Every once in a while, we experience something that brings Scripture alive. Its Story becomes a dynamic, ongoing reality to participate in rather than simply a dry textbook of history or theology. In those moments, you realize the Story holds you, yet in a mysterious way you have a role to play, choices to make, significance in how it will unfold...
Last weekend was one such time. On July 5-6, I joined around five hundred other people from across Canada and the US at a campground just twenty minutes south of Fort McMurray, Alberta. We came from all sorts of different backgrounds-white, Native, Buddhist, agnostic, Christian-but we shared a common concern: the Alberta tar sands. Lying under a swath of boreal forest covering an area the size of Florida, the oil sands (called "tar" sands because of the tar-like quality of raw bitumen) have seen massive investment from Canada's government and industry over the last decades. They have become essential to Canada's plan for "Jobs, Growth, Prosperity", providing often lucrative work for people all across the nation, many unable to find adequate employment in their own communities.
But they have a high cost. Huge swaths of forest have been converted into desert and massive tailing ponds filled with toxic waste, with an estimated 11 million litres leaking from these chemical-infused lakes every day. Air pollution significantly exceeds even less stringent standards for quality breathing air. First Nation peoples in the region have seen higher levels of cancer, thousands of violations to their treaty rights, and ever-diminishing access to their traditional territories. And with proposed plans to grow, the tar sands alone will far outweigh other reductions Canada is making in its greenhouse gas emissions.
So this past weekend, hundreds of ordinary people like me gathered for a revolutionary act: prayer. Concerned about demonizing tar sands workers, among whom are many of their own people, Native elders had counselled this as the best way to shed light on the ongoing destruction at its source. No protest signs, no banners - just feet to walk, eyes to see, and a spirit in prayer. After a pipe ceremony and a brief press conference, we would walk 14 km around a loop of road through land mined by oil company Syncrude. Four times throughout the walk, we would stop, turn toward one of the four directions, and silently pray.
We looked over forest turned by human hands into lifeless desert and prayed healing for land, water, and air.
We looked over apartment blocks as cold and sterile as prison barracks and prayed for the husbands and sons living in them, displaced from their own families and communities.
We looked on as Native elders wept before the Creator, and we cried for freedom from our society's self-destructive bondage to oil.
We looked over large lakes full of toxic tailings an thought of loved ones stumbling from their rich cultures into a soul-sucking morass of money and drugs. And as we walked, we shared our stories, the burdens for and experiences of injustice which had brought us to this place. Standing in solidarity with those amongst us feeling most directly the destructive impacts of this gigaproject, love was working to heal, in such a small, unfinished way, the terrible wound of being alone and unheard in suffering.
Our walk had begun in both celebration and lament. We had rejoiced upon the delivery of a new life into the world, born onto a buffalo skin in a teepee at our campsite the midnight before everything had begun. A great-grandchild of one of the elders who had started the Walk, the baby was like a sign of hope from the Creator. The words of Isaiah resonated through my mind: The people walking in darkness have seen a great light; on those living in the land of deep darkness a light has dawned...For to us a child is born, to us a son is given.
Yet we grieved as we set off, as well, alerted to the likelihood of an oil spill travelling down the Athabasca river even as we walked. We were all too aware of the recent headlines: "Ghost train carrying crude derails in Quebec, causes explosion", and of numerous other recent oil-related accidents, reported by the media or not. Elders had told us how Mother Earth was weeping when she had so recently flooded the streets of Calgary, and we wondered if it was no coincidence that all the major oil companies working in the tar sands were headquartered in that deluged city. Could it be? Was the God of the Bible, who used droughts, locust, fire, and flood to stir His people to obedience, speaking through the Creation today? And if so, would we listen? Would we turn from the allure of money and power to choose life for all God's creatures?
The walk was long. Fourteen kilometers dragged on and on, our legs grew heavy, our mouths thirsty, and some developed headaches from breathing in the bad air. But we endured, and as we loaded on buses to return to our campsite for a traditional feast, we knew that somehow, some way, what we had just undertaken mattered. The smokestacks still chugged their poisons, the land was still scarred...But something had moved in the realm of spirit. We would one day see just how.
Was it a coincidence that, when I returned to Vancouver, I learned that one of my housemates had just quit his job in the oil fields to stay here and reinvest in his church and friendships here at home? Maybe. But in the words of Sir William Temple : "When I pray, coincidences happen, and when I don't, they don't."
No comments:
Post a Comment