Exploring Toronto – Love, the driving force: a journey of discernment

Opening Up

I am waaaaaay overdue for a proper blog post but I’m just not ready yet to write anything particularly reflective. As I’m sure has been the case for most people, my focus for the past few months has been survival. Coping with the never-ending lockdown in Toronto, finishing up my studies, and basically just trying to keep it all together.

Now, mercifully, it seems like life is entering a new stage. The city is slowly beginning to open up as the third wave of the pandemic subsides. I’ve completed my theology studies and am now preparing to begin full-time ministry as the next phase of my formation as a Loretto Sister. There is much that I could write about each of these things but just not yet.

So…instead…I offer photos.

High Park in the spring.

A place of refuge this past year and beautiful in any season. When I walk here each day, there is always something different to see. The landscape reveals itself in spontaneous and mysterious ways.

Sakura cherry blossoms! Blockades were set up this year to prevent crowds from gathering, but after the peak of the blossom I could get up close.

Some mornings the water is almost perfectly still. I am often tempted to just step out on to the water’s surface and see if I can make my way across the pond.

The mist was incredible this morning. It danced along the wind.

And, of course, each walk through the park offers the opportunity to make a new friend.

A New Year calls

Mesmermized by the ice of Grenadier Pond

I went for a long walk in High Park this morning to contemplate the year that has been, to just be present in the fading moments of 2020. I’ve read lots of posts on social media about saying good riddance to 2020, and lots of ways to ‘exorcise’ this unexpected and difficult year from our lives. But as I reflect back on each month of this year, I discover nothing to be rid of. I find so much to be grateful for, so much that caused suffering and disappointment, so much that was lacking in myself and the world around me, and so much that was right in myself and the world around me. Despite the difficulty of it all as a whole, I don’t want to be rid of any moment of this year because these are the moments that make me ‘me’ and you ‘you.’ These moments are what make us who we are.

There has been a lot to carry (and I’ve been a lot for others to carry!) in 2020, and no doubt there is still more carrying (and being carried) to come in 2021. I don’t want to end this year on a note that says “Get lost!” but rather, “It’s now time for you to go, thank you for your troubles and your gifts.”

And so, in my heart all day I have been saying my own farewell. And tonight, in our community, we will end the year with prayer and celebration. I end this post and this year (of relatively few blog posts) with a song we will sing tonight from Kate Rusby, whose music has been a faithful companion to me throughout the pandemic and no doubt, into the New Year.

May God bless us, keep us, and be love in us in 2021.

Addendum: this video was just posted on Facebook so check it out.

Taking a time out

Coming out of the First Spiritual Exercises (FSE) retreat that recently concluded at Regis College, I made the resolution to make a retreat day once a month. Nothing too formal, just a day set aside to be with God and to hang out the way I hang out with friends. A time out from the usual routine.

So today I purposefully spent the day with God. We walked over to see the old Loretto convent on Brunswick Avenue, now turned into beautiful condos called “The Loretto”. Then we went to Indigo to browse the books and inadvertently stumbled upon Canadian icons. Sharon and Bram (of Sharon, Lois, and Bram fame) were there giving a children’s concert and talking about their book Skinnamarink.

It was a childhood dream come true. I remember watching their show in the mid-’80s and being terribly jealous of the children who got to perform on their show and sing with them (those darned beautiful children with their adorable lisps and slight off key-ness). How I wanted to be up there on stage singing along with “Tingalayo” and “Little Rabbit Foo-Foo”. Well, this morning I had my chance. Not to sing on stage with them. The requisite adorable kids were already there and beat me to it. But I did get to wander along looking at books in the science fiction section, singing along to “Tingalayo” and a new-to-me classic, “I Had an Old Coat”. It was bliss.

This afternoon I continued my retreat by going out for tea. I wanted a chance to read old journals and to write in my current journal. And why not do so in the company of strangers with a chai latte? Questions came up during my FSE that I wanted to explore, and part of that exploration required going back into the past. So, I read a couple of journals from 10 years ago. They made me laugh (and a few entries made me want to cry) and I realized, my God, I am really me. I am so me. While the external circumstances of my life have changed dramatically over the past 10 years, I haven’t actually changed all that much (except hopefully, ever so slightly, for the better in some respects). My preoccupations and anxieties are pretty much the same, just transplanted into a new context. Realizations that I have about myself now are just a bit further along compared to the realizations I had then. In large part, it was consoling to read my journal, to see that I am growing, in baby steps for sure, but growing nonetheless.

The always inspiring Eucharistic prayer.

This evening I went to the Church of the Redeemer for their monthly Rock Eucharist. Tonight the Eucharist featured the music of Alanis Morissette. How could I resist? If Sharon, Lois, and Bram provided the soundtrack for my childhood, Alanis Morissette provided the soundtrack for my teenage years and early adulthood. It was a beautiful liturgy, albeit with a couple of surprising song choices (I hadn’t expected “All I Really Want” to be the offertory song), but it was meaningful and thought-provoking. The pastor gave a beautiful sermon and spoke about the tensions we all hold in life. Like Alanis sings, “I’m sad but I’m laughing, I’m brave but I’m chicken shit.” We are rarely one or the other. We are both. And often both at the same time.

My old journals reminded me of the tensions I held 10 years ago, which, it turns out, are not so different from the tensions I hold now. In one entry I wrote: You know, for awhile I thought Ron Rolheiser had it all figured out. [I had been reading several of his books.] He knows about loneliness, sadness, feeling unfulfilled, but he seems content to live the tension out. Prolong it, enjoy it almost. It seems so difficult to me. My patience hinders me, well, my lack of patience.

I think Ron Rolheiser does have it figured out. Not that I particularly enjoy the tensions inherent in my life, but by the grace of God, I think they are getting a little bit easier to hold.

drifting beauty

It has been snowing, off and on, this weekend. The first real snowfall of winter in Toronto. It’s finally really cold. -15C, feeling like -25C with the windchill. I’ve been waiting for this weather to feel as though winter is properly here. When I lived in Calgary, and then in Ottawa, winter was a real presence, showing up sometimes too early in the fall, and often staying past its welcome. But I always enjoyed the cold, even when I complained about it; its sharpness and chill make me feel more alive and invigorated than summer heat.

Living downtown we don’t get much snow. It falls and doesn’t stick around for long. So this morning I went up to our roof with delight, desiring to photograph the snow while it was still fresh and clean and white. I wanted to try to capture something of the frost-bitten rooftops of the university campus that I view from my window. When I downloaded the photos to my laptop, I was taken aback. So busy looking at the snow, wanting to see if my camera could capture its crystalline essence, that I didn’t look above and notice the dramatic beauty of the dazzling blue sky and drifting clouds. How often do I miss the beauty that fills each day?

A life rich in the living of it

I’ve taken a break from writing my blog for the past couple of months. I’ve been immersed in my theology studies and activities at school and in community. Life has been so rich in the living of it that I haven’t felt compelled to write about what has been going on. But I’ve started to feel that longing again to write, so I will continue as I can amidst the hustle and bustle of life.

Centre Island amusement park closed up for the winter.

One of the great treasures I have been enjoying is the gift of friendship. I feel very wealthy in friends these days, which is a big shift from when I moved to Toronto four years ago and knew practically no one. Bit by bit, I have met a wonderful miscellany of people – at school, in the community, and through various ministries – and I have been blessed to make a number of good friends. People who ask interesting questions, who laugh with me, and who challenge me to try new things and to see life from different perspectives.

Petite admiring the Canadian autumnal flora.

At home, I feel especially blessed by friendship. I have been growing deeper in friendship with the younger sisters who are living in the Loretto community – Melinda, Maria, and Petite. I feel such a shift in my heart these past few months. After feeling lonesome for so much of last year, lonesome for peer relationships, and female friendships, in particular, I find myself gifted with these fantastic women and a joyful solidarity.

With Melinda and Petite.

A couple of weeks ago we went out to Centre Island to enjoy the autumn day. It was a great adventure – a time for spiritual conversation, laughter, and discovery. Being with these women made me think of Mary Ward, who was ‘apt for friendship’ and who said, ‘Let thy love be at all times rooted in God and then remain faithful to thy friend and value him highly, even more highly than thy life’.

Following the boardwalk to Ward’s Island.

And, of course, I also thought of Malcolm Guite, who wrote about old ways renewed by friends, in “Prayer/Walk”:

A hidden path that starts at a dead end,
Old ways, renewed by walking with a friend,
And crossing places taken hand in hand,

The passages where nothing need be said,
With bruised and scented sweetness underfoot
And unexpected birdsong overhead,

The sleeping life beneath a dark-mouthed burrow,
The rooted secrets rustling in a hedgerow,
The land’s long memory in ridge and furrow,

A track once beaten and now overgrown
With complex textures, every kind of green,
Land- and cloud-scape melting into one,

The rich meandering of streams at play,
A setting out to find oneself astray,
And coming home at dusk a different way.

Cloud-and lake-scape melting into one.

Praying with the music of Joni Mitchell

While walking along Bloor Street a couple of weeks ago, I noticed a sign advertising a ‘Rock Eucharist’ at The Church of the Redeemer, an Anglican parish, featuring the music of Joni Mitchell. Being a big Joni Mitchell fan, I was immediately intrigued.

It’s rare to find experimentation like this in the Roman Catholic Mass so I really wasn’t too sure what to expect from the Rock Eucharist. I have to say that I was enchanted by it. It was prayerful, reverent, meaningful, and, yes, experimental.

The Ice Offering. In 2000, I visited my grandmother in Saskatoon and she took me to the Mendel Art Gallery to see “voices”, an exhibition of Joni Mitchell’s artwork. Her paintings, like her music, are evocative.

The themes of creation and conservation were woven throughout the liturgy, drawing from the same themes found in the music selected for the evening. We sang “Big Yellow Taxi” as the opening song, “Woodstock” as a sort of responsorial psalm, “Both Sides Now” as the offertory, “Passion Play (When All the Slaves Are Free)” as the communion song, and “Love” as the closing. The combination of the music and the prayer was powerful, and to be honest, because I found it so unusual, I was very attentive to all of the details.

Middle Point

What I found was that the break from the liturgy routine I am used to opened me up to a renewed encounter with God, hearing God speak to me in new language. It also gave me a deeper appreciation for the spirituality and soul-searching qualities of Joni Mitchell’s music. Long have I admired and enjoyed her work and to hear her music in the setting of a liturgy gave it a deeper richness for me.

Both Sides 2

I hadn’t heard her song “Love” before, a meditation on Paul’s letter to the Corinthians (1 Corinthians 13). It’s beautiful and compels me to meditate on Paul’s letter myself.

Love

Although I speak in tongues
Of men and angels
I’m just sounding brass
And tinkling cymbals without love

Love suffers long
Love is kind!
Enduring all things
Love has no evil in mind

If I had the gift of prophecy
And all the knowledge
And the faith to move the mountains
Even if I understood all of the mysteries
If I didn’t have love
I’d be nothing
Love never looks for love
Love’s not puffed up
Or envious
Or touchy
Because it rejoices in truth
Not in iniquity
Love sees like a child sees
As a child I spoke as a child
I thought and understood as a child
But when I became a woman
I put away childish things
And began to see through a glass darkly

Where as a child I saw it face to face
Now I only know it in part
Fractions in me
Of faith and hope and love
And of these great three
Love’s the greatest beauty
Love
Love
Love

– Joni Mitchell

The View from the Box

I’ve completed three shifts at the UN GIFT box so far over the course of the Pan Am Games with two shifts to go during the Parapan Am Games. There have been many volunteers on hand to greet people, share information about human trafficking, and encourage people to sign our petition asking the Ontario provincial government to develop an action plan to address human trafficking.

This experience has been my first as a sort of streetside evangelist. It offered me a lot of food for thought as I had plenty of time to observe the people passing by on the sidewalk.

The first thing I noticed was how individual focused our society has become. This was not a total revelation, of course, because our society has been heading this way for a long time, but this was my first experience observing it in action for a prolonged period. Just standing on the lawn of St. James Cathedral, I got a real eyeful of the kind of society we have become.

People of all generations strode past me purposefully, avoiding any kind of eye contact, ignoring my friendly “Good morning!” and “Hello!” and completely focused on getting to their destination. Some wore headphones and sunglasses to block out the noise and the sights around them, some were busy talking on their phones, and some just didn’t want to engage.

A lot of the time I felt invisible.

(Though one instance made me laugh out loud: some guy burst out, “I have a girlfriend!” when he walked past me a second time and I said hello to him again.)

And to be honest, it didn’t bother me a whole lot. Mostly because I saw myself when I looked at these people. I am guilty of being self-absorbed a lot of the time. On my way around the city, I have dodged the energetic Plan Canada and Medicins Sans Frontiers volunteers many times. I walk quickly and purposefully, sometimes looking at my phone, not really noticing the people around me.

Standing there, as Sarah-the-streetside-human trafficking-evangelist, I realized that that is NOT the kind of person I want to be. I don’t want to rush through life ignoring other people. I don’t want to make other people feel invisible or ignored. Instead, I will try to walk more slowly (although it’s very hard) and force myself to stop and spend a few minutes chatting with the people who are trying to get my attention and see where the Holy Spirit leads.

The second thing I noticed was how open and friendly many of the homeless people in this city are. They have a voice that they want to share and it is beautiful, though usually heart-breaking. More often than not, the men and women who were living on the streets were more ready and interested to engage with me and talk than the more affluent-seeming people walking down the street. And quite often they would share their stories with me. I was moved by their openness and I sensed that they don’t really have the opportunity to talk to people who will just listen to them. No one asked me for money, they just wanted to talk. They signed the petition. They wished me good luck and then kept on with their day.

The view from the box revealed God at work in the most unexpected ways.

Panamania!

The Pan Am Games are in full swing and the city is enjoying the party! There’s a lot more colour and life in the downtown core these days.

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I was also busy at the UN GIFT box this weekend…more to come on that experience later this week. But for now, some photos.

GIFT Box @ Toronto Pan Am Games

London 2012 GIFT box
http://www.un.org/wcm/content/site/sport/home/newsandevents/pastevents/london2012/template/news_item.jsp?cid=36523

The Pan Am and Parapan Am Games are taking place in Toronto this summer (10-26 July and 7-15 August, respectively)! 250,000 visitors are expected to descend upon the city for the Games (some of them are already here – I’ve met them on the subway). With a crowd that size, this is a great opportunity to spread the word about human trafficking in Canada and around the world.

Over the next two months I will be volunteering at the UN.GIFT (United Nations Global Initiative to Fight Human Trafficking) box located at St. James Cathedral at 65 Church St. (King/Church) in downtown Toronto. Created by STOP THE TRAFFIK and UN.GIFT, the Faith Alliance to End Human Trafficking here in Toronto is the driving force bringing the GIFT box to Canada. Versions of the GIFT box have been featured at other international sporting events like the London 2012 Olympics and the 2014 Commonwealth Games in Glasgow, Scotland. GIFT boxes have also appeared in Brazil, Slovakia, and the U.S.

What do you know about human trafficking?

Human trafficking is the recruitment of movement of a person, by deception or coercion, for the purpose of exploitation.
People who are trafficked are often bought or sold for forced labour, sexual exploitation, forced street crime, domestic servitude or even the sale of organs and human sacrifice.

Did you know that Ontario has the highest level of human trafficking in Canada? 511 people reported to have experienced human trafficking in only three years. Human trafficking is an underreported activity so this number is expected to be much higher.

If you want to combat human trafficking in Canada and raise awareness of this issue, go the Faith Alliance website or look for a local organization fighting human trafficking in your city.

Summer in the city

A good friend from Ottawa came to visit last weekend and we had a great time exploring the city together. We went to the Beaches, took the ferry over to Toronto Island, and ended the day with a delicious dinner (and decadent chocolate cake for dessert) and a play: Titanic: The Musical. It was a wonderful way to start the summer! As usual when I’m having fun, I generally forget to take pictures. But here are a few from when I managed to remember I was lugging my camera around.

At the Beaches