By the Way: Wearing orange tomorrow?
By Medicine Hat News on September 29, 2018.
Sept. 30 is Orange Shirt Day in Canada, a day when we are invited to wear orange to help us remember the impact of residential school experience on Indigenous Canadians. My denomination ran a few of those schools in Manitoba and NW Ontario. In 1994 we publicly confessed the harm those schools caused in young lives and Indigenous communities, and set aside funds for work in healing and reconciliation with our Indigenous members and those whose lives were wounded by our educational “mission.” Over the last 25 years, our national church has been humbled to meet survivors of our schools. We have heard stories from those former students which brought tears to my eyes, stories of loneliness, confusion, humiliation. We have met anger sometimes; we have also been offered forgiveness. It hasn’t been an easy journey, for we have had to acknowledge that what was intended as a good thing, education, and offered by people mostly with good intentions, nevertheless injured the souls and spirits of children, their families and communities. Yet who among us has not done this — tried to do something with good intentions but instead caused unanticipated harm through unforeseen consequences? This is one of the reasons we make a prayer of confession every Sunday! A recent poll reported that Canadians are tired of hearing about residential schools. I was very sorry to read that. It seems a lot of people are unwilling to “walk a mile in another person’s moccasins” as the old saying suggests. We can’t or don’t want to imagine ourselves in the place of those who have been hurt. Yet that is what Jesus asks us to do in his teaching “Do unto others as you would have them do unto you.” These words, which resonate in every world religion — not just Christianity, invite us to imagine the feelings and consequences which result from our actions. And to draw back from actions which we realize would harm others. Or to offer the kindness and generosity we would appreciate if we were in a difficult situation. When I shared in a healing circle with members from the Blood Tribe in preparation for the Truth and Reconciliation hearings, someone offered a perspective on residential schools I’d never considered. She remembered what her community was like the day after the children were removed every September. She said it felt so empty, so quiet. No children laughing; no one playing in the fields; no little hands to hold. Can you imagine what Medicine Hat would be like if all our precious children were carted off on the same day, never heard from or seen again for months and months? Think of the grief and the loneliness for parents and grandparents — as if you were in their moccasins. And then put on your orange shirt this Sunday! Rev. Dr. Nancy Cocks is minister at St John’s Presbyterian Church and a retired professor. 7-6
