowing what happened to daddy: this factor alone was enough for me to say anything to get out. I am a coward, and suspect many people are. Meher Arar’s so called confession in a Syrian Prison was a good example. He is not a coward. And yet he was tortured and signed on a paper full of false information. If "national security" is so important, why do security apparatus’ continue to use such an unreliable method?

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Indefinite detention without charge, physical and psychological torture, etc. all sound exactly like what we heard during the days of oppressive regime under Apartheid in South Africa. The whole world condemned South Africa for that. National Security was the holy grail of the day. You could get away with anything for the cause of national security. Does that sound familiar? It does, because we hear the same language every day.

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Do they have to do all this in the name of freedom and democracy?

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Basic problem is: they never ask why. Of course, I condemn terrorism, indiscriminate killing of innocent people always has to be condemned. But if we don’t ask why they do such horrible things and address the root causes, many measures we take would be mere band-aid or Aspirin. We will never resolve the problem.

ARE COCKROACHES SUPERIOR LIFE FORM THAT US?

In 1968, I went to Lesotho in Southern Africa to teach at an university with a newly minted graduate degree proudly tucked under my belt. I was full of myself confident about my ability to help solve all the problems of Africa. One dry hot summer day, after brazenly tearing around many a mountain road in my Land Rover, I was rushing to go home hot, hungry, thirsty, and tired. I saw this old man, with only a piece of rag on his back resting his hands and the chin on a crooked walking stick, sitting on a rock by the road. He looked tired, almost sickly. Of course, I stopped the car and offered him a ride like all good missionaries should do. But he waived his hands and said, “U tsamaea ‘utate. Ke emela moea.” Meaning something like, “Go away young man. I walked a long way today. I am waiting here for my spirit to catch up with me.” I thought, “What a stupid old man. That’s why Africa is so backward.”

Only recently, it dawned on me that I was the stupid one, and he was the one with true wisdom. He could teach us a thing or two, if we want to save our planet from destruction.

He might have died in a few years from malnutrition. His people had never contributed to scientific advancement significantly, neither did they contributed to any technological break through. But they never invented weapons of mass destruction, neither did they caused extinction of any species. I am sure, it was the wisdom of my old African friend on the mountain road that God gave us when we were created in God’s image , not the know-how to exploit and manipulate God given nature. In fact, wasn’t it the fruit of the tree of knowledge that God forbade us to eat? We have some element of knowledge, but have not got the wisdom to distinguish what is good and bad. What we have is like a beautiful piece of marvel of technology like Ferrari, but do not know how to handle it nor where to go with it. We may be speeding towards a cliff of Grand Canyon.

During the height of a dollar a litre gas last summer, a car was seen going around and round a city block. A man asked the driver if he could help if he was lost. He answered, “Thanks. But I know where I’m going. A cheapest gas in town just over there. I’m trying to use up a bit of gas left in the tank, so I can fill it.” Some of us are like that. We think we are very clever, but not really. We may know a lot of things, but not necessarily are wise.

We believe that we are the most advanced form of life. After all God created us in his image. We have the most advanced science and technology no other creature ever possessed. But from greed and vanity the way we are going full speed ahead into self-destruction using whatever we possess, could be much more foolish than the man who is in search of cheap gas. A cartoon on the Globe and Mail two Saturdays ago had it that a doctor talking to a figure of a planet earth on the examination table, “The bad news is you’ve got advanced-stage humans. The good news is they’ve just about run their course and you should be on the mend soon.” If our knowledge and achievements are driving our planet into catastrophe due to environmental degradation and constant warfare, are we really that advanced and better than other creatures?

A 19^th century historian and philosopher, Arnold Tynbee, once said that if human race continued to wage wars on each other for the reason of doctrinal and religious differences, for national interests, or for wealth, probably better organized societies of ants and bees would survive long after humans disappeared.

Dinosaurs had existed for several hundred millions of years before they became extinct. But I was surprised to find at the Insect Museum in Montreal: I was confronted with the fact that cockroaches had existed millions of years before dinosaurs. And they are still with us. David Suzuki predicted that if we continue to destroy life-sustaining environment at the current rate, humans will be just a hiccup in the history of the planet compared to dinosaurs and cockroaches. Our history of existence on this planet is less than a mere one million years. Are cockroaches more intelligent than we are? They know how to survive.

We have to think deeply what it means to say that we were created in God’s image. Is it just a wishful fantasy of our ancestors? Or is it the truth? If it is the truth, we have to prove it in short order. We don’t have hundreds of millions of years like dinosaurs had, to prove that they were not. We have only a few decades to prove that we are better than cockroaches. We owe it to our children and grand-children to do it. We have to stop our cars and computers, and sit and wait for our spirits to catch up with us. Or do we even know where our spirits are? That is a good question.

March 8, 2007

PEACE IN THE HOLY LAND

May I convey “Mazel Tov” to all who are celebrating Hahukah, and “Merry Christmas” to those who await for Christmas!

Israelis greet each other saying, “Shalom.” Palestinians greet each other, “Salaam.” Both words mean, “Peace”. Those words mean much more than mere absence of conflict. I am not a scholar of Semitic language, but I know another language of nomads better. It is a word for peace in the language called Sesotho in which I preached and taught in Africa. It has many similarities with the Arabic and Hebrew word for peace. It is one of the Bantu languages in Southern Africa, and is the mother tongue of Nelson Mandela and my former colleague at a University, Desmond Tutu.

When the Basotho meet, they greet each other saying “Khotso” with by raising both hands like an act of capitulation. They mean, “I come in peace.” After dinner, the hostess would ask you if you are well fed and happy using the same word, “Uena ka khotso?” “Are you satisfied, happy?” Not only do they wish the guests a peaceful state with happy stomachs, but also they believe that everyone is entitled to this state of affairs. So all Basotho children are taught to set aside some portion of dinner for unexpected guests who may show up at the door hungry. In other words, Khotso means both peace and justice. Where there is no justice, there is no peace. The search for peace in the Middle East must also be the search for justice.

I have been struggling with the question of peace in the Middle East for more than two decades. Positions seem to be so polarized that there does not seem to be a compromise nor a middle ground. One is always accused of being biased for one side or the other. I am often tempted to get away from it all. But I can’t, not only because of many friends in Israel and Palestine to whom I owe loyalty, but also to my Jewish son-in-law and two grand-daughters, who are half Jewish. Israel is important to them, so is it to me.

A revelation came to me during my last extended stay in Jerusalem and in a Palestinian village called Jayyous near Jenin in 2003. It was: there are people on both sides who are on the grass roots level working for justice for all. Daniel Barenboim for example is the world renown Israeli conductor of Berlin Symphony Orchestra. He is a Zionist but also a friend of Palestinians. He comes often to Ramalah to to teach at the Conservatory of Music. Another is Rabbi Erik Aschermann, a committed Zionist, who is Director of the Rabbis For Human Rights in Jerusalem. He and I picked olives together with many Isareli volunteers for Palestinian farmers when the gates on the wall opened only a short time during the harvest. It is without saying those Israeli peace activists work together with Palestinian counterparts. Obviously they were firmly against violence. They believe that peace can come only when Israelis and Palestinians become friends and good neighbours. They believe that it was the only way for both Israelis and Palestinians to survive in the region. They could not live as enemies forever. They must live as friendly neighbors. I saw hope in those peace activists on both Arab and Jewish communities. They may be small in number, but they are showing the way of a peaceful future.

There are other examples: There is a village called Neve Shalom, South-West of Jerusalem made up of a few hundred Arab and Israeli families. The children go to the same village school and the village council is represented by members from both communities. It’s existed for three decades.

During my 2003 stay in Jayyous, when I was on the gate watch to make sure human rights were observed and violence would not erupt, I always had a telephone number of an organization called HAMOKED handy. It’s an Israeli human right organization made up of Israeli and Palestinian volunteers. They help people with difficulties created by Israeli occupation of the West Bank with reliable information. Whenever the platoon of soldiers didn’t appear and the gate remained shut, I called Hamoked to find out why. They phoned around their network of informers and called back to tell me what the hold up was. Knowing the reason for delay, people calmed down and regained their composure.

A women’s organization called Bat Shalom (Daughters of Peace) form an alliance of women called Jerusalem Link. Their partner is a Palestinian women’s group called Palestinian Women’s Centre based in Qalandia between Jerusalem and Ramallah. They work together to in human rights and political advocacy. Women in Black demonstrate on every Thursday at noon in the centre of Jerusalem wearing black dresses and carrying cardboard signs. The sign says, “End Occupation.” They believe Israeli occupation of the West Bank is bad for the survival of Israel, because it is making more Palestinians enemies of Israel, and preventing them from being friends. I met a Montreal born veteran of Israeli Air Force, Moshe Altman, again a very committed Zionist, who represented an organization of Israeli veterans helping young soldiers to refuse to serve in the occupation forces. They are not conscientious objectors. They believe that the occupation is illegal therefore it is morally correct to refuse the order. They automatically go to jail for a few months, and suffer insults from the public. They call themselves “Yesh Gvul – Enough.”

I see a sign of hope in these Israeli movements, who believe that making friends with Palestinians is the only way for peace. They are constantly betrayed by their own people. It is not easy. But they are a light in the darkness. Theirs’ is the way of prophets.

December 21, 2006

At the Southern Alberta Council for Public affairs

A CONFESSION OF A JUSTICE FREAK

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I learned a few lessons from my involvement in justice work. It began in Vancouver in 1958 fighting for justice for Japanese Canadians. It continued in South Africa, and Palestine.

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These are the lessons I learned:

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1. Justice will prevail eventually, no matter how hopeless the situation may look. Ian Smith, Rhodesian Prime Minister, who declared unilateral independence of white ruled country illegally, said, "Majority rule will never come next year, in ten years…. not in my life time." But the majority rule did come. Apartheid was demolished, too. During the mid-seventies’ I regularly attended the UN Human Rights Commission in Geneva on behalf of an international N.G.O. During those days, the Commission had three regular items on the agenda: they were dictatorships in South Korea* and Chile, and Apartheid in South Africa. They are all gone.

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Justice will prevail.

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2. However, justice work is hard work. Not many people love you when you are a prophet, because you say things that are hard for many people to accept. Remember the days when anti-Apartheid and disarmament movements were thought to be communist inspired, because we were saying things inconvenient to industries. And we were attacked in the media. Government bureaucracy and politicians looked at us with suspicion. It felt hopeless. The struggle seemed to have lasted forever. Prophets do not produce visible results when you want. When advocacy work does not produce results, you must remember many prophets of old mostly remained a voice in the wilderness. But that didn’t shut them up.

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Justice work can be a lonely work. Prophets were lonely.

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3. Even when some goals of justice seem realized, be prepared to be disappointed Look at Zimbabwe now. I almost regret the euphoria of 1980 when the first democratic election was held in Zimbabwe. I was so happy in March, 1980, when general election was held in Rhodesia, and Zimbabwe was created with Robert Mugabe as Prime Minister and Canaan Banana as President. Soon enough Mugabe brought in North Korean army and slaughtered Matabele in the south, and deposed Banana to become President himself. Euphoria soon dies down as human reality sets in. Do not expect a perfect resolution when an apparent system of injustice is eradicated. Humans do not bring about a panacea. God alone realizes justice ultimately. As soon as the first democratic election was over in 1994, Desmond Tutu warned of new black elitism. "Any black man with a house will be the next target," he said.

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Our justice work is an ongoing process. God only brings ultimate justice.

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4. When one is engaged in the work for justice, one must make sure that one is firmly grounded on a spiritual foundation. A struggle for justice without a spiritual base leads to inhumanity. In 1971, I was horrified to hear venomous language of hatred at a students’ anti-government rally in Lesotho, when the defeated government declared the election nul and void, and established South Africa supported dictatorship. Because you see injustice around you all the time, you are rightly angry a lot of times. And anger can overtake you. Anger makes you hate enemies. But you realize that justice and hatred are oxymoron. Justice work must be motivated by compassion and love, not by hatred. Also if you are angry a lot of times, you will pay an enormous price personally and in your relationships. Anger and hatred destroy you and your relationship with your loved ones.

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Only by compassion and love can we participate in God’s work for justice. It’s a spiritual work.

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5. Injustice hates justice. So, justice work inevitably begets martyrs. Isn’t that the story of Jesus? Several friends of mine died in South Africa and in the Middle East; people like Steve Biko and Kameel Nassr. All the friends who died in the struggle for justice loved life. True martyrs never seek deaths. To call a suicide bomber a martyr is a completely wrong usage of the word. Jesus did not commit suicide. He prayed for the cup to pass him by. But sacrifice is inevitable in justice work. It’s not a fashionable game for a middle class.

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Justice work is serious. There is a price to pay. But it is not suicidal, because it is based on love of life, of oneself and of others.

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October 24, 2006

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Lethbridge, Alberta

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I am certain of one thing. Both Israel and Hezbollah must stop killing civilians immediately. Of course, Israel must defend itself. When Prime Minister Harper affirmed the right of the state of Israel, I would have agreed with him if the action Israel was taking indeed was a "measured response." But it wasn’t and it isn’t. That is the whole problem.

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Last time Israel invaded Lebanon in 1982, to drive P L O out, 14,000 Lebanese civilians died in the first three months. Israel still had to keep the occupation of Southern Lebanon for next 18 years. An alarmingly large number of Israeli troops began to die. Alarmed Israelis began to question the war in Lebanon and started the Israeli peace movement with such organizations as Peace Now and Women in Black, Yesh Gvul. But even then, the Israeli death were not even one tenth of the Lebanese.

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During the first Israeli war in Lebanon, I was in Beirut in 1984 to attend a donors’ conference to help Lebanon recover from devastation. I still remember the scene of bombed out crumbled buildings and houses everywhere even in small villages in the mountains, like the ones you see on the TV today. One thing that stuck in my mind was the trees, which used to line the beautiful streets of Beirut, like Champ d’Elysee in Paris. Indeed, Beirut used to called "Paris of the Middle East." All the trees I saw from the airport into downtown had no tops. All of them were still standing but cut down to 20 ft from the ground. It was bizarre. It was the result of the intense naval bombardment. Palestinians lived, in the refugee camps near the airport, in the camp called Sabra and Shatila. But bombardment was aimed at downtown Beirut. I don’t think that the deaths among Palestinians was anywhere as many as that of Lebanese.

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The same thing is happening now. It was reported that the deaths among Lebanese reached the 1000 mark this last week, mostly among civilians. Not as many Hezbollah fighters have died relative to civilian casualties. Yes, the death toll among Israeli civilian is alarmingly large, but it still is less than 10% of the number of Lebanese victims. On the average, the rate of foreign casualties as the result of the Israeli military action has always been about 10 times that of the Israeli casualties.

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The use of a disproportionately overwhelming fire power for a short period of time has always been a norm of the Israeli military strategy since 1967. It was used during the Six Days war 1967, and Yom Kippur war of 1973. They were successful in those two wars. But it failed miserably in Lebanon between 1982 and 2000. IDF was stuck in Southern Lebanon for 18 years and had to withdraw because of mounting casualties. When such a ferocious surgical strike does not achieve its objectives in a week, it is a failure. When a population in general turns against you, no matter how powerful your weapons are, you will eventually lose. The US learned that lesson in Viet Nam, and are learning it now in Iraq. Israel should have learned it between 1982 and 2000. Israel was stuck in the quagmire of Southern Lebanon for 18 years despite military superiority. Hezbollah came into being during this period.

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There is a saying in Japan, "Kyoso neko wo kamu." It means "if you chase a little mouse into a corner, it will bite even a big cat." . Both Hamas and Hezbollah were born as resistance against Israeli occupation, because people were cornered with nowhere to go. I watched people humiliated everyday living in a West Bank village of Jayyous for three months. Though I don’t condone the methods employed by Hezbollah, or by Hamas, I could see why a certain number of hot-heads become extremists and start scheming unorthodox – often criminal – methods to bite back like a cornered mouse. It’s a desperate act, hopeless, and criminal, but its origins are understandable.

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I advocate for the state of Israel within secure borders. My two granddaughters are both half Jewish, as a result of the union between a Japanese artist and a Jewish doctor. Imagine, if they were born 60 years ago, they could have ended up in a gas chamber. I can understand very well what 2000 years, imagine 2000 years, of rejection by the whole Christendom does to a psyche of a whole Jewish people. Israel must exist. But if this is so, then, for God’s sake, start making friends with your Arab neighbors! Let’s stop Arabs and Israelis making the whole Middle East another Balkan. Let’s do our best to help both Lebanese and Israeli to start living peaceful normal lives side by side as friends and neighbors.

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HUNGER IN THE WORLD

The reason I claim my expertise to speak about this subject is my experience as the Coordinator of hunger relief for the World Council of Churches during the 1984 – 1989 famine in Africa. About one million people died in Ethiopia alone. It was the result of unprecedented drought that lasted four years.

The worst natural disaster was the Boxing Day Tsunami of 2004 which killed about 300,000. But there are two other causes of deaths that are more devastating than any natural disaster. One is the wars: 500 millions in four years, 1941-45 125 million @ year, 34,246 @ day) The other is hunger. 44,000 a day, or 25,000 a day die depending on the way counting is made. That is 100 Jumbo jets crash and kill everyone on board.

This is quite a contrast to the western statistics that indicate that main causes of death is attributed to over eating or unhealthy eating, heart disease, stroke, diabetes, and cancer.

Why are we not paying more attention? Firstly, it is overwhelming – we can not handle it. Secondly, it is happening in the poorer parts of the world – Africa mainly, Asia, and Latin America. The solution is quite simple, actually. But we don’t want to deal with it, because it has a lot to do with our life-style and basic idea about life.

1. We must first of all forget the idea that there is not enough food in the world, therefore the solution is more food – finding ways to make more food or give food to those who have less. It is not the question of us making more food or giving more food to the hungry. The real cause of hunger is poverty. Hungry people are too poor to buy or make food. It is not the problem of availability of food but it is a problem of accessability to it.

There is plenty of food in the world. The problem is that some people can not buy it, because they can not buy it. People can make food anywhere. The problem is that they are prevented to make food because of economics and politics.

2. When I first went to look at the feeding camp in Ethiopia, I looked at a few camps in the Northern part of the country, where people were fed to recover strength. Many died, because for them it was too late. When they recover the strength, they were given some grain and seeds, and in many cases implements to start farming. Many died were farmers.

After inspecting the camps, we were taken to a hotel which stood outside of a feeding camp in Makele in Tigrey Province for lunch. We had a wonderful Italian dishes for lunch. Anyone could eat if they had money.

3. Africa suffered famine because of drought. But if they were as wealthy as we are, they didn’t have to suffer so much. The last few years of drought in Canadian Prairie was more severe that the drought in Africa. Our country is rich enough to cope with it in terms of loans, and other kinds of financing.

But African farmers remained poor because they had no saving, nor country had finance. Another factor that exacerbate the problem is the emphasis on cash crop for the country that required foreign currency. They converted food crops into coffee, sugar, peanuts, tobacco, etc. for the country to ean hard cash.

When Ethiopian farmers were starving, Ethiopia exported more food to Europe. Beef , coffee, and sugar continued to be shipped to Europe. Farmers could not buy it.

4. When good land was expropriate for cash crop, many men went to work for commercial farms. Production of food crop was left to women. They were not valued and not given credit facilities.

5. Making people getting out of poverty is the way to feed people. People need dignity to sustain themselves. We do have enough food. New seed variety or fertilizer is not the solution. Also family farms are more efficient that the large scale commercial farms.

6. I believe in supporting farmers. Japan, Switzerland, etc. We will soon have to pay more attention to water and food. Oil will not be an important factor for our survival.

Why we don’t ask why?

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A few questions are going around and around in my head about the arrest of 17 "home grown terrorists."

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1. Why don’t more people ask why terrorists do what they do (in this case, plan to do)? In a prevailing atmosphere of near panic in Canada, it makes us feel almost unpatriotic to ask such a question. I would have thought that it is a common sense to ask "why" criminals do what they do, if you want to prevent recurrence. Though efficient law enforcement is of utmost importance (please, no more episode like the bungling CSIS at the time of Air India bombing it alone can never be effective deterrent. You have to find the root causes, and eliminate them.

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2. Of course, terrorists should be treated like criminals. But you have to realize that many of them resort to terrorism out of their profound sense of disenfranchisement. I suspect that it’s not caused just by poverty amidst affluence (many "terrorists" come from the middle class it is by sense of alienation culturally and spiritually in the society they have made their homes. You can not stop terrorism if you don’t understand that. Strict law enforcement alone without addressing the root causes drive them to underground.

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3. Terrorists are criminals, hence they should be treated according to the normal process of the fair Canadian justice system. Extraordinary measures taken by some western governments including ours with instruments like Guatanamo or "Security Certificates" only discredit our democracy, and hatch hatred and resentment. Hatred begets further violence. I am increasingly distressed to see our county beginning to look like South Africa during the Apartheid days: indefinite detention without charges, torture, stigmatizing decent people as "subversive" simply because they belong to the same group where terrorist suspects happened to come from, etc.

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4. Most religions preach sanctity of human life, and teach believers to hate evil not persons. So killing innocent lives by terrorist acts is an act of heresy of worst kind. However, many religions do have extremists who advocate such heretical deeds as noble acts of committed believers. Christianity, Islam, Judaism, Sikh can not escape from those heretics within. But we don’t compare Timothy McBey with Christianity. Air India bombers are apostasy of Sikh religion. A Jewish extremist who massacred Muslim worshipers in a mosque in Hebron was a criminal in Israel and does not represent Judaism. We should not think of al Qaida as representative of Islam. They are all heretics.

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5. Many religious extremist groups who resort to violence gained power as they were coopted by democratic governments for their convenience. Osma bin Laden and al Qaida began its work in Afghanistan as they were armed by the United States so they would fight Soviet Union invasion. Again the United States armed Sadam Husein during the Iran-Iraq war, because Iran was at the time worse enemy than Iraq. Hamas was helped by the Israel earlier, in order to weaken PLO under Yesser Arafat.

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6. Information gained from torture is unreliable. Speaking with my South African friends who were former detainees, many felt defeated that they told what torturers wanted to hear, truth and false, just to get out. I was detained also only for two days at Johannesburg Airport. But I am still distressed to remember that I was ready to say anything just to get out of the situation. Then, why do they continue to use such useless methods today? It only makes sense if you want to humiliate and intimidate them.

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7. Canada is a multi-cultural country, where diversity is respected. We welcome all nations around the globe to join us if they are willing to build up a tolerant society. Let us not make any segment of Canada an "enemy within" just because some people resort to violent actions.

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June 15, 2006

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I am looking at a picture of my three year old grand daughter. Her twinkling eyes are warning me that any time she will jump on my tummy knocking me out of consciousness. A cheeky little thing! I love her so much that any minute I live away from her is a pain. Why should she have to live in Toronto and I in Lethbridge. I love her so much that I am ready to give my life for hers. Her name is Hana. Her parents chose the name because it is both Hebrew and Japanese. It means flower in Japanese, a very common girl’s name in Japan.

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I don’t exactly know what it means in Hebrew. Her doctor Dad is a Jewish-Canadian and artist Mom, my daughter, of course, is a Japanese-Canadian. My spine freezes whenever I think of the fate of Jewish people only six decades ago. My lovely Hana would have been herded to the gas chamber for being a half-Jewish. Rise of anti-Semitism brings me a chill, no matter how remote such likelihood. But you never know. Genocide and ethnic cleansing still happen. Persecution of Jewish people by Christians lasted nearly two thousand years. I totally understand why the Jews in the world think the existence of the State of Israel, so important for their sense of well-being. I believe that Israel must exists as a Jewish state.

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Should Israel must exists, it will not be able to live with enemies on all frontiers for ever. Secure future of any state lies in a friendly relationship with neighboring states. This is why I believe that Israel must leave the West Bank and East Jerusalem as soon as possible. In order to create those settlements, Israel made the lives of Palestinians extremely difficult. Oppression begets violence, and violence begets further oppression. Thus a downward spiral of violence accelerates.

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Israeli pull out of Gaza and from four settlements in northern West Bank is a good thing, if it is a start. Prime Minister Ariel Sharon is taking a big gamble. However, I am afraid that it may be too late too little. But it must succeed. It is the only way for the State of Israel to start walking toward the direction of survival. And it must, for the sake of the Jewry of the world, even for the sake of my grand daughter, little Hana.

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Tad Mitsui, Retired United Church Minister
1264 8^th Avenue South
Lethbridge, Alberta T1J 1R1
403) 328 6230

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rnThe natural calamity known as the worst in history, the Tsunami in Southeast Asia, killed perhaps at most 310,000 people. But over 200,000 died in a split second as the result of the two atomic bombs dropped on Hiroshima and Nagasaki in 1945. All together, according to Wikipedia free encyclopedia, about fifty million people died during the four years of the Second World War, including six million Jews. Thirty million were noncombatants. Millions have died since in military conflicts, though there has not been another world war. Human beings are our own worst enemies, not nature. How much money do we spend for peace? A pittance. It is shameful. We must spend more energy resolving conflict in the world.

In Palestine last year I began a faith journey of learning to share powerlessness.

I served as a volunteer for the Ecumenical Accompaniment Program in Palestine and Israel from the end of August until the end of November 2003. The World Council of Churches’ program was launched in response to an invitation by the churches in Jerusalem to journey with them on the road to peace. Ecumenical accompaniers, as volunteers in the program are called, work for three months with Palestinians and Israelis. I joined 19 accompaniers from Canada, Denmark, Norway, Sweden, Switzerland, United Kingdom, and the United States. We were placed in Israeli and Palestinian communities and organizations to live with them and share their lives in the state of a low-level war.

I lived with two clergy persons, a Norwegian and an American, in a Palestinian farming village called Jayyous on the border between Israel and the Occupied Territories, sharing the reality of living with the separation barrier. The barrier, constructed by Israel in the Occupied Territories to control the movement of Palestinians, is a concrete wall in some places and a wire fence in others. The fence in Jayyous created an immense difficulty for the villagers because it separated them from their fields, greenhouses, orchards, and olive groves-their livelihoods. There were two gates that, in theory, enabled farmers to go to work. Children also went to school through the gate. But the openings were irregular, and every day created an explosive atmosphere between the farmers and the soldiers who controlled the gates.

We went to work in the field with the farmers and shared the difficulty created by the barrier and the occupation. We also took turns watching the gate openings so that the peace would be kept between farmers and soldiers. The gate watch was also a human rights watch.

In Jesus, God became human, became powerless like us. Therein was Christ’s power, a “power of powerlessness” as Dietrich Bonhoeffer put it. In the mission of the church, are we not also sent into the world to share powerlessness?

Yet I know first-hand that sharing powerlessness is not easy. One day, we waited for two hours for soldiers to open the gate. Children were already late for school and the day was getting shorter for harvesting. Olives, the villagers’ main crop, as precious as gold, were overripe and drying up on the trees. Mohamed, one of the farmers, looked at me and my cell phone and demanded, “Call jesh (soldier in Arabic).” He didn’t know that I had no access to the Israeli military. I felt badly for being so powerless. I felt I was betraying my friends. As far as he was concerned, foreigners were supposed to fix things that needed fixing. Throughout recent history, we Europeans and North Americans have accepted proudly the role of the designated fixer-uppers of the world. So we feel badly when we cannot fix what needs fixing. In other words, we don’t know how to share powerlessness, because we think we are blessed with power and know-how to fix things for others. In the meantime, we confess that God only is almighty, yet God became human and lived among us. How does this belief fit in with our self-designated role?

The sun was high and scorching hot and the situation looked hopeless. Another day lost and the crop ruined. Women bunched together and started to cry. Louise, a visiting Danish journalist and an accompanier, joined the women and cried with them. Hearing this, a British volunteer of a solidarity organization said, “That must have been the most healing thing that happened to those women, sharing tears.” But men don’t cry. I wished we could.

What hinders us from sharing powerlessness is our passports and technology. Maren, another accompanier and a medical student, was riding an ambulance with a Palestinian colleague. She flashed her passport at the checkpoint, and the soldier just waved them on. She was proud that she could help in an emergency. But her Palestinian colleague said, “I wanted you to see the difficulty and delay we face every day when it is only us (Palestinians) in the ambulance.”

On another day, the soldiers were late again. So I phoned HAMOKED to find out what’s the problem. HAMOKED is an Israeli human rights organization that keeps up-to-date information about checkpoints and gates to help Palestinians cope with difficulties they may have to face in the course of their daily work. The representative at HAMOKED said, “I will call you back as soon as I find out what the problem is.” A second later, an Israeli jeep pulled up and the gate was opened. It was a coincidence. Abdul Karim, a man on a donkey, gave me a thumbs-up and said, “Thanks, you did it again.” “No, I didn’t,” I told him. It was a pure coincidence. But he didn’t hear me. A foreigner did his magic bit, again.

The people of Jayyous were incredibly gracious to us. I had heard about Palestinian hospitality but their kindness surpassed all imagination. But towards the end of my stay, I began to notice that this was not always the case with some older men and women. They were never rude, but kept a respectful distance from us. I can still picture this old man who always came with a donkey cart, dressed in a traditional kaffiyeh head cover and a worn-out dress jacket. He always sat silently on a boulder near the gate and patiently waited for the soldiers. I tried to engage him in conversation a few times sitting next to him. But he ignored me as though I wasn’t there. I could feel his embarrassment. Why could he not go to his olive trees, handed down from generation to generation for centuries, without help? Why did he have to depend on the foreigners?

I saw the same humiliated eyes in a soup kitchen in Montreal. While many seemed to have given up, some looked disdainful. I saw the same eyes in the feeding camps in Ethiopia in 1985. The Ethiopians were proud farmers. They arrived, near death and starving, because they stayed home too long trying everything, in the end selling all possessions, to feed the family on their own. They were still proud but defeated, looking humiliated. Am I reading too much into their stoicism? I don’t think so. Why? Because I know the humiliation of having to depend on other people’s charity.

It was in 1945 in Japan. We were all dying of starvation because the war totally destroyed the country’s infrastructure. I was desperately hungry and Americans gave us food. Was I grateful? I should have been. But the only thing I remember is an overwhelming feeling of humiliation. Sincere appreciation occurs in the relationship of equals. This is why unaffected giving and receiving are difficult among strangers. We have to be friends, brothers and sisters, first.

I am not saying that we should not help others. Jesus fed thousands, healed the sick, drove out demons, and raised the dead. But the central message of the gospel is that God came to be like us and lived among us in Jesus. His healing act was a spontaneous reaction of one human to another in the community of love. It was an act of solidarity, not an intervention.

I think about the violent history of the Middle East and the role played by the West. I now realize that there has been too much imposition and not enough solidarity. There has been too much tit-for-tat of violence that benefited foreign powers. Violence always begets more violence.

Let us not go to the trouble spots of the world and impose our solution any more. Let us first share the powerlessness of the suffering people. That is the Christ’s way.

Tad Mitsui is ….

THERE WAS A SPRING

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– A parable about water –

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There was a spring 500 yards away from the house I lived in; and a pipe was running through the 30 acre mission compound. Water was stored in a tank near the house on a 10 feet high platform for pressure. The terrain was full of mimosa and acacia trees; and a mud brick house stood in their midst. I lived there, in a village called Cana via Tyatyaneng, in the mountains of Lesotho; 7 km away from a town, for six months. I had no car. I was placed there to learn the language. I had a Sesotho language text book, and Sesotho speaking people who lived around me. This is my story; but it could easily be a parable about land and water in Canada.

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Water was abundant, clean, and cold. Ernest Bacquet, the first missionary from France, thought it was a gift from a grateful nation. Water came with the land from the king of Basotho, King Moshoeshoe I. He didn’t realize that no king of Basotho gave away land, because it was not his to give. Land belonged the creator, and people were the tenants. As far as the king was concerned, Monsieur Bacquet was subletting the land from him. No one owned land nor water in Lesotho. It belonged to God and people rent it and took care of it.

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But for Monsieur Bacquet, now la Societe Missionaire Evangeliques de Paris owned the land and water. In order to protect precious water from animals and other people, he built a concrete box – a cistern, around the spring and the fence around the compound. That was about two hundred years ago.

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A few weeks after I got there, a villager came to the door to tell me that there was a problem. Water stopped running at the community water tap. I had no idea I was expected to look after the whole water system. From then on, I repaired the gaps on the cistern to stop animal droppings getting in there, unplugged the pipe of a dead snake, or dug the whole five hundred yards to find the airlock. It was made quite clear to me that it was my job to fix whatever the problem. I didn’t mind, really. I learned later that another missionary installed a water tap in the village, so the women didn’t have to walk miles for water. I guess he thought he was being charitable; so did I – being charitable. Every morning there was a long line of women and girls waiting for their turn to fill up their jelly cans. I realized now that as far as the villagers were concerned, water didn’t belong to the mission; it was for everybody. Foreign missionaries like me were the custodians and the stewards. It was my job.

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There was severe drought that year. Rivers stopped running and many wells ran dry. So there was a longer line by the village tap everyday, and often the tank was empty by mid-afternoon. So we did everything we had to do with water earlier and earlier in the morning.

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One day, a tanker truck appeared. It sucked water out of the whole tank, leaving the villagers waiting until evening for the tank to fill up again. The truck came next day, and the next. Finally, I went to the driver and told him to go away. That evening, the manager of the South African trading post chain "Fraser’s" came to our door. He told me that their well was also dry and the store needed water to wash the animals and produce. He said that the store had as much right to the water as the villagers. I was angry. I said that I would stop the water at the source if the tanker truck appeared again.

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Next day, ‘Ntate Tente, my friend and teacher, came to tell me that I had to allow the Fraser’s to share water. The Fraser’s trading post was the only place where people could sell their livestock and produce. He suggested that I negotiated different times for villagers and the South African traders.

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Happily, I didn’t have to do anything, because by chance, the rains came back. But what if it didn’t, what could I have done?

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I hear that today there is a multi-billion dollar project in progress to dam up Lesotho’s only river, to supply water to South Africa.

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I crossed the barrier for the first time in twenty-two years.  At last, I saw what I had missed all those years on the other side.  It was just ordinary airport scenes; carousels, customs, foreign exchange, etc.  But I was almost in tears as a flood of emotion overcame me.  My fellow travellers asked me how I felt.  I could not answer.

On January 2, 1972, I was stopped at the passport control in the old terminal building of Jan Smuts Airport, Johannesburg.  It looked as though the Security officials were waiting for me.  All I had in my mind at the time was picking up my car and driving the 360 miles home to Lesotho, where Evelyn, who was seven, was waiting for me to prepared supper.  Her mother had gone that morning to a conference in Botswana.

A security man came to the passport control office, and asked me to follow him.  He already had my passport in his hand.  He took me to a room on the second floor, told me to wait, and went away.  Three days of hell began.

No, nobody did anything to me.  That was the worst part.  Nobody showed up, except a frightened black man in a blue coverall who delivered stale food from greasy spoons.  I had no idea why I was held.  I still don”t.

The thought of Evelyn alone in that house in Lesotho, not knowing where her dad was and wondering when she could eat supper and go to bed, drove me crazy.  There was nothing to read, listen to, or write with.  The door of course was locked.  The only window, which could not open, was facing another brick wall.  The ingredients of hell are the conditions in which you have absolutely no control over or knowledge of you own future. I would have said anything to anybody just to get out.  I was an easy torture victim.  Of course, I could not sleep during those 3 days, until the same security man came to give me a piece of paper ordering me to get out of the Republic of South Africa in 6 hours.  After that, I was not allowed to enter South Africa until 1994.

Since the 72 hours alone at Jan Smuts Airport, a few of the friends I met in the University Christian Movement of South Africa have died under mysterious circumstances or have been murdered – Abram Tiro, Mapetla Mohapi, Steve Biko, Rick Turner, and others.  Two Anglican friends lost body parts by letter bombs.  One man, I thought was a trusted friend, Craig Williamson, turned out to be a spy for the Security Police.

Many South African friends asked me, who didn’t known anything about my 3 days in detention asked me when I would come to visit them. I answered, "When freedom comes to your country."  Now I am here again.  It is a miracle.

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Don and I spent all morning since 5 at the North Gate of the village of Jayyous waiting for soldiers.  Don is a retired university chaplain from the U.S.  The sun was already high by 7 and the temperature soared to 38C.  This was September in Palestine.  There was no warning about the closure.  By 10 am, it is too hot to work in the field.  So most of the farmers, about 60 of them, just gave up and went home.  But Ahmed stayed on.   Someone in the field who stayed the nigh was waiting for him to bring food.  There was an old man with a donkey on the other side of the fence.  The donkey was loaded with tomatoes and guava.  I guess he harvested at night, just in case the gate would not open.  Ahmed collected all water in our canteens into a kettle, and started fire with dead branches to make tea.  Boy!  It was good!  There is nothing like sweet hot tea laced with plenty of sage on a scorching hot day.  We sipped it in the cool shade of an olive tree.  There was sharp loud, “Hee, Hoo.”  Donkey protested.  I don’t blame him.  It’s over 40 degrees!  He wants to go down on his back and have a good rub on the sand.  We threw some bread soaked in olive oil to the man on the other side and smuggled a tea through the wire fence.  He threw some guava back to us.  There was a picnic on both sides of the fence.

At 4 P.M., Don and I gave up.  There will be no soldiers coming today.  It’s one of those unannounced closures.  We started back, a  forty minutes climb.  About a half way up, we ran into another old man on a donkey heading down.  He looked like ready to spend the night in the field, so he could start tending tomatoes before sunrise.  Don with his elementary Arabic tried to tell him that the gate was closed for good.  There would be no Israelis coming to open the gate for you.  He stared at us for a long time.  “What the hell am I supposed to do?” expression needed no translation.  Then he looked up the sky and said, “Inshaala – God willing.”  He started to continue the descent anyway.  I guess he would not give up.  He would wait all night to save his crop.  We hadn’t known then that there was a suicide bomber attack in Tel Aviv the day before.  We had no radio nor TV.  The gate was closed for good.  It’s collective punishment.

Don and I started to climb up again.  I could not hold back tears.  I tried to hide it.  Men don’t cry,  in Canada anyway.  I noticed Don looking up.  He too was trying hard to hold back tears.  We looked at each other, and had a good cry together.  God willing, indeed.  What else can we say?

“Where do you see signs of hope?” is the most frequently asked question since I came back after three month stint in Israel and Palestine.  I know in theory the word ‘despair’ should not be in the Christian vocabulary.  But it is hard to hope, where there is so much hatred and suspicion between peoples.  Two peoples in despair.

In October again, the gates on the separation fence was completely closed for a few weeks after a female suicide bomber blew herself up in Haifa.  That was the fourth attack since I arrived in the Middle East.  It was the beginning of olive harvest and a few weeks before the month of Ramadan.  Farmers watched helplessly their most valuable crop wilt on the trees.  I could see bottled up anger swell.  People were ready to explode.  Tension was so thick, and walking into the streets of the village was like walking into thick hot humid air from a cool building.  I spoke to a reservist Israeli soldier who wore a grey hair ponytail obviously hating every minute.  “Don’t you see what you are doing?  You are making terrorists out of these gentle farmers who just want to make a living.”  “I know.” he said.  “But it’s order.  What can I do?”  And he looked at me almost on the verge of tears.  I didn’t see any sign of hope at the gate.

Where is a sign of hope in this?  I don’t see it.  Do we still dare to hope?  Yes,  only in faith where there is no sign of hope.  What sustains my faith is my South African experience.  When I was in Southern Africa during the seventies’, it was time of despair.  Many friends died fighting Apartheid.  One of them was Steve Biko; they beat him to death.  Four years later, a friend turned out to be a spy – Craig Williamson who had informed on Steve.  I then really despaired.  I saw no hope.  South Africa would never be free in my life time, I felt.  How wrong I was!!  Miracle happens, God willing – Inshaala.  That’s where I get strength to hold on to faith that enables me to dare to hope.  Not the visible sign.  I can’t see it, but I have hope.

In Palestine last year, I began a faith journey of  learning to share powerlessness.    In Jesus God became human.  Thus God was powerless like us, therein was Christ’s power, “power of powerlessness” as Dietrich Bonheoffer put it.   In the mission of the church, are we not also sent into the world to share powerlessness?

I served as a volunteer for the Ecumenical Accompaniment Program in Palestine and Israel (EAPPI) from the end of August until the end of November, 2003.  It is a program of the World Council of Churches which was launched in response to an invitation by the churches in Jerusalem.  The churches in Jerusalem gave  the wider churches an opportunity to journey together with them on the road to peace.  Ecumenical Accompaniers (as volunteers in the program are called) work for three months with Palestinians and Israelis.  I joined 19 Ecumenical Accompaniers from Canada, Denmark, Norway, Sweden, Switzerland, United Kingdom, and the United States.  We were placed in Israeli and Palestinian communities and organizations to live with them and to share their life in the state of a low level war.

In my case, I lived with two clergy persons, a Norweigian and an American, in a farming Palestinian village called Jayyous in the occupied West Bank, and shared the life with the separation barrier – the concrete wall in some places and the wire fence in others.  The fence in Jayyous created an immense difficulty for the villagers, because it separates them from their field, green houses, orchards, and olive groves.  In other words, they were separated from livelihood.  There were two gates that in theory enable farmers to go to work.   Children also went to school through the gate.  But the openings were irregular, and everyday created an explosive atmosphere between the farmers and soldiers who control the gates.

We went to work in the field with the farmers and shared the difficulty created by the barrier and occupation.  Also we took turns to watch the gate openings in order that the peace would be kept between farmers and soldiers.  The gate watch was also human rights watch.  I did gate watch most of the time.

One day, we waited for two hours for soldiers.  Children were already late for school, and the day was getting shorter for harvesting.  Olives, their main crop as precious as gold, were overripe and drying up on the trees.  Mohamed, one of the farmers, looked at me and my cell phone and demanded, “Call Jesh ( soldier in Arabic).”  He didn’t know that I had no access to the Israeli military.  I felt bad for being so powerless.  I felt I was betraying my friends.  As far as he was concerned, foreigners were supposed to fix things that needed fixing.  We, from Europe and North America throughout in the recent history, accepted proudly the role of the designated fixer-uppers of the world.  So, we feel badly when we can not fix what needs fixing.  In other words, we don’t know how to share powerlessness, because we think we are blessed with power and know-how to fix things for others.  But in the meantime, we confess that God only is almighty, and yet he became human and lived among us.  How does this belief fit in in our self-designated role?

The sun was high and scorching hot and the situation looked hopeless.  Another day lost and the crop ruined.  Women bunched together and started to cry.  Louise, a visiting Danish journalist and an accompanier, joined the women and cried with them.  Hearing this a British volunteers of a solidarity organization said: “That must have been the most healing thing that happened to those women – sharing tears.”  But men don’t cry.  I wished we could. 

What hinders us to share powerlessness is our passports and technology.  Maren, another accompanier and  a medical student, was riding an ambulance with her Palestinian colleague.  She flashes her passport at the check-point, and the soldier just waves them on.  She was proud that she could help in emergency.  But her Palestinian colleague said: “I wanted  you to see the difficulty and delay we face everyday when it is only us (Palestinians) in the ambulance.”  On another day, soldiers were late again.  So I phone HAMOKED to find out what’s the problem.  HAMOKED is an Israeli human rights organization who keep up-to-date and minute-by-minute information about check-points and gates to help Palestinians cope with and prepare for difficulty they may have to face in the course of their daily work.  The representative at HAMOKED said: “I will call you back as soon as I find out what the problem is.”  A second later, an Israeli jeep  pulled up, and the gate was open.  It was a coincident.  Abdul Karim, a man on a donkey, gave me a thumb-up and said: “Thanks, you did it again.”  “No, I didn’t.”  It was a pure coincidence.  But he didn’t hear me.  A foreigner did his magic bit, again.

People of Jayyous were incredibly gracious to us.  I had heard about Palestinian hospitality but their kindness surpassed all imagination.  But towards the end of my stay, I began to notice that it was not always the case with some older men and women.  They were never rude, but kept respectful distance from us.  I can still see this old man, for example, who always came with a donkey cart, in a traditional kaffiyeh head-cover and a worn out dress jacket.  He always sat silently on a boulder near the gate and patiently waited for the soldiers.  I tried to engage him a few times sitting next to him.  But he ignored me as though I wasn’t there.  I could feel his embarrassment.  Why can he not go to his olive trees handed down from generation to generation for centuries without help?  Why does he have to depend on the foreigners? 

I saw the same humiliated eyes in a soup kitchen in Montreal.  While many seemed have given up and servile, some of them looked disdainful.  I saw the same eyes in the feeding camps in Ethiopia in 1985.  They were proud farmers.  They arrived near death starving, because they stayed home too long trying everything, in the end selling all possessions, to feed the family on their own.  They are still proud but defeated, looking humiliated.  I am reading too much into their stoicism?  I don’t think so.  Why?  Because I know the humiliation of having to depend on other people’s charity.

It was in 1945 in Japan.  We were all dying of starvation, because the war totally destroyed infrastructure.  I was desperately hungry and Americans gave us food.  Was I grateful?  I should have been.  But the only thing I remember is overwhelming feeling of humiliation.  Sincere appreciation occurs in the relationship of equals.  This is why unaffected giving and receiving are difficult among strangers.  We have to be friends, brothers and sisters, first.

I am not saying that we should  not help others.  Jesus fed thousands, healed the sick, drove out demons, and raised the dead.  But the central message of the Gospel is that God came  to be like us and lived among us in Jesus.  His healing act was a spontaneous reaction of one human to another in the community of love.  It was an act of solidarity not an intervention.  I think about the violent history of the Middle East and the role played by the West.  Think about the twenty centuries of persecution of the Jews by the Christians to begin with, and the colonization and humiliation of the Arabs in the last few centuries.  I now realize that there has been too much imposition and not enough solidarity.  There have been several shaking of enemy hands in front of smiling Presidents..  Foreign interventions always are calculated acts to benefit mediators.  There have been  too many tit-for-tat of violence that benefitted foreign powers and violence always begets more violence.  I read Dr. Seus’ “A cat in a hat.” as a sad metaphor of foreign intervention, including many misguided good deeds of the missionary movement.

Let us not go to the trouble spots of the world and impose our solution any more.  Let us share powerlessness of the suffering people first.  That is the Christ’s way.

Tad Mitsui

When I lived in Montreal, there was a sales clerk at a nearby bakery, called "Yaegel Bagel", who was convinced that I was a famous writer.  He served me well, perhaps better than he served others, so I didn”t try very hard to destroy his illusion.

Soon after we arrived in Montreal in 1991, I was interviewed by a local religious reporter and also by Mardi Tyndall on United Church Television.  Meanwhile, Neil Bissoondath, a truly famous writer who lived in our neighbourhood, received a literary  award and was the talk of the town.  One day, I walked into "Yaegel Bagel", and this young man spotted me from behind the counter, and asked if I was in the newspaper.  So I said "Yes".  There was another person nearby who looked at me and said, "He was on the TV."  Then the sales clerk asked if I was a famous writer.  I said "No,."  But he persisted.  "Don”t you write?"  Of course, I do.  The answer was "Yes."  I didn”t tell him that nobody read what I wrote, because he never asked that.  A myth was established.  It”s been more than ten years.   Every time I go to Montreal and buy bagels I can see that he still thinks I am somebody.  Still he doesn”t know my name.

This has been my life since I came back to Canada from Switzerland in 1987.  Many people thought that I was somebody else.  In the beginning, they thought I was David Suzuki.  A  woman on a bus, a bit tipsy, stared at me in a bus and pointing her finger at me and said, "Aren”t you that Chinese guy on the TV?"  Another time I was paying for a weekend Toronto Star at a super market.  David Suzuki had a regular column in the Star. The cashier asked me, "Do you have to pay for what you wrote?"  There were many other similar incidents.  At the "Yuk yuk" on Queen Street, the MC spotted me and pointed at me with a spotlight, then and told other comedians to watch their language and be politically correct.  I didn”t think he said that because I was a United Church minister.  He thought I was somebody else – David Suzuki perhaps?

From 1988, things got worse.  Sang Chul Lee was elected to be the Moderator of the United Church.  Often, as I walked in or near the old United Church headquarters at ”85 St. Clair Avenue in Toronto, people stopped me, pumping my hand to congratulated me for being elected.  Elected to what?  They never mentioned.  None of them said that they thought I was Sang Chul Lee, the newly-elected Moderator.

I can assure you that I don”t look like either of them at all. I know them.  I took David Suzuki”s course at the UBC when I was
doing a graduate study in 1964.  He even came to our church to speak. He was a young professor who was just starting his career.  I knew Sang Chul very well; he and I lived in the same house, when I was writing my thesis and he was an Ordained Supply for my congregation.  No, I don”t look like them at all.  Why didn”t they ask my name?  They assumed that I was somebody else.  Should I be happy that I did not look like Ho Chi Minh?

I was once astonished to see Tenjiwe Mtintso flying into Lesotho from South Africa to meet with me.  She became an MP for the African National Congress in 1994, but at the time, in 1977, was under a Banning Order in `King Williams`Town in Natal.  Those who saw the movie "Cry Freedom" should remember a gutsy young black woman reporter working for the "Daily Despatch", edited by Donald Wood.  That is Tenjiwe Mtintso.  After Steve Biko was murdered, his organizations were banned and all his colleagues were either imprisoned or banned.  Tenji was imprisoned, tortured, released and then banned.  Among the many restrictions placed on her were that she had to report to the Police once a week, was not allowed to move out of King Williams Town Magistrate District, and was not allowed to see more than one person at a time., etc. etc.  I was working at the time out of Geneva, Switzerland, in many projects to support liberation organizations like Biko”s in Southern Africa.  Since I had been expelled from South Africa in 1972, I had established a pattern of meeting with South African colleagues in Lesotho.  On that particular trip, I was to see Griffith Mxenge from Durban, a lawyer representing many of those Biko”s former colleagues.  Next year, Mxengehe was found shot dead in a ditch in Durban.  When I was meeting with Griffith, I got a message that I was to meet someone at the airport.  Griffith and I could not believe our eyes, when we saw Tenji coming off the plane.  She was a known dare devil, but violating the Banning Order and flying off to another country?  No!

She said that it was easy, she had borrowed someone else”s passport, bought a ticket, and flown out.  There was another woman
sitting in her house pretending to be Tenji.  Tenji was going back home.  She said, "Those South African police can not tell one black from another.  We have no name, you see.  We are just ”Bantu”."
     
That was true.  When I was teaching at the University of Botswana, Lesotho, and Swaziland, many students borrowed other
people”s passports or those infamous "passbooks" and went to South Africa for shopping.  We used to laugh about those border Police who never bothered to look Africans straight into their faces.  Because as far as the Apartheid regime was concerned, Black people had no names; they were just "Bantu".

On the other hand, when you get to know a person by name, other superficial attributes disappear.  You forget about
difference in their physical features.  My daughter came home once from a summer job hunt laughing, "Do you know I am a visible
minority?"  She thought it was some kind of a joke.  I am grateful that she had not been exposed to any situation where she was forced to be conscious of her minority status in Canada.  That apparently never happened until someone told her that she could apply for some jobs as representing a "Visible minority".   We live in a better country than many others.

Once I sat next to a Mathematics professor of a South African University in a airplane, on the way to London.  We had a wonderful conversation all the way.  He was fascinated by my story about one Old Testament Professor, who successfully compared the history and spirituality of South African Black nations with that of the Jewish nation.  At one point in our conversation, some thing I said triggered a question from the mathematician.  "Is he a black man?" he asked. I was taken a back a bit and had to think for a second.  Of course, come to think of it, he is a black man, very much so.  But for me he was Desmond Tutu, my neighbour and a colleague.

rn

I recently moved to dry and sunny Southern Alberta with treeless mountains and gullies.  This landscape started a chain reaction of memories leading to my life in a small village in Lesotho in Southern Africa and back to Canada and Toronto”s search for a new land-fill site.   It was in 1969 in a small isolated village where I learned Sesotho – the language of the country.  I loved the way
its address was written – "Cana via Tyatyaneng".  We lived in a 150 year old mission station away from any urban center.   The house was built next to a church and a primary school.  We received lessons from a French missionary in the mornings using a text book written by an English woman.  We spent afternoons walking around the village and talking with people.  It was intended to be an opportunity to practice the language we learned in the text book.   We enjoyed looking and walking around more than practicing the language.

The village primary school had about 300 children.  Some of them were boarders from far away villages.  It was wonderful to hear them singing at night.  There was no book, nor radio, nor TV.  So singing and dancing were the only entertainments for them.  And it was good.  When I heard a South African singing  group "Black Mombazo", I remembered those nights going to bed hearing children singing in the mountains of Lesotho.  They sounded like that.  It didn”t take me too long to notice that there was no washroom in the school compound. Children fetched water from the one and only water tap in the village enjoying visits with other
people while waiting for their turns at the water tap.  So,  I knew how the washing part of the toilet was taken cared of.   But what about other things?    "Where do they go?"  I wasn”t sure if it was an OK thing to ask such a question, so I didn”t.   I had not figured that out until I got talking with a Canadian doctor who was working for a hospital run by our partner church – the Lesotho
Evangelical Church.   Doug Abby came from sunny Okanagan, B.C.  He and I often had fun talking about some of the silly things  foreign "development jet-setters" did while trying to "civilize" Africa.  One  day the topic was the toilet.   "Latrine" was the favorite word used by the aid agencies in their project proposals.  It didn”t seem that any explanation was needed why the latrine had to be built in every public institution.  It was a common sense first step towards "civilization";  to build an outhouse everywhere there were people.  But Doug  surprised me.  He said that it was a stupid idea in some parts of  Lesotho to build the outhouse.  He argued: "The country is poor and land is badly eroded.   But the Sun is plentiful.   It is hot and strong, and shines all the time like it does in Okanagan."  If anything, the Sun was too much and that created problems.  Drought was a constant threat.  And in such a place,  Doug thought that the way "they go" traditionally was very sensible.  I didn”t get it.  "What do you mean?" I asked.

"Have you noticed school kids taking a walk one by one towards donga?" Doug asked.  Yes, I did notice that.  I thought that they were just having a nice walk.  "Donga", by the way,  is the word for the gully.  In Alberta and interior of the Northwestern States, they call it "coulee".  It”s a crevasse which is created by erosion, often the result of over grazing and/or  deforestation.  Every rain sweeps scarce top soil away into the rivers and into the ocean, because there was no vegetation to stop it.  Donga is  a part of the familiar landscape in Lesotho.   They are everywhere.    They made the country looking like  a wrinkled face of a very old person.  People may call them "Moonscape".  Some of them are very deep and wide, but others are 6 feet deep or less and narrow.   You can jump in and out of them easily.  You can have privacy there.  It”s where a boy meets a girl.  Doug said, "They go,  in the donga."  I didn”t know that.  Polite people don”t tell us about their bathroom habits, I guess.  Doug continued,  "The Sun is so strong that it kills all germs in minutes.   It can kill you too, if you stay out in the Sun too long.  In a few hours, cow dung becomes cooking fuel.  It”s very clean.  But if you build a community outhouse, you create an instant germ factory.  It”s dark and warm in there.  Germs do very well there, thank you very much."  Of course, this life-style would not work in populated urban situations.  But
Doug had a point or two.  Every place has its own unique and appropriate ways, and the other people”s ways are not always good in every situation.  The so-called civilized solution does not always work everywhere, and can even make the existing situation worse.  Doug”s another point which is an important lesson for the technologically advanced people like us is that, in Western
civilization, we often don”t take responsibility for the consequence of our own actions.   But we must.  We must realize that our "civilized" life-style often lets us forget about the mess we leave behind, just like the same way we flush the toilet.  Somebody has to take care of  it, but we think it is not our problem.  We ignore the mess that is there in a dark and warm pit.   It will come
back to haunt us sometime.

We had a foster child for a few years.  He was fascinated by the toilet, as we began to toilet-train him.  Every time he flushed it, he looked at the whole process with intense fascination.  When it”s all gone, he would declare, "All gone!" and sigh.   He thought it was an absolutely amazing magic.  "Where does it go?" he asked.  "Sewage," I said.  "Where does the sewage go?"  "To the river," I said.  But I didn”t tell him that we drunk that water and ate the fish that lived in that river.  I knew that, but I didn”t want to talk about it.   We know that it isn”t "all gone, " but pretend that it is.  How long can we keep pretending that the mess we create is taken cared of?  

My Old Testament Professor in Japan studied in Germany during the Nazi era.  He told us about his visit to the sewage treatment plant in Berlin which was the pride and joy of the Nazi regime.  They claimed it to be another example of the greatest achievements of German science.  I suppose it was a rare thing during the thirties of the last Century.  He was shown a glass of water.  It was the end result of the sewage treatment process.  The guide asked my professor if he wanted to drink it.  "It is absolutely clean.  In fact, it is cleaner than tap water," he said.  But my teacher could not drink it, because he saw how the intake had looked like.  I guess it is our blissful ignorance that lets us forget what we put into our environment, and drink and eat out of it.  I belong to the generation who saw our lives progressed from the outhouse to the indoor plumbing, from the septic tank to the municipal sewage system.  We think the progress is wonderful.  It makes life more convenient at every step and makes our life cleaner and more sanitary; sort of  "more civilized."  But we forget that often what we call ”progress” is shifting responsibility to others without asking if it is OK to do that.  We think it”s "all gone."  But it isn”t all gone.

We are brainwashed to assume that progress is always good and wonderful.  We have to realize that it isn”t always so.  We must think deeply what progress means and what it is doing, not just now, but for the future.  I love to remember and retell the story about an old African wise gentleman who didn”t want to take the ride which was offered to him.  One hot day, an old man
was sitting by a dusty mountain road looking very tired.  An eager young foreigner stopped his Land Rover and offered him a ride.  But the old man said, "No."  The foreigner didn”t understand it.  So he insisted.  The old man said, "I walked a long way.  I sit here waiting for my spirit to catch up with me."  I am not against progress.  I am not a Ludite.  But I happen to think that we all have to stop and think about the consequence of  the steps we take.   Stewardship is not only about setting priorities and give money to church.  I think it is also about being responsible .

rn

"Why do we insist on settling disputes in a hurry?"

rn

Japanese language does not have articles.  Neither has the language spoken by Basotho people of Southern Africa, Sesotho.  The 1992 General Council of the United Church in Fredericton spent a lot of time arguing whether the Bible is "a" foundational authority or "the" foundational authority.   People in Japan or in Southern Africa would not have understood, what the fuss was all about.

Another example:  The word for God is neuter in those two languages.  Lot of our discussions about gender of God must be strange to Japanese and Basotho ears.

From those two small examples alone, we can readily admit that many of us engage in theological discourse with the mind-set conditioned by culture.  We must realise that we must distinguish issues that are vital to our faith from that which are basically cultural baggage.

If we believe that Christian faith is universal, we must recognise some of the western cultural hang-ups in our beliefs and practices, so that we don”t spend too much time defending them.  However, the greatest difficulty in doing this is to recognize that our desire for accuracy, clarity, focus, and precision may be a cultural obsession or based on political expediency.  The medieval Church burnt many people at stake, because they described their beliefs too accurately.  Were those issues so important to lose their lives for?  I think not.  

We laugh about some of the ancient theological debates today, like the debate about the number of angels who could dance on a head of a pin.  We don”t realise, however, that some of the discussions we engage in today can be funny.  Some are puzzling to people in different cultures.  Many aspects of our faith are mysteries.  Perhaps they will remain so for many more years, even for ever.  Mystery, after all, is very much the nature of our faith.  So why settle the difference in a hurry?

I went to Lesotho as a young missionary.  At the School for Missionaries in Paris in France, I met a veteran missionary who worked in that country for many years.    He was a sort of burn-out veteran who forgot any idealism a long time ago.  He said of the people I was about to go to, "the Basotho are liars.  It”s in their culture."     I began to learn the language, and read about the founder of the Basotho nation.  He was Paramount Chief Moshoeshoe.  According to a European writer, Moshoeshoe was a superb diplomat and negotiator.  "He was a smooth, slippery character who could be skilfully deceitful and would lie for convenience."   He sounds like many of our politicians, doesn”t he?
     
As I began to learn the ways of people, however, I began to understand what those European experts of local culture saw in practice.   What they thought were lies were not what we understand as malicious deceit.  It was sort of like flattering remarks to make people feel good.  In Basotho culture, language must not be used to insult or hurt others.  It is a tool for social harmony.  So punishment for insulting an older person verbally, for example, is heavier than the one for physical assault.  Words are for encouragement and for making people feel good.

It can be nuisance at times.  If you ask a villager how far your destination is, the answer always is "not very far."  Or, it is, "One more mountain."  They say so even though it may be a day”s trip on a horse back.  They rarely say outright "no".  It usually is, "yes, but".  In fact, there is no word for "no" exactly.  Do you call these ”lies”?  

When you think of the number of lives lost in the disputes on fine points of doctrines and ideologies in our history, you would wonder what was so much at stake.  I would rather live with ambiguity.  Wouldn”t you?  I should think this way of living and letting live in ambiguity is sort of like ”love”.  Wouldn”t you? I prefer ambiguity to precision in our belief, if it means life rather than condemnation and sometimes death.

There was a festivity in a village hosted by the Chief.  Everyone was invited, but was expected to contribute something, food, drink, or entertainment.  One man found there was someone who did not give anything.  He grabbed the freeloader by the neck and brought him to the Chief.  He demanded justice.  Curiously, the Chief severely reprimanded the justice seeker for disturbing the peace.  He said that an offender of rules can repent and pay retribution.  On the other hand, damaged relationship and broken harmony take a long time to heal.

I often wonder why we so often are eager to settle issues of faith in a hurry.  And for what reason?   It is interesting, isn”t it, that the very important question of ”who Christ is” took a few hundred years to settle.  It was at last enshrined in the Nicene Creed in the fourth century.  Even that had to depend on the Roman Imperial power which invoked an Ecumenical Council.  Without the power of the Emperor, probably the early church people would have had to spend a few more centuries to settle the issue, if they did so at all.   The Emperor needed to settle the theological quarrel about the nature of Christ, because the dispute was endangering the unity of Roman Empire.  I don”t think that the Emperor was all that interested in settling the question of whether Christ was God or human.  His concern was primarily political.

It is also interesting to note that the first major split in the Christian Church occurred because of the Nicene Creed.  I often wonder how many of the causes for the split in the church  could have been avoided if the question of faith was not linked to some form of political power and control.

I am sure that in an ideal society, persons of different views can live in peace side by side.  Indeed, I believe that a mark of a civilised society is where the members can  disagree and yet can live together.  It is a sick society if it has to expel or reject persons because of a disagreement over faith.  

I have a deep suspicion that intolerance  on faith matters may be motivated by latent desire for power and control, and is not so much as the result of love of truth.  Salman Rushdie, who has been targeted for assassination because of a book he wrote said, "Any religion, which claims to have explanations on the world and tries to link up with a political power, has a beginning of Fascism."  I think he is right.  When you hear that a group of Hindu fanatics were attacking and destroying an ancient Mosque, you know that this has to do with politics not faith.  Hinduism is, as far as I know,  the most tolerant religion there is.  It believes that all religions are different paths to the truth.  

We Christians also often behave strangely, if we should be the believers of the religion which advocates the universality of forgiveness and love.  Quarrelling over doctrinal matters should be an exercise in the search for truth, not a path that might lead to exclusion of the vanquished.  

Kosuke Koyama, who teaches at the Union Theological Seminary, makes an interesting point by comparing the Crucified mind and the Crusading mind.   He believes, and I agree, that "Crusade" is not a Christian language, ours is the crucified Christ, who loves all of us just or unjust, right or wrong.  

rn

Please don’t ask me where I come from.

rn

People ask me where I came from, whish is a difficult question for me.  I have to ask back, “How far do you want me to go back?”  Probably they expect me to say that I come from Korea, China, or Japan.  I suspect that people are not ready for me to say that I came from Chateauguay in Quebec, Geneva in Switzerland, or Lesotho in Africa.  I was born in Japan to be sure, but that was before three score years and ten.  Yes, I am a Canadian of Japanese descent.  But that classification hardly explains who I am.  If you want to know exactly who I am, you will have to hear my whole life story.  Otherwise you have to accept me as I am.

One day during the early eighties, a CBC Radio reporter came to interview me.  She was working on a program about  “missionaries.” I thought that she came to me because I was a missionary of the United Church of Canada in Lesotho in Southern Africa.  I had a good time talking about my experience in Lesotho where I spent seven and a half wonderful years teaching at a university.  Not only did I speak about my teaching experience, I spoke also about making friends with some extraordinary people like Desmond Tutu and Steve Biko..  Desmond taught in the same department with me.  Steve was a prominent student leader in the University Christian Movement of South Africa in which I was a Regional Director.   I also spoke about some exciting experiences, like traveling through the war-torn Mozambique in an armed convoy or being banned from South Africa, and a 73 hour detention leading to an expulsion from South Africa.  I thought that the interviewer was quite happy to record those stories.  She said that they were extraordinary.  She taped about three hours of the interview.  

When the program was broadcasted, however, the segment from the interview with me was a few seconds clip about my being a Christian in the non- Christian Japan.  My recorded voice said only one sentence, “Being a Christian in Japan, I was a foreigner  in my own country.”   I suspect that the producer didn’t expect a person of Japanese descent to be a Canadian missionary in Africa.  The interviewer apologetically informed me that my part in the CBC program was intended to have been the condition of  “being a Christian in a non-Christian country,” or some thing along that line.  So, all my experience as a missionary was nixed, because I was a Canadian of non-European origin.  

At another occasion, I met a Dutch man at a meeting in Ethiopia who was working for the Africa desk of a Dutch missionary agency.  He was puzzled by the fact that I was working in Africa.  Het asked me,  “Aren’t there more work in Japan for you?”  I could have asked him the exactly same question; about more work to do in the mostly secularized Netherlands.  I could also have said that there was more growing and vibrant churches in Africa, where the number of Christians was increasing faster than in any other continents.  But I didn’t.  Nevertheless, I was appalled by his naivete.

My problem with Canadian multi-culturalism is that it encourages stereotypes and boxes a person into a prescribed mold.  Granted, it has done a marvelous job making people of other non-Anglo-Franco cultures and races normal in the Canadian society.  But there are problems if one’s identity depends solely on one’s ethnicity and culture.  Not everybody accepts one’s ancestral tradition totally.  There are people who want to get away from their traditions.  Once I was doing a walking tour of Cologne in Germany with an Australian colleague.  We were totally in awe of a marvelous city which was full of history.  We met a young man at a beer joint.  He was a local and volunteered to give us a guided tour.  We were grateful.  However, he had hundreds of questions about Australia and Canada.  He said to us at the end of the day that he knew where we came from by our speech and wanted to find out about our countries.  He wanted to migrate to Australia or Canada.  We said, “Why?”  We didn’t understand why anyone wanted to move away from such a beautiful and historic city.  But he said that the city was so full of history and tradition that it was stifling for a young man like him.  He just wanted to get away from it all.  You don’t box such a person into the same box he or she is trying to escape from.  This doesn’t mean that such a person hates his or her country of origin.  It simply means that one feels one has to dictate one’s own destiny without feeling chained.  Everyone has to have freedom to choose a course of one’s life.  

On the first day at my protestant chaplain’s office at the university in Lesotho, I was very excited when a Botswana student phoned to make an appointment – the very first client.  He said he wanted to make  a “serious request.”  He came in, hesitated a little, and asked me if I “could teach him Karate.” What a let down.  I didn’t know Karate.  In fact, I hated lessons in marshal arts in the middle school because of its military overtone.  I was no use for him, a failure, not because I was not a good spiritual counselor nor my theology was weak, but because I was a Japanese who didn’t know Karate.

One can be quite content being ignorant of one’s ethnicity, too.  I don’t think there is anything wrong in that.  Try Hawaiians.  Many of them have so much mixed racial background that they are not sure which particular race they belong to.  Yet, I don’t know any Hawaiian who is unhappy because they don’t know exactly who they are.  In fact, they are some of the happiest people I have encountered.  My daughter grew up in a multi-racial university staff community in Lesotho.  Her friends were Africans and Europeans of various colors of skin.  Asians were not many, none in fact, of the Oriental variety  The first time she saw the Oriental person, after the age of self-consciousness, was the time when she ran into many development aid workers from China at the airport in Lesotho.  She was afraid of them, because she had never seen such a people who did not belong to any category of people she had known.  When she came back to Canada, she was classified officially a member of  “visible minority”.  She came home from school one day and said, “Did you know I was a visible minority?”  She thought it was very funny.  

I do not dislike things Japanese.  But I like what I like and don’t like a lot of things Japanese.  Nobody can push stuff I dislike into my throat.  Some of my favorite foods are Japanese and enjoy preparing some of them.  But the best two in my culinary repertory are French.  In terms of the geographical areas I am interested in, I am passionate about the issues related to Africa and the Middle East.  In fact, I am not too familiar with Asian affairs.  We lived in the Global Village.  Much of classical arts now belong to all of the human race no mater where they originate.  Aren’t some of the best Symphony orchestra conductors non-European?  They don’t have to specialize in African, Middle Eastern, or Oriental music.  I heard some time ago a debate about Seiji Ozawa’s interpretation of European music.  The question was if his ethnicity influenced his interpretation.  The question did not make sense to me.  Mozart is Mozart interpreted by a Finish, an Indian, or a Japanese conductor.  In the same token, good food is a good food regardless of the cook who prepared it.  Only question that should be asked is the quality of the art.  There is such a thing as an universal standard.  Likewise, I believe there should also be a Canadian standard.

When I came to Canada, my first pastorate was a United Church of Canada Japanese congregation.  To be sure, it was organized according to the United Church Manual.  But the only thing United Churchy about it was how it was governed.   It was in many other ways distinctly Japanese.  Japanese Christians in Canada were mainly converts as the result of the work by the Methodist Church of Canada.  And the first church was founded in 1892.  So the Japanese church was not new in Canada.  There were many second and third generations Japanese Canadian United Church members.  

However, the church in Vancouver was different in 1957.  The uniqueness of the congregation in Vancouver was the fact that many members were, unlike other Japanese United Church congregations, relatively new converts.  Many of them became Christians as the result of the work done by the United Church of Canada during their removal and internment beginning in 1941.  They felt betrayed by their own country when Canada treated them as “enemy aliens.”  But the United Church stayed sympathetic to Japanese Canadians throughout the war against the tide of hostile sentiment among many Canadains.  For those converts, the United Church represented the best of Canada.  They might not have changed their culture and life-style on the surface, but their conversion was a paradigm shift at the core.  They adopted the core spirit of Canada as their foundational philosophy, and their conversion to Christian faith by joining the United Church of Canada represented a profound commitment to Canada.

One of them in my congregation who converted to Christianity was Mr. Sen-ichiro Asai.  He became Christian at the age of 60 during the war at an internment camp in Tashme a few kilometres west of Hope.  He told me about many cultural events that were popular before the war.  He spoke about exhibitions in marshal arts, flower arrangement, Japanese dance, etc.  They were well attended popular events by Canadians.  But, “Did those cultural events changed the mind about us? Apparently they didn’t,” he said.  Canadians, some of whom might have attended those events and liked them demanded our expulsion, just the same, he said.  “Except,” he continued, “the church, CCF, and the Canadian Jewish Congress.  They were the ones who lived by the principles of British fair play and justice.  And they helped us.”  So he was baptized, and joined the United Church.  He never learned English.  But he was a proud Canadian and an Elder of Vancouver Japanese United Church.  I met many people like Mr. Asai in Vancouver.

I believe that there has to be a set of core values that binds Canadians together.  Merely accepting all the cultural traditions of all Canadians and term Canada as a mosaic or a bowl of tossed salad does not unite us.  Multi-culturalism characterizes Canada as a tolerant country.  Tolerance may work as a uniting force of a country in an ideal world that has no conflict. But the world in reality has many conflicts.   It may also work if Canada is a neutral country like Switzerland.  But neither option is viable under the circumstances where Canada is placed geographically and politically.  I don’t think Canadians are prepared to pay the cost of being neutral.  Then there has to be a decision to be made about alliance.  That is where the values come to fore as an operating principle.  Our decision not to participate in the wars in Viet Nam in the sixties and in Iraq in 2003 was not based in our principle of tolerance.  It was based on our belief that Canada is not a part of an empire.  Domination and subjugation of another country without consent of the world wide community is not according to our value.

We do enjoy living in a tolerant and multi-cultural country and intend to keep it that way.  But choosing our partner also is our value based practice.  So how is a decision to pick our partners made?  Multi-culturalism helps us accept people who are different from us, but does not help us reject some of them.   Our love of humus, Kabuki, Mozart, or Chardonnay is not enough to help choose an enemy.  It used to be a religion or an ideology that did that.  But that is no longer the case.  It has to be something we all agree on.  It has to be the principle based on values that help us make tough decisions.  When we know what it is that unites us, we may have to reject or discard some cherished traditional practices.  We have already done that with female genital mutilation, which is to some traditionalists as sacred as circumcision of male infant child.  A fierce debate is raging in France about the outward manifestation of religious beliefs in public schools, because secularism is an important value based principle is France since Revolution.  Canada is moving towards opposite direction.  I like the Canadian way better so long as it allows flexibility for me to be whatever I want to be and do.  But my question is: Do we not need more if Canadians have to be united to undertake a common project together as a nation?

Two wars in Iraq raised important challenges on the question of the uniquely Canadian values and multi-culturalism.  Many Canadians of Arab and Muslim background became victim of racism and stereotyping.  It is possible to be both a devoted Muslim and a patriotic Canadian, who would take up arms against an Islamic country for Canada.  Japanese Canadians faced that challenge during the second world war.  Some Japanese Canadians, at last towards the end of the war, were permitted to enlist and went to war from the internment camps to fight the Japanese Army in Burma.  But, for a good reason, many Japanese Canadians did not trust fellow Canadians’ ability to distinguish culture and country and hid their chopsticks when there was a knock on the door during the dinner.  Many Jewish compatriots fall victim of anti-Semitism because of what Israel government does to the Palestinians.  Those are stupid mistakes but with seriously negative consequences.  Such a mistake does grave injustice and hurt people badly.  This is why I believe that we must keep working on the distinct Canadian values in the age of multi-culturalism.  Multi-culturalism alone is not enough.   Religion or British tradition does not work any more as the national standard.

This is why I believe that it is important for me to insist on being seen as what I am, not just as a Japanese Canadian who knows a good sushi restaurant.

I served the church all my life since coming to Canada in 1957 at age 25.  But unlike other Canadian born colleagues, I have always had a problem participating in the observance of Remembrance Day.  I always feel sorry for those aging veterans who had to stand, or increasingly in recent years sit in the wheel chairs, outside on the damp, cold days.  It’s always cloudy, cold and damp.  I hate cold damp days.  But that is not the reason why I have apprehension about attending Remembrance Day observances, because I do believe them to be an important part of ministry.  The reason I feel apprehensive is that  I have never been able to honor the war dead in my family except in silence.  I felt inappropriate to honor those in my own family openly, because they died fighting for Japan.   

Histories are always written by victors;  there is no official remembrance day for the vanquished in the triumphant nations.  This is the problem in a country like Canada whose citizenship includes many nationalities.  Even though those three uncles died in wars, their deaths are not honored in Allied nations, where they were “the enemy.”  War is ugly.  There is no way to make it pretty.  We hide images of our dead heroes and expose those of “the enemy.”  We demonize the opposition, taking away their dignity as people with families who mourn them, a faith that sustain them, and a lost future. That has always been my problem with Remembrance Day.   I believe that all the war dead should be remembered including civilians.  And only by remembering all of them on both sides of the conflicts, we can mean what we say that we pray for peace.

My maternal great-grand parents had two sons and a daughter (my mother’s mother).  Both boys died in 1900 during the Russo-Japan War.  Many people in Canada probably don’t know about that war or that Tzarist Russia lost it.  A decisive battle was fought between Japanese Imperial Navy and Tzarist Russian Navy on Japan Sea.  Russia’s Pacific fleet had been sealed in a port and made immobile, and the Baltic fleet which circumnavigated half the globe to face Japanese navy was completely annihilated.  That was in 1900.   Next year, two Armies fought over a hill overlooking the Chinese city of Yingkon, which had previously been conceded to Russia by the Chin Dynasty of Imperial China.  Russia lost that hill also.   Tzar conceded the defeat and proposed armistice.  That war ended Tzarist Russian ambition for China and launched that ambition in Japan.  My Grand-uncle Masao was a Navy Commander died while he was leading a feet of old cargo boats in order to seal the port of Yingkon, where Russian Pacific fleet was based.  He was ordered to sail those old  rusty pieces of metal, that had been in the scrap yards waiting to be salvaged to the mouth of the port and scuttle them.  But while  he was still aboard the sinking boat, the land-based artillery fires blew it up.   He was 28 years old.   The other grand-uncle, Shiro, died of dysentery in a field hospital in the same year at the age of 23.  Because the Mitsui family no longer had a son to continue the family name, when my mother married my father, they together inherited the Mitsui family name.

Uncle Mitsugu was my father’s youngest brother.   As a boy, he lived in Seoul, Korea, where the rest of my father’s family lived.  Before the war, he came to stay with us for a few years, because he wanted to go to a high school in Japan.  As soon as he finished high school, he was conscripted into the Imperial Japanese army and sent to fight in the battle of Guadacanal in the Solomon Islands in 1944.  Some people must remember that the battle for Guadalcanal was where the tide of war in the Pacific turned north and the Allied forces began their way towards Japan, one island at a time.  Many Japanese soldiers starved and rotted in the steaming and stinking bug-infested jungles, never to be found.  The movie “Thin Red Line” produced and directed by Sean Penn was about the battle of Guadalcanal.  We don’t know whether my uncle died at sea before landing or on the island of Guadalcanal.  Uncle Mitsugu still is officially “missing-in-action and presumed dead”, because there was no way to find his remains.  He was only 18 when he died and I was 11 years old.

All three uncles were Christians.  In fact, the Mitsuis have always been a proud Christian family since the end of Tokugawa Shogun dynasty in late 1800”s when Christianity was still illegal in Japan.  For my great-grand parents, it was a Christian duty to be patriotic to the newly reformed state which was based on the western model of constitutional monarchy.  They saw the beginning of the modern, industrialized Japan.  The constitution clearly declared freedom of religion.  So,  as Christians and Japanese,  my grand-uncles Masao and Shiro had no problem choosing a life in the military as their careers.  

The case of Uncle Mitsugu was different.  After two failed military coup d’etat during the 1930”s, Japanese politics turned radically to the right, and a process towards militarization and  absolute monarchy began in earnest.  The fragile democracy, which briefly thrived in the 1920”s and early 30”s when my father was growing up, was snuffed out.  It was a difficult time for Christians in Japan.  And my father, who was educated in the liberal tradition at a seminary founded by American Methodists, had to think very hard about  his faith and his love of  the country.  Believing that being faithful to Christ was the most patriotic option,  he became a pacifist and paid heavily for this conviction during the Second World War.  Uncle Mitsugu was very much influenced by my father.  He taught me in Sunday School briefly at my father’s church in downtown Tokyo.  We met in a dusty little room on the fourth floor of the bell tower covered with creeping ivy vines.  It was a junior class, and had a name   “Nozomi” – Hope.  I remember the first lesson: Uncle Mitsugu spoke about what it meant to hope.  When he was drafted into the army, he went most reluctantly.

My two grand-uncles are buried in the United Church cemetery in St. Louis-de-Gonzague in Quebec in the midst of lovely dairy country between Chateauguy and St. Lawrence rivers surrounded by maple and sumach trees.  Their ashes were brought into Canada from Japan and re-interred there together with those of my great-grand parents, and of my father, because there is no other surviving member of my branch of the “Mitsuis” in Japan.  My favorite uncle is remembered on the covers of some of the Voices United hymn books at Howick United Church in Quebec, which was my very last pastorate.  I was the minister of Howick United Church for five years after the official retirement.  Howick is a close knit dairy farming community of about 3000 people – half Francophone Catholic half Scottish Protestant, where practically everybody is related to each other in some way.  On Remembrance Day, every war dead is remembered and their names read aloud.  Tears are shed as though they died yesterday.  It is the time not only of remembrance of  the war dead in their families but also of affirmation of the tie that binds them together.  On Sunday before Remembrance Day,  all the churches in the community come together and have a joint ecumenical service instead of their own Sunday services with the local branch of Royal Canadian Legion as a co-sponsor.

The dropping of the first atomic bomb on Hiroshima, Japan on August 6, 1945 and the second one on Nagasaki a few days later led rapidly to the end of World War II in the Pacific.  Earlier that summer in June, one beautiful day in a fishing port city of Numazu in Japan, to which I had been recently evacuated from Tokyo, I was walking home with my friend from school.  Streets were covered by a canopy of fresh green leaves of the trees.  An “All clear” siren indicated that bombers had left the area and it was safe to walk.  We were happy, kicking stones and just fooling around like typical young boys.  Suddenly there was the sound of a bomb falling from the sky.  So we hit the ground and covered with our hands ears, eyes, and nostrils, as we were all trained to do during those last days of war.  It was close; noise was deafening.  When I got up, my friend was nowhere in sight.  It was a direct hit.  There was only a long piece of intestine hanging from a tree branch.  My friend was blown to bits and blown away completely.

In Western culture, good is beautiful and bad is ugly.  But the problem is: war is; war is by definition the act of destruction, hence its result is always ugly.  This is why as soon as the images of the body bags of “our” soldiers in Viet Nam, or of the naked dead American soldiers in Somalia appear on the television, the public rapidly turn against the war.  In the movie “Saving Private Ryan”, the scenes of D-Day begins by showing body parts of American soldiers who were blown apart by German bombardment sinking to the bottom of the sea.  It shocked the viewers.  But wars are always like that. It happens to both “our boys” and theirs.   No wonder many of veterans who were in combat zones often don’t want to speak about their experiences.  No wonder many of them come back suffering post traumatic stress syndrom.  

On August 6th each year during a commemorative ceremony at Hiroshima Peace Memorial Park, a few dozen names are still added to the list of those who died from the first atomic bomb dropped on humans more than a half a century ago.  People are still dying as the result of sickness caused by nuclear radiation, some of who were mere fetuses in their mothers’ wombs in 1945.  For a long time, Koreans who had been conscripted to work in factories in Hiroshima and who also died were excluded from the list of dead.  Korean residents in Japan erected a separate monument in the Hiroshima Peace Park.  I understand that there was a large prisoner-of-war camp in Hiroshima, mainly from Commonwealth countries.  Many of them died when the bomb was dropped.  I believe that they, too, should be remembered on the same day.  The memorial at the Hiroshima Peace Park simply says, “Rest in Peace.  We will never repeat the same mistake.”  I believe that the pledge should be made to all who lost their lives on that day, regardless of nationality.  I believe that war is evil.  And all those who died in any war are the victims.  They should not suffer the indignity of becoming ugly dead.  I wouldn’t allow indignity to any dead person, but somehow people must be made aware that wars and result of wars are ugly – to both friends and foes alike.  Remembrance Day should be the day to remember all the war dead regardless of their nationality or loyalty, whether they were soldiers or civilians, elderly or children.  Then I will participate in it sincerely and wholeheartedly.  

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Why do we not ask "why" more often? I am asking this in the context of today’s two serious issues: mass migration including human smuggling and refugee, and terrorism.

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I am old enough to remember the UN Conference on Development in 1968 held somewhere in Sweden. That was the year I went to Africa with a bloated sense of self-importance and of my role in Africa. What arrogance!! Consensus at that conference was that a gap between rich and poor nations must be bridged, and the world must work together to enable developing nations to achieve their full potential. It launched the first UN Decade for Development. We were warned that if the world failed to succeed in this endeavor, the consequence would be dire. A dam will burst. We were told that masses of people would try to migrate to the richer part of the world, and anger and frustration of those who stayed poor would be so enormous that nobody could guess what they would do to express their rage. The first Development Decade was not very successful, so it was repeated a few more times. Was it successful?

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I suppose it is fair to term the result mixed. China, India, Korea, and a few other countries have been transformed for the better, to be sure. But a sign of failure is also everywhere. Mass starvation still persists. Meanwhile, serious health problems due to consumption of too much food are evident in the richer part of the world. One factor that was not predicted in 1968 was fury of culturally and spiritually humiliated people. They have formed an alliance with the poor.

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Mass migration of desperate people is truly a serious concern of the most of the western industrialized countries. Anger of frustrated and humiliated people is the root causes of terrorism.

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Hasn’t the 1968 prediction come true? I can hear, "I told you so" from those who made those prognostications. Should we not also be asking more seriously "why is this happening?" Fences and guns alone will not stop the gushing water of migrants and terrorists. The dam is already breached.

LET’S ENCOURAGE AND SUPPORT EXCELLENCE

Recently, I was saddened to find that Martin the Cobbler on 5^th Street North in front of Galt Garden is retiring. I know of no other person in town who repairs shoes in an old-fashioned way masterfully like him. There are a few people like that in Lethbridge. Terrible George (as he called himself to me) of the Cowboy Boots (Leather Unlimited) on 5^th Street South next door to the Abyssinian Restaurant is one. Precision Watch Repair on 13^th Street North near 6^th Avenue is another. I weep for the passing of any of those masters of crafts, who pride themselves in quality of their work, not so much in profit making. Do readers know any other masters of crafts like them in this town? Let’s mention their names here and promote them.

Like North American auto industry is painfully realizing, quality in the end wins. I was once sitting next to a roofer from Calgary on the flight to Japan. He was telling me the quality of roofers’ work in Japan. He said that when it comes to quality, no Canadian roofer can beat Japanese. He said, in Japan it takes eight years for an apprentice to be a fully qualified roofer, whereas in Canada it takes only a few weeks. Yes, it is more costly over there, but in the end it is cheaper because their roofs last forever; he said.

When I lived in Switzerland I was told that the Swiss didn’t buy American cars because of poor workmanship. They used to look for cars that would last life-time; they said. I guess that era is passing even there. But the same mentality persists. So you hardly see American cars in Switzerland. The same is the case in Japan, where I often go. Mr.Buz Hargrove complains about the trade barrier there. But the fact is, their quality control is much more strict, thus North American cars can not compete. In Tokyo, you see mainly Japanese made cars, but also many foreign cars. They are, however, mainly German not American. Patriotism has nothing to do with it. It’s quality they seek. My friends tell me that the old fashioned mentality still persists: they still think everything foreign is superior and prestigeous. They show off their business success by driving Audi, Mercedes and BMW. “Oh, you drive Gaisha (foreign car” is a great compliment. It’s not that we don’t have masters in Canada. We do. We can create quality.

Let’s promote and encourage our own quality makers, who are proud of their crafts. I am asking readers to tell me more about them, because I want to do business with them. It’s good for Lethbridge economy. In then end, I am convinced that I will save money.

ISN’T "THE HOLY LAND" AN OXYMORON?

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Daily, we read bad news from the Middle East. I believe that the issues of the Middle East are primarily about human rights, justice, and peace, not religion. I wish we could keep religions out of the debate.

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I was neither an atheist nor an agnostic when I started to go regularly to Israel/Palestine in 1979 for human rights and refugee work. I was a Christian then and I still am. But I nearly lost faith in religion – in any religion. The ugliness of conflicts between religions, leading sometimes to blood-shed, was absolutely contrary to whatever romantic view of "Holy Land" I had held. I cannot speak much about the disputes between Jews and Muslims. I am sure that they are serious. But I can speak about the fights between Christian denominations over so-called "holy sites." For centuries, the churches fought each other over the authenticity of various holy sites and over ownership of those sites. Fights still go on. And they are ugly.

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If an intelligent life form from another planet came to the earth, he/she would not be able to understand why people who believe in one God are fighting over an object like a piece of land, a building, or a rock, etc. For believers of Christianity, Islam, and Judaism, there should be no other god than the God of Abraham. For them, only that God is holy and no other. Then why should there be such an object like land be "holy." Isn’t the way they fight over land is akin to idiolatry? Land is not a god – it’s a part of God’s creation.

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These three religions believe in the same God of Abraham and held the Hebrew Bible as Holy Scripture. And yet, the fanatics in all three religions claim that only their own particular brand of faith is correct and others be damned. I think that the whole point of belief in one God is universalism. We believe that by believing one universal divine being, we acknowledge that we are all God’s children, and brothers and sisters. I believe that to say "only my god is the real god, and all others be damned" is apostasy in Christianity, Islam, and Judaism.

HIROSHIMA by Tad Mitsui

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The day was promising to be a hot humid day, in the morning of August 6, 1945 in Hiroshima. At about 8:30 a.m., "All clear" siren signaled that enemy bombers had left and it was safe to go out for work. Only a few people saw a parachute slowly coming down with a dangling bomb about a size of a wrecking ball. It exploded in mid-air for a maximum deadly effect on humans. More people remembered a flash of blinding, intensely bright white light like a thousand suns, and a second later earsplitting bang. Little did they realize that, at that very moment, a few hundred thousand people were vaporized and completely disappeared in a split second. Those who survived the initial blast would have wished they died with them. They wandered around the city totally naked and hairless as the heat of explosion burned off their clothes and hair. Their skins were burned black and peeling off. There was hardly any medical service left in the city. And no shelter or tree to protect them in the agony. They died within a week from severe radiation sickness. Many thousands continued to die for decades due to the effect of radioactive particles that rained down on them. On August 6, 1990, Muriel and I attended the annual Memorial Service at Hiroshima Peace Memorial Park, which was attended by tens of thousands of people. On that day, close to a hundred names were added to the list of victims who died that year as the result of radiation poisoning from 45 years previous. Some had sustained this poisoning as fetuses in their mothers’ wombs. That was the first nuclear bomb dropped on humans. The second bomb was dropped on Nagasaki a few days later. A week later, Japan surrendered to the allies ending the most devastating war the world had ever known.

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In 2004, our planet saw the most devastating natural disaster when a huge tsunami hit Indonesia, Thailand, and Malaysia. An estimated 300,000 people perished. It was a terrible tragedy. But compared to the number of deaths caused by natural disasters like cyclones, earthquakes, hurricanes, and that tsunami are eclipsed by the number during the Second World War. It is estimated that about 50 million people died, about two third of whom were civilians. The death due to wars did not end in 1945. During the 60 years that followed, still millions continued to died in wars. The reason we don’t realize this is because they died in many places and in many conflicts. There are 29 ongoing armed conflicts in the world today. When you sum up all the number of casualties, it is estimated that more than one million people died in 2006. The wars still go on.

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Humans are the only species who kill each other en mass within the family of the same species. Most other creatures don’t kill their own kind in such a scale. When I think of this incredible human stupidity, I often wonder if we really are created in the image of God. We have never learned from Jesus who said two thousand years ago that "One who draws a sword will die by the sword." Yet we continue to behave as though weapons will resolve conflicts and differences. Weapons are expensive – they cost billions. In comparison, how much money have we spent to find solutions in dialogues and negotiations?

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The United Church of Canada, with your contribution to the M & S Fund, supports Project Ploughshares, a research and advocacy coalition of many churches and peace-loving organizations. Project Ploughshares advocates the elimination of all nuclear weapons along with peaceful resolutions in international conflicts and the protection of vulnerable populations like those who died that day in August in 1945. They work towards the world where there will be no more Hiroshima.

I retired in two stages: officially, from full-time ministry in 1995, then from a half-time supply ministry in 2000.  There was a period of two months in 1995 when I had nothing to do before taking up the half-time ministry with a rural pastoral charge in Quebec. I cannot forget the sensation of dislocation on the first day of retirement in 1995.  It was a lovely spring day in Montreal. Birds were chirping in the trees as I woke up with the seven o”clock CBC news as I had done for years. Suddenly it dawned on me that I didn”t have to get up at all.  I felt lost.  I didn”t know what to do.  There was nothing I had to do except washing and breakfast.  After that, what?

Happily, that morning we needed some groceries.  So I walked to a supermarket. Half a block south and two blocks east. The maple trees lining the streets were still bare. The air was nippy, but smelled like spring. I had never been to a supermarket at 9 a.m.  It used to be called "Steinberg," but that old Quebec institution was gone.  It was now "Metro". Even the red of the Metro store seemed disturbing, compared to the soothing olive green of the Steinberg.  I was surprised by how many men were there shopping, all looking like me, retired, looking comfortable with hush puppy shoes and light blue wind breakers, or some similar attire.  They seemed to be in no hurry, looking more as if they were just hanging around than shopping, leaning on the shopping carts like they would on walkers. Some of them were just talking, visiting friends.  I had never seen men just hanging around and visiting friends in broad day light, except in and around coffee shops in Little Italy on College Street or St. Clair  Avenue in Toronto.  But, unlike the Italian men who look like they live for those moments of visiting buddies, those men at the Metro store in Notre Dame de Grace – the English-speaking part of Montreal- looked sad.

Suddenly, I felt depressed. "Is this what the rest of my life will be like?  Cheer up," I said to myself, "I don”t have to answer to anybody.  It doesn”t matter what I do; nobody will come after me or fire me."  But I felt I was nobody because there was nothing I had to do. Nobody cared if I was not there.  I had to learn the first thing about life after retirement that morning in a supermarket between lettuce and celery: it doesn”t matter what I do indeed, but it does matter that I am.  That day, I began to learn the lesson I should have learned during my forty years of growing up.  

My mother and our cat have taught me a lot in this process.  Some people may think it is insulting to my mother that I mention a cat and my mother on equal terms.  But on the other hand, cat lovers will understand this comparison totally.  Importance of just being. I look at our aging cat, who sleeps most of the time.   A famous writer – I think it was T. S. Elliot – said something about a cat having three things to tell humans:  ”Feed me.  Love me.  Leave me alone.”  Our cat, Estra,  lives exactly like that.  It doesn”t bother us if she doesn”t catch mice or doesn”t go after her tail like a cute, cuddly little kitten.  But Estra gives us so much pleasure.  She makes our life richer just by comfortably being herself.   We pray that she will live for a long time, if not for ever.  She teaches me so much about aging, and about life in general, like my mother does just by being who she is.  

My mother celebrated her 96th birthday in June, 2003 and passed away on Christmas Eve of the same year.  Her memory was almost gone.  Only rarely did she recognize me.  Even on a good day when she knew who I was, she asked things like why I didn”t have to go to school that day.  She didn”t see a grey-haired retired man but a school boy of fifty years ago.  She was not interested in eating much any more towards the end nor was she doing anything about her appearance.  She had never used to allow herself to be seen by other people, including her children, without make-up.  She slept most of the time,  but she looked happy when she was awake. She raised her right hand like a queen and said "Hello"  with a beautiful smile to anybody who happened to be nearby. "It makes my day when I see her smile," said a kind woman who visited her regularly.  My mother and my cat teach me how important for an aging person, or for anyone,  to keep on living fully no matter how little he or she can do.  

This is an almost impossible thing for a normal Japanese person to understand. Japanese truly believe that we are what we do.  If you do nothing, you are nobody.  What”s the point keep on living?  When I announced that I was going to retire, one of my sisters, who lived in Tokyo, refused to accept such a notion.  "No, brother.  You do no such thing!"  In Japan, there is no acceptable way to completely retire.  A person who ”retires” there usually moves on to a job in another organization which has no mandatory retirement age – usually a small NGO or a small firm connected to the organization you are retiring from.  A person with no positionis nobody in Japan.  Any respectable person in business, after retirement, would move to a position in a smaller corporation, which belongs to the "Keiren" – a group of smaller, related corporations – suppliers or sub-contractors, which have a special connection with the ”parent” firm, the "Oyagaisha."  Such a job shift is called "Amakudari".  Literally it means "descending from heaven to livean earthy life among the mortals."  This expression means taking up a positionin an organization of lesser importance.  There really isn”t a respectable way to completely retire in Japan. Those who cannot find a position by Amakudari could not have been a person of any significance before retirement.  

So what do you do if nobody wants you?  You create your own organization, often a consulting firm, set up an office some where cheap downtown and go to the office every day.  Not having any position in any organization is unthinkable, unless you are a famous artist, a writer, a freestanding theologian who does not have a pastorate or a teaching job, or a well-known sage or a philosopher.  My sister almost succeeded in finding me a job in Japan.  It was a position of "Chancellor" of a small junior college in Shizuoka  – an honorary position, of course.  I was even interviewed,  kind of.  This is how it went: I was asked to preach at a chapel service of the college.  After the service, I had tea with the entire teaching staff and lunch with the Principal and Registrar in a chi-chi restaurant with a beautiful view of Mt. Fuji.  When I found later that they were serious about giving me a position, I was horrified and respectfully declined the offer.  I really wanted to retire, as I felt burnt out.  My sister didn”t understand me. She was offended that I didn”t appreciate her effort to help me.  

I spent several years working for the Church in Lesotho teaching at a university in Southern Africa.  In contrast to our way of thinking in the western society, among black Africans, a person is considered to be a full person deserving of all respect no matter who he or she is or what he or she does.  In this way of thinking, the amount of money one earns or the positionone holds has nothing to do with a person”s worth.  Every man is addressed as "Ntate," which literary means ”father,” but it is an honorary title like ”sir”.  Every woman is ”Mme” (mother).  "Think about flowers of the field.  They are more beautiful than the riches Solomon ever produced.  Yet they can be thrown into fire when they wither.  Think about the sparrows.  God does not allow even a single one of them to fall without his consent.  And yet two of them can be sold for a mere penny." (Matthew 6: 25 – 34)  God loves us as we are, not so much dependent on what we do and how much we do it.  That was a very valuable lesson Africans taught me.  

But this lesson had unfortunately remained dormant in me until I retired.  It scares me to think how much damage I might have done to others without putting the lessons I learned from African friends into practice in my dealings with other people.  When I was thinking about retirement, I had resolved to follow a life with a set of regular activities.  I was hopelessly task oriented. I had to have a "ToDo List."   My spouse, Muriel, and I have known that she would be in full-time pursuit of her career as a university professor, and I would be a house husbandafter I retired.    So my  time would be divided into regular pattern of physical exercise, learning, volunteering, and writing.  I am realizing as I began to live under a new regime that many things I am learning now are things I should have learned long ago. I shiver when I think now what an insensitive person Imust have been without knowing those things.  However, I must confess that the model for living I see in my mother and our cat is still very far from me. It will take some more time of learning to reach ”Nirvana” – the state of complete understanding.   So I am not in my consciousness what I am, but still what I do.  I hope that in time I will learn to be what I am, because those things I do seem to be good lessons.

Here is what I do, and what I am learning:

On being a house husband:

As I began preparing meals, cleaning and keeping the house, I was surprised to find how time consuming those chores are.  I realized that keeping the house is not an occasional project, as some men think, but it is a full time job.  No, housekeeping is more than a job.  It is almost like a set of regular life-sustaining body functions such as breathing and eating.  You can not call in sick or take a holiday from it.  It is not an option.  But unlike breathing, housekeeping takes attention, energy, and creativity.  Like many other men, I used to think that because a housewife is not paid, her work is pretty close to worthless – not a value-adding activity.  Now I realize it is priceless.  

I was planning to write after retirement, to leave some written record of my life behind for my family and for the sake of posterity.  I was not necessarily thinking about writing a book.  But amazingly, I could hardly find time to write. Planning and preparing meals and shopping for groceries simply take up a lot of time.  I always liked cooking and cleaning the house.  I used  to be quite proud that Icould say I loved cooking.  Cleaning the house was not my strength, but Ienjoyed a sense of victory when dust balls were vanquished from the hard wood floors. Again, it was a revelation to me how time consuming cleaning the house is. I know it is late in life to realize this.

I can”t imagine how career women with children manage to take care of the household.  Many men don”t feel in their heart of hearts that they really have anything to do with it.  They view household chores as a favor all good men would do willingly for their spouses -from time to time.   "I don”t mind, really," we say.  It is incredible to me that I had never realized how hard housekeeping is until I retired and became a house husband.  And I don”t have a young child hanging on to my apron strings!  

Physical exercise:

It”s important for me to exercise regularly.  I had an episode of angina in 1999.  I spent a few days in hospital for observation.  Nothing serious was found, but it was a wake-up call.  Thus began a new regime of proper diet and regular exercise.  I fell into swimming daily.  I say "fell into" because I could have chosen walking or cycling, but didn”t.  By default, swimming has become my regular physical activity.   I used to cycle regularly.  When I had full-time work in church bureaucracies in Toronto and Quebec, we didn”t own a car.  Instead, I cycled to work, in Toronto from Cabbagetown through Rosedale to St. Clair Avenue, and in Montreal, forty minutes to the office in Lachine and one hour home up-hill to Notre Dame de Grace. I enjoyed cycling along the beautiful north shore of the St. Lawrence River.  Muriel and I cycled quite a bit in the dairy farming country of Chateauguay Valley when we lived in Howick.  Since arriving in Lethbridge, our bicycles have not been repaired from the damages of moving.  

Earlier in our life in Lethbridge I walked in the coulees, but the icy conditions in the valley made me hesitate to walk there in winter.  Hence swimming became my regular routine.  I can still walk in the coulees, and will probably enjoy it enormously.   The changing colors of different seasons, the amazing array of vegetation from cacti to wild roses, the variety of birds from Canada geese to magpies to pelicans. Yes, pelicans. I couldn”t believe my eyeswhen I saw them; even the bird watchers” guide books do not mention them. There are also deer, jack rabbits and gophers.  I will for sure enjoy walking in the coulees. 

The university swimming pool gives me a reasonable rate as a family member of the faculty. Every morning, a variety of interesting regulars appear.  A dozen faces of swimmers and friendly life guards now are as familiar as the smell of chlorine.  Most of them look so fit.  I don”t understand why I don”t see more unfit people like me, for whom regular exercise is a requirement.

The 5:30 a.m. to 8:30 a.m. period at the university pool is a scene from ”Reality TV”.  They all wear tight-fitting swimsuits, looking fit and beautiful. And they all swim like dolphins.  I was amazed how many people there were at that ungodly hour swimming back and forth in silence as if obsessed.  One hardly hears a human voice.  It is a bit eerie.  They must come before breakfast, do 20 (Olympic distance) lengths, then go to a Esquire – a trendy coffee joint for latte and bagels before donning their business suits and going to their offices.  No one swims like me – a slightly improved version of the dog paddle.  I”ve only seen two men my age and an overweight man among the regulars so far.  And I have been swimming for nearly three years.  

Where are people like me, elderly or unfit, those with heart conditions who have been told by their doctor to doregular exercise?    Maybe they come in the afternoon or evening.  It ispossible that those elderly and/or unfit people go to specialized classes like a seniors” exercise class with bouncing balls and stuff like that.  No wonder even those reasonably fit thirty-something professors avoid the university facilities and go to the local YMCA or a community pool so as not to be seen by the beautiful people, or worse, their fabulously fit young students.  Fitness is a good thing, but I”m very ambivalent about its becoming a commercialized fad.  

Those few unfit-looking people who come to the swimming pool in the morning are inspirations.  They have lived long enough to be unashamed of themselves; they don”t feel the need to hide anything.  One morning, I saw a long line-up of primary school kids before the cubicles in the washroom waiting for their turn to finish changing.  Why?  Is it a kids” culture or the influence of their parents?  Why should they feel ashamed of their bodies?   Is it a man”s thing? Those old or unfit people who enter the crowd of beautiful must have achieved a state of innocence like Adam and Eve before they ate the forbidden fruit.  They see their reality, accept it, and are comfortable with it.  

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On learning the beauty of Creation:

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I decided to do take up art. I had toyed with the idea of taking academic courses in political science or sociology, but decided they were too close to the way I used to think in my job.  I wanted to explore unknown territory. I took up drawing.   I take lessons in the basics of drawing from an instructor in the Faculty of Fine Art.   I was lucky to have been introduced to an instructor and a practicing artist who is gentle and patient.   I also go a studio to draw with other artists.  I am grateful that those people, who have dedicated their lives to making art, allow me to hang around with them as they practice their calling.  

The first thing I was obliged to learn in drawing was to observe realities as they are.  I realized, as the teacher forced me to look at the minute details of what is in front of me, how much I had assumed what was there. I learned that reality is not always what the left side of the brain tells you; it is not always linear and rational.  I am learning to depend on the right side of the brain to acknowledge and accept what is often chaotic and irrational.  

Another important lesson was that every object – live or still, nature, landscape, or human face and figure – is beautiful.  There really isn”t ugliness in Creation.  Ugliness is what we read into a piece of Creation from our assumption, a creation of our mind. Often our assumption is wrong.  There is a book I should read cover-to-cover – I have just skimmed through it – titled, “Anatomy of Disgust.”  The author makes the point that a disgusting thing to one person can be another person”s delicious food.  It is a wonderful feeling to see beauty in an unexpected object.   Beauty, indeed, is in the eyes of the beholder, and is in everything if you keep an open mind.  I am still in a stage of discovery.  I expect that it will take me years to learn to re-create the beauty of reality and indeed of God”s creation.  I am even farther away from creating  art as an expression of ideas. But in the meantime, I am enormously enjoying learning to re-create what is in front of me as faithfully as possible.  I now shiver to imagine how I used to think, conclude and argue based on assumptions and on imagining, rather than on the realities of beautiful creation.  

On seeing a rainbow in all people:

As for volunteer work, Muriel found an advertisement for volunteers to help theat a horseback riding stable for handicapped persons.  I phoned right away. The organization is called Lethbridge Handicap Riding Association – Rainbow Riding Stable.   I have been happily going there once a week since early in 2001.  I love horses – I think they are the most beautiful animal.  I rode quite a bit in Lesotho between 1970 and 1975 and in France from1975 to 1979.   Horses are a popular mode of transport in the mountainous country of Lesotho.  The Africans ride a type of pony probably related to or descended from the Arabian horse, the tough little ponies that can climb mountains like mountain goats without ever needing horseshoes and can live from grazing alone.   Because they are so numerous in Lesotho, horses are cheaper than bicycles.  With other horse lovers on the university campus, I used to help paraplegic children from the Lesotho Save-the- Children Fund shelter learn to ride.  Horses made better sense than wheelchairs in a country where a smooth surface is a rarity and where wheelchairs are probably more expensive than horses.  Rainbow Riding Stable brings back happy memories; the smell of sweaty horses and manure make me forget my frustration with Alberta politics.  

The stables are located outside the city limit east of Lethbridge.  It takes only 20 minutes from our house by car, passing the agricultural research station of the Federal Government and a large pond surrounded by tall reeds and trees  -a rare site in this part of the Canadian prairies.  Many Canada geese hang around the pond.  I pass the red brick buildings of a federal prison and meadows where cows lazily graze.  Rainbow Stable keeps a couple of dozen elderly horses for handicapped people.  They are gentle – lazy to some people – but ideal for those with less mobility.  There is an instructor who was trained in the art of hippo-therapy, a woman who aspires to be a professional rodeo rider.  Of course, she has a long way to go to make a living out of the rodeo circuit, if ever, so she teaches at the Rainbow Stable.  Up to three learners at a time usually come for the one-hour sessions.   

I help out at two sessions per day.  There are paraplegics, mentally handicapped persons, persons with Down syndrome, of all ages and backgrounds.  On days when it is rainy, windy or snowy, or too hot or cold, they ride in the cavernous arena. Each rider is accompanied by a person on either side, one to lead the horse and to make sure that the animal behaves, the other person to watch the rider, ready to grab the safety belt around the rider”s waist if necessary.  It is intensive work.  The instructor stands in the middle of the arena and gives directions.  Each rider is expected to brush the horse, bring the tack from storage, saddle up, and warm up the horse by leading it once around the arena, and finally, mount.  A lot of work, but enjoyable.  It is wonderful to watch an unsure, frightened person develop confidence as well as skills.  

Toward the end of a six-week term, the rider often has developed so much confidence and is having so much fun that we have difficulty persuading him or her not to keep trotting.  Accompaniers have to run with the horse, you see.  One can almost believe that anyone can learn to ride a horse, given a chance.  However, one type of handicap I still have difficulty accepting is Fetal Alcohol Syndrome.  I  feel angry at the parents that a beautiful child of any background, any race or class, has to bear the burden of their parent”s weakness all his or her life without any hope of a cure.  Not fair! Of course, if you scratch the surface of our society, such unfairness is found everywhere.  That is another reason for all of us to take responsibility in caring for such disabled persons.  At one of the Volunteer Appreciation Day potluck suppers, I sat in front of Michael, a long-time client of the Rainbow Stable.  I was a little taken aback, because this was a supper for volunteer helpers, while Michael is a paraplegic. In our conversation over spaghetti, I found that he became such a good rider that now he is a volunteer.  I didn”t ask how he could do it in a wheel chair. It didn”t matter to me really.  To me, he is an inspiration just being on a horse by himself.  

I can almost believe that life begins after retirement.  There is so much to learn and so many ways to grow.  Didn”t Socrates say something like to ”know thyself” is the ultimate form of knowledge?   I have a long way to go. And if I have to accept that self, I have an even longer way to go.

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LET US NOT STEREO-TYPE PEOPLE

Before she was disgraced for plagiarism, the Gobal and Mail columnist Margaret Wente accused the United Church of Canada of being too much of activists, and said that was the reason for declining membership. She must have forgotten that many churches have always been activist throughout history. It’s called prophetic ministry. Religion is not only for personal gratification. It is also very much about society. I resent any stereo-type.

When I lived in Switzerland during the seventies, my 10 year old daughter was often asked by her schoolmates, “Why are you not good in Math?” ( She wasn’t.) It was assumed that all Korean and Japanese children were good in Math. She hated such a stereo-type. People are different. There are Japanese persons who can not handle chop sticks either.

All those who call themselves Christians do not reject evolution and are not for Pro-Life anti-abortion. Then how come the adjective “Christian” is often applied only to the Evangelicals. Muslim brothers and sisters suffer in the West from a stereo-type characterization of “extremists” or even worse “terrorists.” Most of them are not. When I live in Jerusalem in 2003, I met many Israelis who were against the Jewish settlements in Palestinian territories. All Israelis are not supporters of right-wing Likud Party. Members of the LDS Church suffers from the label “cult.” They are Christians too. Look at the name, “the Church of Jesus Christ.” The First Nations suffer the stereo-type most often. Stereo-typing people is not fair and is wrong. Democracy can be destroyed by such bigoted and racist attitude toward people.

The recent United Church policy statement, regarding the Northern Gateway Pipeline and the Jewish settlements in Palestinian territories, was branded as a political action not worthy of the Christian Church by people like Margaret Wente. They forget there is a strong belief in the Social Gospel since 19^th Century with people like Bishop William Temple. Stanley Knowles (United Church), Tommy Douglas (Baptist) were both clergymen who believed that the Gospel must be a good news in societal matters. In fact, those clergy were about the only ones who defended the rights of Japanese-Canadians during the WW II. A large part of my life as a clergy person was a fight against racism in South Africa.

All religions have personal and societal applications. In ancient times, Hebrew people called them Priestly and Prophetic functions. One size does not fit all.

POOR PEOPLE ARE HUNGRY ANYWHERE

Superintendent of schools for Catholic Schools in Lethbridge Alberta said, “We have far too many children living in poverty and coming to school hungry…. that impacts their learning.”  (The Lethrbuidge Herald September 16, 2012, the headline article)  I wonder how many people connected that comment to the letter by Larry MacKillop on the same paper, the Lethbridge Herald about helping hungry people in West Africa. I believe both articles are talking about the same thing: poverty is the main cause of hunger, not availability of food. Then why do we always talk about producing more food and shipping it to hungry countries.

When I lived in Geneva and was engaged in emergency relief for the drought induced famine in Africa during the 1980’s, we in the aid agencies and aid workers weren’t hungry because we stayed in nice hotels and had money to buy good meals, while people were starving to death around us. In Canada there is plenty of cheap food and too much eating, but there are many children go to school hungry. Eating too much food is killing many of us from diabetes and obesity. What is wrong with this picture? We are overlooking the problem of poverty. Of course, hungry must be fed through charity and aid programs. But it’s like bandaid solution. One should not stop there. We must address the root causes of hunger, poverty.

Money not only gives people access to food, but also gives producers ability to keep producing. Our farmers have farm credit, crop insurance, and all kind of other safety nets. African farmers don’t. So when natural calamity like drought strikes, they can not produce food, neither can they feed themselves. During the famine in Ethiopia in 1987, some people in Italy noticed a label on the can of corn beef ,”Made from Beef from Ethiopia.” during the famine in Ethiopia in 1987. So they stopped giving money. OXFAM, U.K. did some digging and found that food export from Ethiopia during the 1980’s actually increased in beef, coffee, and sugar. The government needed hard cash so the industrialized farming sector received all kinds of assistance.

I know that the food issues are complicated. But overlooking poverty is one of the most serious problems. It’s poor people who go hungry. Problem of hunger is not the question of availability of food but of accessibility to it.

RUTH AND JONAH

Conquered nations and minority groups disappear when they fail to keep their spiritual tradition. The stories told around the family tables help hold on to traditions. In Canada, the Fist Nations were nearly destroyed by a deliberate attempt to transform them into Europeans by separating children away from families and prohibiting them of to remember their culture, to use their language, and to practice their spiritual tradition. The Jewish Nation didn’t disappear even though they hadn’t had the country of their own for three thousand years, thanks to the stories that they kept repeating within families. Many of the stories have been preserved in writings. The present day Bible is a collection of those narratives – folk tales, legends, myths, and poems i.e. Ruth and Jonah.

At a first glance, the books of Ruth and Jonah look like history. The name Ruth appears in the Gospel according to Matthew (1:5) as King David’s great-grand mother. Jonah’s name is found in the Second Kings 14:24. But they aren’t history exactly. If they were historically correct, they should reflect the atmosphere of the period between 1200 and 1025 B.C for Ruth. and Jonah between 931 and 910 B.C. Their style and the basic message do not reflect the time when those two persons lived. It is much more reasonable to assume that they are fictions using the names of ancient mythical figures. They are historical novels in that sense. Historical novels are fictions using the names of real persons and events, but embellished freely with a mixture of real and imagined circumstances and events in order to express an opinion.

The common message both Ruth and Jonah carry is: “Foreigners are also God’s beloved.” It is an astonishing idea which is challenging even today. Imagine, these stories were written three thousand years ago. Reality is the opposite: we are not comfortable with anyone who looks and speaks and behaves differently. In those days, all the strangers were seen with suspicion, and were repelled or killed. Marrying such a person? Impossible! But there they are in the Bible giving the opposing message to commonplace xenophobia.

Ruth was a Moab who lived in the east of the Jordan River. Moabites were arch enemies of the Jewish nation. But in the book of Ruth, she married a Jew, Boaz, and became a great-grand mother of the most beloved and respected king of the Jews, David. But what a seduction scene! In the Bible, “foot or feet” is an euphemism for male genital. (Chapter 3) Fiction or reality? Doesn’t matter. Obviously, the opinion about the Moab evolved after 600 years, and they were no longer enemies.

Jonah’s God, God of Israel, loved the Assyrians in Nineveh so much that He did not want to destroy them when they repented. Historically Assyrians beat the Kingdom of Israel and drove them out of existence. If the Israelites were God’s chosen, how could the Assyrians be His beloved? According to the book of Jonah, God of Israel is no longer a tribal god who only favoured Israel. Never mind the man-eating fish. It’s a humorous fish story – of course not true. But what a place, in a stomach of a fish, to offer a heartfelt prayer of confession! (Chapter 2)

A brief historical background: Two Jewish kingdoms disappeared by 587 B.C. Israel was destroyed by Assyrian Empire in 721 B.C., and Judah in 587 B.C. by Babylonian Empire never to forge a country again until 1948 A.D. with the birth of the present Jewish state of Israel. When Babylonians defeated Judah, they destroyed the temple of Jerusalem and made thousands of people in leadership prisoners and transported them to the city of Babylon. They were captives there for fifty years.

The Babylonians planned to wipe Jewish people out of existence. The first step was to prohibit the practice of religion. Without the Temple of Jerusalem and without leadership class of kings, priests, scholars, and prophets, the plan to destroy a nation nearly succeeded. Before the destruction of the Jewish kingdoms, Deuteronomy was discovered behind a stone wall In Jerusalem. What save them was the tradition kept in those writings of Torah (laws) and stories and sayings of prophets. Traditions were kept in the form of stories preserved their customs, culture, language, and spiritual heritage (religion). That was how the national consciousness remained even without land or a state.

While they were prisoners in Babylon, there appeared two opposing ideologies: nationalist and universalist. The first is represented by the books like Esther and Ezra, which emphasized the importance of the purity of faith and race. The later was represented by books like Ruth and Jonah which stressed tolerance and importance of living in peace with other people. It is interesting that both opposing positions are kept in the Bible as sacred documents.

The seeds of the universalist idealism can be found in the Prophet of Jeremiah, who lived at the time of the final defeat of Jewish kingdom and exile. In Jeremiah 29:1 – 15, the prophet advised people who were taken away to a foreign country of Babylon, to settle down and make home in a strange country and be happy. He said, “Build homes and settle down. Plant garden and eat what you grow. Marry (even locals) and have children. Let your children marry likewise so that they also have their children. You must increase in numbers. Work for the good of the cities you live in, though you were brought there as prisoners. Be prosperous where you live.” It still is the same story we tell to the immigrants in Canada. Isn’t it?

Scholars believe that the two books in question, Ruth and Jonah, were written after 428 B.C. By then the Jewish nation was freed to return to Palestine. During the same period, it is believed that Job, Proverbs, Song of Songs, many of the Psalms, minor prophets were written. That was almost 500 years after Ruth was said to have lived. In case of Jonah, there is about 150 years time gap. They are narratives, not laws, sermons, proclamations, or declarations of doctrines. It was the time when they were trying to come to terms with the question: How to keep their culture, religion, and tradition alive while they had already been influenced by Babylonian people, culture, food, and life-style. Some people hated anything foreign while many others enjoyed them and wove them harmoniously into a fusion of the traditional and the foreign – like us in Canada.

The Old Testament (Hebrew Bible) is a collection of stories, granted somewhat jumbled, that tell the evolving consciousness that went through many stages of development. By the time many post-exile writings were written, many universally held ideals like, freedom, justice, love, mercy, and sacrifice have become common themes. Ruth and Jonah, though very short simple stories, represent the highest point of their spiritual journey.

AMOS AND HOSEA

For about two centuries, Israel and Judah fought each other on and off, during which time many books of the present day Old Testament were written including the most of the prophets like Elijah and Isaiah, and Ezekiel known as major prophets. There were also so-called minor prophets like Amos and Hosea. “Minor” here does not mean less important. Their writings are simply shorter than major prophets like Isaiah, which are longer.

Israel, where Amos and Hosea preached, was richer than Judah, because of its abundant natural resources and fertile land. Neither Amos nor Hosea belonged to the established order of prophets (like our Order of Ministry): they were freelance preachers, so to speak. Soon after Amos and Hosea died, Israel would be attacked by Assyrians and the kingdom vanished in 721 B.C. Many foreigners moved in and the land became the land of mixed race known at the time of Jesus as “Samaritans.” Thus ten tribes who had lived in the North became known today as “Ten lost tribes of Israel.”

One hundred forty years later, Judah also was defeated by Babylonians and utterly destroyed in 581 B.C. The leadership of the nation was taken prisoners and were moved to Babylon (today’s Iraq), where they lived for a few centuries in captivity until Persian (Iranian) emperor Cyrus freed them and allowed them to return home to Palestine. It is interesting that because of his act of liberating Hebrews, Persian Emperor Cyrus was called “the anointed one” – Messiah in Hebrew, and Christ in Greek, even though he did not know YHWH. (Isaiah 45:1)

Hosea had a sad marriage. He was a cuckold: his wife Gomer ran away with another man, who quickly betrayed her and sold her to a brothel. But Hosea never gave up on her. He looked for her everywhere in the red-light district, and tried to bring her back to him. People mocked him saying Hosea was a fool going after such a stupid woman. Hosea told his own sad story as a metaphor, as a story of God who never gives up on unfaithful people, and never stops loving them. Though it is a story of the faithful and loving God, it is so vividly told that you know it is Hosea’s own personal experience. It is a powerful story about the love of God.

When you reach the books of prophets, you realize that the progress of a search for the true God, or the pursuit of the ultimate truth, has reached its highest level. A jealous and murderous God of the tribal kings has transformed into a loving and justice seeking God of Hosea and Amos. When you reach the second Isaiah (Isaiah chapters 44 and following), you will find a model of our Lord Jesus Christ in the notion of the suffering servant for the sins of others. One might think that Jesus had the image of God in mind described by prophets like Amos, Hosea, and Isaiah when he acted as he did? God is just, loving to the point of sacrificing himself for those he loved? It’s a shocking discovery, the most unorthodox among religions. No other religion has a god who suffers and dies. God is almighty and powerful, a victor, that is the norm. But God of the Bible is so weak to be crucified for the sake of love. Therein is the ultimate victory: Easter.

The Old Testament is a history of the Hebrew people’s search for the true God. Hence, it is wrong to pick just one part of it to form the whole notion of God like fundamentalists do. You are quite right to be appalled by the terrible image of an inhuman and cruel god in the book of Samuel. Of course, you must reject such a god. You have to read the whole Bible to appreciate the progression of the search for God. You will appreciate how far the Jews progressed in their search once you reach the prophets. We inherited the heritage of that progress.

GOD OR KING?

– AN UNRESOLVED QUESTION –

Comments on the First Book of Samuel

Before you read the historical accounts of the Bible, you must see the Jewish history as ours. We read the Old Testament because it was the Bible for Jesus Christ. Through Him, the Old Testament has become our Holy Scriptures. We are reading the Bible of the Jews as a history of their search for God. Our search is the continuation.

For the believers of Christianity, Islam, and Judaism the real power belongs only to God. Then comes the next tricky question: Who among us should exercise power on behalf of God. It’s tricky, because no human could hear or see God. Therefore we can not tell for sure who speaks for God. Anybody can lie and says this is the word of God and say “do as I tell you.” And many do. The question is still unresolved. Too many people claim such right, and I say they are all wrong. The Pope claims it: and he is wrong. History proves that he was wrong a number of times. Ayatollah claims it. Dictators, political leaders, fundamentalist religious leaders and preachers claim the divine authority and condemn, and even sanction murders of, those who don’t agree with them. The First Book of Samuel tackles this challenging question in the story of the anointment of the first king of the Jews. When you read the stories of Saul and David, you will realize how reluctant God was giving any human such power as the one kings (in today’s terms political leaders) exercise.

It is poignant that people demanded a monarchy in order to help them fight a war better and kill more enemies. “God is on our side” therefore why shouldn’t God give power to an exceptional human an authority and power to kill as many enemies and win. After Moses, starting with Joshua, every leader whose job it was to speak on behalf of God to resolve disputes (called Judges). They also had to be strong in battles. At least one of them was a woman, Deborah, a very smart tactician, Gideon, and a strong but tragic figure, Samson, etc. However, as the Jews found themselves fighting better organised enemies like Philistines, they wanted and demanded an autocratic and strong leader like kings of other nations, which the Jews hadn’t had so far.

Samuel, the last of the judges, by then concentrated on interpreting the will of God, delegating the fighting part to soldiers, was dismayed, because he thought the demand of people showed distrust of his words. But God told Samuel that it was lack of faith in God not in Samuel. The liberator from slavery in Egypt meant nothing to people any longer: short memories. They want a leader who fights better and wins.

It is interesting that according to the Bible the institution of monarchy is, for that matter all human political institutions and governments are the indication of lack of faith in God. Does that mean a true form of government is theocracy (direct rule of God, like Iran)? We are still struggling to find a solution to that question: “Who should possess the absolute power?” In the history of the Jews, in the end according to Samuel, God relented and allowed Samuel to choose a king of the Jews. The message is: all human authorities are a compromise stems from inadequate faith in God and must be placed under a constant and vigilant scrutiny.

Samuel warned them that a king would force his arbitrary will on them, force them to kill and be killed. King would take their women, property, and freedom at his whim. Ten Commandments were thrown out of the window as far as the kings were concerned except the first three commands! People have no way to balk. But for people, winning wars is top priority even at the price of their freedom and moral compromise. Doesn’t that sound familiar? We surrendered a lot of freedom after 9/11 in the war on terror and allow questionable practices as necessary evil.

What then are the criteria to choose an upstanding man to be a king? No woman was considered though there had been many strong and wise women. Even in England, in the 21th Century, the law of succession was changed to allow the first-born woman to ascend to the throne at last. (Queen Elisabeth II would not have been the Queen, if she had a younger brother. Princess Anne would have been the first in line of succession in stead of Charles.) Anyhow, Samuel found Saul. He was a good looking tall man. There are many other criteria to make a man worthy to be a king, but good looks and big stature came first. Sounds familiar? We are obsessed with superficial “Barbie and Ken” looks. The tall handsome Saul’s attraction is the same as Diana and Kate phenomena. In our TV dominated culture, good look still counts in politics. Nixon lost the election because Kennedy was better looking: “five o’clock shadow” during the TV debate killed Nixon’s chance of winning.

There are other qualities worthy to be a king: strong in battle, popular among people, ability in poetry and music (David became Saul’s confidant because of his poetry and music), etc. But where is an ability to discern the will of God and do the right thing? This final criterion seems to have distinguished David from Saul, and let David win God’s favour. But David too was fraught with weaknesses: adultery and murder among them. But he got away with it, and became the model of a saviour of the nation. What is interesting about the Bible is: it does not hide the ugly side of the heroes. Some accounts of Saul and David’s behaviours are quite disgusting. The Bible does not hide them.

The scholars who engage in textual analysis say it is because the books of Samuel and subsequent historical books, are the collection of two different traditions: one from the North where Saul’s tribe Benjamin lived, and the other from the South where the tribe of Judah from which David came. North and South hated each other. So the scholars say: the bad reporting on Saul was written by the Southern people and anything bad about David comes from the North. At any rate, this makes the Bible unique among ancient legends. More often than not, histories are written by winners, making the winners look always good and the losers always bad. The Bible says, on the other hand, all humans have limitations; they are both good and bad, none perfect.

Eventually the Jewish kingdom split up after Solomon’s death into Northern Kingdom and Southern Kingdom. They fought each other for a long time. Weakened by civil wars, both kingdoms were conquered and vanished, and the united Jewish nation never came back until 1948. The Jews have dreamed of the return of King David ever since. But that’s another story: Read the books of KINGS.

WHERE ARE BUTCHERS?

We planned a dinner party with Sukiyaki. It is food for an omnivore’s paradise: beef, tofu, green onions, shiitake mushrooms, bok choy, cooked in soy sauce, sake, and sugar. Nobody has disliked it in my experience unless you are a vegetarian: a Swiss friend called it “sublime.” Like Fondue Boeuf Bourguignonne, Sukiyaki needs paper thin Kobe beef or prime rib. I went to the Lethbridge’s best butcher “Alberta Meat Market” as I had done a few times. He knew exactly what was required for Sukiyaki. But he told me he could not do it any more. The new rules prohibit slicing meat by hand nor machine at the shop.

I didn’t give up. I went to the supermarket which sliced Sukiyaki beef once for me before. What do you know? There was no butcher behind the glass window. I was totally stunned. Come to think of it, lately all fresh meat in the refrigerated tubs are all pre-cut and vacuum packed. The regulation does not allow a butcher to butcher any more, except in a factory! We live in a strange new world.

Then I wondered that it could be the result of the measures taken after contaminated meat from a big meat packer company caused deaths and sickness a few years ago. It is ironical that the regulations that are supposed to safeguard the safety of little people like me but end up punishing neighbourhood Mom and Pop butcher shops. The supermarket still cut luncheon meat as thinly as we want. I thought that the fiasco was caused by contaminated processed meat not fresh meat. It’s ambivalent.

You may think this is trivial. It’s for the sake of public safety: just “suck it up.” Maybe. But I am worried about the trend to favour big money industries forcing the Mom and Pop operations to go under. What happened to the corner convenient stores? What happened to shoe repair shops? Recently I had to go around a few jewellers to change a watch strap. It wasn’t easy. You are supposed to buy a new watch, if the strap is broken. I miss a watch repair shop. Creativity comes from independent people. Communities are made up of small businesses who know everybody in the neighbourhood and know their exotic needs.. I know: Time’s changing. I should shut up and fade away. No! I refuse to give up Sukiyaki.

ABRAHAM, SARAH, AND THEIR SONS

Genesis 12 – 23

This collection of stories about Abraham and Sarah (Genesis 12 – 23) belongs not only to 14 million Jews in the world but also to nearly a half of human race; Christians, Muslims, as well as to Jews. All of them consider Abraham and Sarah as their spiritual parents. Christians and Muslims make up 3,2 billion people, hence almost a half of the world’s population belong to the tradition that Abraham and Sarah started. However, as I repeatedly said, it is important for us not to think of the Genesis as a history of factual truths, but as stories telling us our fundamental and spiritual truths that make up our personality. They shaped our identity as the people of the Book and children of one God..

Abraham probably lived around 1850 B.C. There must have been many stories told about Abraham and Sarah at Jewish dinner tables or by the camp fire. Some of them must have contained pieces of historical facts. But they probably contained also gossips and rumours, true and/or false, good and bad, whispered between friends and neighbours as well as read publicly in synagogues. All of them were recounted to make specific points, good or bad; cruel or merciful. This is why the accounts of the Genesis are “holy” not “scientific.” Preserving historical facts was least of interest for those who participated in the determination of which books should be included in the Bible. When you read the Bible you must ask, “What is the point of the story,” in stead of asking, “Did this really happened?” Facts were beside the point.

So what are the points of the stories of Abraham and Sarah? There are many stories, some good and inspiring, some utterly horrible, but why were they preserved and became the part of the Holy Bible?

Here I make a few points to set up the background:

The image of God is evolving. In the beginning, God of the Bible had seeds of the belief similar to ours, but not always. Imagine, it’s a horrible god who told Abraham to kill his only son to prove his loyalty. Don’t hesitate to express your outrage in such a story. Hebrew (Jewish) people recorded the progress of their search for the true God. It is a history of the evolving idea of God. People didn’t know any better, so in earlier times they thought God was possessive, jealous, vengeful, tyrannical, etc. As you read through the Old Testament, the idea of God evolves gradually and reaches its height in the books like Isaiah where God is loving, universal (loves everybody regardless of nationality and race), wants peace and harmony among all creatures, even to the point of sacrificing himself (Isaiah 65 and following) for the sake of love. Don’t be afraid to express your disagreement or dislike. We make the same spiritual journey with the Hebrew people (Jews) in search of the true God. Here are some other thoughts that came to my mind as I read the stories of Abraham and Sarah.

1. Abraham packed everything up and moved on (Chapter 12: 1 & 4) from a comfortable settled life in Ur to Haran (Iraq), and into the unknown thus began the notion of “moving on.” Hundreds of servants and thousands of animals! He was a minor king. Civilization always progresses when people migrate. It is not only about physical and geographical move but also changes that happen to ideas. We question accustomed habits and ways of thinking when we move, and try new ideas. That’s how civilization has progressed.

2. Abraham and Sarah became the ancestors of the chosen people. God told them that their offspring will be special people and multiply to fill the world. This is how the Jews came to believe they are a special people. That is how they become proud of their identity. However, you have to realize that almost every nation of the world has the notion of being the special or only people. Chinese think that they are the centre of the world (the middle kingdom is the meaning of the name “China”). The Inuit in the North and the Bantu in Africa also believe that they are the only people. The word Inuit simply means “people.” The word Bantu also means the same. I believe that it is good that every nation consider themselves special, because they are, so long as they don’t become ethnocentric and self-centred. Everybody is special and blessed by God.

3. Abraham’s relationship with God introduces the notion of “Covenant.” (Chapter 17) One of the special manners in which to be related to the Almighty Creator is “covenant.” Our relationship with God is not one way. It is a two way traffic: God acts and we react, we pray and God answers. We don’t just sit and wait whatever God does for/to us. Entitlement requires responsibility.

4. The sign of the blessing from God in the covenant relationship was procreation (baby making). God promised Abraham and Sarah to be the parents of a great nation, countless number of people to fill the earth, like the stars and grains of sand. Making babies was the most important purpose of human race for millennia. The reason was: babies and mothers died devastatingly in large number until recently. Medical science and technology (and improved diet) are slowing down the rate of the infant/mother mortality drastically, thank God. In one hundred years, life expectancy doubled. But as the result, we face a totally different situation. There may be too many people (7 billion) and people live far too long. Is this the time to make a paradigm shift to rethink of reproduction and longevity. They no longer may not be the primary purpose of our lives? Quality of life is. Even the idea of eternal life may need re-examination.

5. Because procreation was of paramount importance in ancient times, the symbols of the covenant relationship were such things as circumcision (Chapter 17) that might help the process of baby making or prohibition of acts that might interfere with procreation. This is one reason why male homosexuality (19) was termed as against God’s law. In many places where climate is hot and clean water scarce keeping penises clean is difficult (in Africa), circumcision has been a part of their custom for a long time. Homosexuality and masturbation were considered to be waste of God given blessing, thus abomination. For the same reason, lesbianism is not the issue and is totally ignored.

Some minor point, Abram means a noble father. Abraham means the father of multitude of people. Sarai means a noble woman, and Sarah means a princess.

FLOOD

Obviously, the story of a catastrophic flood and Noah’s Ark in chapters 6,7,8, and 9 of the book of Genesis is not a description of a specific world-wide event that actually happened. There was no such event recorded in any archeological finding. It might have been based on a historical experience in a place like Egypt, Babylon (present day Iraq), or Armenia (Mount Ararat is in Armenia). In highschool history lessons, I learned that experience of frequent flooding caused rapid development of civilization in places like China and Egypt. They had to cope with and survive repeated natural disasters, thus helped them to develop science and technology in the earliest human history.

Algebra and Trigonometry were invented and developed in Egypt in order to ensure property rights after devastation where everything was wiped away. Food production was enhanced enormously because floods brought fertile soil from high-lands. Food became abundant. Economy grew fast and population as well. People became affluent. Thus many forms of culture a mark of the civilized society such as artistic and literal culture developed consequently. This is the reason the earliest civilizations were found in flood prone regions of the world, such as China, Egypt, India, and Mesopotamia.

Noah’s Arc represents such a development; building of a big ship and food production. The dove brought back an olive branch when rains stopped. Do you know that this story is the earliest mention of ‘wine’ in the Bible? Olive and grapes are still major cash crops in the Middle East. Noah got drunk and boys were so ashamed of their father’s drunken nakedness. He probably left the left-over grape juice over-night, which became alcoholic. He probably didn’t know.

I want to encourage you to think about the meaning of what the Bible deals with natural disasters. The insurance industry calls it “Act of God”. Why God allows such tragedies to happen Or does God have anything to do with it? Think about the recent catastrophes: earthquakes in Haiti, New Zealand, Japan, and Turkey; or tsunami in Indonesia and Japan, or hurricane in New Orleans. Was God responsible? Were they the sign of the wrath of God for corruption of people?

The ancient Hebrews obviously thought so; the act of God, or punishment. Some fundamentalist TV evangelists like Jerry Falwell suggested that: “Indonesians are Muslims. So God punished them.” Or “New Orleans is a sinful city.” Etc, etc. Do you really believe that natural disasters are punishments from God? How do you answer people who ask, “Why does God do this to me?” If you don’t, how should you understand Noah’s story?

There are other tidbits that may be interesting to think about. What about angels (or heavenly beings) falling in love with beautiful human girls, which God obviously didn’t like? Were the animals who perished with sinful people in the flood also sinful? It sounds so unfair! Or what about the ages of people. Did Noah actually lived more than 600 years? If you believe the account of the Bible is the historical facts, you have to struggle also with the question of incest. How did Cain and Abel produce their children? There was no other humans other than their parents, Adam and Eve.

Creation Story

According to the recent survey of what the United Church people believe, 75% of those who belong to the United Church including the ministers believe like I do. Thank God! So I want to articulate what I believe about the creation story without fear of being accused as a non-believer.

The Bible contains the word of God, but is not the word of God. The word of God is Jesus Christ according to the John’s Gospel. In other words, what the Bible stories mean is what God wants us to know about him. I don’t believe that everything I find in the Bible is historical and/or scientific facts; though some of them may be.

1. When you read the chapters 1 to 3 of the book of Genesis, think of the meaning of those stories, without necessarily accepting all the facts as history. Many of them are made-up stories in which the writers tried to express their beliefs, like poetry or fictions, about the relationship between God and the world we live in. For example, numbers have meanings. Seven does not necessarily mean 7, but it means sacred. It is just like people used to believe the number thirteen was unlucky.

2. The first three chapters of Genesis is the result of putting together two sets of writing done by two persons or two different traditions. They have totally different views of God. Chapter one is mainly made up of the writing done by what the scholars call him as “E” taken from the Hebrew word for God “Elohim.” This God does not have a human-like body. He uses only his word to create or change things. “Let there be light!” In most of the English translations, the God of “E”is translated simply as “God.” This word is a title, or the generic word for the divine being, not any particular divinity. It could be a Hebrew God, an Egyptian god, or Hindu for that matter.

3. In chapter two and three, God is referred as “Lord God” in English. It is a distinctively Hebrew, or Jewish, God. The Jews, after the Ten Commandment, prohibited to pronounce the name of their God according to the third commandment “You shall not call his name in vain.” The Hebrew language does not print vowels. The name of God was simply written as “YHWH”. Because they had not pronounced the word so long they forgot the vowels. So in stead of reading his name as written, they simply said, “Lord”. And this God described by this writer, now is known as “J” (In Hebrew J and Y are the same.) God by J is very human-like. He molds by hand the first human out of clay, and takes a walk in a shade in a hot summer.

Some parts of them were primitive and even immature. Some mistaken ideas about God too. The Bible is written by humans, and their understanding of God grew and matured as the time went by. The God in the Bible began as a tribal, selfish, jealous and vengeful god into the universal, just, forgiving, loving, and self-giving God as the history of the Jews and the early Christians progressed. The Bible shows that progress.

CAN DEATH BE A BLESSING?

Nowadays, I am beginning to wonder if the belief in ‘eternal life’ is important anymore.

Don’t get me wrong. I love life: I love my wife, my daughter and granddaughters, my cats, good food and wine. I do not want to part with any of them soon. In the mean time, I am sadly aware that all have to go separate ways eventually. The final demise is as sure as anything that can be sure. This is why many spiritual traditions, particularly mine – Christianity, have defined longevity or eternal life as the ultimate blessing. This is why death has often been considered to be an ultimate curse. I am not sure about that anymore. Here is why:

The progress made in recent years in medicine and other sciences have made us live for a long, long time. During the last few years of my career as a clergy person, most of the funerals I conducted were the kind people would say, “I’m glad he didn’t suffer. It was a relief.” My mother died at the age ninety-six. She had been a happy person until the end. She died peacefully in her sleep holding hand of her favourite cleaning lady in her nursing home. Most of her friends predeceased her. Her offsprings had all settled happily one way or another. Her memories had almost gone. She had no pain, not much appetite, and worse thing was she could no longer play piano. She kept saying, “What’s the point? I love you but…”

Of course, no one should die young, in pain, or brutally. Everyone should live as long as possible with good health. It is possible to do this for many people in the industrialized societies. Thank God. But how long? Imagine, people used to die much younger, many in infancy. That’s why, I think, the notions like “eternal life” or “life beyond death” seemed so attractive. My dad died at the age fifty. “Three score years and ten” used to be such a long life that it was a favourite line for many speeches and poems. Now I will pass the point of “four score years” soon. I am not depressed. I am happy. But longevity or life-eternal is no longer my most coveted goal. Peace is. And going back to dust and become a part of the earth comforts me.

SOME PEOPLE LOVE CROWS

Crows get bad press in Canada. People do not like crows and magpies. For a person of Japanese origine, I should say that they occupy a special place in my culture.

Crows are an intelligent birds, and very family oriented. They mate for life. A children’s song I learned in the kindergarten sings about crows’ love of their children: “Crows, why do you sing like that? They sing like that because they love their children.” ( ‘Caw’ sounds like “Caw-waii.” It means “a lovely cutie-pie.”)

A famous Japanese writer of children’s stories, Kenji Miyazawa, wrote a short story about a captain of the crow air force. He is a fierce fighter, a brave leader, but easily falls into depression. He is committed to defend his clan, but can not bear the thoughts of killing others, basically he is a kind bird in heart.

Wasn’t it a raven, a species of crow, who fed Prophet Elijiah with bread and meat to survive while he was hiding in a cave? I think crows suffer from bad press around here.

I HATE INFLATION
Re: Cartoon, Lethbridge Herald, December 16
                        
So penny will be history.  When I arrived in Canada, a cup of coffee cost only ten of those.  I hate inflation that made penny obsolete.  Money becomes cheaper, so does savings.  So why save, they say.  I don’t understand why a bit of inflation is better than deflation.  I hate anything that diminishes the value of real things.

Inflation is not only about money.   The other day I tried to fly to Toronto with the points I earned with a frequent flyers’ program.  I had to add more money to the accumulated credit, which had been enough to fly to Tokyo and back only two years ago.  I felt lied to.  No wonder people do not save any more.   They say that borrow money to buy now and pay later is cheaper.  

Another kind of inflation I hate is one with language.  What should be enough to say “nice” must now be “awesome” to mean the same thing.  What belonged to the divine, the word like “absolutely” is now a substitute for a mere “yes.”  Only God was “forever”, but now it’s  diamond.  A sales clerk is now called an “associate.”  With an enhanced title like that, one should expect an enhanced status. But it’s not the case.  “Associates” are  not even allowed to unionize.  

Coca Cola created an image of a fat bearded man in red for Santa Claus about a century ago.  He appears at every shopping mall, and changed a symbol of charity and love of an old saint who lived in Turkey into a  gimmick to sell merchandise.  I hate inflation.  Bring back the original Saint Nicholas who loved the poor who had no money to buy presents.

I guess I have to change with the time and stop ranting like this.  But I am an old retired bag of air, who still cherish old values, like beauty, charity, fairness, love, and simplicity.  They are not pennies.  I just wish that inflation will not diminish those important values into irrelevance.

IT TAKES ALL KINDS

It takes all kinds to make a country like Canada.  To make a nation out of different peoples, one has to appreciate and understand difference.  I can list many examples.  Here are a few.

I was interested reading a couple of letters on this paper about crows recently.  Let me voice another view point:  In Japan, crows are loved as the birds that are seen as kind and faithful creatures, and they are plenty.  Crows are very family oriented, they mate for life, and they are smart.  Being brought up in Japan, I don’t understand why they are disliked in Canada.   I think crows get the bad press here.  A species that is disliked in one culture can be loved in another.

Before sushi became an integral part of the North American conversation and diet, many people used to think that it was an uncivilized barbarism to eat raw fish.  Many European explorers, Englishmen and Vikings who came to Canada and Greenland might not have to perish if they ate raw fish and meat like the Inuit.  

When I lived in Vancouver soon after I came to Canada, a bunch of Italian children came one day to ask if they could dig up dandelions in my shamefully unkept front yard.  I had no idea then Europeans loved dandelions in their salad.  Later in my life, when I lived in Switzerland,  a family of Swiss friends and I used to go to a pasture in France to collect soft and juicy dandelions.  An article in April by a famous Montreal chef of a high class restaurant “Toque”, Normand Laprise, on the Globe and Mail, extort the virtue of dandelions, for its gastronomical and nutritious values in salad.  It is believed that it was the British Army that brought dandelions to the North America.  I heard that dandelions saved many soldiers’ lives in the spring, of those who survived scurvy during the winter when there was no fresh vegetables.  I love the slightly bitter taste of young and tender dandelion leaves.  You have to harvest them before they blossom.

Canada is a nation of many peoples with many cultures and traditions, and we are proud of it.  It will be good if we learn from difference, appreciate it and adjust the familiar views of things         accordingly.  When we do, we will make our lives richer.  We may find ourselves better equipped to survive in turbulent times.

No, bigger is not always better.

Toyota got into trouble as soon as it replaced GM as the biggest automaker in the world.  It became apparent that Toyota was hiding a serious problem for some years because of the pressure to become No. 1.  I wonder why the big must always strive to be bigger risking an ultimate existential demise.  It does not need to be like that.  It is already big.  So many huge corporations nearly failed and had to be bailed out costing taxpayers billions because they adopted questionable business practices in their efforts to become even bigger: Chrysler, GM, AIG, and the list goes on.  I guess it’s like a gambler who could not stop gambling when winning.  If you think of the large corporation that were responsible by instigating the World War II, such as the Krupp of Germany and the Mitsui (no relation of mine) of Japan, BIG can even be evil.  Didn’t a President of the United States, Dwight Eisenhower, warned about the danger of the growing military industrial complex dictating the policy?  He should know what he was talking about.  He was a general and a war hero before he was elected President.

A few decades ago, there was a book written by a man by the name of E.F. Schumacher, titled “Small is Beautiful.”  He was a German-born economist who lived in England and pioneered the notion of the importance of regional economies (as opposed to the global economy).  He also emphasized the importance of ecologically and socially responsible consumption.   I heard him once in Toronto during the 1980’s.  I don’t remember exactly what he said but I remember him warning about the destructive nature of the BIG and praising enthusiastically about the SMALL.  The bigger, the cheaper is not always everybody’s cup of tea.   I for one want quality though it may cost more.   Quality pays because it lasts longer.   Bigger is not always better nor cheaper.

A story has it that one day an American, a Frenchman, and a German were discussing elephants.  The American wants to discuss the way to make elephants bigger and better.  The Frenchman’s interest was , of course, the love life of elephants.  The German kept talking about the ontological significance of elephants.  We do have other values that are important; such as love or existential meaning.

I gave my love a Smart Car, and she loves it.

NATURAL DISASTER IS NOT ALL ACT OF GOD
POVERTY IS THE CAUSE OF SUFFERING

Why do people starve?  The answer is quite simple.  They starve because they are poor.  But the world would rather give food aid to the starving people than making them rich enough to feed themselves, because we are not willing to give up our affluent life style.  We rather give what we can spare.  We should ask the same question about the tragedy in Haiti.  Why God allows such a devastating catastrophe to happen?  The answer is the same.  Because Haiti is poor.   Cheaply built buildings crumbled easily.   Let’s talk about the food shortage first.

At the height of famine in 1985, I went to Makele in Northern Ethiopia to observe the feeding operations.  I was just appointed as Coordinator of the famine relief of the World Council of Churches based in Geneva, Switzerland.  The horrific scene I saw must still be familiar to many people’s memories, skeletal bodies of dying people lying on the ground with their hollow eyes looking at the merciless camera.  However, a big surprise came next.  Representatives of the relief organizations were taken to a hotel by the government officials for lunch.  It was a wonderful Italian dish.  It was only a few miles away from the feeding camp where people were starving to death.  There was food if you had money.   Even in the midst of famine, food is available.  In fact, food has always been plentiful in the world.  The problem is rather too much food, and food producers in poor countries don’t get enough income because surplus food from overseas is cheaper.  Ethiopian peasants died because they had no money to buy food nor could they produce food.   Why?  There was no farm credit for inputs and implements.  Southern Alberta is a semi-desert,  but farmers do not starve and keep on producing food, because they have access to credit and crop insurance.  Food production is possible in the semi-desert, because there is enough money to build infrastructure such as irrigation systems.  If you don’t have money, you can neither produce food nor buy food.  So you starve.

There was a scandal in Europe in the midst of the African famine of the 1980’s.  An Italian journalist noticed that a tin of corned beef had a label,  “Made with beef from Ethiopia.”  OXFAM,  U.K. picked up the story and did some digging.  They discovered that during the height of famine, Ethiopia increased its food export.  Ethiopia exports beef, coffee, and sugar.  How do they do that?  Because their factory farms has better land and government subsidies has been generous:  the government needed foreign currency to buy weapons to fight the civil war.  So Ethiopia had surplus food in the middle of starvation.  The problem was that people could not live on coffee and sugar, and beef was too expensive to produce for farmers.

The problem of hunger in the world is not the problem of availability of food, it’s the question of accessibility to it.  Food is plentiful and available if you have money to buy it.  If you have money, you can produce food too.  The Western countries are reluctant to give farm subsidies to the poor countries because our agro-business does not want more competitions, while our governments’ subsidy to the food producers is enormous.  So we don’t mind giving surplus food as food aid, but we don’t want the poor countries to become rich enough to produce their own food.  We don’t starve because we have money.  No money?  They starve.

The miracle of the feeding of thousands in the Gospel according to John has an interesting added story.  Verse 8 says, “There is a boy who had five loaves of barley bread and two fish.”  That food was what Jesus blessed and fed five thousand people with.  The point of the story is not the miracle but the sacrifice made by the boy.  Many people interpret this story as a miracle story that proves that Jesus was the son of God.  I don’t believe that this is the point.

If you learn about other religions, such a miracle is not unusual.  Many legends are miracles stories.  They simply try to express their belief in an exceptional person by telling the amazing stories of miracle they are supposed to have performed.  They may have made up such stories.   Even if it is a made up story,  you can not dismiss it because it conveys an important message.  You have to ask why people created such an image of the person they loved and respected.  For example, it has been fifty-three years since I left Japan.  Every time I visit Japan for family celebrations and other events, I am always surprised by the myths created about me during my absence.  I got tired of correcting their mistakes nowadays.  Instead, I learned to appreciate the image of me created that reflects their view of Tad Mitsui.  If you want to believe this story as a historical fact to prove Jesus Christ was the son of God, that is your choice.  But you can not dismiss the importance of this story because it is a made up story.  I believe it has an important meaning even if it was not a miracle.

For example, I see the sacrifice that the boy made by giving up all the food he had is  a very important point of this story.  Five loaves and two fish were all he had.  It could have been his lunch, or could have been a lunch for his family.  But when he heard Jesus saying to the disciples to find out what food they could find, he gave it all up.  He didn’t give up some and kept most of it for himself.  But He gave it all he had.  When someone is ready to sacrifice everything, amazing things can happen.

Haiti is a tragic country.  Earthquake resulted such a devastating catastrophe because the country is so poor.  Buildings were built, according to our standard, very poorly.  Imagine a three story concrete block building without any reenforcement?  Earthquake is a natural disaster, act of God if you will.  But the rich can cope with it much better, because everything is of a better quality, buildings and infrastructure.  And a poor country is often densely populated so one crumbling building can kill more people than it does in Canada.  Sometime ago, there was a terrible earthquake which killed more than three thousand people in Nicaragua.  The same earthquake with the same strength hit San Fernando Valley in California at the same instance.  The total death toll in California was six people.  Again, just like the case of food shortage, people suffer more in a poor country.

The problem is that we are not willing to deal with poverty, because the solution to poverty requires sacrifice on our part requiring not just a spare change.  A system change is required.  We are not ready to give up the system that has made us rich.  We don’t mind giving food aid, but we don’t want them to become our competitor.  Haiti used to be a rice producer.  The land is suited ro rice production.   But cheap rice from Louisiana and North Carolina destroyed the Haitian rice farming.  The farmers in the States can produce cheap rice because they are subsidised in the tune of 41%.  American farmers didn’t intend to destroy Haitian rice industry, but they didn’t want to give up government subsidy either.  And they need to sell their surplus rice overseas.

Feeding of five thousand people with five loaves and two fish is a miracle.  It is not a miracle because Jesus proved his magical power as the son of Gos, but it is because there was someone who gave up all he had.  God will bless such sacrificial love, and perform miracles, even today.

Examination of anti-Semitism in Renaissance religious art

Religions bear a lot of responsibility in arousing and perpetuating racism, including anti-Semitism.  I want to examine Renaissance religious art that exposes the Christian church’s latent but profound anti-Semitism.  Why?  It is very important for me as an active advocate of  human rights.   It has been my experience that  as soon as you begin to speak about the human rights record of the  State of Israel , you are dismissed as an anti-Semite.  It is ridiculous to label me as such.  My grand daughters are half Jewish, and a half of my daughter’s relations are Jewish.  I continue my work in the effort to stamp out racism in all forms particularly Anti-Semitism, in order to continue my advocacy for universal human rights without being accused of holding a double standard.

At the outset, however, I must acknowledge with gratitude, help and encouragement I received from two professors of the U of L in this enquiry.  Anne Dymond, a professor of Art History, who encouraged me to pursue the subject, and Mary Kavanagh, Chair of the Department of Art, who introduced me to Leo Steinberg’s work.  Steinberg was a professor at the University of Pennsylvania and in 1983  published a book called “The Sexuality of Christ in Renaissance Art and in Modern Oblivion”.
My query began when I sat in an art history class for two semesters at the University of Lethbridge.  While going through the Renaissance period, I was struck by two odd things about naked bodies of the Biblical characters.  (Fig. 1, 2,3 – Michelangelo)  First of all, they are all male figures.  There are undraped females in Renaissance art, but they are pagan figures like Venus.  Secondly, though they represent  Jewish males, they are not circumcised.  It was not that difficult for me to interpret this as a mark of male chauvinism and anti-Semitism in the Christian Church, which commissioned those artistic works.  I realized then how deep and entrenched the church held those views and influenced generations of racist practices and misogyny, especially against the Jews.

There is a book written by Barrie Wilson, who teaches religion at York University in Toronto, titled “How Jesus became Christian.”  He examines the process in which a movement within Judaism in Palestine became another religion, no longer Judaism.   During the first century, a man called Joshua or Yeshua in Hebrew became Iesus in Greek, Jesus in English, in the new religion.  And Messiah or Messhiah in Hebrew also became Xristus in Greek, Christ in English.   A few centuries following, the selection of the books that became the present day Christian Bible, was canonized by the church in AD 393 at the Synod of Hippo, at the time when the church was eager to erase as much traces of Jewishness as possible.  This is why, Wilson contends, that the New Testament itself is inherently anti-Semitic, particularly Luke, Acts, and Paul’s letters.  The New Testament is where the notion of the Jews being murderers of Christ came from.   It was an official doctrine of the Roman Catholic Church until Vatican Council II, which was held during the 1960’s.  The Church took 350 years to admit that the church was wrong and Galileo was right, but two thousand years to admit that the Jews could not be blamed for the murder of Jesus.
Let me go back to the subject of art.  In the Art History class, I was surprised when I first saw Michelangelo’s Risen Christ.  (Slide 2 and 3) I was not surprised to see Jesus in a naked male body.  Michelangelo did many nude figures, including the most famous David in Florence. (Slide 1).  My amazement was seeing a Jewish male not circumcised.  The Book of Genesis 17 indicates how important circumcision was as a mark of a special relationship between God and the Israelites.  Every Jewish male child is circumcised after eight days of birth even today.  (So is a Muslim baby.  Arabs and Jews are the children of Abraham.)  How can anyone deny that Jesus was circumcised? (Slide – Circumcision by Mantegna)
I looked at other Renaissance religious art and ventured into some speculations.  I made a quick survey of artists who painted Mother and Child, (Slides 3, and next few slides of Mother and Child are by Botticelli, Bruegel and others)   Note Mary’s hand.  It is drawing the attention of the viewers to the child’s genitals and you will see the same problems: emphasis on maleness and rejection of Jewishness.  Some people defend those artists.  Their argument is:  Renaissance was a movement to revive the ancient Greco/Roman culture.  Greeks didn’t think that a female body was as perfect as a male body, so there are few female nudes.  Also the Greeks were not circumcised, they never saw circumcised genitals and didn’t know how they looked like.  Therefore Renaissance artists, so the argument goes,  did what the Greeks did.   I don’t accept such an argument.

Renaissance people  certainly must have known how a circumcised penis looked like.  Many North African slaves lived among them in Europe and surely exposed their bodies dead or alive.  They were Muslims and were certainly circumcised.  The depiction of the Biblical males not circumcised was an explicit rejection of an important sign of the covenant between God and the offspring of Abraham – Jews and Arabs.  The Church and the artists certainly knew that Jesus was circumcised.  (Slide 4 – Circumcision by Montegna) But the church tried to distance itself from Judaism by instructing the artists to eradicate the sign of a special relationship between God and the sons of Abraham.  The process of de-Judaisation began with Paul, who determined that Baptism alone was enough to enter the church.  Circumcision was dismissed as optional.  An early Christian theologian, Tertullian said, “the faith has turned away from circumcision back to the integrity of the flesh, as it was from the beginning.”   Origine and Augustine and many other fathers of Christian thought followed the same argument.  Leo Steinberg concludes, “The reason for the Child’s (and other Biblical figures’) apparent uncircumcision must lie in the artists’ (and the church’s) sense of the body’s perfection.”  Jesus, the Son of God, can not be imperfect.  Jews can not be perfect human because of circumcision?  This is how the church rejected Jewishness of Jesus.  Son of God must be without a shameful scar, or an embarrassing defect as these church fathers  called it.
Another telling feature of Mother and
Child in Renaissance art is the scene depicting the Magi paying homage to the Holy Child.   It is the scene of Epiphany, revelation of the son of God to the pagan world, represented by the Magi, who came from the East.  A close look at them, it is easy to see what the Magi is looking at. The Magi is clearly showing that they are staring at Baby’s genital.  The Magi represented the pagan world,  therefore they must be told in no uncertain terms that the true God is a male.

I come from the East.  So I know how much female divinities   can be popular figures in other cultures.  For example, the one who gave birth to the Japanese archipelago was a goddess, Izanami, and a    mystic figure who was supposed to be the founder of the Japanese nation is a goddess, the Sun Goddess of Amaterasu.  Therefore the moment of Epiphany when the Magi came to visit the child is not only a demonstration to the pagans who the true son of the true God was, but also he was a “HE”, a male person.  Therefore, the Magi must see with his own eyes that Jesus, a new born son of God was a boy.  It is no wonder that male-chauvinism is well entrenched in the Christian Church, even though things are changing in some churches.

If you think that I am picking only on the Catholic Church, you are quite wrong.  Read Martin Luther, the first Protestant reformer.  His tirade against the Jews was venomous: in 1543, he wrote “Jews are base, whoring people, that is, no people of God, and their boast of lineage, circumcision, and law must be accounted of filth – devil’s faeces.”  The K.K.K. began as  a Protestant movement, and it’s mission is anti-Semitism, racism, and anti-Catholicism.  I personally encountered people who said, “the mark of Cain” was a Biblical basis to exclude non-white races as referred to in the Chapter 4 of the Book of Genesis, by Protestant people in Canada and South Africa.

Yes, religions have a lot to answer for taking advantage of racism.  You may ask me, “Are you still a Christian?”  And I say emphatically, “Yes, I am.”  I believe that religion is an important instrument in our pursuit of truth.  It is as much a legitimate channel as art, philosophy, and science.  However, all human effort to find what is true can be abused in a pursuits of power and domination.  By striving for power instead of truth, we can go against truth.  This is how any religion can become evil by twisting the truth and excluding and demonizing others in order to glorify itself beyond and against what is truth.  This is why I am keen to expose past mistakes in my own faith tradition in order to strive towards what is truly true.

HOW TO GIVE                .

Christmas is a time to give.  But to whom?  A good question.  There are so many causes seeking donations.  We need to carefully think about the marks of worthy causes.   The following are my criteria.  What are yours?

1. My priority is to support people who help me think of the root causes of  hunger, sickness, poverty, or whatever the problems.  So I chose a church, a political party, and the local art institutions.  The church makes me think of  moral values.  Artists help me think of important questions in life.   For you it could be any religion or association.  Political parties try to put those ideas into practice.  Granted all of them can be flawed.  But it is more effective if you are involved to make changes.  So the church, the political party, and the art institutions get a chunk of my money.

2. I ask: Do they put more emphasis on building a community rather than giving hand-outs to individuals?  Yes, it is necessary when conditions are dire. But  it can also perpetuate dependency making some people life-long beggars.  When someone is starving, you have to feed  him/her.  Therefore, I support food-aid overseas, food banks and soup kitchens at home.  But in the mean time, find and support the organizations that try to eradicate the root causes of hunger, sickness, and poverty.

3. All life forms are precious.  Therefore animal welfare and care of environment get my money.  
4. Cash donation and volunteer time are the best ways.  I know that gifts-in-kind cost people’s time and money to process.  Give gifts-in-kind as well as money.

5.  Finally, I would check how accountable the organization is, especially the big one.  Why?  Unfortunately some charities are money making business and little money goes to the actual cause.  I try to find out what the cost of overhead is, e.g. TV advertisement, and staff salaries and such.  They are necessary expenses for an efficient operation.  But the cost of overhead should be below 25 % of the total budget.  I will be suspicious if they don’t give you such information.  

6. So, I never give neither pledge donation at the door or on the telephone, because it is impossible to hold them accountable unless you know the person on the phone or at the door.

There must be more.

                In John Steinbeck’s novel, “The Grapes of Wrath” there is a scene of a box car full of starving jobless people on a way to find work in California.  There is a young woman, who just gave birth to a still born baby.   There is a starving man on the verge of death.  She has  nothing to give him so she lets him suck on her breast.  I heard of a retired teacher who received a complaint from parents  by speaking about that part of the novel  in his highschool English class in Southern Alberta.

Learning another language is difficult.  I have been speaking and working in English for more than a half a century.  But I still have problems with English.  For example, the Japanese language does not have articles.  So I still have problem in the use of articles.  The Japanese way of thinking is that life is full of ambiguity.  Trying to be definite or precise about life is futile.  We have to live with ambiguity.  Who needs a definite or indefinite article?  When I was at the United Church General Council in Fredericton in 1992, the assembly spent a half a day hotly debating whether the Bible was the authority or an authority.  I had no idea what the fuss was all about.  

In Sesotho language in which I preached in Africa, there are two ‘e’ sounds.  A French speaking person can pronounce them distinctively ‘e’ with an accent grave and ‘e’ with an accent aigu.   But I can not hear the difference those different sounds nor produce them distinctively.  In Sesotho, ‘body’ is ‘mele with an accent grave and woman’s breast is ‘mele’ with an accent aigu.  For the first two years, every time I gave out “body of Christ” in the communion service, people giggled.  I didn’t understand why it was so funny.   It so happened that I was giving out the Breast of Christ.  

Lately as I was thinking about the meaning of communion, I began to develop a deeper meaning from my mistake because of my inability to distinguish “body” from “breast”.   If you look at Renaissance paintings and sculptures, by Michelangelo and Donatelo and others, you will notice the only exposed female body part is Mary’s one breast, nursing Baby Jesus.  The word ‘Christ’ is not Jesus’ last name, it’s a title.  It means the anointed one.  King of Persia, Cyrus was called the anointed one in the Isaiah, because he defeated Babylon and freed Israelites.  It can also be technically male or female.  If the Christ was a woman, isn’t it meaningful to receive her milk when a minister gives out communion by saying like I said in Lesotho, “this is the breast of Christ” through which we receive life’s sustenance?  After all, the meaning of the word ‘communion’ is sharing.  In communion, we remember that Christ shared himself.  So why not through the breast. I was reading a book about the development of Mary’s status as the mother God in the early Christian church, recently.  The status of Mary we know today is not from the Bible.  It comes from the yearning of new converts, who missed a female divine figure because they were used to worship goddesses.  So Mary as a mother of god, a mediator between Christ and us, was a theological compromise in early church.  When you hear people who believe in Mary as the ultimate mediator between Jesus and people, you could feel a tremendous adoration for her almost equal to that you give to Christ.  I am not saying that we should replace Jesus for Mary.  All I am saying is that my mistake in pronounciation gave me an opening into a different kind of understanding of the Communion Service and how we may eb nourished by God.  Try to think of communion as an act that is as intimate and basic as a baby nursing at mother’s breast.

In order to understand the deeper meaning of the breast of Christ, you have to switch your mind into the way hungry people think about the communion.  In Lesotho, communion services are held only once or twice a year.  Because the church is poor and often could not pay a full time minister, one ordained person looks after at least three or more congregations, sometimes in the mountains, thirty congregations.  Each congregation is looked after on Sundays by a part-time trained and certified lay preacher called an “evangelist” who is usually a teacher in a city and a farmer in the countryside.  So if an ordained person has ten congregations, for example, communion services are held jointly once or twice a year with a few neighbouring congregations.  A host congregation holds fundraising events in order to sponsor such an event.  They have tohave sufficient funds to  feed the crowd who may walk hours to come to the special joint communion service.  It is called ‘mokete’ meaning “Feast.”  It’s a joyful occasion.

When I went to administer a communion like that for the first time, I had a few surprises, not only the breast of Christ I gave out unknowingly.  They used home-baked hearty bread and sweet South African wine in a common cup.  Bread is held by the minister which each communicant tear away a chunk, and a cup of wine is held by an elder from which each person has a sip.
But what surprised me  was that the a group of elders surrounded me and the cup holding elder like the honour  guards.  What surprised me even more was that their role was to make sure people didn’t take too much of bread and wine.  They pushed them away if they thought someone was taking too big a chunk and tear them away from the cup if they stay there too long.  People were hungry.  For them, even a bit of bread and a drop of wine were food.  It never dawned on me, since I came from an affluent society, that communion could mean  food when you are hungry.                    

In Communion Service, we remember that Christ shared his own life, the most precious thing any living person has.  Food is precious for a lot of people in the world.  By taking communion, we
must remind ourselves that this symbolic act is a beginning of our action to try to eradicate hunger from our world.  In conclusion, I wish to go back to John Steinbeck.  The communion is a remembrance of an event as intimate and embarrassing as the young woman’s act who had nothing else to give except what she had.