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Where Have All the Monarchs Gone?

/ Dennis A. Gray / Leave a comment

This morning, as I was walking through Margaret Greene Park with Roberta, we took note of all the little white butterflies that were fluttering around us. When I was a kid at Paisley Road School, we were told they are properly called Small Cabbage White Butterflies, but we all just called them Cabbage butterflies. As we walked, we admired them and enjoyed the cool of the shade along the path.
Then it hit me… those were the only butterflies I had seen all this year, anywhere!
At least in the city anyway. Again, when I was a kid (do I sound old yet) we regularly saw Dustywings (several varieties), Skippers, and, best of all, Monarchs! We used to catch them with homemade butterfly nets and put them in jars to take to school and to put in the terrarium. We’d grab the striped caterpillars as well and place them in a glass case with some milkweed, watch them pupate and form a chrysalis, then finally emerge as an adult, marveling at the transformation. It was pretty much a rite of passage for grade school kids in the 1960s.
Today however, I can’t remember the last time I saw a Monarch butterfly in the wild, adult or caterpillar. You know what else I haven’t seen? Milkweed.
Not a one. Used to see them all the time down at the Bullfrog Pond across from John F. Ross C.V.I. Of course, it’s the Bullfrog Plaza now, along with the Bullfrog Pond Park behind it with its concrete creek. The ponds at the top end (west) of Paisley Rd. are gone now too, filled in and paved over for condos and Costco.
No ponds, no milkweed. No milkweed, no Monarchs.
And no tadpoles, insect nymphs, or the hundreds of other tiny creatures we observed in our science lessons at Paisley Road. We collected all kinds of life at school and at home, examining them with our magnifying glasses and sometimes even microscopes. It was easy to do, what with the culvert at the bottom end of the playground, between the school and Knight Lumber. I first learned to really draw making sketches of what we saw in those simple microscopes.
But now the culverts are fenced off, where they haven’t been buried. (Did you know there’s a buried creek under downtown Guelph?) The ponds are filled in, paved over, or lined with concrete. It feels like we took the Biblical exhortation to take stewardship over Creation and, seeing the word “dominion” decided to focus on the dominate part.
And so we excavate it, clear-cut it, pound it, suck it dry, and bend it to our will despite generations of pollution, and the desperate cries of scientists, native elders, rangers of all kinds, and even Boy Scouts, trying to encourage us to follow a less destructive path.
When we do manage to section off a little belt of green across the landscape, others, more focused on reaping instead of sowing, undo it all with a wave of an administrative hand because, well, they have a “mandate” you know. Which is ironic because ‘mandate’ comes from the Latin root mandare which basically means “to give responsibility for” as in to care for and protect. But again, we chose to focus on the “rule over” aspect of the meaning because there’s more money in that.
Funny how meanings change when we want them to. God gave us a mandate to care for creation and to protect it, and all of creation is desperately waiting for us to fulfill that mandate before it’s too late.

The Face in the Mirror

/ Dennis A. Gray / Leave a comment

Back when Donald Trump first emerged on the campaign trail I, like many others, couldn’t imagine him getting the nomination let alone being elected. Then, when I heard so many Christians trying to tell me that this lying, cheating, womanizing, self-obsessed misogynist was God’s choice for President of the United States and therefore the de facto “Leader of the Free World” I shuddered at the very thought of it.

There was no part of me that could accept the idea that when God looked out over the landscape seeking a suitable occupant for the White House he saw Donald J. Trump, paper billionaire and paper human being, and said, “There’s my man!”

But now, six years later, on the eve of Joe Biden’s inauguration, I’m not so sure.

One phrase that we’ve heard more than any other the last few weeks, especially since the attack on the Capital in Washington is, “That’s not who we are.”  However, the fact remains that this would not be happening if that statement were true.

The occupant of the White House, whoever they are, is very much a reflection of who America is as a people, as a society, as a nation; and for the last four years we have been forced to take a good long look in the mirror and the face staring back at us has been Donald Trump.

“For now we see in a glass darkly, but then we shall see face to face.”

For some time now the heat of political correctness has been steaming up that mirror preventing us from seeing all the imperfections. Donald Trump’s presidency wiped away the fog and forced us, and the world at large, to take a hard look at who we really are. The real us, with no make-up, no fashionable outfit, no perfectly coifed hairpiece; just the unadorned true face of North America.

It happened because Trump gave Hilary Clinton’s “basket of deplorables” free reign to prove just how deplorable they could be. People who had formerly concealed their hate behind a mask of political correctness were empowered to voice their hatred in the name of patriotism. We also learned that the basket was much bigger than we thought it was.

And the white, evangelical Christian church, desperate for a Martin Luther King Jr. of it’s own, had finally found him. We took down the cross from our sanctuaries and raised the Confederate battle flag in its place along with the Stars and Stripes. We worshipped a westernized version of Jesus that put the modern church in the role of God’s chosen people and convinced ourselves that we could do no wrong.

But we were wrong. We just couldn’t see it, mostly because we didn’t look, or didn’t want to admit what was there. Oh, we heard the cry of the disadvantaged, the poor, the black, the Asian, the native Nations, the LBGTQ, just to name a few; but how many of us went out of our way to lift them up out of their disadvantage? How many of us, while genuinely sympathizing with their plight, continued living a guilt free life secure in the bosom of our white privilege?

“There is no one righteous, not even one.”

The more astute (or the more defensive) of you will notice my use the the collective pronoun “we”. You are likely wondering why a Canadian would lump himself in with the deplorables to the south, or you are defensively protesting that “we aren’t like that, that is not us.” But is there as much difference as we think? The church in Canada cannot rest on it’s laurels any more than can the church in the U.S., or the church in Europe, or in Africa, or anywhere else for that matter. The church everywhere has much to answer for.

Because Donald Trump didn’t make things the way they are anymore than my bathroom mirror is responsible for the face looking back at me. I’m not sure where it started, but it didn’t start with him; he just gave the ugly truth a higher profile. It didn’t even start with the Republican Party, or the American church. It started long before that as the church in all it’s various incarnations has sought to influence politics and dictate the way in which all people should live whether they believe or not. It might even have started with Constantine making Christianity the state religion of Rome for reasons that some consider likely more political than religious.

But wherever or whenever it started it continues as long as we ignore the one who said “Render therefore unto Caesar the things which are Caesar’s; and unto God the things that are God’s“

So yeah, maybe Donald Trump was indeed God’s choice for president. Maybe God looked at America, and the church in particular, and decided we needed a wake up call. Does that mean I owe the 45th president a vote of thanks? Hardly; no more than I should give Judas a pat on the back for his betrayal of Jesus, even though it ultimately led to the the hope of salvation.

But I do owe God my gratitude for the lesson I think I’ve learned. I thank God that issues of racism and privilege are getting attention more in keeping with what they deserve rather than just lip-service from “woke” policy-makers. I thank God that though I never desired to own another human being myself, I now better understand how my life in the 1% is founded on the actions of those who did. I thank God that I am reminded that I need to examine my own beliefs and how I follow the teachings of Jesus in my day to day walk and hold myself accountable to His words. I thank God that the church can no longer take its privilege for granted and must also examine itself to see where it went astray. And I thank God that the instrument of His instruction didn’t get a second term.

One question remains: Now that we have seen the face in the mirror, what are we going to do about it?

Mercy, not sacrifice

/ Dennis A. Gray / 1 Comment

Like many of you I’ve spent the last week trying to process the events in Washington DC. Watching the church embrace the alt-right has been a huge source of anxiety these last four years. Not the greatest, the Pandemic holds that honour, but it has certainly been up there. I’m appalled, worried, saddened, and yes, even shocked, though frankly people should have seen this coming.

As the events unfolded, I was reminded of the lyrics of a Shawn Mullins song from the album Mercyland: Hymns for the Rest of Us. It’s called Give God the Blues (you really should check it out) and the verse makes a statement very relative for these times (emphasis is mine).

God ain’t no Republican
He ain’t no Democrat
He ain’t even Independent
God’s above all that

There is a real tendency among Christians to invoke the notion of a “Christian Nation.” Personally, I tend to balk at this. Mostly because the history of the so-called Christian nations has not been what I would call Christian in its character and actions. In the grand history of such nations and empires, from Rome through all of Europe through to America, more decent God-fearing people have been martyred by those acting under the authority of the church then by all the enemies of the church combined.

It’s completely understandable then that many people are questioning the validity of Christianity as a faith, as a religion, as a lifestyle, as… well… anything based on the behaviour of those who claim to follow Jesus and his teachings. Not surprisingly, Jesus had something to say about this.

…22Many will say to Me on that day, ‘Lord, Lord, did we not prophesy in Your name, and in Your name drive out demons and perform many miracles?’ 23 Then I will tell them plainly, ‘I never knew you; depart from Me, you workers of lawlessness!’  (Matthew 7:22-23)

In my mind this verse (and others like it) should drive all the arrogance from any believer. Note that these people were doing all the things that we tend to associate with great faith. They cast out demons, they prophesied, they performed miracles, they did it all. So why does Jesus respond the way he does? I’m going to suggest they lacked one key ingredient to their faith.

But go and learn what this means: ‘I desire mercy, not sacrifice.’ (Matthew 9:13)

On the surface this sounds kind of strange because didn’t God instruct the Jews in the offering of that would amount the thousands of sacrifices a year of everything from grain and oil to lambs and bulls? So, what gives? Paul puts it this way…

1If I speak in the tongues of men and of angels, but have not love, I am only a ringing gong or a clanging cymbal. 2If I have the gift of prophecy and can fathom all mysteries and all knowledge, and if I have absolute faith so as to move mountains, but have not love, I am nothing. 3If I give all I possess to the poor and exult in the surrender of my body, but have not love, I gain nothing. (1 Corinthians 13:1-3)

There wasn’t a whole lot of love or mercy on display in Washington this week.