FREE TRADE AND FAIR TRADE

 ISN’T FREE TRADE THE SAME AS FAIR TRADE?  ISN’T FREE TRADE FAIR BECAUSE FREE TRADE AGREEMENTS (FTA’S) ESTABLISH RULES THAT ALLOW GOODS THAT ARE PRODUCED IN OTHER COUNTRIES TO BE BROUGHT INTO A COUNTRY WITHOUT TARIFFS IMPOSED BY THE RECEIVING COUNTRY.  IF THESE TARIFFS WERE IN PLACE, THE AMOUNT OF THE TAFIFF WOULD BE ADDED TO THE PRICE YOU AND I PAY TO PURCHASE THE GOODS?  WELL, ONE DRAWBACK TO MOST FREE TRADE AGREEMENTS (FTA’S), AT LEAST TO WORKERS WHO PRODUCE THE GOODS, IS THAT FTA’S ALLOW COMPANIES TO ESTABLISH BUSINESSES IN COUNTRIES WHERE PAY TO WORKERS, EMPLOYMENT STANDARDS/LABOUR AND ENVIRONMENTAL LAWS ARE MINIMAL.  MANY FTA’S ALSO INVOLVE REGULATIONS THAT RESTRICT THE FREEDOM OF GOVERNMENTS TO CREATE LAWS FOR THE BENEFIT OF ITS CITIZENS THAT MIGHT REDUCE THE PROFITABILITY OF A PARTICULAR BUSINESS.

ADVOCATES OF FREE TRADE ARGUE THAT FREE TRADE OPENS UP MARKETS TO PRODUCERS FROM ALL OVER THE GLOBE. HOWEVER, THE US AND EUROPE HEAVILY SUBSIDIZE THEIR FARMERS AND SOME OTHER INDUSTRIES. SUCH SUBSIDIES DISTORT THE WORKINGS OF THE SO CALLED “FREE MARKET” AND PREVENT FARMERS FROM OTHER COUNTRIES FROM COMPETING FAIRLY IN THE GLOBAL MARKET PLACE.  OPPONENTS OF FREE TRADE ALSO SUGGEST THAT IT DOES LITTLE MORE THAN ALLOW SELLERS OF GOODS TO ACQUIRE THEIR GOODS FROM DEVELOPING COUNTRIES BY EXPLOITING DESPERATELY POOR AND VULNERABLE PEOPLE (E.G., BY PAYING FARMERS AND FACTORY WORKERS THE LEAST POSSIBLE FOR THEIR PRODUCT AND/OR WORK).

THE INTERNATIONAL FAIR TRADE ASSOCIATION IDENTIFIES THE 7 ESSENTIAL PRINCIPLES OF FAIR TRADE:

1. IT IS A STRATEGY FOR POVERTY REDUCTION AND SUSTAINABLE DEVELOPMENT, BY PROVIDING OPPORTUNITIES FOR PRODUCERS ECONOMICALLY DISADVANTAGED OR MARGINALIZED BY THE CONVENTIONAL TRADING SYSTEM.

2. TRANSPARENCY AND ACCOUNTABILITY:  FAIR TRADE INVOLVES TRANSPARENT MANAGEMENT AND COMMERCIAL RELATIONS TO DEAL FAIRLY AND RESPECTFULLY WITH TRADING PARTNERS.

3. CAPACITY BUILDING:  FAIR TRADE IS A MEANS TO DEVELOP PRODUCERS’ INDEPENDENCE.  FAIR TRADE RELATIONSHIPS PROVIDE CONTINUITY, DURING WHICH PRODUCERS AND THEIR MARKETING ORGANIZATIONS CAN IMPROVE THEIR MANAGEMENT SKILLS AND THEIR ACCESS TO NEW MARKETS.

4. PAYMENT OF A FAIR PRICE:  A FAIR PRICE IN THE REGIONAL OR LOCAL CONTEXT IS ONE THAT HAS BEEN AGREED UPON THROUGH DIALOGUE AND PARTICIPATION.  IT COVERS NOT ONLY THE COSTS OF PRODUCTION, BUT ENABLES PRODUCTION WHICH IS SOCIALLY JUST AND ENVIRONMENTALLY SOUND.  IT PROVIDES FAIR PAY TO THE PRODUCERS AND TAKES INTO ACCOUNT THE PRINCIPLE OF EQUAL PAY FOR EQUAL WORK BY WOMEN AND MEN.  FAIR TRADERS ENSURE PROMPT PAYMENT TO THEIR PARTNERS AND, WHEN POSSIBLE, HELP PRODUCERS WITH ACCESS TO PRE-HARVEST OR PRE-PRODUCTION FINANCING.

5. GENDER EQUITY:  FAIR TRADE MEANS THAT WOMEN’S WORK IS PROPERLY VALUED AND REWARDED.  WOMEN ARE ALWAYS PAID FOR THEIR CONTRIBUTIONS TO THE PRODUCTION PROCESS AND ARE EMPOWERED IN THEIR ORGANIZATIONS.

6. WORKING CONDITIONS:  FAIR TRADE MEANS A SAFE AND HEALTHY WORKING ENVIRONMENT FOR PRODUCERS.  THE PARTICIPATION OF CHILDREN (IF ANY) DOES NOT ADVERSELY AFFECT THEIR WELL BEING, EDUCATIONAL REQUIREMENTS AND NEED FOR PLAY AND CONFORMS TO THE UN CONVENTION ON THE RIGHTS OF THE CHILD, AS WELL AS THE LAWS AND NORMS IN THE LOCAL CONTEXT.

7. THE ENVIRONMENT:  FAIR TRADE ACTIVELY ENCOURAGES SOUND ENVIRONMENTAL PRACTICES AND THE APPLICATION OF RESPONSIBLE METHODS OF PRODUCTION.

OTHER BENEFITS OF BUYING FAIR TRADE PRODUCTS INCLUDE

1.  LESS MONEY TO “MIDDLEMAN” AND MORE TO THE PRODUCER, USUALLY AN INDEPENDENT FARMER, ARTISAN OR MEMBER OF A SMALL CO-OPERATIVE.  FOR EXAMPLE PRODUCERS OF MOST COFFEE RECEIVE ABOUT 11% OF EVERY DOLLAR PAID BY YOU AND ME TO BUY COFFEE.  UNDER FAIR TRADE ARRANGEMENTS, THE COFFEE GROWER RECEIVES ABOUT 28% OF THIS SAME DOLLAR.  SO MORE OF OUR MONEY IS HELPING TO INCREASE THE INCOMES OF REGULAR PEOPLE.

2. YET, FAIR TRADE ALSO ESTABLISHES MECHANISMS FOR UTILIZING SOME OF THE MONEY IN THE WIDER COMMUNITY E.G., TO BUILD SCHOOLS AND OTHER INFRASTRUCTURE

FAIR TRADE PRODUCTS AND FAIR TRADE TOWNS

BESIDES COFFEE, FAIR TRADE PRODUCTS NOW INCLUDE TEA, COCOA/CHOCOLATE, BANANAS, SUGAR, FRUIT JUICES, CLOTHING, CRAFTS AND FLOWERS.  ALTHOUGH NOT AS YET OFFICIALLY CERTIFIED, COLUMBIA GEM HOUSE AND ITS JEWELRY MANUFACTURING SUBSIDIARY TRIGEM DESIGN HAVE ESTABLISHED A SYSTEM TO CLASSIFY THEIR GEMS AS FAIR TRADE.

GARITANG, U.K. BECAME THE WORLD’S FIRST FAIR TRADE TOWN IN 2000.  NOW, HUNDREDS OF EUROPEAN TOWNS HAVE BEEN CERTIFIED BY TRANSFAIR, WHICH ALSO CERTIFIES PRODUCTS AS FAIR TRADE.  THE FIRST TOWN IN CANADA CERTIFIED WAS WOLFVILLE, N.S. ON APRIL 17, 2007.  THE MAYOR OF WOLFVILLE NOTED THAT TOWN COUNCIL WAS DISCUSSING BECOMING A FAIR TRADE TOWN WHEN LOCAL PRODUCERS WERE IN DIFFICULTY DUE TO POULTRY AND PORK PROCESSING PLANTS CLOSING.  HE STATED THAT THE TOWN SHOULD SUPPORT FAIR TRADE PRINCIPLES LOCALLY WITH THEIR OWN FARMERS, AS WELL AS THOSE IN THE DEVELOPING COUNTRIES. BY BUYING LOCALLY.  LA PECHE, QUEBEC HAS BECOME THE SECOND CERTIFIED FAIR TRADE TOWN IN CANADA AND SAUGEEN SHORES (NEAR PORT ELGIN, ON.) IS IN THE PROCESS OF APPLYING TO BECOME THE THIRD TOWN CERTIFIED IN CANADA.

 QUOTES FROM THE FAIR TRADE CONCEPTS WEBSITE

 THE WEBSITE TRIES TO:  1) EDUCATE AND PROVIDE RESOURCES ON FAIR TRADE AND ECONOMIC JUSTICE, 2) “PROMOTE SUSTAINABILITY FOR THIRD WORLD PRODUCERS, THE ENVIRONMENT AND LOCAL ECONOMIES”.  “SOMETHING MUST CHANGE AND IT IS!  FAIR TRADE IS EMERGING AS THE WAY TO DO BUSINESS.  NOT JUST WITH COFFEE, BUT IN NUMEROUS DIFFERENT COMMODITIES AND INDUSTRIES THAT NEED ECONOMIC TRANSFORMATION.

WHO’S TO BLAME?

WHEN YOU SEE DESTRUCTIVE DOWNSIZING, UNDERPAID WORKERS, WIDESPREAD POVERTY IN AREAS WHERE FACTORIES PRODUCE FOR MULTI-NATIONAL COMPANIES AND ENVIRONMENTAL DEVASTATION, YOU MAY START LAYING BLAME.  THERE’S PLENTY OF ALL THE ABOVE ATROCITIES TAKING PLACE ON OUR PLANET, AND WORSE.  HOWEVER, DON’T EXPECT THIS SITE TO HELP YOU BECOME ENRAGED AT CORRUPT GOVERNMENTS, MONEY HUNGRY MULTINATIONALS, FILTHY RICH CEO’S, OVERPAID ATHLETES WHO ENDORSE PRODUCTS FOR MILLIONS OR FACTORY OWNERS WHO DEVASTATE THE ENVIRONMENT.  A PREMISE UPON WHICH FAIR TRADE CONCEPTS OPERATES IS THAT THE INJUSTICE AND EXPLOITATION STEMS SIGNIFICANTLY FROM EVERYDAY CONSUMERS WHO IGNORANTLY PURCHASE PRODUCTS WITHOUT BEING AWARE OF THE PRODUCTS’ HISTORY.  SO... IN SHORT YOU AND I ARE TO BLAME.

YOUR PERSONAL CHOICE – CONSUMER ACTION

INDIVIDUAL CONSUMERS NEED TO MAKE PERSONAL CHOICES BASED ON CLEARLY DEFINED MORAL CONVICTIONS AND COMMON SENSE.  BIG COMPANIES BECOME BIG BECAUSE MANY PEOPLE BUY THEIR PRODUCTS.  IF THOSE CONSUMERS DON’T DEMAND THE COMPANIES TO BE RESPONSIBLE GLOBAL CITIZENS THEN WE AS CONSUMERS “DROPPED THE BALL”.  ANOTHER PREMISE OF FAIR TRADE CONCEPTS IS THAT GUILT IS A POOR MOTIVATOR FOR LONG TERM POSITIVE CHANGE.  SO THIS SITE WON’T TRY TO HUMILIATE YOU FOR HAVING BEEN AN UNINFORMED OR UNCONCERNED CONSUMER UNTIL NOW.  FAIR TRADE IS NOT THE WHOLE ANSWER TO THE WORLD’S WOES BUT SIMPLY ONE MORE PIECE OF THE PUZZLE TOWARD AN EQUITABLE WORLD WHERE PEOPLE ARE REGARDED WITH DIGNITY AND THE PLANET IS TREATED WITH RESPECT.

 SOME OF THE FOLLOWING STATEMENTS MAY HELP YOU BECOME A MORE ETHICAL CONSUMER!  1) I OFTEN EXPEND MUCH ENERGY TO EARN MONEY BUT SPEND LITTLE THOUGHT ON THE ETHICS OF MY   BUYING CHOICES – STRATEGIC EARNING BUT IGNORANT SPENDING.  2)  PURCHASING A PRODUCT FROM A COMPANY SENDS A MESSAGE TO THEM THAT I ENDORSE THEIR WAY OF DOING BUSINESS – MY MONEY IS MY VOTE OF SUPPORT.  3)  OFTEN I BUY A PRODUCT WITH LITTLE OR NO KNOWLEDGE OF HOW THE PEOPLE WHO MADE IT WERE PAID OR TREATED OR HOW THE ENVIRONMENT WAS AFFECTED.  THE WAY I SPEND MY MONEY CONFLICTS WITH WHAT I SAY MY MORAL CONVICTIONS AND BELIEFS ARE – UNINTENTIONAL INJUSTICE. 

BEFORE YOU BUY SOMETHING, HERE’S SOME QUESTIONS YOU CAN ASK THAT MAY MAKE YOU, AND MAYBE SOME SALES STAFF, THINK ABOUT WHETHER YOUR POTENTIAL CONSUMER CHOICES WILL BE SUSTAINABLE FOR THIRD WORLD PRODUCERS, THE ENVIRONMENT AND LOCAL ECONOMY.

1.  WHAT PRACTICES WILL I BE ENDORSING WITH MY PURCHASING DOLLAR?

2. HOW RESPONSIBLE IS THE COMPANY WHICH PROVIDES THIS PRODUCT?

3. HOW MUCH OF THE PURCHASE PRICE WILL GO TO THE PRODUCER?

4. HOW WAS THE ENVIRONMENT AFFECTED?

5. WHAT MOTIVATES ME TO BUY THIS? (BE CAUTIOUS IF YOUR MOTIVE IS:  LOWEST PRICE, POPULAR TRENDS, PEER PRESSURE OR EXPENSIVE AD COMPAIGNS)

6. CAN STORE STAFF PROVIDE ANSWERS TO THE HISTORY OF PRODUCTS THEY SELL?

7. IF IT’S IMPORTED – DO PRODUCERS HAVE A CODE OF CONDUCT ADVOCATING THEIR RIGHTS & FAIR TREATMENT?

8. IF IT’S DOMESTIC – COULD I SUPPORT A PRODUCER WHO’S CLOSER TO HOME?

KEEP A PLEASANT ATTITUDE.  YOU’LL SOON DISCOVER THAT MOST STORE STAFF CAN’T ANSWER THESE QUESTIONS.    DON’T BLAME THE STAFF, THINKING THEY CARE LESS THAN YOU DO.  COMPANIES TRAIN THEIR EMPLOYEES TO ANSWER QUESTIONS THAT CUSTOMERS ASK.  THE STAFF DON’T KNOW  BECAUSE  SHOPPERS HAVEN’T BEEN ASKING THE KEY QUESTIONS, SO MANAGEMENT DECIDED THAT ETHICS DIDN’T MATTER TO YOU.  YOU’RE SENDING A MESSAGE WITH YOUR QUESTIONS AND YOUR CHANGED CONSUMER HABITS.

NOW YOU MAY ASK HOW EFFECTIVE IS ENLIGHTENED CONSUMER ACTION? (FROM AN ARTICLE MARCH 21, 2007, BY STUART LAIDLAW, FAITH AND ETHICS REPORTER, THE STAR.COM)

GAVIN FRIDELL BRINGS HIS OWN CUP – EMBLAZONED WITH THE TRENT UNIVERSITY LOGO – WHEN HE GOES TO A COFFEE SHOP, CHOOSES ONLY FAIR TRADE COFFEE AND COMMENTS ON HOW HE’S NOT DOING ENOUGH TO HELP POOR FARMERS IN DEVELOPING COUNTRIES. “YOU CAN’T THINK THAT SHOPPING IS YOUR ULTIMATE POLITICAL ACT,” HE SAID IN AN INTERVIEW AT YORK UNIVERSITY, SHORTLY AFTER HIS BOOK WAS LAUNCHED IN MARCH, 2007.  “YOU HAVE TO DO MORE”.  FRIDELL, AN ASSISTANT POLITICS PROFESSOR AT TRENT AND A GRADUATE OF YORK, HAD JUST RELEASED FAIR TRADE COFFEE:  THE PROSPECTS AND PITFALLS OF MARKET-DRIVEN SOCIAL JUSTICE, A BOOK TAKING A CRITICAL LOOK AT THE SUCCESSES AND FAILURES OF THE FAST-GROWING FAIR TRADE SECTOR.

COFFEE IS THE TOP-SELLING PRODUCT IN THE FAIR TRADE MARKET.  LONG THE PREFERENCE OF COMMITTED SOCIAL ACTIVISTS, FAIR TRADE  PRODUCTS HAVE GONE MAINSTREAM IN THE LAST COUPLE OF DECADES, RESULTING IN BOOMING SALES.

I HAVE PREVIOUSLY NOTED THAT FAIR TRADE PRODUCTS MUST BE PRODUCED UNDER STRICT CONDITIONS – GOVERNING ENVIRONMENTAL SUSTAINABILITY, LABOUR POLICIES, EDUCATION AND INCOME DISTRIBUTION – BEFORE THE LABELLING AGENCIES GIVE THE PRODUCTS THEIR STAMP OF APPROVAL.  THE IDEA IS TO ENSURE THAT CONSUMERS’ DOLLARS GET TO THOSE PRODUCING THE PRODUCTS.  SALES OF FAIR TRADE COFFEE HAVE QUADRUPLED IN CANADA IN THE LAST DECADE, TO MORE THAN 600 TONNES A YEAR, FRIDELL WRITES.  WORLDWIDE, SOME 20,000 TONNES ARE SOLD EACH YEAR, WITH A GROWTH RATE OF ALMOST 40 PER CENT AS THE COFFEE MOVES INTO NEW MARKETS.

IN HIS BOOK, HOWEVER, FRIDELL CHARGES THAT SUCH GROWTH HAS HAPPENED BECAUSE FAIR TRADE HAS VEERED FAR FROM ITS FOUNDING GOALS MORE THAN 60 YEARS AGO TO BUILD AN ALTERNATIVE TRADING SYSTEM THAT EMPHASIZES SOCIAL JUSTICE AND SUSTAINABLE DEVELOPMENT OVER PROFIT.INSTEAD, HE SAYS, FAIR TRADE HAS BECOME CAUGHT UP IN CONSUMER CULTURE, AND RISKS BECOMING LITTLE MORE THAN AN “ETHICAL FIG LEAF” FOR COMPANIES TRYING TO RIDE ON FAIR TRADE’S COAT-TAILS TO ATTRACT SOCIALLY CONSCIOUS CUSTOMERS.

SUCH A PAIRING, FRIDELL WARNS, COULD ULTIMATELY PROVE TO BE FAIR TRADE’S DOWNFALL.  “FAIR TRADE HAS MADE GAINS, BUT AT THE EXPENSE OF BEING CO-OPTED”.  AS WELL, HE WARNS, LARGE COFFEE COMPANIES ARE WATERING DOWN THE CONCEPT OF FAIR TRADE BY COMING UP WITH THEIR OWN PROPRIETARY BLENDS THAT SOUND SOCIALLY CONSCIOUS – SUCH AS SHADE-GROWN OR ECO-FRIENDLY COFFEE – BUT WHICH HAVE FAR LESS STRINGENT GUIDELINES THAN FAIR TRADE.

FRIDELL STILL SUPPORTS BUYING FAIR TRADE PRODUCTS, AND DOES SO HIMSELF, AS AN ACT OF SOLIDARITY WITH PEASANT FARMERS TRYING TO BUILD BETTER LIVES FOR THEIR FAMILIES.  YET HE SAYS MERELY DOING SO IS NOT GOING TO BE ENOUGH FOR A TRULY JUST OR EQUITABLE TRADING SYSTEM. THAT, HE SAYS, WILL TAKE POLITICAL ACTION.  “IF YOU REALLY WANT TO BUILD A WORLD THAT’S TRULY JUST, YOU’RE GOING TO HAVE TO TAKE YOUR FAIR TRADE COFFEE KNOWLEDGE AND GET POLITICAL,” “THINK ABOUT THE PARTY YOU VOTE FOR”.

WHILE MOST PEOPLE HAD NEVER HEARD OF FAIR TRADE PRODUCTS UNTIL A DECADE OR SO AGO, THE MOVEMENT HAS BEEN AROUND SINCE THE 1940’S, WITH OXFAM AMONG ITS EARLY PROPONENTS, FRIDELL WRITES.  IT BEGAN AS A REACTION TO AN UNEQUAL POWER DYNAMIC BETWEEN POOR DEVELOPING COUNTRIES AND LARGE MULTINATIONAL CORPORATIONS THAT DOMINATE TRADE.

THE IDEA WAS TO SHOWCASE HOW TRADE COULD BETTER BE USED TO ENCOURAGE DEVELOPMENT IN THE THIRD WORLD, PULL MORE PEOPLE OUT OF POVERTY AND, ONE TRADE DEAL AT A TIME, BUILD AN ALTERNATIVE  OUTSIDE THE CORPORATE WORLD.  THAT NEVER HAPPENED.  WITH EARLY FAIR TRADE PRODUCTS BEING SOLD EXCLUSIVELY IN SPECIALTY FAIR TRADE STORES AND CHURCH BASEMENTS, THEIR MARKETS REMAINED SMALL AND THEIR INFLUENCE LIMITED.

BY THE LATE 1980’S, MANY FAIR TRADERS WERE ARGUING THAT THEY NEEDED TO GET THE CORPORATIONS ON BOARD.  LABELLING SYSTEMS WERE DEVELOPED TO HELP THE PRODUCTS GET INTO MAINSTREAM STORES, WITH FAIR TRADE LABELS USED TO BRAND THEM AS ITEMS WORTHY OF A HIGHER PRICE.  COFFEE COMPANIES WERE SUCCESSFULLY LOBBIED TO INCLUDE FAIR TRADE PRODUCTS ON THEIR SHELVES, ALONGSIDE CONVENTIONAL BEANS.  GROCERY STORES BEGAN OFFERING FAIR TRADE COFFEE, AS WELL, VASTLY EXPANDING THE MARKET FOR SUCH PRODUCTS.  THE SHIFT, FRIDELL SAYS, HAS MADE FAIR TRADE PART OF WESTERN CONSUMER CULTURE, DEPENDENT ON THE WHIMS OF FICKLE SHOPPERS AND DANGEROUSLY TIED TO LARGE CORPORATIONS.  MULTINATIONAL STARBUCKS, FOR INSTANCE, HAS BECOME CANADA’S LARGEST RETAILER OF FAIR TRADE COFFEE, BUT IS SO LARGE THAT ETHICALLY GROWN BEANS REPRESENT NO MORE THAN 2 PERCENT OF ITS ANNUAL SALES.

IN AN EMAIL  I RECEIVED ON MAY 7, 2008, FRIDELL WRITES THAT, SINCE THE LAUNCH OF HIS BOOK IN MARCH, 2007, STARBUCKS HAS INCREASED THE NUMBER OF ITS BEANS THAT ARE TRANSFAIR CERTIFIED TO 6 %.  THROUGH A PROGRAM THAT THEY HAVE DEVELOPED CALLED CAFE (COFFEE AND FARMER EQUITY), STARBUCKS NOW CLAIMS THAT 53%, 53% OF ITS BEANS ARE CERTIFIED.  HOWEVER, FRIDELL FOUND, THROUGH THOROUGH RESEARCH OF A STARBUCKS WEBSITE, THAT ONLY 10.7% MEET AT LEAST 80% OF CAFE CRITERIA (AND SUCH CRITERIA ALREADY INVOLVE LOWER STANDARDS THAN REQUIRED BY TRANSFAIR).  FOR MORE INFORMATION ON STARBUCKS’ CAFE CERTIFICATION PROGRAM AND FRIDELL’S CRITIQUE OF IT, I CAN PROVIDE YOU THE WEBSITE OF ANOTHER OF STUART LAIDLAW’S TORONTO STAR ARTICLES DATED SEPT. 1 2007.

RETURNING TO LAIDLAW’S MARCH, 2007 ARTICLE, FRIDELL SAYS THAT WHILE FAIR TRADE GROUPS NOW NEED SUCH BIG COMPANIES TO STAY AFLOAT, THOSE SAME CHAINS DON’T NEED FAIR TRADE FOR ANYTHING MORE THAN ENHANCING THEIR CORPORATE IMAGE.  “THEY ONLY HAVE TO GET ON BOARD ENOUGH TO SHUT THE FAIR TRADE PEOPLE UP.”  RATHER THAN BEING SEEN AS A THREAT TO CORPORATE-DOMINATED TRADE, FRIDELL SAYS, FAIR TRADE IS NOW SEEN AS A COMPLEMENT TO IT.

“THE WORLD BANK SERVES FAIR TRADE COFFEE AT ITS HEADQUARTERS,” HE SAYS OF THE WASHINGTON-BASED INSTITUTION THAT HAS BEEN A FERVENT SUPPORTER OF UNFETTERED FREE TRADE AND A LONG-TIME TARGET OF LEFT-LEANING ACTIVISTS.  FRIDELL WOULD LIKE TO SEE THE FAIR TRADE MOVEMENT RETURN SOMEWHAT TO ITS ROOTS, USING ITS NEW-FOUND POPULARITY AND INFLUENCE TO PUSH FOR REAL CHANGE IN INTERNATIONAL TRADING RULES TO BENEFIT ALL THEIR CITIZENS.  HE WORRIES, HOWEVER, THAT IT MIGHT BE TOO LATE.  “THE MORE THEY ALIGN THEMSELVES WITH TRANSNATIONAL CORPORATIONS, THE LESS ABLE THEY ARE TO OFFER AN ALTERNATIVE”.

AT THE LAUNCH OF FRIDELL’S BOOK, DARRYL REED, CHAIR OF SOCIAL SCIENCES AT YORK UNIVERSITY AND A FORMER PROFESSOR OF FRIDELL’S – AND AN EARLY FAIR TRADE ADVOCATE – SAID THE MOVEMENT NEEDED TO GO MAINSTREAM TO SURVIVE.  “IF WE ALL HAVE TO GO TO TEN THOUSAND VILLAGES (A CHAIN OF FAIR TRADE STORES) TO BUY OUR COFFEE, THEY’RE NOT GOING TO SELL MUCH COFFEE,”  HE SAYS, ADMITTING THE MOVEMENT HAS SOME THINKING TO DO ABOUT HOW TO EFFECT CHANGE WHILE WORKING WITH LARGE CORPORATIONS.  “IT’S REALLY A STRATEGIC QUESTION.”

FRIDELL’S CRITICISM OF THE FAIR TRADE MOVEMENT OBVIOUSLY COMES FROM A LEFT OF CENTRE POLITICAL PERSPECTIVE THAT SUGGESTS FAIR TRADE IS NOT ADEQUATELY CHALLENGING THE CURRENT TRADING SYSTEM.  THERE ARE ALSO THOSE FROM A RIGHT OF CENTRE PERSPECTIVE WHO CRITICIZE FAIR TRADE AS A FORM OF SUBSIDY.

CONCLUSION

IN CONCLUSION, I HAVE STATED  THAT THE PRESENT INTERNATIONAL TRADING SYSTEM ALLOWS BUSINESSES TO TRY TO MAXIMIZE THEIR PROFITS AND REDUCE THE PRICE OF GOODS THEY SELL BY PAYING LABOURERS AND PRODUCERS IN MANY COUNTRIES AS LITTLE AS POSSIBLE.  IT IS A SYSTEM THAT IS LEGAL AND WIDE SPREAD, BUT HARDLY FAIR AND JUST TO THESE LABOURERS AND PRODUCERS.  WE HAVE ALSO SEEN THAT FAIR TRADE’S FIRST PRIORITY IS NOT TO MAXIMIZE PROFITS, RATHER TO PAY LABOURERS AND PRODUCERS A FAIR AND JUST RETURN FOR THEIR PRODUCTS AND THEIR LABOUR, AMONG OTHER PRIORITIES.  DESPITE CRITICISMS, FAIR TRADE’S GOALS ARE DEFINITELY CONSISTENT WITH UNITARIAN PRINCIPLES, SUCH AS THE INHERENT WORTH AND DIGNITY OF EVERY PERSON, JUSTICE, EQUITY AND COMPASSION IN HUMAN RELATIONS, AND THE GOAL OF WORLD COMMUNITY WITH PEACE, LIBERTY AND JUSTICE FOR ALL.  

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"Tuesdays with Morrie "

Sunday, May 25, 2008
David Seale

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The inspiration for this talk comes from the book “Tuesday’s With Morrie” by Mitch Albom. In brief, it is a story by a middle aged man who learns that his favourite college professor is dying from ALS or Lou Gehrig’s Disease. He meets weekly with his professor Morrie Schwarz and gains insights from him. He calls it the last class that he will take with his beloved teacher, and through the book we are permitted to audit the class. It is a small relatively thin book of 192 pages, but is packed full of insights, some related to the process of death and dying.  Other insights are related to how we live our lives, what matters most deeply to us, and what is simply window dressing. . I think the book became extremely popular for what happens outside of the pages. People are challenged to ask questions regarding their own lives and ways of living. Am I living the life I want to live? Who were the mentors who most touched my life and how? What meaningful connection am I making with people in my journey through life?

First the background. In the 1970’s Mitch Albom attended Brandeis University in the city of Waltham Massachusetts. He meets a professor named Morrie Schwarz. Morrie was a doctor or Sociology with an interest in philosophy, religion and psychology. Morrie took a very personal interest in his students and especially connects with a young Mitch Albom.

Mitch takes every course that Morrie teaches over his student career and they often discussed class content and other life issues over lunch. At Mitch’s graduation, Morrie sought out Mitch’s parents and tells them “You have a special boy here”. Morrie and Mitch hug and agree to stay in touch.     But they didn’t.

Like a lot of people, Mitch followed up his graduation by going out and getting busy with life. He married, and devoted hours and hours to his career of being a sportswriter for the Detroit Free Press. Old relationships including his one with Morrie, fell to the wayside. In 1994, Morrie Schwarz received a death sentence. He was diagnosed with amyotrophic lateral sclerosis or ALS. Famous New York Yankee Lou Gehrig was one of the most famous people to deal with the disease.

Morrie had known something was wrong for a while before his diagnosis. He loved going to parties and dancing with reckless abandon. He knew he was losing his dancing moves at a faster rate than normal aging would dictate. After hearing his diagnosis, Morrie quickly decided on a course of action. “He would not wither. He would not be ashamed of dying. Instead he would make death his final project, the centre point of his days. Since everyone was going to die, he could be research. A human textbook. Study me in slow and patient demise. Watch what happens to me. Learn with me. Morrie would walk that final bridge between life and death and narrate the trip.”

Morrie started writing down short philosophies on living in death’s shadow. “Accept what you are able to do and what you are not able to do.” “Accept the past without denying it or discarding it”. “Learn to forgive yourself and to forgive others.” “Don’t assume it’s too late to get involved.” A friend sent some of his words to the Boston Globe. A Globe article caught the eye of a producer from the Nightline Show. The producer shared his idea. So that’s how it came to be that on a Friday night on NBC, Ted Koppel boomed with authority stating “Who is Morrie Schwartz and why by the end of  the night are so many of you going to care about him?”  A thousand miles away Mitch Albom was casually flipping channels when he heard “Who is Morrie Schwarz” and went numb.

Within days Mitch Albom went to see his old professor. “You know I’m dying don’t you Mitch? Shall I tell you what it’s like.” “What it’s like to die.” “Yes” he said. Albom was unaware that his last course with Professor Schwarz had begun.

Mitch’s newspaper union went on strike at this time and fortuitously he was given the time and opportunity that allowed him to visit Morrie on a weekly basis. Much of what Morrie talked about resonated deeply with Albom, and with most who heard and read about him.

Morrie recognized that the culture we live in does not make people feel good about themselves. Inundated by messages of consumerism = happiness and the ideas that diet pills and surgery can make us better people, can lead to a pretty shallow existence. Morrie said “the way you get meaning into your life is to devote yourself to loving others, devote yourself to your community around you, and devote yourself to creating something that gives you purpose and meaning.” I think that Morrie must have read some of Viktor Frankl’s writings.  Morrie recognized that if the existing culture doesn’t work for you, don’t buy it. This is where intentionality comes in. If you don’t like the existing rules and meanings that today’s culture provides, you have to be pretty intentional about developing your own rules and meanings and in finding ways to live them.

Morrie had developed his own culture of meaning. Discussion groups, walks with friends, dancing to music in the Harvard Square \Church filled Morrie’s days. He wrote letters to keep in touch with friends, took time to enjoy eating, and loved to spend time with nature.

Morrie had a difficult childhood. His mother died when he was eight. His father was a Russian immigrant and couldn’t read English. When the telegram came from the hospital with the news that his mother had died, Morrie had to read the telegram and break the news to his father. His father was not a demonstrative man and Morrie greatly missed not having someone to hug and to cuddle him. As an adult, Morrie craved human connection whether it came through physical touch or through conversation that demonstrated caring. Morrie said that “The most important thing in life is to learn how to give out love, and to let it come in. Let it come in. We think we don’t deserve love, we think if we let it in we’ll become too soft. But a wise man named Levine said it right. He said love is the only rational act.”

Morrie was born Jewish, but became agnostic as a teen. He enjoyed some of the philosophies of Buddhism and Christianity. He was a self-declared religious mutt and this made him even more open and accepting with his students. The things he was saying in the final months of h is life seemed to transcend religious differences. One common theme in those months was to focus on what was real and important and what was without substance.

Morrie said, “I don’t know what ‘spiritual development’ really means. But I do know we are deficient in some way. We are too involved in materialistic things and they don’t satisfy us. The loving relationships we have, the universe around us, we take these things for granted.  Even though Morrie became quite focused, philosophical and positive through much of his end stage of life, there were some darker moments.

Reading from “Tuesday’s With Morrie” pgs 88 and 89

The newspaper near his chair has a photo of a Boston baseball player who is smiling after pitching a shutout. Of all the diseases, I think to myself, Morrie gets one named after an athlete. You remember Lou Gehrig, I ask?

“I remember him in the stadium, saying goodbye.”

So you remember the famous line.

“Which one?”

Come on. Lou Gehrig. “Pride of the Yankees”? The speech that echos over the loudspeakers?

“Remind me,” Morrie says. “Do the speech.”

Through the open window I hear the sound of a garbage truck. Although it is hot, Morrie is wearing long sleeves, with a blanket over his legs, his skin pale. The disease owns him.

I raise my voice and do the Gehrig imitation, where the words bounce off the stadium walls: “Too-dayyy…. I feel like….. the luckiest maaaan… on the face of the earth….”

Morrie closes his eyes and nods slowly.

“Yeah, Well. I didn’t say that.”

One Tuesday Mitch showed up for his visit carrying a newspaper. The headline said “I don’t want my tombstone to read ‘I never owned a network.’” The quote was from Ted Turner the billionaire media mogul and owner of CNN who was lamenting that he had failed in an attempt to buy CBS TV network. Morrie stated that we put our focus on the wrong thing. More money is good. More property is good, more commercialism is good. We lose perspective on what is really important. 

Morrie had long been focused on the simple pleasures like singing, dancing and laughing. Morrie felt that the people who were always looking for more were fooling themselves. They were embracing material things and expecting a hug back. You can’t substitute material things for love or for gentleness or for tenderness or for a sense of comradeship. “This Ted Turner guy” Morrie said, “he couldn’t think of anything else for his tombstone.

Reading from “Tuesday’s With Morrie” pgs 150 and 151

Okay, question, I say to Morrie. His bony fingers hold his glasses across his chest, which rises and falls with each labored breath.

“What’s the question?” he says.

Remember the Book of Job?

“From the Bible?”

Right. Job is a good man, but God makes him suffer. To test his faith.

“I remember.”

Takes away everything he has, his house, his money, his family…..

“His health.”

Makes him sick.

“To test his faith.”

Right. To test his faith. So, I’m wondering….

“What are you wondering?”

What you think about that?

Morrie coughs violently. His hands quiver as he drops them by his side.

“I think,” he says, smiling, “God overdid it.”

As time went on, Morrie became more  and more dependent on those around him. At times this bothered Morrie, but at other times he was more philosophical. “In the beginning of life when we are infants we need others to survive right?  And at the end of life, when you get like me you need others to survive right? But here’s the secret. In between we need others as well.

This very much reminds me of my father’s last weeks and how important relationship and connection became during those times. He would light up so much when someone would come to visit him. For the visitors and for us family present, there was a poignancy and a sense of melancholy as we had a hard time not thinking that this was probably a last living contact between the visitor and my father. However for Dad, he only showed the pure pleasure that he was feeling in having this person visit him. When he became tired, the palliative nurses would partly close his door and put a guest book for visitors to sign outside the door. After a few people had signed the book and left without visiting, Dad asked what was going on. We explained that the nurses were concerned that he was getting too tired. The incredulous look on his face spoke volumes and very few visitors were turned away after that.

Mitch Albom and Morrie Schwarz had 14 Tuesday visits. On the 13^th Tuesday, Morrie told Mitch that he had felt a certain peace about the idea of dying. He had a terrible spell that went on for several hours where he struggled to breathe. I feel a bit panicked when I picture someone struggling to catch their breath, but as Morrie struggled to breathe and was getting dizzy, he felt a certain peace, he was ready to go. Morrie said that if we can make peace with the idea of dying, we can make peace with the idea of living.

Reading from “Tuesday’s with Morrie” pg 174

“As long as we can love each other, and remember the feeling of love we had, we can die without ever really going away. All the love you created is still there. All the memories are still there. You live on – in the hearts of everyone you have touched and nurtured while you were here.”

His voice was raspy, which usually meant he needed to stop for a while. I placed the plant back on the ledge and went to shut off the tape recorder. This is the last sentence Morrie got out before I did

“Death ends a life, not a relationship."

So, Mitch Albom wrote a heartfelt book about a reunion with his favourite professor, as his professor prepared to die. There were definitely parts of the book that touched my emotions, touched my intellect and added to my understanding of living and dying. But as I said at the start of this talk, much of the popularity and benefit of the book actually takes place outside of the pages, through the questions we ask ourselves as a result of having met Morrie Schwarz.  And the answers that eventually come to the surface.

What matters the most in life?

What words would you like to see in your obituary or on your tombstone?

What activities bring the most depth of meaning to your existence?

If you had 14 Tuesdays or 14 minutes to tell someone what the most important things in life are, what would you say?

If we discover those things that are truly important, how can we intentionally make them a part of our living as opposed to meaningful concepts to think about at times.

I will open it up to you now for your discussion.

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"What’s love got to do with it? A personal journey to green action."

(First Unitarian Congregation of Toronto Sermon for Sunday, May 18, 2008)

Sunday, September 14, 2008
Judy Velland

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- I grew up in Minneapolis Minnesota on a street called Sunrise Drive in a house that sat on an acre of land in a neighbourhood where the houses were spaced far apart.
- I remember iris growing wild in a field behind the house, huge bushes of white and purple lilacs, a tall willow tree with a swing hanging from a high branch, and an old apple and plum orchard whose blossoms in the spring were a mass of intoxicating beauty.
- I spent much of my childhood outdoors - running through fields, climbing trees, building forts, eating wild asparagus right off the plant, and selling rhubarb at a small stand at the edge of the road.
- This was the beginning of my love of being outdoors, and my deep connection with the earth.

Jump ahead about 25 years. I’m now in my early 30s, living in Toronto, and married with two children. I read in the newspaper daily about pollution and think to myself – this is terrible, there’s no question what I’m going to do with my life. I worked for the Recycling Council of Ontario for 12 years doing public education on the 3Rs - reduce, reuse and recycle.

My kids had ambivalent feelings about my work. They called me the compost queen, but hated it when their ball fell into the compost bin. They were really embarrassed when I appeared at the schoolyard one day on my bike wearing a helmet. They were afraid their friends would see their strange looking mother. This was before cycling became so popular and people proudly wore helmets that made them look like racers.

Jump ahead a lot more years and I’m now around 50. I’m hiking on the Bruce Trail overlooking Georgian Bay in Bruce National Park south of Tobermory. Each of us probably has a place for which we have a special love, and this is mine.

I like hiking alone, because it’s just me and the trees and water and wind, with no human conversation to get in the way. But I was hiking along at a fast clip in a goal-oriented mode concentrating on getting to the end of the hike in good time, when I suddenly stopped and said to myself “Judy, slow down, stop, just be here.” And then I had an amazing experience.

- The trees stood tall at the side of the trail and said to me, “Be with us. We are Creation.”
- The water lapped against the rocky shore and the birds sang, and said, “Hear us. We are Creation.”
- The sun burned hot on my skin and said, “Feel me, I am Creation.”
- I breathed deeply of the sweet, fresh air which said, “Smell me. I am Creation.”
- I drew my hands across the pitted rocks which said, “Touch me. I am Creation.”
- The water is cool as I tip my head back and drink, and the water said, “Taste me. I am Creation.”
- The gulls glided white across the blue bay and shadowed cliffs and said, “See us. We are Creation.”
- I was in Creation and felt truly blessed.

About five years ago, I saw a film called “The End of Suburbia” which is about peak oil. In simple terms, peak oil refers to the fact that the demand for fossil fuels - oil and natural gas - is increasing just as the supply is decreasing. Our whole economy and way of life depend on cheap abundant energy, so the implications of peak oil are huge. I left the movie feeling as if I’d been hit by a ten-tonne truck. Suddenly I could no longer assume that life as I had known it would continue in quite the same way. I knew I had to do something.

It’s hard to spend your days working on problems. It’s helpful to remember the love. Derrick Jensen, an activist, philosopher and writer, in response to a question about why he does the work he does, answers “Because I’m in love. With salmon, with trees outside my window, with baby lampreys living in sandy streambottoms, with slender salamanders crawling through the duff. And if you love, you act to defend your beloved. Of course results matter to you, but they don’t determine whether or not you make the effort. You don’t simply hope your beloved survives and thrives. You do what it takes. If my love doesn’t cause me to protect those I love, it’s not love.”

That pretty much brings me up to the present. We live in extraordinarily challenging times. Just reading the daily newspaper makes that only too clear. I see a picture of a polar bear on a shrinking ice cap and feel so sad that I quickly turn the page. I read about the possibility of “ecological catastrophe”, I read that “humanity’s very survival is at stake”, and I feel anxious and worried. I seem to spend a lot of time worrying these days.

- I worry about climate change and where our energy will come from.
- I think about what the future will look like and how best to prepare.
- I’m concerned about what life will be like for my children and grandchildren.
So I’ve decided to devote my retirement years to working on these issues. And that’s what I’m doing. So far I’ve learned a lot, been to lots of meetings, and met some fabulous people. I’ve helped to form an environmental group in my neighbourhood and have gotten involved in some interesting projects.

I’m very excited that my congregation, the First Unitarian Congregation of Toronto, has formed a green team. We’re starting with 2 projects: one to look at possible changes to the building and its operations to save energy, water etc. The other is to engage the congregation in making changes in their own personal lives.

This work seems like a very good fit for Unitarian congregations. We can be inspired by our 7th principal –“respect for the interdependent web of all existence of which we are a part”. In fact I would suggest that it is more than a matter of respect; we are dependent on “the interdependent web of all existence”. As David Suzuki says, “In our busy lives most of us have forgotten that it is nature that supports everything that we do…”  

And what do religious communities do? One of the things they do is help us lead good lives, moral lives. Climate change is often spoken of as a moral issue. Al Gore says “The climate crisis is a moral and spiritual challenge to all of humanity.”

There are important questions of responsibility. What is our responsibility to other species? What is our responsibility to future generations? It seems to me that a religious community is a good place to ask these kinds of questions.

And religious communities also talk a lot about love, love for each other and for the earth, and about living our values. So, yes, it seems like a very good fit.

So let’s talk about what we can do, both as individuals and as communities.

There are so many issues and questions we could discuss together. Here are some examples:
- can renewable energy – wind and solar and biomass – make up for the loss of fossil fuels?
- is it possible to have infinite growth on a finite planet?
- is green consumerism the answer?
- what does it mean to call something sustainable?
- in the face of the enormity of the problems, will changing our light bulbs really make a difference?
- do solutions lie with us making changes in our daily lives, or with politicians, or with both?
- does it really matter what individuals do; shouldn’t we be looking to big industry?
- does it really matter what we in the west do; aren’t the burgeoning economies of China and India the real problem?
- can we rely on voluntary action to make the kind of change we need to see? or do we need legislated changes?
- what will get us moving?, do we need to wait for energy prices to reach a certain point, or for blackouts to occur more frequently?
- what kind of a positive vision of the future can we create to inspire us? Martin Luther King didn’t say “I have a nightmare”. He said “I have a dream.” What is our dream?
- what are the most effective things that we can do, what’s holding us back, and what would help us move forward?
- what inspiring examples are there from other communities, cities and countries that have made real progress in energy conservation, renewable energy and local living?

We could have many interesting conversations, and I think it’s important that we have these conversations. The better our grasp of the issues, the more intelligent our response.

In terms of what you and I can do in our daily lives, I’d like to suggest that there are three biggies:
1) Use less energy in our homes – and there are many ways to do that.
2) Eat local and eat less meat – that one may surprise you.
3) Drive less.

A more detailed discussion of these actions is best left for another time. But remember, we’re not just talking about deprivation here. There are benefits to taking these actions, in addition to helping curb climate change.

For example,  if you do an energy-retrofit on your house, you will not only save energy, you will also be more comfortable, save money in utility costs, and boost the re-sale value of your home. Another example is eating local food. Not only do you help save energy because the food has traveled a shorter distance, but nothing could be more delicious and nutritious than fresh fruits and vegetables bought at the local farmers’ market.

Some of these changes are easy – such as replacing your light bulbs; others require more effort. Some are easy for some people and harder for others. For example, I live within walking distance of a subway, so it’s easy for me to switch to public transit. If you live a 15 min. walk from a bus route and the bus only comes every ½ hour, it’s a lot harder. So individual action is part of the equation, but structural changes such as improved public transit, are important as well. The main thing is to start somewhere, as I know many of us have, and move forward from there.

Flying is the one that stumps me. My son and his family live in Vancouver so flying is the only way I can see them, unless I’m prepared for a 4-day train trip both ways. In terms of ghg emissions, just one plane trip can wipe out months of being good and green. I could rationalize it by saying that the plane’s going anyway, and many people do that, but to me that’s not a good argument. I have friends who have stopped flying all together and I respect them for that decision.

My friend Anne has a good way of making these kinds of decisions. She asks herself “If I do this – whatever this is - will it be part of the problem, or part of the solution.” If we all asked ourselves that question on a regular basis, we could make some real progress.

I will end with one final entry in the episodic diary with which I began. This morning I went out on my back porch and said a prayer. I said, “Good morning, morning. Thank you for this morning, thank you for this day. Good morning to all my brothers and sisters – the trees and flowers. The fresh air and big sky and clouds. And the birds singing. Thank you for this morning. Thank you for this day.”

I try to do this every day out of love because I know the answer to the question “what’s love got  to do with it”. The answer is everything.

But, as Denise Levertov said, "we have only begun to love the earth."

So let us find our way, together, to become ever more loving toward this home that gives to us with each new morning, the gift of our very lives.

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"The Meaning of Service"

Sunday, November 9, 2008
Dr Michael Szarka

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It is two days before November 11th, and it is a great time to think about giving.  The people we honour on Remembrance Day made what is truly the ultimate sacrifice; they gave their life.

How much is enough for any of us to give?  What should we give and to whom?  What is the “right” amount of generosity?  What is the reward for giving? 

There was a time in my life, when I was in university and I had time and inclination to ponder the big questions, that I asked myself what I should be giving in life.  Why should I be going to university and preparing myself for a gratifying and rewarding life, when there could be other things I could do that would be more important?  Why shouldn’t I be heading off to Africa and digging wells?  Wouldn’t that be a more appropriate use of my life, wouldn’t that have the greatest impact on my fellow man? 

I came up with an answer to that question, perhaps a convenient and facile answer, that I had certain natural gifts; an inclination towards math and science, and some other talents as well.  On the other hand, I do not have a large frame and certainly others would be able to dig more wells in less time.  Maybe I should follow my talents and passions, and service to my fellow man will follow naturally and be greatest in this way.

If our inclination is to be an undertaker, a schoolteacher, or a factory worker, we are all contributing.  But those who take a deeper step of personal sacrifice or risk, what takes them there?

We have recently had a Federal election in this country.  It is pretty uncontroversial to bash politicians as egomaniacs, incompetents, or crooks.  Yet all those people who put their names forward, spend months or years raising money and then weeks of tireless effort in a campaign, and they subject themselves to intense scrutiny, abuse and ridicule.  Do we really believe that they are following purely selfish motivations, that they are not seeking a higher purpose?  I am convinced that most of them believe that our country, our province, or our cities are not on the right track and that they have the vision to help improve their communities or homeland.  Most of these elected positions pay reasonably well, but not generally better than equivalent positions in the private sector, and certainly not in proportion to the crazy hours and family sacrifice of elected office.  This is indeed another kind of giving.

Ninety-four years ago the Great Powers of Europe squared off in a war that the Germans, French, British, Austrians and Russians had seen coming for quite some time.  Europe had seen many wars, most of them involving a series of short, dramatic battles fought by trained armies on defined fields of battle with minimal civilian casualties.  A century earlier, all of Europe was engulfed in the Napoleonic Wars which saw the Armies of France capture Moscow followed by a slow and terrible retreat back as the infamous Russian winter took its toll, and the spoils of war could not be held.  The Napoleonic Wars started in 1799 and ended in the Battle of Waterloo in 1815.  In that sixteen year conflict, France and its allies suffered the loss of some 370,000 in battle, and another 400,000 from disease, and a total of about one million dead and missing.  On the other side, the British, Russians, Spanish, Austrians and Prussians lost some 1.5 million total dead or missing.  Approximately 1 million civilians in Europe and overseas colonies also lost their lives.  This is an incredible toll of human life.  Yet, compare that to the losses in just four years from 1914-1918.  In those four years, the Allied powers, principally France, Britain, Italy and Russia, lost about 5,700,000 soldiers and 3,600,000 civilians.  The Central Powers of Germany, Austria-Hungary and The Ottomans, lost about 4 million soldiers and 5 million civilians.  The total deaths to all sides of all causes was around 21 million people.

Canada at that time had around 7 million people.  Total enlistments during the four years were about 600,000, with about 400,000 serving overseas.  That is almost 10% of the population.  That is about equivalent to the situation if we were to have 3 million soldiers in Afghanistan.  And interestingly, Afghanistan is just about the same size as France. 

According to the 1911 census of Canada, the total number of men between the ages of 20-29 in Canada was about 600,000.  So in essence, every man who was fit to serve, probably did serve, notwithstanding the fact that in French Canada for a variety of reasons the rate of volunteerism was much lower.  Our military deaths totaled 64,000 and wounded 149,000.  So 10% died, another 20% were wounded, and one can only speculate at the mental wounds and incapacities carried back by the other 70%, in an age when post-traumatic stress disorder was only known as shell-shock and was not understood as a true wounding of the mind.  So much of an entire generation of men was deeply crippled by the war. 

These numbers boggle the mind, but they do explain why in every little town in Canada, there is a cenotaph with a list of names of those who were lost in those four years.  Why did these young men sign up?  For some no doubt there was a sense of duty.  For some a sense of adventure.  But as time went on and the horrible reality of life in the trenches started to seep back home (despite the best efforts of the censors), a few held out until public shame or conscription got them into the army.  The sad fact is that this was a war that seems to have been wandered into by all sides expecting a speedy conclusion like the battles of previous centuries, and once a quick victory proved impossible, they lacked the political will to stop it and the young men just kept dying.  Newfoundland had only about 250,000 people at this time, about the current population of Oshawa and Whitby.  On one horrible morning in 1916 700 young men of the Newfoundland Regiment died at the battle of Beaumont Hamel as a result of an order to advance from the trenches which assumed that machine gun emplacements had been knocked out.  They weren’t, the men knew it, and yet they still followed orders and charged to their deaths.  Newfoundland lost about 1,500 dead and about 2,400 wounded in the war.  Is it fair to say they died for nothing?  Certainly they died mostly due to a lack of political will on all sides of the conflict.

Twenty years later Europe had another conflict brewing.  Fascism was in the ascendance in Germany and Italy, and in 1936 an insurrection of Spanish nationalists against their government initiated the Spanish Civil War.  The Nationalists were backed by the fascist powers Germany and Italy, while the Republicans were supported by communist Russia and international volunteers including Canadians.  Astonishingly, Canadian volunteers arrived in numbers constituting a greater proportion of our population than any other nation except France.  In total about 1400 men served in the Mackenzie-Papineau battalion of the International Brigade, and about half of them died in Spain, probably the worst rate of casualties of any war fought by Canadians.  The Canadian government ignored these veterans and has never provided them with veteran’s benefits or recognition.  In fact, many of them were spied on by our intelligence services after they returned.  The reason?  Many of them were communists, leftists whose view of the world was shaped by the Great Depression.  They were truly volunteers whose only motivation was passion, and to hear some of them speak they knew what fascism was about to wreak upon the world and they were the first to step up and be counted.  Few of them are still alive.

So these young men volunteered and gave for what they believed in.  A few years later, World War 2 began and another 1.1 million Canadians served in a story that is somewhat better known, again about 10% of our entire population at the time.  About 34,000 lost their lives, a toll considerably less than in World War 1, principally due to the fact that aside from the disastrous Dieppe raid, the majority of Canadian soldiers did not see action until the last two years of the war following the invasion of Sicily in the summer of 1943, even though the war had been going on for almost four years by that time. 

Now we have almost 100 dead in an undeclared war in Afghanistan.  Each day we wonder what Canadians are doing there, how long they need to stay, and all of us who are parents wonder how we would feel if it was our child who was in the desert, driving along in a truck or armoured vehicle and hoping not to run across a roadside bomb.  Some of these soldiers may have signed up from a sense of duty, some just to get an education, and some for the same sense of adventure as their great-grandfathers in 1914.  Sadly now when Stephen Harper declared a fixed date for Canadian withdrawal, parents of the dead have wondered aloud if their child will have died for nothing if Afghanistant remains in anarchy and no other country steps in to Canada’s shoes as we leave.

This is certainly giving, giving of an extreme and indispensible purpose.  Many of you will remember Jack Nicholson’s rant playing Colonel Nathan Jessop in Aaron Sorkin’s powerful screenplay for, A Few Good Men: “You can't handle the truth! Son, we live in a world that has walls. And those walls have to be guarded by men with guns. Who's gonna do it? You? You, Lt. Weinberg? I have a greater responsibility than you can possibly fathom. You weep for Santiago and you curse the Marines. You have that luxury. You have the luxury of not knowing what I know: that Santiago's death, while tragic, probably saved lives. And my existence, while grotesque and incomprehensible to you, saves lives...You don't want the truth. Because deep down, in places you don't talk about at parties, you want me on that wall. You need me on that wall.  We use words like honor, code, loyalty...we use these words as the backbone to a life spent defending something.”

As repugnant in some ways as Jessop’s character was, we really do want people doing things that we as civilians would rather not think about too deeply, or too often.

Military service, while a job, is a vocation intrinsically connected to the concept of service.  The risk of one’s life is always there.  The same is true of police officers, firefighters, search and rescue workers, and other similar occupations.  Then there are other kinds of occupation which, while not intrinsically hazardous, certainly have a sense of service, of a higher purpose in the service of humanity.  These would include nurses and doctors, social workers, politicians, ministers, and many others.  And of course, in many of these there are hazards as well.  Think about nurses in the front lines of infectious disease epidemics, for example.

These are all forms of giving, indeed.  But what about the rest of us, who are not on that wall, who are not in the truck in the deserts of Afghanistan, who are not tending the diseased? 

We could be digging wells in Africa, but that is not for all of us.  Each of us contributes to society through the work that we do and our individual efforts with family, community, and others. 

But can we give more?  How do we as Canadian stack up in our giving and volunteerism?

According to the 2000 Survey of Giving, Volunteering and Participating, 27% of Canadian volunteered an average of 162 hours each.  Higher rates of volunteerism correlate positively with education, employment, and children.  The busiest among us are most likely to volunteer, although the retired and the part-time employed who volunteer tend to give more hours.  160 hours is about three hours per week.  For those of us with full-time jobs and families, finding three hours to do good works is not always easy. 

But if we do not have time to volunteer, can we serve our community through charitable giving?  Again, charitable giving correlates strongly with education and income, with the highest rates of giving and the largest sums coming from those over the age of 45.  Presumably these are people who have reached a level of financial security, and who can afford to give.  However, while the absolute sums of money are higher for wealthier families, as a percentage of income the trend is precisely reversed.  Those with household incomes less than $40,000 contributed a much greater percentage of their income, between 0.7 and 1.1% of their income.  Wealthier Canadians gave under 0.5% of their income, despite a tax system which proportionately rewards larger donations. 

The motivations for giving were most strongly cited as compassion for those in need and personal belief in a cause, both of which were cited by over 90% of donors.  Religious obligations or beliefs were cited by only 31% of donors.  On the other hand, donating to fulfil religious obligations increased with increasing age, to almost 50% of those aged 65 and older.  Nearer my God to thee indeed.

Of those who do no donate, about half cited wanting to save for the future, many claimed skepticism about the use of the money, and about as many said they didn’t like the way requests for money were made.  I suppose that begs the question of what is the right way to ask for money so as not to offend the 22% of Canadians who do not give to charity.  We as Unitarians seem particularly sensitive to this issue; much more so than the Sunday morning TV evangelists who haven’t the slightest hesitation with linking the health of their church and the prospects of eternal salvation to the generosity of their viewers.  Of course we don’t want to sound as crass as many of these fellows in their opulent crystal cathedrals.  But we do ourselves no favours by being too shy to talk about it.  It is not generally known by the members of this congregation that our budget to pay for the things we do, including the religious education program, the rental of this hall, the fees we pay to the Canadian Unitarian Congress and other essential costs add up to around $1000 annually for every member of the Church.  This average budgetary need works out to around $20 per person per week, which is a comfortable sum for some of us to part with, but a bigger challenge for other members and obviously has to be made up by larger donations by some, or preferably, by building a larger congregation to distribute the costs among more people.  

But are donations to this congregation really “service” in the sense that I have been talking about?  The money we give to the Church is, in some sense, giving to ourselves.  The Church provides us with a service that we consider valuable and we pay for it, albeit on a voluntary basis.  Yet if the donations dried up and UUCD shut its doors, what would the impact be?  The answer to this question is highly personal, yet UUCD is more than the sum of its parts.  We are partners in a community that gives in many ways to many people to create a host of benefits and spiritual well-being.

With so many choices for charitable giving, how do we know where to start or where to focus?  For my family, Tracey and I focus on the Church, on environmental causes, and on third world relief.  We generally don’t give much to medical research.  Why not?  As a scientist, I have too much knowledge of how far my money goes in a research environment.  My $50 might pay for coffee and donuts in a weekly university seminar, whereas by giving to Oxfam or UNICEF it can buy ten mosquito nets to protect ten children from malaria.  Medical research is massively supported by governments and by corporations, who are less likely to give to our favoured causes of UNICEF, Oxfam, the WWF and the David Suzuki Foundation. This is a personal perspective, and simply one way for us to deal with the fact that our resources are limited and we can’t give to everything.  We all need these rationalizations, just like my rationalization for not spending my life digging wells in Africa.

There is also, of course, the old adage that charity begins at home.  While this sounds like a convenient excuse for selfishness, there is a certain truth in that I don’t expect anyone else to come to the aid of my family if we run into problems.  Yes there is in Canada a social safety net, and we have friends who we trust to help us through certain kinds of problems, but still each of us who belongs to a family has to protect our loved ones and help provide our children with opportunity and our elders with care.  This sense of family is perhaps an even better justification for supporting UUCD, since our religious community is in a real sense a sort of extended family that we want to serve and protect.

So where does this all leave us as we look towards Remembrance Day and consider the profound sacrifices of others, and our own shared obligations of service to our community? 

For myself, I made a choice to get married and have a family.  I suppose this could be argued as a selfish choice compared to a life devoted to service, such as for example the distinguished Canadian Jean Vanier who devoted his life to building communities for the mentally disabled.  Now I have a wife and two daughters who count on me.  Digging wells in Africa is no longer a feasible option for me, and neither is military service.  I do a job that I believe benefits Canadian society, and it helps me to provide opportunity, pleasure and security for my family.  As a parent of a child with a significant disability my family life includes some very significant challenges.  Even so, I still occasionally look at myself and wonder whether I am too deeply flawed, too self-absorbed, or too lazy to do more than I do for my community.  But I suppose the fact that I have these feelings shows at least that I am on the right track.  We always have to challenge ourselves to be the best that we can be for ourselves, our families, and our community.  I hope that all of us take Remembrance Day as an occasion to honour the sacrifices of others, and use it as inspiration to keep asking ourselves whether we are truly giving what we can back to our country, our family, our religious community, and those who are unprotected or less fortunate .  As long as we all continue to challenge ourselves in this way and to try to serve as examples for those we know and love, we have a chance of building a better world one step at a time.

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"Life with Livvie"

Sunday, January 11, 2009
Dr Michael Szarka

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Most of you who are regular members know my teenage daughter Olivia.  For those of you who are visitors, Olivia is the young girl who was sitting beside me who struggles to keep quiet in church.  Olivia has a form of autism, a condition which manifests itself in many different ways among many different children and adults.  Because it is so diverse, the preferred terminology for the condition is ASD which stands for Autism Spectrum Disorder, meaning that the diagnosed individual exhibits symptoms of autism somewhere on the spectrum between being mildly affected or profoundly affected.

Just days ago, Olivia’s mother forwarded me a link to a provocative story from the UK Guardian entitled: “Why can't we face the truth? Having an autistic child wrecks your life ...”.  On the other hand, some compassionate souls argue that such a child is a blessing from God.  I’m going to talk about my experiences as a parent of an autistic child, and you can try to assess where your opinion sits between these two extremes.

Olivia was diagnosed at age 3 by one physician but another specialist gave us a different diagnosis, so it was much later that we faced the real diagnosis head on.  Olivia’s mother, Anna, and I separated when Olivia was near her fourth birthday, although it was from mutual incompatibility and not principally because of Olivia.  A couple of years later I met my wife Tracey and she became part of Olivia’s life. 

The symptoms of autism are many, but most of them have a common thread that they disable the individual’s ability to carry on normal social interaction.  In severe cases, individuals will be unable to talk.  In milder cases, they may speak very well, but you simply know that there is something a bit weird about them, a preoccupation with strange subjects, possibly a lack of understanding of personal space and social queues.  A lot of us had our first impressions of autism from the 1988 film Rain Man starring Dustin Hoffman and Tom Cruise.  In that movie, Dustin Hoffman’s character Raymond is a “savant”, meaning that despite his disability, he has certain bizarre gifts such as the ability to memorize phone books, to do complicated mathematics in his head, and so on.  In reality, this is not common and it is estimated that only about 10% of autistics have savant skills.

There is a lot of debate in the autism community about the causes of the disease.  The majority of scientific evidence points to a genetic basis for autism, although I have throughout my life been bombarded by well-meaning friends and acquaintances sending me clippings, usually from women’s magazines, linking autism to food allergies or certain components of vaccines that were at one time used in young children.  Nevertheless, the idea of a genetic basis is strongly supported by the fact that there is a 4:1 ratio of boys to girls in the autism community, and other genetic evidence is accumulating.  Still, some parents have put their children on extremely restrictive diets and claimed to have seen dramatic improvements in their conditions.  The latest and most famous case is former Playboy bunny Jenny McCarthy.  Ms. McCarthy claims to have cured her son’s autism through a change in diet and has written a book about it.  From a scientific standpoint it is almost impossible to know whether a child is improving because there was some other problem that the diet alleviated, or simply because the children are growing up and improving naturally.  In those studies that have tried to show a response based on diet, the results have been inconclusive.  Probably most kids would behave better if we fed them mostly vegetables and fewer refined foods.  But the main problem I have with these stories is that they seem to put the blame on the parents for not doing enough to “cure” their child.

The sad fact is that for most people afflicted with ASD, there is no magic bullet.  Some drug therapies help, and some kinds of behavioural modification treatments applied to very young children have had convincing results.  However there has been reluctance on the part of government to pay for this treatment, since it is extremely expensive, at many tens of thousands of dollars per year.  At the moment the available clinical data has only shown results up to age six, and so that is when treatment stops in Ontario.  As a result, any child who is diagnosed late, and many are, will never receive treatment. 

So what is it like to live with autism, and what is the role of a caregiver to a person with autism?

It is difficult to make generalizations about ASD since there are such wide variations of symptoms.  One common thread for most people with ASD is a lack of empathy.  They do not know how to put themselves in other people’s heads, and this is one of the reasons they have such a difficult time learning social conventions and queues.  The classic experiment which very clearly shows this effect is to have a person watch a cartoon story.  In the story are two girls, Lucy and Alice, in a room with two boxes and a ball.  Lucy watches Alice put a ball in Box A.  Lucy then leaves the room.  While Lucy is out of the room, Alice takes the ball out of Box A and puts it in Box B.  Then Lucy comes back into the room and looks for the ball.  So which box does Lucy look in first?  A normal child will know that Lucy will expect the ball to still be in Box A.  But a child with ASD will almost always expect Lucy to immediately look in Box B.  Why?  Because that’s where the ball is!  To illustrate this with something Olivia often does, if she strikes up a conversation with you, it will almost always be on her terms, about her own interests.  The give and take of conversation does not come naturally to her.  The person with ASD lives in their own head, and that is challenging enough for many of them.  I will watch TV with Olivia and she will ask me questions about the emotional state of the characters, who is angry, who is embarrassed and so on.  She doesn’t quite get it, but she is trying to understand.  She certainly becomes extremely upset if I say I am angry or disappointed, although that may be from her own experiences with the consequences of Daddy being angry.

Which leads me to comment on parenting a child with ASD.  As one mother of an ASD child told me, when someone asks her how her day was, she instinctively thinks about how her son’s day was.  If he had a good day, then she had a good day.  A child with ASD can be absolutely exhausting because you never know what they will do next.  Imagine trying to discipline a child who doesn’t understand the social context in which the rest of us live.  A child who has no empathy does not have the instinctive desire to please their parents and to “fit in”.  We’ve all had the experience of being in a grocery store with a parent whose child is having a fierce tantrum.  But imagine how emotionally exhausting it is when you expect an outburst like that almost every time you go into public.  That is one reason why you don’t see more autistic children in public.  The parents can’t deal with the stress and humiliation of a child who appears to be out of control and completely undisciplined, or exhibits behaviour that is bizarre.  You can imagine the looks you get when your child is behaving like this, or even worse when your only recourse is physical restraint of a misbehaving child in a crowded public place.  So most try to find ways to avoid public scenes, which is kind of unfortunate in a way because it only reinforces the stigma.  I always tended to be the sort who would soldier on, and take Olivia to Wonderland, or the highland games, or shopping and so on.  I do try to draw the line in places where there is some particular need for quiet or solemnity.  Olivia loves to talk, almost all the time, and usually about the same things over and over again.  It took me several years before I felt comfortable with Olivia being a regular part of our services here, even in a very welcoming congregation, and I still try to avoid events when I think that the need to be reasonably quiet will exceed her patience.  It took us many weeks of practice to get Olivia into the habit of whispering in church, and even now it is still a bit dodgy, but she feels like a part of something and I want all of you to know that it is very important to both of us and she does enjoy coming here.

Living with Olivia is fun in that she has a good nature and likes to joke, but it can totally fray your nerves as well to keep hearing the same things over and over again.  Sometimes she will go along with things and other times she will be as difficult as possible so that you totally give up trying to get her involved in a new activity.  The thing is, in some ways, that’s not totally different from other kids, it just expresses itself differently with Olivia.  So it can be difficult to say she’s acting up because she has ASD, or she’s acting up because she’s a pain in the ass teenager!

The obsessionality can be both challenging and embarrassing.  Olivia likes watches.  So sometimes when someone enters an elevator she will grab their wrist and stare at their watch.  The dream of every parent of an ASD child is to be able just to get all the way from the bottom floor to the top floor in an elevator without the child doing something that upsets the social rituals of silence and personal space in an elevator.  No weird talk, no strange actions, just a nice quiet ride where no-one knows that your kid is not quite normal.  It almost never happens.

Strange things can happen in strange places.  Olivia likes dictionaries.  At our recent euchre night at Norah and Drummond’s place, Olivia came along and very quietly and politely amused herself by watching videos.  I was very pleased, and quite relieved.  However, the next day Drummond discovered dictionaries he didn’t even know he had scattered all around the house.  Olivia had gone to every bookshelf and pulled off all the items of interest.  For a while, Olivia could not be taken into a grocery store without her charging off on her own to the freezer section and pulling out a bag of frozen French fries.  Eventually, when I knew that I already had two or three bags of frozen fries at home, I refused to let her buy them, and in a couple of cases ended up having physical struggles with a screaming child right in the freezer section of a busy supermarket.  On other occasions I just bought the damned fries and left Olivia in the car and returned them.  We have managed to work through this and most of the time she is OK on shopping trips now, but there is always the trepidation that might do it the next time.

And this brings me to another challenge.  I feel guilty talking about these things, because even though a lot of them are pretty funny, it isn’t appropriate to laugh at someone for a mental illness.  On the other hand, if someone does something funny, can we laugh with them in a way that is supportive and not mean-spirited?  I do laugh a lot with Olivia, and our family members who have gotten to know her best laugh with her and about her as well.  We all laugh about each other’s idiosyncrasies with people we are close to, and tease each other as well.  I think that one of the things about living with someone with ASD is to keep seeing the humour of situations, and just view them through a lens of love and kindness. 

I already alluded to the fact that treatment for children with ASD can be very expensive.  But life in general can cost an awful lot.  Olivia is 15 and still needs after school care.  I leave her alone at home sometimes for an hour or so but she isn’t ready to be that independent yet.  It is difficult to find someone who will care for a child with autism, and so every outing for Tracey and myself is more of an ordeal than the usual challenges of finding a babysitter.  Dealing with the summer vacation is always a huge challenge since Olivia cannot be put in summer camp without support.  City camps will accommodate a special needs child at summer camp by providing a support worker, but they limit this support to two weeks per year.  For years Anna and I have juggled the nine weeks of summer with two weeks of support here, a couple of weeks of support there, our own vacations, help from grandparents and so on to patch the summer together. 

So it’s a lot of work for parents, but there are many other people in the orbit of a person with ASD.  Siblings are often ignored but they are affected greatly.  It’s very unfortunate, but when Olivia is at our place there is a natural gravitation for Olivia to me and Katie to Tracey.  There are many stories of siblings severely resenting all the time and attention spent on disabled brothers and sisters.  Parents can try to compensate, but in the end that only makes them even more exhausted.

Which brings me to talk about relationships.  The stress and exhaustion on parents leads to many marriage breakdowns.  For single parents with a disabled child, it takes an awfully generous person to step into a new relationship as a step-parent to a child with extraordinary needs.  So many women (and it is mostly women) who sink themselves into the role of caregiver for a disabled child end up doing so alone and staying alone.

Of course much of the burden of dealing with autistic children falls on the school system.  What happens to autistic children in school?  Well in most boards there are almost no programs that are specifically designed for autism.  Many ASD children require educational assistants to function in regular classes, but getting one assigned to your child is a major struggle.  Parents of ASD children are all familiar with “meltdowns” when their child runs out of the inner discipline needed to function in “our” world.  Keeping your job when the school expects you to run and pick up your child every time there is an episode of some sort can be a real challenge. 

Parents of ASD children get used to an interminable ongoing battle with teachers, administrators, school boards and others just trying to make sure that their child gets an education.  It has been my experience that parents basically get what they want from the school system only through tireless advocacy and spending so much time badgering the principal that they get what they want just to make them go away.  Parents who do not have that sort of forceful personality will usually just give up.

So even if you get what you want in school, how long does that last and what happens next?  Children are allowed to stay in school until they are 21 and then they are on their own.  If at that point a young adult does not have the skills to live an independent life then they will require care.  This is the nightmare of every parent of a disabled child; that their child will have a life of nothingness, and that the parent will either devote their life or most of their earned income caring for a disabled adult for their entire lives.  Even more frightening is the prospect of what will happen when that devoted parent grows old and is no longer able to care for their child.

Ontario has a disability pension, the ODSP, for people who cannot work.  It amounts to about $1000/month for people living on their own, or about $800 if they live in someone else’s home.  That is not a great deal of money, but it helps if it can be supplemented from other sources.  The problem is that the Ontario government does not allow it to be supplemented from other sources.  If a well-meaning relative were to leave some money to the child, pension payments are halted until the person’s total assets drop below $5,000.  In other words, the government pays no money to help disabled people and their families survive unless they can prove total impoverishment. 

There are some complicated trust mechanisms that have been devised for parents to leave money without cutting off the pension payments, and although they have been fought tooth and nail by the government, they have stood up to legal challenges.  The federal government has also introduced the RDSP program which allows savings and matching federal grants much like the RESP program.  Ontario has recently agreed that they will not claw back RDSP savings from disability pensions.

What do mentally disabled adults do if they don’t work?  Fortunately organizations have cropped up, one example being Tania’s Place which just opened a location in Oshawa.  Tania’s place runs day programs that teach life skills and have activities for a modest cost, based on the degree of needs of the disabled person.  Housing options for those who do not live with parents are another entire issue which I won’t go into, but suffice to say that supported group homes have massive waiting lists, and the trend now is to find disabled individuals who can live together in small mutually supporting groups.

So that’s what life looks like if you lose the genetic lottery and have a disabled child, or if your child ends up having some sort of accident or brain injury.  Your life is never again the same.  I’m afraid I have painted a pretty bleak picture, but there are many bright spots.

There are community organizations who play a tremendous role in providing support and education to parents.  Autism Ontario is one in particular which runs parent support groups, sibling support groups, special events for children and their families, and provides financial support for families whose children attend summer camps and so on.  They also do advocacy work, promote public awareness, and provide educational materials for those who want to learn more about ASD.  While investing in research is a wonderful objective, the reality is that most people with autism will never be “cured” in an objective sense.  So agencies that provide support to families are really more important to those of us in the trenches.  It is for this reason that the Community Builders group has decided this year to share 50% of the proceeds from our Dream Auction with Autism Ontario’s Durham chapter.  We feel this will open up our event to more people, and it may make it easier to solicit gift donations.  It also keeps us from being too inward-looking and helps us to build our own community by reaching out.

So what can each of us do to help those with ASD and their families?  Well to start, please give generously to our dream auction and help us raise money for UUCD and Autism Ontario.  Secondly, if you want to help others, get to know the people in your community who have special needs children.  As I have already said, a lot of us keep close to home because of the challenges we face to go out in public.  Get to know the child and become a friend.  Offer to help someone by watching their child so that they can go out on their own when they need to.  If you see someone in public who is having a difficult time, offer to help.  If you don’t know what to say or do when you see a disabled person in public, try smiling.  A smile is almost never wasted.

So to go back to the Article in the Guardian, is autism a blessing from the Almightly or a life sentence?  Well, I do not believe in destiny or that there is any God with a well thought-out plan that makes some people endure these challenges while others do not.  I would not choose such a life, and I have said so bluntly to friends grappling with the issue of pre-natal screening.  Still, I consider myself very fortunate to have Olivia and I love her deeply.  The glass for me is definitely half full, because Olivia is physically well and is able to communicate and enjoy many aspects of life, and she is able to love me back and express it, which is something some parents are only able to dream about.  I might not be so sanguine if her handicaps were even more severe, as some families have to grapple with. 

Olivia will come out and say something very profound just when you least expect it that shows she has a better understanding of what is going on around her than we sometimes assume.  I hope that Olivia will teach her little sister some valuable lessons about compassion for others as she grows older.  Olivia gets great joy from simple things, and special traditions.  Olivia and I have wonderful times together; every year I take her on a camping trip just the two of us, as well as on trips with our entire family, and last year we also had a father daughter weekend with Jeff and Madelaine Hayes that Olivia still talks about.  The first time I took her alone out in the woods for a long stretch I really wondered if she was going to drive me crazy.  The strange thing was, it was the most relaxing holiday I had all summer.  One of the things I remembered is that unlike my younger daughter Katie, teenagers like to sleep in!  I stayed in bed until 9:00 AM for the first time in recent memory.  We went for bike rides, trail hikes, snacks, swimming, had wonderful meals and relaxed and read at our campsite.  Olivia’s actually pretty good company if you show some flexibility and patience.

We also have special things that we do together at home such as going to Toronto to watch Argos games, or watching our vast collection of Star Trek DVDs.  If you ever want to get Olivia chatting, just mention something to do with Star Trek.  When Olivia and I are nestled together watching a show with her head on my lap and Olivia pipes up with a spontaneous “I love you Dad”, well, all is right with my world.

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"A Unitarian at Christmas"

Sunday, December 13, 2009
Drummond White

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Good Morning,

As Unitarians, we live in a community that has been shaped by a social, historical and religious perspective to which Christianity has been central.  While our views are shaped by this context, we still have a perspective on the most central Christian celebration  -Christmas. 

We participate, we adapt, we dialogue amongst ourselves and with others and we innovate new variations on old rituals.  We have some wonderful traditions here  -our weekly pebbles or candles, the water communion, the maple syrup communion... and. of course, our winter solstice service.

At the end of the calendar year, we have winter solstice service just prior to the Xmas celebrations  -so close that they overlap in most ways and Unitarians can look upon our service as an alternative for our families.  I will argue that we are building on traditions that are millennia old.  Importantly, we are respecting and enjoying traditions from our predecessors  -Unitarian, Universalist, Christian, and pagan- and we are refuting the rebuff to Unitarians that we are too wedded to a dry and unnourishing doctrine.  In fact, we have vitality and resilience as a congregation without divine succour.   Our humanity and our connection with the natural, social, and spiritual world sustain us well.

My talk this morning is a personal exploration of Christianity and Christmas from a Unitarian perspective.  That is say from my perspective and from my experience.  One of the great joys of being Unitarian derives from the solidarity that we all feel with each other.  So long as our personal behaviours and our expressions of spirituality don’t compromise our common principles, we can expect support and positive engagement from our religious peers.  So we can feel free to believe -or not -what is appropriate for us at this point in our spiritual journey.

Many of us have been Christians, Jews, or Muslims.   Few of us believe in miracles, supernatural phenomenon, a Supreme omniscient Being, a single creator, etc.   Or we may have believed, but we have felt deeply and poignantly disappointed.

As Unitarians, we very much want to believe, to struggle towards a just society, one that can live in concert with nature and other beings.  Some of us, myself included grew up in a Christian home and within a Christian community.  I believed that there were values -values that were somehow at the core of the Christian religion.  These values and the communion in Christ would and should result in a better world  -we thought.  We hoped that there was a moral sense to the universe.  Sadly, I have had to let go of the hope that this morality will flow like justice from the Christian churches. 

The twentieth century wasn’t kind to those hopes.  In the late 19th Century, Nietsche proclaimed that God was dead and Hardy wrote in a much more sympathetic tone:

God's Funeral

I saw a slowly-stepping train --
Lined on the brows, scoop-eyed and bent and hoar --
Following in files across a twilit plain
A strange and mystic form the foremost bore.

II
And by contagious throbs of thought
Or latent knowledge that within me lay
And had already stirred me, I was wrought
To consciousness of sorrow even as they.

III
The fore-borne shape, to my blurred eyes,
At first seemed man-like, and anon to change
To an amorphous cloud of marvellous size,
At times endowed with wings of glorious range.

IV
And this phantasmal variousness
Ever possessed it as they drew along:
Yet throughout all it symboled none the less
Potency vast and loving-kindness strong.

V
Almost before I knew I bent
Towards the moving columns without a word;
They, growing in bulk and numbers as they went,
Struck out sick thoughts that could be overheard: --

VI
'O man-projected Figure, of late
Imaged as we, thy knell who shall survive?
Whence came it we were tempted to create
One whom we can no longer keep alive?

VII
'Framing him jealous, fierce, at first,
We gave him justice as the ages rolled,
Will to bless those by circumstance accurst,
And longsuffering, and mercies manifold.

VIII
'And, tricked by our own early dream
And need of solace, we grew self-deceived,
Our making soon our maker did we deem,
And what we had imagined we believed,

IX
'Till, in Time's stayless stealthy swing,
Uncompromising rude reality
Mangled the Monarch of our fashioning,
Who quavered, sank; and now has ceased to be.

X
'So, toward our myth's oblivion,
Darkling, and languid-lipped, we creep and grope
Sadlier than those who wept in Babylon,
Whose Zion was a still abiding hope.

XI
'How sweet it was in years far hied
To start the wheels of day with trustful prayer,
To lie down liegely at the eventide
And feel a blest assurance he was there!

XII
'And who or what shall fill his place?
Whither will wanderers turn distracted eyes
For some fixed star to stimulate their pace
Towards the goal of their enterprise?'...

XIII
Some in the background then I saw,
Sweet women, youths, men, all incredulous,
Who chimed as one: 'This is figure is of straw,
This requiem mockery! Still he lives to us!'

XIV
I could not prop their faith: and yet
Many I had known: with all I sympathized;
And though struck speechless, I did not forget
That what was mourned for, I, too, once had prized.

XV
Still, how to bear such loss I deemed
The insistent question for each animate mind,
And gazing, to my growing sight there seemed
A pale yet positive gleam low down behind,

XVI
Whereof, to lift the general night,
A certain few who stood aloof had said,
'See you upon the horizon that small light --
Swelling somewhat?' Each mourner shook his head.

XVII
And they composed a crowd of whom
Some were right good, and many nigh the best....
Thus dazed and puzzled 'twixt the gleam and gloom
Mechanically I followed with the rest.

Thomas Hardy, of course, was an atheist and renowned for his rather tragic and depressing novels.  Yet, he was a churchgoing man who loved the music, the services, and the architecture of religion.  Despite his intellectual knowledge, he saw the church as a moral compass.    The overwhelming sense of sadness and loss in his poem comes from the real lack of consolation and of moral meaning that the Christian god had offered. 

His sadness in the poem is that of a thinking Christian and a compassionate man.  Burdened by his intellect, he cannot deny the reality of this world, but it offers no solace to him.  He would like to and cannot “prop the faith of others” and finally Mechanically he followed with the rest.   As Unitarians, we acknowledge the same reality but find solace and succour in exploring with others freely and in being comfortable with the questions that devastated Thomas Hardy.

Similarly, Charles Darwin, who was born a mere 200 years ago, was still an adherent of the church long after he had developed his theories of evolution by means of natural selection.  He may have shown that the Book of Genesis was a myth, a metaphor, but it was a personal tragedy that set him against the Christian religion.  His daughter Annie died at 10 years of age.  She had been his delight, his pride, and his companion on many of his long walks.  He could not understand how a just god would allow the sudden death of his little Annie. 

Atheism offers but very cold comfort and no consolation.  That is, perhaps, why many nonbelievers still can find comfort in the traditions and company of a church.  Reason and fact compete poorly with communion, solidarity, and consolation. Almost twenty years ago, after the dissolution of the local Unitarian fellowship, I was attracted to a Christian church and that is a Christmas story.  Although God, the divine patriarch, may have had his funeral, the church has lingered on and Christmas is a big part of its residual health.  It is the  

From the nadir of death and loss in the fall/winter, let us go to the great celebration of birth/life/hope at the very beginning of the year, the very shortest of days.   Paradoxically, we celebrate the winter solstice as the time that cannot get worse, the day that cannot get shorter. This is a time of when we all seek reassurance in communion with others -that there is something to look forward to.

Our hope for a better tomorrow is rekindled at this time.  When we gather with friends and family, we have consolation and hope. Our strength emerges into a New Year and we proclaim our plans with new resolution.  The rituals and promise that emerge at this time are associated with Christianity.  For a while, I wanted to believe that there was something to that association, something more than the co-opting of community experiences and rituals.

Christmas, the New Year celebrations, and the winter solstice are very special times-no doubt cemented in our hearts by childhood presents and wonderful foods.

In the early 90’s, I felt something was missing in my life and in my family’s life.  I felt that loss and emptiness most acutely at Xmas time.  The Unitarian Fellowship in Oshawa had folded and our family had not found a replacement other than Unicamp. I had heard from friends about a United Church congregation and minister. On Xmas eve, there was a live children’s enactment of the manger scene with birds and farm animals -sheep, goats, rabbits.  They were delightful and after a couple of  Xmas eve services, I was hooked and  became a regular member.  Still, was Christ the reason for the season?

There were some fine people and many of my friends in social justice movements were devout Christians.  The social gospel movement had been a key building block to the NDP and CCF before it.  Certainly, many felt that their Christian faith was what drove their social mission and what informed their passion for social justice.

I wanted to feel that spiritually-embued passion.  It would bolster my sense of solidarity, purpose, and connection, but, alas,  for me it never happened.

I felt like a hypocrite.  My lack of faith in a divine and benevolent power meant that I did not belong and wasn’t consonant with the UC congregation.  I felt if I expressed my thoughts I would be rejected along with my thoughts.  After all, there is a creed, a belief system and, however modest and unthreatening it may seem, it limits what can be discussed and who can participate.  Even in the United Church, there is a Christian triumphalism (that contrasts poorly with its declining social role) and there is a pretense of exclusive possession of the Truth. 

Not sharing that belief, I was uncharacteristically silent.  Our Unitarian covenant by contrast permits any honest seeking and many different truths within one communion.  That is surely the social and spiritual communion that Xmas promises.  So, when the UUCD was forming, the decision was easy.

Unitarianism does not offer the same celebration at this time of year.  We have Xmas without the same Christ and the ‘nativity’ is not so central to how we feel about the feast.  I would argue that the ‘reason for the season’ may not, in fact, be the nativity of a god, demigod, or prophet.  And that this is true both historically and in our\ present day social experiences.

Throughout history, there has been a conflict between the Christian church and the people over the winter solstice celebration.  For 400 years, the Kirk in Scotland banned Christmas as a popish or Catholic feast and so Hogmanay was the central celebration. It of course is celebrated on December 31 through to January 2 (or later).   (The celebration of Hogmanay was also disparaged by the Kirk.

Historians believe that Hogmanay evolved from the Vikings and specifically from Yule.  The house was to be cleaned and there was even a tradition that all debts were to cleared up prior to midnight. (It must have been a truly Scottish ritual.) At midnight, there would be a singing of “For Auld Lang Syne”;  that great Unitarian, Robby Burns, claims that his version was based on an earlier folk song that had been printed more than 80 years prior to his.

“First footing” is the first foot through the door after midnight, preferably a male, dark-haired and bringing symbolic coal, shortbread, and whisky (uisge beatha).  The hospitality and welcoming of friends and strangers continues over the following days.  The New Years’ Levée is no doubt connected. Following this celebration, presents were given out in the early New Year to children on Handsel Day  (this tradition now superseded by Xmas gifts).

Many of the features  we associate with Christmas were condemned by churches  -the Christmas tree, the giving of gifts, Santa Claus, etc.  were not developed from or by the Christian church but emerged from pagan sources or earlier religions  or have come about through our popular culture over the last couple of centuries.

Yule is a winter festival that has originally a Germanic or Scandinavian heritage and was later absorbed into Christmas.  It was celebrated in late Dec ember to early January.  The name Jol is thought to come from hjol in Old Norse meaning wheel so that the wheel of the year had come to its low point, ready to rise again.  Like Hogmanay, it is a feast with lots of alcohol and food.  The Yule tree is decorated and there is much caroling.  In Finland, children are visited by Joulupikki on his sleigh and presents are given and opened immediately.

The Christmas tree comes from Yule tree and has become increasingly widespread and popular over the last couple of centuries.  It is also associated with the hanging of mistletoe and the burning of the Yule log  -and British Druids.

Another midwinter celebration that preceded Christmas celebrations was the Roman feast of Saturnalia.   Saturnalia featured feasting and gift-giving.  It started in the third century BC and was later adopted by the Christian church as the timing of the nativity. Saturnalia marked the rebirth of the day.

Santa Claus has ancient predecessors but our image of the reindeer and nightly visitations through chimneys comes from the poem  “A Visit from St. Nicholas” by Clement Clarke Moore.
The depiction of a white-bearded, plump, red-jacketed, and bespectacled Santa was popularized in Coca-Cola commercials.

There was of course, an historical St. Nicholas.  Although he was famous for his generosity, particularly to the poor, his life was in the relative warmth of Turkey and southern Italy.  Odin the Norse God with a long white beard, was associated with what became Christmas stockings and horse-born visits in northern Europe.  The Dutch have a long tradition of gift-giving to children and they had both  Sinterklaas and Zwarte Piet (Black Peter). (In the Netherlands up until W.W.II , there was also Zwarte Piet to deal with the naughty children, but Canadian troops transformed him into a group of helpers  -like Santa’s elves).

More recently, Christian churches have grabbed a number of popular traditions and even the strict methodists and presbyterians celebrate what had been condemned as a commercial distraction. 

My former minister, Chris White, has written a charming little book about Christmas rituals, called Our Twelve Days Before Christmas.   He speaks about the Whitby Boy Scout Xmas trees, Xmas lights on the old Scugog road, Xmas gifts and gift-giving, family love and sharing, offers recipés for stuffing and oatmeal cookies, and shares his family’s life with the reader.  Interestingly, there are but very few references to the nativity, so even in a minister’s accounting, Christ may not be the reason for the season.  Instead, the blessings of a loving family and a sharing community are the joys that one takes away from his book. 

Similarly, in a friend’s reminiscences of her nine years as a nun, there is little of Christ in Christmas. (Karen Cole, Lifting the Veil).  She recalls the first Xmas away from her family as painful even though she was surrounded by constant praise of the Christ-figure and the holy nativity.  She remembered the Xmas gifts and secular traditions. She remembered her connection to her family and the feeling of being wrenched away from it.

In thinking about how Unitarians can approach the winter solstice and Xmas time.  It strikes me that so much of what we already do has little direct relationship to the ‘nativity’ and that so much of the reason for the season has to do with popular traditions such as Dickens’ Christmas Carol, its a Wonderful Life, Santa, and most importantly the rituals that every group, every congregation, and every family develop at and for this wonderful time.

We can go on into a New Year with a dream of justice and solidarity, with hope that we will find richness in communion, and spiritual depth in exploration.  As Unitarians we can find comfort in being with the questions of life. We can have our rituals and yet know that while we are reassured by those rituals and our friendships here, we can live with the uncertainties and the changes –the questions that life give us.   Our mutual acceptance and communion allows us to live examined lives richly and fully.

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