Last weekend I was at a banquet awards ceremony in Calgary for Christian artists in Canada. It was open to the public. At my table, there were three artists from Nova Scotia, my son Joel, and two people from the city of Calgary who happened to be Dutch.
The awards brisked by, partly because several artists were not there to pick up their awards. As a result, the many ‘thank you’ speeches seemed about half their usual. I was up for four nominations myself. I didn’t win, but I had a good time although I confess it was an interesting exercise in chewing food. Thoughts such as “If I win, do I want roast beef sticking through my teeth as I say thanks” were running through my head. I also had to introduce the Francophone album of the year award, so I didn’t want my Quebecer accent to be sounding like this: "excusez-moi for da carrot shining like la soleil on my lips.”
Things got even more interesting as I had left my keys in the trunk of the car half an hour before the ceremony began. Getting a jacket and transferring out of an Alpaca sweater can be a challenging thing when you’re my age. Great timing. And so it was that while the awards proceeded we awaited the arrival of the CAA vehicle to do the master break in job. I kept telling myself, relax, God is in control, “trust in Him at all times” (Ps 62:8) - even times like these when you are a nincompoop. Amazingly, the CAA guy arrived half an hour later than projected but within a streak of awards where I was not required to be there. He apologized for being late, Friday rush hour traffic and all but I told him it was perfect timing, his arrival that is, which in reality meant that I didn’t have to be anxious about hearing this: “And the winner is…I’m sorry he’s outside right now retrieving his keys in the trunk of his Rio rental car, and writing a song about it.”
At the end of the banquet the Dutch man mentioned that he had only heard three awards on my behalf. While it can be helpful to have someone counting on your behalf, especially when you’re disappearing to retrieve your keys and jacket, I subtly reassured him that maybe it was because my name had not been heard on one of the four due to a mispronunciation –“Mickel” as in Nickel. I could have said, with humility, “I’ll go back and do a recount” but you have to cut some slack in this day and age as we all have different ways of reasoning and perceiving things. Besides any hint of sarcasm might betray the wisdom of fools.
After the meal we all moved on to the second part of the awards in the sanctuary. The sanctuary was the size of two soccer fields with a total of 3000 seats - we were roughly a third of that number last night. The wide theater styled room was set in a church building that looked like it was originally designed to be a mall. There were two massive screens left and right of the center of the stage. Over the center was a wooden cross high above, without the Son of Man on it. The cross seemed dwarfed if not insignificant, but I wasn’t sure if the answer was to have a bigger one that would match the size of the media screens. Besides, what if it fell on someone? I wondered if the cross would work better rooted to the ground.
The concert section of the awards evening was fun, a stage band on hand to back a variety of artists switching like channels on a remote TV. The sound was predominantly rock-pop. At times I couldn’t hear the lyrics accurately - but that’s not so much about age and taste as it was the choices in the overall mix. The real highlight of the night for both my son and I was a new artist from the Maritimes, Jon Bryant, who sang passionately with an acoustic guitar backed by a string quartet and a pedal steel player floating over his heartfelt tune. Suddenly there was an intimacy and longing that filled the air. It felt like someone was reaching thru him, without size or cacophony, to gently touch us and call us to a simpler way of being. Simpler that is, if you don’t lose your keys.
Thursday, November 4, 2010
Monday, October 11, 2010
BIRDS OF A FEATHER Monday October 4 2010
Last night I played and led singing/worship in a Dutch Reformed church in Surrey, BC. Ninety-eight percent of the folks there were white like me, and I’d estimate that seventy five percent were of Dutch ancestry. I wondered if my last name were “Hartsma” or “van Hart” if I would have fit in better ethnocentrically, not that I didn’t fit in at all, it was just that it was a bit awkward for an Irish/Welsh/Scot/French Huguenot to fit snugly in amongst the Dutch, even though I am, as mentioned, of pale colour. I have been to Holland, well mainly Amsterdam if that’s of any significance. I think that’s the town that inspired the song “Roxanne,” a tune with a somewhat Argentinean gait in the verses (emphasis on beat two), which unfortunately none of my material will remotely offer this night.
Before the Service even started I noticed that my clothes were quite different – an open necked shirt (reasonably pressed), an Alpaca sweater and dark relaxed jeans. Not too shabby in my books. Usually evening Services are a bit more relaxed fashion wise, and otherwise as well. Many of the men there had ties and jackets with hues of dark blue, brown, grey and beige being the most prominent. The women wore a mix of skirts and dresses, a minority in trousers, with splashes of green, red, pink and mauve predominating. Overall, they were a nice, respectful conservative bunch, who stepped up to the plate to sing, especially in the hymns, even though I didn’t have the foggiest what the lyrics were for “Crown Him with Many Crowns” as their power point version, probably from another hymnal, differed markedly from the words on my sheet music. I remember sensing that their singing in “Amazing Grace” was slower than my swung waltz so it was a bit of an exchange to see who was really following whom. By the end of the Service I think we’d figured out some kind of rapport, even if it was a distant one. But a few congregants were quite friendly to me in the lobby after the Service.
Today I am a teacher on call in a multi-cultural classroom with twenty-four grade 6-7 students in the heart of Surrey. I prefer a straight grade rather than a split class but today it’s working well. They are a good bunch of kids, respectful but definitely not conservative. The dress is all over the place – the diversity of shoes should be photographed and blown up onto a poster. After a unit on Meal Planning for Career and Health we discussed the best places to eat brunch in the Lower Mainland. Seems like The White Spot had the most votes but The Red Tomato was highly touted by one student. I wondered if the Dutch prefer Ihop, which came in third with the students. We also talked about multiculturalism in Social Studies, a topic of high interest to them as all together they represented about eight nations worth.
At lunchtime I joined a round table with four SEA’s. I wondered later if they always sat together. I didn’t get on a first name basis, but the discussion landed quickly on what everyone was wearing for Halloween this year with reflections on what people had worn last year. I didn’t wear anything in 2009 (clarification: except my jeans and shirt comme d’habitude!), however a random memory of my mother dressing my brother and I up as jailbirds flew across my mind. Mom has often related that the Montreal neighbors thought that the chosen outfit was a real panic, largely because they reviewed the costume as highly appropriate, as in “two thumbs up” appropriate. One SEA said she dressed as the Tin Man last year but the metal was too hot so she said she’d try something different this year, though not sure what yet. Before I could get asked what I was going to wear this Halloween – and truth be told it seems you need a minimum of two lunches to earn this kind of trust or interest these days –I found I was excusing myself even as I was preparing to say “uhhh… maybe the Lion.. or Eyore?” as a just in case scenario, but given I’d finished my lunch I thought I’d go check my email while there was still time. On the way up to the computer I had this faint echo of a song scaling my mind “Ozz didn’t give nothing to the Tin Man that he didn’t already have”, which didn’t make any lyrical sense except in my acceptance that the lunchtime conversation had triggered something.
So just what is the relationship between the Dutch, and hymns, grade 6-7 and brunch, Halloween costumes and songs from the culture? Certainly, we are not in Kansas anymore. There is not a lot of congruity in these disparate fragments except one possibility for me: This is just what God sees and hears everyday. Different bunches of people who have certain likes and dislikes, birds of a feather with certain preferences, passions and anomalies. Birds of a feather may flock together but sometimes birds scatter north from all sorts of nations, non-European ones too. They arrive and settle in nests and end up being co-singers, neighbors, colleagues and my students, even when I don’t have the dress code or outfit figured out yet. But I’m always free to roam and observe.
Before the Service even started I noticed that my clothes were quite different – an open necked shirt (reasonably pressed), an Alpaca sweater and dark relaxed jeans. Not too shabby in my books. Usually evening Services are a bit more relaxed fashion wise, and otherwise as well. Many of the men there had ties and jackets with hues of dark blue, brown, grey and beige being the most prominent. The women wore a mix of skirts and dresses, a minority in trousers, with splashes of green, red, pink and mauve predominating. Overall, they were a nice, respectful conservative bunch, who stepped up to the plate to sing, especially in the hymns, even though I didn’t have the foggiest what the lyrics were for “Crown Him with Many Crowns” as their power point version, probably from another hymnal, differed markedly from the words on my sheet music. I remember sensing that their singing in “Amazing Grace” was slower than my swung waltz so it was a bit of an exchange to see who was really following whom. By the end of the Service I think we’d figured out some kind of rapport, even if it was a distant one. But a few congregants were quite friendly to me in the lobby after the Service.
Today I am a teacher on call in a multi-cultural classroom with twenty-four grade 6-7 students in the heart of Surrey. I prefer a straight grade rather than a split class but today it’s working well. They are a good bunch of kids, respectful but definitely not conservative. The dress is all over the place – the diversity of shoes should be photographed and blown up onto a poster. After a unit on Meal Planning for Career and Health we discussed the best places to eat brunch in the Lower Mainland. Seems like The White Spot had the most votes but The Red Tomato was highly touted by one student. I wondered if the Dutch prefer Ihop, which came in third with the students. We also talked about multiculturalism in Social Studies, a topic of high interest to them as all together they represented about eight nations worth.
At lunchtime I joined a round table with four SEA’s. I wondered later if they always sat together. I didn’t get on a first name basis, but the discussion landed quickly on what everyone was wearing for Halloween this year with reflections on what people had worn last year. I didn’t wear anything in 2009 (clarification: except my jeans and shirt comme d’habitude!), however a random memory of my mother dressing my brother and I up as jailbirds flew across my mind. Mom has often related that the Montreal neighbors thought that the chosen outfit was a real panic, largely because they reviewed the costume as highly appropriate, as in “two thumbs up” appropriate. One SEA said she dressed as the Tin Man last year but the metal was too hot so she said she’d try something different this year, though not sure what yet. Before I could get asked what I was going to wear this Halloween – and truth be told it seems you need a minimum of two lunches to earn this kind of trust or interest these days –I found I was excusing myself even as I was preparing to say “uhhh… maybe the Lion.. or Eyore?” as a just in case scenario, but given I’d finished my lunch I thought I’d go check my email while there was still time. On the way up to the computer I had this faint echo of a song scaling my mind “Ozz didn’t give nothing to the Tin Man that he didn’t already have”, which didn’t make any lyrical sense except in my acceptance that the lunchtime conversation had triggered something.
So just what is the relationship between the Dutch, and hymns, grade 6-7 and brunch, Halloween costumes and songs from the culture? Certainly, we are not in Kansas anymore. There is not a lot of congruity in these disparate fragments except one possibility for me: This is just what God sees and hears everyday. Different bunches of people who have certain likes and dislikes, birds of a feather with certain preferences, passions and anomalies. Birds of a feather may flock together but sometimes birds scatter north from all sorts of nations, non-European ones too. They arrive and settle in nests and end up being co-singers, neighbors, colleagues and my students, even when I don’t have the dress code or outfit figured out yet. But I’m always free to roam and observe.
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