Blue Community Updates

Looking forward is difficult in these extraordinary times with COVID-19. Everyday brings new changes to what has long been considered ‘normal’ and no one really knows what things will look like two years from now or even two weeks from now. There is a new blog post on the project website called: Public Health and the Right to Clean Water that connects the human right to water principle with the current pandemic. Here is a quick look back, and ahead for the CSJ Blue Community project.

We want to wish all our collaborators and partners well, especially the event organizers. In the past weeks and in the months to come, our Blue Community project was getting ready to address audiences in:

  • Toronto at the WaterDocs film festival

  • Hay River at the Catholic Women’s League Diocesan Convention

  • London at the Go Wild Grow Wild Expo

  • Rochester at the Sisters of St. Joseph Lakes Region planning meeting

  • France and Switzerland as part of an international Say No To Nestlé delegation

Bless all the organizers who have spent months developing and coordinating these gatherings and who continue to monitor the public health situation and adjust for the future. Alternatives are being planned so that we can continue raising awareness and widening the circle of engagement.

One of the many priorities we heard from you in the Blue Community survey last year, was to create an educational poster for shared spaces like dining halls, schools, hospitals, parishes, etc. After many months of drafts and feedback from our Committee, the final product is almost ready. It features a full-colour hand-drawn image of a river impacted by two very different types of relationships. The title on the poster is: One River, Two Futures: reflections on water. Included here is just one small section of the poster.

On one side of the river we can see health, connectedness and sharing, while on the other side we see pollution, exclusion and extraction. Measuring 27 by 36 inches, this poster will catch people’s attention, give them some visual and factual information and lead audiences to our project’s website. The divided river image has text on each side to give more context and a few facts about the scarcity of freshwater and the struggle to share it. Can you think of somewhere to hang this poster and spark a reflection about water?

If so, please contact Paul Baines at info@BlueCommunityCSJ.org or 647.831.4525. Special thanks to Jenna Kessler who illustrated the poster.

EVENTS & INFO:

Toronto

Waterdocs trailer

Lake Erie

Sudbury and TO

Canada

The Bruce

God's Liberation: Celebrations of Passover and Easter

In most years the celebrations of Passover (Pesach) and Easter (Pascha) are very close in time. Increasingly, the proximity of the two celebrations goes beyond simply a matter of dates. For Christians, there has been a developing consciousness of the “Jewishness” of Jesus. In some recent situations, Jews and Christians have come together to celebrate a Seder supper. Indeed, as Christians reflect with Scripture, it is most probable that the “Last Supper” was Jesus’ celebration of the Seder meal with his disciples and in accordance with Jewish Tradition. It is also notable that in addition to the Last Supper, the arrest, trial and execution of Jesus took place on Passover. Significantly, this fact aligns the two celebrations even more closely at the point of meaning.

Passover, beginning with the ritual slaughtering of the paschal lamb, the lamb that dies on behalf of the people, brings families together to commemorate the liberation of the Jewish people from slavery in Egypt (Exodus 12: 12-13). Spanish Scripture scholar, José Pagola, in his beautiful book, “Jesus: An Historical Approximation”, adds that in addition to remembering the earlier liberation, the Jewish people in their celebration of Passover were also awaiting the restoration of the freedom they had lost under the rule of the Roman Emperor.[1] Thus, the celebration of Passover is also concerned with liberation from current “unfreedoms”. The Paschal Mystery celebrated at Easter also remembers the liberation from death to life in the total self-giving of Jesus, the Lamb of God (John 1:29); his cross and resurrection. Alive in creation and lived out by Jesus’ disciples the Paschal Mystery is also alive to liberation in the current day. The celebration of Easter entails both memorial and call to new life.

As we prepare to enter into the celebrations of Passover and Easter this year it is not difficult to consider a loss of freedom in our own communities. We are faced with the almost unimaginable context of the Coronavirus pandemic, accompanied by so much death, grief, and suffering. Our Passover and Easter this year will be marked by isolation, fear, and uncertainty. There will be no public opportunities for worship and celebration within our communities. We are, however, afforded time to reflect. What are the freedoms we have lost that go beyond those that we are experiencing personally? What needs restoring in the world?

Scientists inform us that the initial spread of the virus across species, now devastating communities worldwide, cannot be separated from the context of our manner of living. From misconstrued notions of freedom, we have, in fact, adopted other forms of captivity. We have become captive to philosophies of individualism, to patterns of behaviour that include greed, consumerism, excess in lifestyle, vulnerability to the power of advertising, convenience and separation. Ultimately, we have forgotten that we exist in relationship with God and with all that God has created. The result, destruction of the environment and immense human suffering, the potential for serious development and impacts of disease. For the cry of the Earth and the cry of the poor are one. These are our un-freedoms today. Yet, Sister Gemma Simmonds, C.J. reminds us of our need to remember that “God’s greatest gift to us is freedom, so we are invited to acknowledge whatever gets in the way of our freedom and ask God to liberate us from our self-chosen slavery.”[2] We are called beyond memory to restore balance, to choose freedom, to elect life over death in the manner of our living. It is this celebration of and choice of freedom that is the very essence of Passover and Easter.

In this very different time perhaps we can take the opportunity to embrace the Traditions to remember God’s liberation in the past as we pray for that same freedom now in our own hearts, our communities and in hope. For, this is the true and convergent meaning in these celebrations. While we continue to hold in our prayers all those suffering in this time may it also be a time of celebration in whatever ways we can make safely possible. Eamon Duffy, a historian of Christianity, reminds us that the Paschal Mystery, and I would add, the liberation of the Jewish people from Egypt, is “always an affirmation of the unquenchable life of love … and it asserts our right to rejoice.”[3] Despite all the struggle today may we rejoice together still. A blessed and happy Passover and Easter!

Sister Mary Rowell, CSJ
President, National Association of Vocation and Formation Directors

[1]Pagola José A., Jesus: An Historical Approximation, Convivium Press, 2009, 67

[2] Simmonds, Gemma, The Way of Ignatius: A Prayer Journey through Lent, SPCK, 2018, 7-8

[3] Duffy, Eamon, Faith of our Fathers, Continuum Books, 2004, 7