Pastoral Message From Rev. Bill Weaver
Hello, friends.
I keep checking the numbers. I put my phone down, turn my attention to something else, and then find myself looking again to see whether another batch of votes has been counted. I know refreshing the page won’t make the counting go any faster. Apparently, knowing that isn’t enough to stop me.
When I first arrived at seminary in Atlantic Canada, having grown up in Calgary, I encountered a pace I wasn’t used to. People stopped and had conversations at checkouts. At Tim Hortons, I would stand several people back and watch each successive customer have a prolonged conversation while I waited to order my coffee. Those first days of my theological education brought a fairly immediate discovery about myself: I do not do well with waiting. I’m reminded of that impatience today.
Each time I reach for my phone, I recognize the question drawing me back: What does this mean? I want to understand what these results will mean for the people I care about. I am trying to imagine the consequences in lives very different from my own. I find myself looking for something about our future together in every change to the totals, wondering what will be asked of us in the days ahead.
Understanding that will take time. These proposals reach into people’s lives, and the uncertainty about what follows is already having an effect. When your access to health care has been debated publicly, you may be wondering what will happen the next time someone in your family becomes ill. Hearing your neighbours discuss who should qualify for support can leave you questioning whether they would want help to be there for you.
The question underneath the numbers becomes deeply personal: Am I safe here? Does my family belong?
If those are the questions you are asking today, I want to take them seriously. You deserve time to speak about what this has been like, and you deserve to be cared for while the count continues and as the implications become clearer. Your experience matters now.
As a person of faith, I uphold your dignity and worth without reservation. You bear the image of God. You belong here. The pressures on our health care, housing, and public services have too often been laid at your doorstep. You did not create these problems by coming here to build a life, and you deserve better than to be held responsible for them. You deserve care for your family and a community in which you can make a home. My commitment to your dignity and belonging holds whatever the final count may be.
You may need time before you feel ready to talk about any of this. You deserve to have that respected, too. You can decide what you feel able to share and with whom.
I know that people I care about will have voted differently from me. Our relationships have grown through years of ordinary life together, and that history gives us a responsibility to speak honestly with one another. That includes considering what we hoped our votes would accomplish and how the decisions that follow may affect our neighbours.
I cannot know everything someone intended when they marked a ballot. I can ask, and I can listen. I can also ask them to hear why someone else is frightened. A conversation like that requires enough trust to let another person’s experience trouble our assumptions. It may lead us to reconsider something we supported or take responsibility for a consequence we had not anticipated. Our relationships need room for that kind of learning. If I’m honest, these past weeks and months have left me wondering how we find our way into that kind of grace and vulnerability when our collective trust is already strained.
Jesus’ command to love our neighbour calls me to approach those conversations with care and honesty. It asks me to pay attention when someone is struggling and to become involved in their care. The call to welcome the stranger demands something concrete of the welcome we offer in our churches and our communities.
Every person has dignity simply by being human. A person who needs help has an inherent claim on our compassion. I believe our faith calls us to honour that dignity through the care we offer and the way we speak about those who need it.
In a moment like this, the welcome we have offered one another needs to hold. Someone who is questioning their place here may be wondering whether they can speak openly with a friend about what they are feeling. They may need reassurance that the relationship has room for their fear, and that sharing it will be met with grace.
I am conscious of how much energy this takes after a long campaign. Weariness has a way of shortening our patience just when we most need it. Giving ourselves time and space can help us remain available to one another with grace and kindness. We can respect someone’s need to step away from the discussions that have occupied so much of our lives, especially when those discussions concern their own family’s future.
If you would welcome a conversation or help finding support, please reach out to me or to anyone on the ministry team. That invitation extends to you wherever you find yourself in relation to faith or the church, and however you voted. We are here to listen and to help you find the care and support you need as you make sense of the days ahead.
I will probably check the numbers again before long. I still want to know what this means. Part of the answer will emerge through the decisions made in the coming days. Much will depend on what we choose to do once the dust has settled, and understanding that will take longer. We have a part in shaping what comes next through the care we offer and the responsibility we take for one another.
I think again of those conversations at the Tim Hortons counter, and how impatient I was to get on with my day. I hope I can give the person in front of me more time today. There may be something they need me to hear.
With care,
(Rev.) Bill Weaver