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.
