A number of you might remember Raffi, a Canadian Children’s musician from the 1980s and 1990s. With songs like Baby Beluga, Raffi Cavoukian treated his young audience with gentleness and respect, and with a commitment to a world of harmony: harmony between people, harmony between humans and the environment, and a world in which children could be children, motivated by play and wonder rather than consumerism.
It was with joy, then, and no
big surprise, when I learned what Raffi is up to these days. Shannon introduced me to a book entitled Child
Honoring: How to turn this world around which was co-edited by Raffi
and a Clinical Psychology Professor named Sharna Olfman, As we engage a story
in which Jesus brings a child into the middle of his disciples, and as we, on
orange shirt Sunday lament the actions of the Church to Indigenous children,
let’s hear what Raffi Cavoukian has to say about Child Honouring:
(p.
xviii) “Across all cultures, we find an essential humanity that is most visible
in early childhood – a playful, intelligent and creative way of being…. The
impressionable early years are the most vulnerable to family dynamics, cultural
values, and planetary conditions.
“Child
honouring is a vision, organizing principle, and way of life… it is a ‘children
first’ approach to healing communities and restoring ecosystems; it views how
we regard and treat our young as the key to building a humane and sustainable
world…. Child Honouring is a global credo for maximizing joy and reducing
suffering by respecting the goodness of every human being at the beginning of
life with benefits rippling in all directions”.
And then Raffi asks this:
(xix)
“What does it mean to honour children?
It means seeing them for the creatively intelligent people they are,
respecting their personhood as their own, recognizing them as essential members
of the community, and providing the fundamental nurturance they need in order
to flourish.”
These words are so full of
wisdom. As they point to a potentially
hopeful future, if children and the world they live in are shaped by respect
and loving care, they take me back to the days in my family history when my
most important job was to be a kind, attentive, emotionally available parent to
our young children. It was so evident that
these young lives were impressionable and vulnerable, and I had been given the wondrous
gift of God’s grace to be charged with the task of parenting. As they learned and grew and amazed me with
their innate sense of honesty, curiosity, creativity and joy, I prayed for
God’s help in not messing up – to help them experience the world as a good
place, a safe place, supported by relational love.
I think much, much further
back in our faith family history, to an instance when the disciples were
behaving not as wide-eyed children, but as bickering adolescents. (Mark 9:
30-37) They were just starting to internalize the idea that to follow Jesus was
to deny one’s own ego needs in favour of a new realm of liberty and love… when
someone in the group pointed out that HE was actually Jesus’ favourite and
would certainly be ‘second in command’ in this new Kingdom.
I can just see them
whispering and jostling, when Jesus asks them, “watcha talking about, fellas?”
and the truth comes out. Looking for a
clear way to get their thoughts and behaviours back on track, he brings a child
into the middle of the circle, holds the child in his arms and says, “Whoever
welcomes one such child in my name welcomes me, and whoever welcomes me
welcomes not me but the one who sent me.” (Mark 9: 36-37)
Recalling the sensation, of
holding a child in my arms, perhaps reading a story together, it’s not
hard to draw a line between that personal experience of mine, and this picture
of Jesus from the 9th chapter of Mark, and Raffi’s big concept of
child honouring. To receive a child with
love, to honour the preciousness of their personhood, is a passageway through
which we understand God’s love for the world, and the love we are to have for
the young lives untrusted to our care, and the care of this fragile land on
which we live. Now, Biblical scholars
such as Fritz Wendt remind me not to get too carried away here with a warm
fuzzy interpretation of the 9th chapter of Mark, for children in
Jesus’ day were not yet regarded as fully human until they reached adulthood,
and many children were treated as the lowest of servants or slaves. In this
scene, then, a child is more a metaphor for powerlessness or nothingness than a
cute, cuddly little person whom everyone would be drawn to – but still, amidst
a group of disciples unable to stop themselves from dreaming of power and
grandeur, it is powerful that Jesus changes their focal point by putting a
child in their midst.
When the Dominion of Canada
was in its infancy, Sir John A MacDonald and the other leaders of the day were
faced with a problem. The land, not just
the first four provinces but now including Manitoba and BC and PEI was so vast,
with such potential, AND IT WAS ALREADY INHABITED. That COULD have been perceived as an
opportunity or even an asset – neighbours who already understood how this land
worked, knew the wildlife that lived here, had identified the plants that could
bring nutrition and remedy. But no,
European arrogance won the day, and the Indigenous people already here got
labelled as a problem to be solved.
Working hand in hand, Church and
state combined in the shameful system known as the Indian Residential Schools, designed,
in the chilling terms they actually used, to “solve the Indian problem”. Even those who brought higher, more loving
ideals to their work in the schools were ham-strung by chronic underfunding and
miserably isolated surroundings that created a perfect environment for
abuse. As a third generation United
Church Minister, I carry the shame, regret and accountability for what Church
folks and bureaucrats and teachers and medical personnel did with the young
lives entrusted to their care. Not only
was it child DIShonouring, it led to generation after generation of Indigenous
children who experienced adults not as loving mentors who would care for them,
but as mean-spirited, unsafe taskmasters.
Wearing an orange shirt today reminds me not only of the mistreatment of
young children like Phyllis Webstad at the St. Joseph’s Mission Residential
School near Williams Lake - and children from the Osoyoos Indian Band who were sent to St. Eugene's IRS near Cranbrook, and the notorious IRS at Kamloops - but it also reminds me of the great responsibility
that every adult has, to influence a child’s life and to be re-shaped by the child’s
wide-eyed curiosity and innate wisdom.
God gives us these opportunities for growth, and to not only squander
that opportunity, but to pivot it in evil ways as so often happened at the
Residential Schools, is an affront to God: Creator, Christ and Spirit.
So what does the way forward
look like? Well, for starters we
acknowledge that in the journey of truth and reconciliation, we are still in that
first phase, of hearing and processing the truth; we’re not at the point of
putting this all behind us. As
Indigenous people in their own time, work through what has happened and
discover their authentic path forward, I pray that it will be a shared journey
that we are invited to join. Our twelve
years in Canmore, on the ancestral lands of the Stoney Nakoda, the other
signatories of Treaty 7, and, in Alberta, the Metis Nation, taught me that the
road ahead must be full of patience, respect, a willingness to be confused and
make mistakes and fall flat on our faces, AND the possibility of seeing the
gifts of land and life in new and expansive ways. As I learn how to live in the unceded
territory of the Osoyoos Indian Band of the Okanagan Nation Alliance, some of
those prior learnings will be of use and others will need to be re-learned; and
once again, the orange shirt reminds me of what happens when arrogance
interferes with the journey. Quoting
again from Jesus, as he embraced a child, “Whoever wants to be first must be
last of all and a servant to all” (Mark 9:35).
That humility, even servitude, will shape our next steps.
And so will the lessons of
child honouring. Ending today’s message
as it began, I share these words from Raffi Cavoukian. He wrote them while visiting the state of
Virginia, so they are shaped by the words of the U.S. Declaration of
Independence which I find a wee bit off-putting, but they totally draw me back
to what Jesus is calling us to be, as those entrusted with shaping the lives of
children. May these words and principles
inform us in Church life, call us back to a place of profound respect every
time we interact with cultures and societies unfamiliar to us, and state our
intentions for our connection to each child and the world they live in. And with that, “A covenant for honouring
children” (Child Honoring, pp. xxi – xxii)
“We find these joys to be self-evident: that all children are created whole, endowed with innate intelligence, with dignity and wonder, worthy of respect.
“The embodiment of life, liberty and happiness, children are original blessings, here to learn their own song. Every girl and boy is entitled to love, to dream, and to belong to a loving ‘village’, and to pursue a life of purpose.
“We affirm our duty to nourish and nurture the young, to honour their caring ideals as the heart of being human, to recognize the early years as the foundation of life, and to cherish the contribution of young children to human evolution.
“We commit ourselves to peaceful ways and vow to keep from harm or neglect these, our most vulnerable citizens. As guardians of their prosperity we honour the bountiful Earth whose diversity sustains us. Thus we pledge our love for generations to come”.
Amen!
References cited:
Cavoukian, Raffi and Olfman,
Sharna (ed’s). Child Honoring: How to turn the world around. Westport, CT: Praeger, 2006.
Hooper, Tristin. “Here is what Sir John A. MacDonald did to
Indigenous People.” NationalPost.com,
posted August 28, 2018.
Orange Shirt Society.
Orangeshirtday.org
https://raffinews.com/raffi/bio/
Wendt, Fritz. Political Theology.com: “Receiving the
Kingdom as a little child – Mark 9: 30-37” posted September 17, 2018.
See also: Louie, Chief
Clarence. Rez Rules. © 2021. Published by Penguin Random House/McClelland and
Stewart.
© 2024, Rev Greg Wooley,
Osoyoos – Oliver United Church Pastoral Charge.
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