what does it mean to celebrate all people?

Sometimes organizations make bold statements in their mission, vision and value statements (and the like). But what do such statements mean? How are they realized (real-alized; made real)? 

I offer this as one example of how one can respectfully ask about such statements, in a way that promotes accountability, provokes thinking, and encourages movement forward.

Last summer I wrote to our parish priest about a statement that was sent out in a key document. Here's my side of the email:

---

Hi P,

I have a question for the leadership regarding the following value from the mission action plan document that was sent out:

Welcoming and Open to All
We will live Christ’s words: “Love your neighbor as yourself.” We will be a welcoming parish family. We love and celebrate all people regardless of age, culture, sexuality, or socio-economic status.

I’m wondering in particular what the last sentence means. Does it mean that we at our church generally celebrate all people without regard or attention to any of these things, even those things like race, culture or sexuality which are unique and something to be specifically celebrated? Kind of like being “colour-blind” where we celebrate all people regardless of their colour but in fact we ignore their colour and their ethnic / racial uniqueness and what they bring to the table and how the community is enriched by them?

Or will we actually celebrate people for who they specifically are, including race, culture and sexuality? Kinda like the way the LGBTQ2S+ community is acknowledged and celebrated particularly in June here in Edmonton, or the way we in our church region are beginning to recognize and celebrate indigenous peoples?

Related to this: two Sundays ago two women were sitting in the row in front of us. Based on their affection and physical contact, I would assume they are a couple and I wondered, how did they know this would be a safe place to be themselves? It's not a reasonable assumption to make about churches, and the public face of our church does not indicate that LGBTQ2S+ people would be welcome. Did they speak to one of the clergy in advance? Do they know someone who attends here? Were they just taking a chance on us and lucked out? I don't know.

Further related to this: P, you preached about a prophetic imagination. How might we imagine a church where all people are truly embraced and seen as an integral and needed part of the body? A church where none are shamed? A church which makes it obvious that people walking in will be loved and embraced? A church that shines its light on a hill instead of hiding it under a bushel?

Warm regards,

Rob

---

Note: I received a very positive response from our priest, who said that the leadership was discussing this and moving forward to look at specific ways of implementing.

[free unconscious bias microlearning lessons]

Addressing Unconscious
Bias with
Modern Learning

Grovo has made all 20 of its Unconscious Bias Microlearning lessons available for free.

These mini lessons are 3 minutes or less, and give a quick and easy to understand introduction to the topic:

https://www.grovo.com/addressing-unconscious-bias


And while you're at it, check out the new "Learning Snippets" from Aaron Barth. The first three are free to try -- these short 5 minute lessons get you thinking about bias in the workplace and how to respond to it.

https://www.learningsnippets.ca/try3free

another haiku for our time

solace

    clouds trump sun and moon

    warm rain like tears streaming down

    dog-god comforts me

                                              written by rob goetze for rachel,

                             for poem in your pocket day, april 30, 2020

[revision and resistance - kent monkman]

My birthday present just arrived in the mail, and I'm super excited about it:

In collaboration with Kent Monkman and his studio, the Art Canada Institute is publishing a book on the commission and creation of his diptych unveiled at New York’s Metropolitan Museum of Art this week. Revision & Resistance: mistikôsiwak at The Metropolitan Museum of Art, which will be available for sale in March 2020, celebrates Monkman’s groundbreaking paintings with essays by today’s most prominent voices on Indigenous art and Canadian painting. (source: the Art Institute of Canada webpage)

Kent Monkman is a  Cree two-spirited artist living in the Toronto area whose work I've been following for a few years. He combines traditional European painting techniques with Indigenous imagery with critiques of colonization and Eurocentric views of history.

Here is one of the two pieces that he created for the Met:

Read more about the book:
https://aci-iac.ca/news/art-canada-institute-in-collaboration-with-kent-monkman

View my post about Monkman's exhibit, "The Rise and Fall of Civilization", at the Glenbow Museum in Calgary last year.

[rise and fall of civilization - exhibit]

In the late summer of 2019, I visited the Glenbow Museum with one specific goal in mind: to see the exhibit "The Rise and Fall of Civilization" by Kent Monkman, a Cree two-spirit artist based in Toronto.

From the museum's website:

Kent Monkman’s The Rise and Fall of Civilization references the near extinction of the American bison in the 1800s when unsustainable hunting practices, used primarily by white settlers, reduced the number of bison from over 30 million to just a few hundred by the 1880s. During this time, bison or buffalo were hunted for their durable hides and their bones were used for fertilizer and in the manufacture of bone china. The buffalo meat was left to rot, decimating a food source that had sustained Indigenous peoples for generations.

(source) 

Read more at the Glenbow Site: https://www.glenbow.org/exhibitions/kent-monkman-the-rise-and-fall-of-civilization/

The exhibit is long-term at the Glenbow, so be sure to check it out once the pandemic is over.


For a video about one of Monkman's other works, The Deluge, visit:
https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=OqbhG4BX6oU

All photos by rob goetze. (c) 2019.

holy egg!

And now for my contribution to Easter:

[inclusion lens - event management tool]

York University has a great "inclusion lens" event management tool which is very helpful for ensuring that events are as inclusive and accessible to all as possible. And even better, this tool is available to the public!

Each of the four main categories - Planning, Advertising, Implementing and Evaluating - offers a list of questions. Click on any question and it expands to show specific considerations. Click on any consideration and a tip pops up with an explanation or more information.

Here's an example from the Planning section, showing the considerations for the question: "Is your event location accessible?"

Go have a look and try it out for your next event:
https://inclusionlens.yorku.ca/

[god as a black woman]

"Harmonia Rosales is a 33-year-old artist based Chicago who’s doing something really powerful. She’s recreating some classical paintings, but portraying God as a black woman instead."

Here's one example of her work:

Read more:

This Artist Reimagines Classic Paintings With God As A Black Woman And They're Beautiful

Harmonia Rosales' website:  https://www.harmoniarosales.com

Harmonia Rosales' Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/honeiee/

a haiku for our time

[good minds books]

Looking for good books? Here's a lot of them - all First Nations, Metis and Inuit - on one website.

www.goodminds.com

[christ our black mother speaks]

An 84-page, full color collection of art, essays, questions and practices to deepen our connection to the Dark Divine Feminine.

Our conditioning has taught us to automatically perceive femininity as untrustworthy and blackness as dirty. So, black femininity is perceived as wholly unholy.

There’s something very evil about the way black women in particular are perceived as distant from the Divine. It brings to mind the Jezebel stereotype, the idea that black women are lascivious by nature, which has long plagued black women... [and] continues to thrive today...

In this volume of essays, I turn toward images of Christ on the cross. As I continue my exploration of the wholly holy female face of God, I ask a deeper question.

What does God’s femaleness and blackness practically mean for my particular black female experience?

And what does God’s femaleness and blackness practically mean for all of us? 

(from the website)

Find out more and order a digital copy for yourself:
http://www.christenacleveland.com/shop/christourblackmotherspeaks

the tale of the pyreneesian piranha

My great-great-grandfather lived in a small town in Europe and, it turned out based on his journals, liked to record happenings around town along with folk tales that the townspeople told. Here is his entry from January 4, 1876:

------

The Curse of the Pyreneesian Piranha

Once upon a time, there was a young man who lived by the sea. He was afraid of the sea, very very afraid of the sea and all that lived with it. 

"Give me an egg or a steak or a quail or a beet salad, but keep that sea-stuff away from me and my plate!" he said regularly.

And when he grew up, the very first thing he did with money saved from his first job delivering emails, was to move to the mountains. The Pyrenees, to be precise. To Bordes-du-Lys, France, to be more precise, a little hamlet high up in the Pyrenees and about equidistant from the Bay of Biscay and the Mediterranean Sea and thus, about as far away from the sea as possible without moving to Siberia.

After a few months, he learned the habits and routines of life in Bordes-du-Lys, and took them on for himself.

So he started every day by going to the bakery down the street, to get a fresh brewed coffee and croissant.

Except for one day. A box of chocolate came in the post, anonymously, just as he was about to leave, and he decided, as a special treat, to eat the chocolate for his breakfast 

Ta-a-asty, that chocolate. Good dark Swiss chocolate, with little bits of hazelnut embedded in it. Yummmeeeee.

Once the chocolate was all gone into his belly, he put the box on the kindling pile. That's when he heard a loud rumbling outside. 

"What is going on???" he asked himself!

He ran outside, looking around. The sky was clear though grey instead of the usual blue. Then, turning around and looking up at the mountain, he saw it. The biggest piranha he had never seen. Bigger than anything of any sort of fish or toothy thing he had ever seen in a book. Bigger than tall skyscrapers and the mountains themselves.

And that was when he knew. By skipping his usual morning jaunt and giving in to the temptation of the chocolate instead, he had broken the rhythm of the universe. And now the universe was coming for him. 

The piranha opened its mouth wider, 

        bigger than the sky, 

                        lunged forward,

                    and SNAP!

The End.

-------

Note to regular readers of this blog: I apologize that this post does not fit into the usual theme and genre of this blog. However, I have nowhere else to post my great-great-grandfather's stories.

whenever you do this...

[peanut goes for the gold]

The children's book "Peanut goes for the Gold", published January 2020, is about a non-binary guinea pig.

Peanut Goes for the Gold is a charming, funny, and heartfelt picture book that follows the adventures of Peanut, a gender nonbinary guinea pig who does everything with their own personal flare....
This upbeat and hilarious picture book, inspired by Jonathan's own childhood guinea pig, encourages children to not just be themselves—but to boldly and unapologetically love being themselves.

From Harper Collins

Should be an interesting read if it meets the publisher's description. 

** Since posting this originally, I took the book out from the public library. Not that interesting and definitely not a "I've got to have my own copy" kind of book.

I do wonder, though, if anyone has done any studies as to the impact of books featuring animals versus those featuring human characters. Is there a difference in how children relate to and take in the message?

---

I asked Kristi who works in education and literacy, about this. While we are not aware of particular research about this, here are parts of our conversation.

Certainly there is a positive impact when people see themselves or their own situation reflected in characters in a book, movie, TV show, etc.

A wide variety of characters and situations can be helpful to normalize a range of differences.

Seeing something first in a non-human character (like a guinea pig) who plays a human-like role might make it easier for someone who finds ideas like nonbinary new or unnerving might make it easier for them to later relate to a person who is nonbinary.

The use of non-human characters might also expand our understanding of binary. What I mean is, while some animals are clearly understood to have male and female (think cow and bull, or male and female birds with very different plumage), some others are not as obvious (think squirrels) and some ... well, I have no idea if worms even have gender. Or what about those guinea pigs? I imagine they are male or female, just like the gerbils I had as a child, but I don't think about male or female when I see one.

The connection for the reader could be the character species, the artwork, the humour, or any number of aspects of the book or show.

Kristi also said,
"I do feel it is so important for kids and adults to get a wide range of literature and if being exposed to characters in all situations helps you recalibrate and check who you are all the better. I also think it’s really important to have a huge variety because it can help 'normalize' ideas and situations too."

Would love to hear your thoughts... 

gendered events and two spirit people

In the spring of 2019, I attended a Two Spirit Ceremony and Workshop. Now, those of you who have attended Indigenous events like pipe ceremonies will know that it is not uncommon for the women to be asked to wear long skirts or dresses at such events, while there is usually no particular requirement for the men. And non-binary people and Two Spirit people are not often mentioned.

In this particular case, Warren Winnipeg was the cultural lead. In advance of the event, he sent out this note:

All ceremony participants are to wear a wrap‐around, blanket or full length skirt to the
ankles. This can be a throw‐blanket that one can tie around their waist.

Pretty simple, huh? The men mostly had a blanket tied around their waist, which went down to their feet. Most women had skirts but those who don't like skirts used blankets or wraps. Non-binary and Two Spirit people could also pick whatever they prefer. Including everyone doesn't always have to take a lot of work...

---

Jennifer Brockman, a Woodland Cree Metis with Scottish, British, and Italian ancestry, has written about their experience as a Two-Spirit participating in ceremonies. The article concludes with some tips on how to create ceremonial space for Two-Spirit people.
          Coming into the Circle – Welcoming Two-Spirit People in Ceremony