Letter

As you know, I’ve been away from the blog for a week, enjoying a wonderful reunion experience at Ziontario, made even more special by the opportunity to share in ministry with my son Art, and sharing in much more with his family—wife Laura, son Eric and daughter Tiona. I don’t get to spend nearly enough “face-time” with them, so this was just an incredible time for this grandma. Now, on to today’s good word.

I have been spending some decompression time browsing through my week’s stack of local newspapers. And, of course, there have been some major news stories featured in headlines and front pages. But the place I feel more connected to what’s been going on in my community is in the Letters to the Editor. I try to keep one eye on what’s being discussed in these short (or not) essays by my thoughtful neighbours.

I live in a town with some very aware and very justice-conscious people. We are proud of our status as Canada’s most volunteering community, among other things. You can count on Guelph folks to produce some very thoughtful and articulate letters to the editor. I like letters, better than the quick comment on a news blog. Oh there will be a few that haven’t been well deliberated and share some of those hot-head traits of the quick anonymous blasts. But for the most part, real letters to the editor benefit from a couple of days of deeper thinking, of considering the larger picture, of weighing pros and cons and offering a perspective I may not have thought about.

There are a few issues that have drawn me into the conversation and I’ve written a few letters to the editor myself. I rely on others’ letters to help form my opinions. More, for example, than on campaign materials that shall soon be appearing in this municipal election year.

I appreciated very much the comment from one of my neighbours who lamented the fact that the upset, the violence, the perhaps over-zealous policing may be the main reason the recent G-20 Toronto summit meeting was reported abroad at all, despite its noble objectives. Isn’t it sad, says he, that peaceful protest alone doesn’t go far in promoting “that most radical of all concepts—peace?”

While he doesn't really offer a solution, I appreciated his musings on this sensitive subject, a subject we in the Community of Christ ought to care about, I suggest.

One very serious theme that kept coming back to us from our international guest minister was the call to us to get serious about real, practical, local or global, questions that confront us. As a “peace church” will our choices be to retreat to the peaceful safety of our reunion grounds, or the comfort of our Canadian stereotypical traits as tolerant and non-confrontational, or will we engage in the deeper consideration and be more willing to grapple with the harder questions that I see daily in the letters to the editor columns of my local newspaper?

Posted by Marion