[SB] Sabbath Blessing

[Molly Wolf]

CBC

Vaughan Williams's "The Lark Ascending" comes on, and I yawn and change 
radio stations. This is serious.

I love "The Lark Ascending" -- or at least, I used to. I used to love 
Elgar's "Enigma Variations" and the Bach organ triple concertos and the 
Haydn trumpet concerto and all sorts of Mozart. I'm not a big German High 
Romantic fan, but there are bits of Brahms of which I used to be 
exceedingly fond. No more.

Back in mid-August, the management of the Canadian Broadcasting Corporation 
(the CBC) locked out its employees, after bargaining talks broke 
down.  Ever since then -- after a brief settling-down period -- we've had 
non-stop Great Dead European White Male Music, one piece after another, 
with no explanation, no context, nothing but a five-minute news and weather 
update every hour. For. Seven. @#$%#. Weeks.  Nudging eight.

I have listened to CBC's classical channel since ... oh, let's not go back 
that far. A very long time, anyway. Sometimes I've gotten irritated by the 
radio-show hosts' banter. No more. I'd kill for some typical CBC 
burbling.  Getting a steady diet of non-stop Great Classical Music is like 
eating perfectly prepared rare prime rib roast for breakfast, lunch and 
dinner for seven (nudging eight) weeks. One begins to gag. Enough, already!

But there is one thing about the CBC lock-out that I do enjoy, and that's 
the weather report. We don't hear about anything to the east of the 
Quebec/New Brunswick border, or anything to the west of the 
Ontario/Manitoba border, but we do hear about the weather in between. 
Gaspé, Quebec City, Sherbrooke, Montreal, Ottawa, Kingston, Toronto, 
London, Windsor, Sarnia, Sudbury, Sault Ste Marie, Thunder Bay, Kenora, 
Kuujjuaq, Iqaluit....

Kuujjuaq?

I know where Iqaluit is -- it's the capital of the eastern Arctic Inuit 
territory, Nunavut -- but Kuujjuaq? Briefly I have it mixed up with 
Inukjuak, on the Hudson's Bay shore, but I learn better. It's on the 
Koksoak River, which empties into Ungava Bay, and it's the _de facto_ 
capital of Nunavik, the Inuit region of Quebec, east of Hudson's 
Bay.  There: new piece of information acquired, very satisfying.

I enjoy hearing about the weather in Iqaluit and Kuujjuaq, and I wouldn't 
mind hearing about what's happening in (say) 
Kangiqsualujjuaq,  Kuujjuaraapik, or Purvinituq, either, if the substitute 
CBC people cared to let me know about it.  It makes me feel connected. From 
the Gaspé right across to Thunder Bay, we're in for rain, ranging from 
intermittent to heavy, and temperatures beginning to be seasonal 
(damn!).  But it's particularly pleasing to check in with the Real North. 
They're expecting snow showers and rain, temperatures hovering around plus 
to minus 3 Celsius.  Good to know.

This is an *extremely* large country. From Gaspé to Kenora is close to 
2,000 miles, and that's only two provinces, albeit the two biggest ones, 
and most of that is woods and the occasional moose.  Much of this country 
can only be reached by airplane; there are no roads. The national radio 
network helps keep us all connected, which is why it's so annoying (and 
even a little dangerous, perhaps?) to have it out of action.  Far-flung as 
our communities can be, we need all the help we can get staying in community.

We live in a culture imbued with the idea of individuality: I do what I 
please and I'm not answerable to you. You're not the boss of me. We want to 
be atomies, unresponsible one to another, free as birds are never free, as 
remote from each other as Iqaluit is from Kuujjuaq. And yet, at the same 
time, we yearn for something else -- for a connectedness that seems just 
barely out of reach.  It's a push-pull thing. The notion of being close to 
and answerable to each other is, in some ways, frankly terrifying, 
especially if we've tried before and come away with serious trust-damage.

But it's where we are called. Truth is, it's where we've always been 
called: into connection with God and into community with each other. We've 
fought that call every step of the way, partly because it calls us out of 
selfishness and into sacrifice, and we don't want to go there, but also 
because we've tried before and found ourselves being used and hurt.  And 
the fact is that community, used badly, *can* be oppressive. There are 
communities of hatred as well as communities of love, communities of 
exclusion as well as of inclusion. Like any other human institution, 
community has the power to turn towards or away from love.  When I hear the 
weather report, I spend a moment or two remembering how my culture did such 
terrible harm to the people the close-knit Inuit communities of Nunavut and 
Nunavik and to the Inuvialuit communities of the Northwest Territories, and 
how that hurt still ripples through those communities in major problems 
with substance abuse and social and familial trouble.

But still, there's that call -- that hope for real community, of which 
church is (sometimes) an imperfect symbol. Tomorrow morning, in church, we 
will sing hymns and say words that keep up connected in space and time: 
hymns from other traditions and other centuries, words going back (in some 
cases) close to two millennia, to Christ's own utterances (the Lord's 
Prayer), to the early Christian Sabbath feasts. We will also say and sing 
things that are new, or at least newish and individual to us. We will, 
however briefly and symbolically, be in community, within our parish, with 
the beautiful Iqaluit domed Anglican cathedral, with Anglicans in Nigeria 
(however problematic that community is), with Christians everywhere around 
the world, with the family of Christ throughout the millennia, with the 
Body of Christ. At least for a moment.

The noon news says that the CBC labour dispute has been resolved and that 
regular programming will resume next week. Tomorrow Iqaluit will have highs 
of +1 celsius and possibility of flurries; Kuujjuak will be a balmy +6. I'm 
going to miss the weather report.

******************

I'm about to hit some sacred cows, and they moo so badly. -- Phyllis 
Tickle, aka The Divine Miz T.