Donald Grayston

Today is August 6.

Three “days” connect with the date of August 6: in the traditional Christian calendar with the Feast of the Transfiguration of Christ (there are some contemporary commemorations at other times of the year); with Hiroshima Day; and today in Vancouver, because the Sunday of the holiday weekend falls this year on August 6, with the Pride parade–three very different observances of a single calendar date. And is there, I wonder, a way of linking these three very different ways of observing the day? Continue reading →

Predictably, the “nattering nabobs of negativism” (thank you, Spiro Agnew) have crawled out from under their rocks to criticize the (in my view, none too generous) award of $10.5 million to Omar Khadr in recompense for his years of torture and imprisonment. I note that a number of these voices come from the Conservative Party, which is making use of the award to poke at the Liberal government.

They call him a confessed murderer, and so he is; and so would you and I be if we had found ourselves in his situation. This was his choice: plead not guilty, certainly be found guilty by the kangaroo court (so named in the Globe this morning) and rot in an American prison for the rest of his life; or, plead guilty, which would open the way to a transfer to Canada, where our “kinder, gentler” justice system would in due course release him, which it has.

A number of others who took the same route in the US have now appealed to have their ersatz convictions overturned; and all of them have had their appeals granted. Omar’s lawyer plans to enter the same appeal on Omar’s behalf.

Those of us who have met him know him to be a modest and gracious young man. He intends to train as a nurse, a vocation which will give him opportunities to give to his patients the kind of care which he was denied in Guantanamo. There is a lovely irony in this.

Go Omar!

A glorious moment! The government has acknowledged that Canada did not do right by its young citizen, Omar Khadr, and will compensate him and his lawyer, Dennis Edney, with $10,000,000.

Is this a lot of money? Given that Omar was in prison (and tortured) for 11 years in Guantanamo and was imprisoned for an additional two years back in Canada, and that he will share equally in the money with Dennis Edney, this works out to $385,000 a year–something less than numerous Canadian CEOs make–not a lot of money for what he went through. Let no one say that he has been overcompensated.

Before my thoughts about Omar himself, two other stories.

In 2001, I visited Auschwitz: the experience left me numb. Later I visited Anne Frank’s House in Amsterdam, and burst into tears.

A year or two ago, the photo of three-year-old Alan Kurdi appeared in the media. It unleashed a tidal wave of political and financial support for the further welcoming  of and support for Syrian refugees.

My point, of course: the difference between a faceless tragedy, and a tragedy with one human face.

I am grateful, as a Canadian citizen, that I was challenged to demonstrate my support for Omar (whom I have had the privilege of meeting). There has to be a ripple effect from his experience. Never again, I trust, will our government fail to protect a citizen enmeshed in a foreign nightmare.

Or have I spoken too soon?  Immediately I think of Hassan Diab, a Canadian citizen, who for eight years has languished in the French legal system. Anyone who has paid attention to his case will recognize that he is innocent of the terrorist-style murder with which he is charged. A parallel with Omar: in his case an American citizen died, and someone had to pay. Omar was the only one on “the other side” left alive, and so he was picked for this role. In Hassan’s case, a French citizen died, and again, someone had to pay. In his case, he was arrested on the flimsiest connection of his handwriting with that of the killer. 

Over now to Justin Trudeau: read the whole story at https://www.thestar.com/opinion/commentary/2017/05/23/how-a-canadian-professors-life-became-a-horror-show-fahmy.html

A word about Dennis Edney. I first heard him speak some years ago here in Vancouver. At the end of his talk, I asked him what would happen to Omar when he was released. “He’ll come to my house and live with me and my family.” I remain astonished to this day at this man’s simplicity and generosity of spirit. He sustained Omar’s case for more than 15 years pro bono, not receiving a penny. I had not thought ahead to what would happen for him financially when this day of resolution came; but that he and Omar will share in the money equally fits perfectly with their relationship, which has become one of father and son. I hope to be part of a team of people who will nominate him for the Order of Canada.

And another word of thanks to Kathy Copps and her colleagues in the Free Omar campaign, for keeping his situation alive in the media. Well done!

Pulling this together. My point is that a situation like Omar’s or Hassan’s offers to each of us as individual citizens an opportunity to contribute to the sum total of justice in the world. May we seize on every such opportunity to exercise committed citizenship.

Sometime in the nineties I took a group of SFU students down to the Ground Zero peace centre in Poulsbo, Washington. GZ was started in the eighties by Jim and Shelley Douglass, longtime peace activists–Jim was a friend of Thomas Merton.

GZ is very close to the Trident submarine base at Bangor. (This is the west-coast Trident base; there is an east-coast base at Norfolk, Virginia.) There are 24 submarines at Bangor; each one carries 408 times the firepower of the nuclear weapon that was dropped on Hiroshima. Each single submarine carries enough firepower to destroy all the major cities of the northern hemisphere–and there are 24 of them.

Our first morning at GZ we joined members of its community in their weekly leafletting vigil at the gates of the Trident base. As workers go into the base, they are handed a leaflet–or sometimes a chocolate chip cookie or, on or near February 14, a valentine. Thousands go in and out every day; and each year in the nineties (I don’t know if this is still true) one worker would quit as a result of the GZ leafletting.

This visit got me onto the GZ mailing list; and every few months I get its newsletter. In that I regularly read how the GZ community has since its beginning maintained a steady and faithful witness against nuclear weapons: against their invention, their design, their construction, their transportation, their being readied for use, and, most ominous, the prospect of their use.

Here is an excerpt from the most recent newsletter (April 2017). It comes from Leonard Eiger, chair of the GZ communication and outreach committee, and requires no comment from me.

The end of the Cold War brought with it a historic opportunity for the US to begin serious negotiations with Russia leading to nuclear disarmament. Instead, our nation continued to pursue nuclear dominance, and as a result, over 25 years later we are entering into what is unarguably a new Cold War with Russia.

Trident is now three times more deadly than ever before. The US is rapidly moving toward production of a new ballistic missile submarine fleet that will be even more sophisticated than its predecessor. . . .  How long can we go building newer and more sophisticated (and deadly) nuclear weapons systems before they end up being used either accidentally or intentionally? . . . How can our nations’ leaders, in good conscience, continue to put humanity at risk of nuclear extinction?

Let me pick up on his use of the word “nations,” plural. The US is not the only country contributing to this madness. Canada, with its reluctance to speak and act in direct opposition to this situation, is contributing to its continuance–a sin of omission.

As many of you know, I spent most of the eighties and early nineties working at issues related to nuclear disarmament. On the basis of that experience, I am distressed to say that in my view the world is in greater danger of nuclear war today than we were during the Cold War. Both the US and North Korea are headed by maniacs, not to put too fine a point on it. From Donald Trump’s public comments on the subject I can only conclude that he is, as the kids used to say, “not clear on the concept.”

So where to? As Canadians, we need to put pressure on our political leaders, asking them to place Canada firmly on the side of nuclear disarmament, to support the many initiatives under way which are trying to move us to nuclear sanity. Then if Canada does step up to the plate, to support its progressive policy in this regard. A good way to do this is to support the Rideau Institute, an Ottawa-based think tank headed by Peggy Mason, former Canadian ambassador for disarmament at the UN (1989-1994) – rideauinstitute.ca

A final word: my title. Standing there at the Trident gates early in the morning, a word of Jesus came to me: “the gates of Hell shall not prevail against you” (Matthew 16:18). Yes, I said to myself: I am standing at the gates of Hell. It was only later that I realized what “prevail” implies. It implies that we are battering at the gates of Hell, and that sooner or later, they will not prevail against us. They will fall. This blogpost is an invitation to you to join with others in the assault on the gates of Hell which our historic moment requires of us.

Decided to add the “bloody,” because I have been watching, indeed inhaling, the BBC series, “Sherlock”–Sherlock Holmes updated to the 21st century: just wanted to get your attention [ ].

So yes, today is Shrove Tuesday. My evening minder has promised pancakes and sausages. And why pancakes to mark the day? Because in medieval times, the day before Ash Wednesday was a day when the folk of those times used up all the foods which they were supposed to fast from (mainly eggs and sugar) during the fasting season of Lent, which starts tomorrow, Ash Wednesday. (My evening minder for tomorrow will be very kindly bringing me the ashes.) And the shrove part refers to the practice of being “shriven” in preparation for Lent, i.e., to make one’s confession and be absolved.

Speaking of Lent offers me the opportunity to say how much I admire the way Muslims practice their season of fasting, Ramadan. Christian observance of Lent in the West is a feeble thing by comparison. I am thinking here of Canadian Muslims, of course. As members of a minority community, they are motivated to a disciplined practice of the norms of their religion. Christians, being a majority in Canada, feel no such motivation; and so for most of us, even the church-involved, Lent passes quickly to little effect.

In December, when I thought my time on the planet was very short, I took advantage of a visit from the priest whom I have asked to preside at my obsequies to hear–not my confession, but a recounting of my regrets. Having come to my venerable age, temptations to the more egregious varieties of personal sin as such are few and far between; but I did want to let go of my regrets in a formal, serious way.

So rather than think about personal sin, I am inclined to focus on social sin–structural, corporate, institutional sin. It would be wonderful if our society, the Christians among us at least, could use Lent to deal with the aspects of our society that separate us from our social well-being. (I’m thinking of a theological definition here, i.e., that sin in all its forms is separation–from God, neighbour and self.)

There are many social challenges, of course, and sometimes we can use that recognition to avoid dealing with any of them. Of all of these, the one issue that keeps catching my attention is child poverty. With a child-poverty rate of 18.2% (roughly one out of every five children in the nation–disgraceful), Canada ranks 21st out of 29 OECD countries; we are also 21st in the ranking of children’s overall physical and mental health, in which of course poverty is a determinant.

This Lent, could we combine a concern for child poverty with the fasting that is a major part of the Lenten tradition? Could we fast from watching TV (I’m not talking “Sherlock” here: it’s on Netflix) and use the time to save to study the issue? Dr Google is ready to help us with our research. Might small groups in a congregation or a neighbourhood make child poverty the focus of a Lenten study? I’m all in favour of prayer and bible study, the staples of Lenten study; but to incorporate research and action on child poverty would make concrete what the Bible and prayer point us toward.

And with these thoughts, I wish you, if not a happy Lent, then a challenging, energizing and productive Lent. Your celebration of Easter will be all the better for it.