Dear ones,
This new month brings new ways of being in the world, and some of what we’ve known has been forever changed. The collective commitment to health and safety of one another over the course of the pandemic has empowered friends, families and communities to be closer together again – yet we’re discovering this brings it’s own challenges of anxiety and confusion. The revealing of unmarked graves that has come from the intentional listening to and sharing of residential school and assimilation trauma has shifted the Settler way of understanding truth, reconciliation that brings us closer together, yet also with anxiety and confusion. It seems there is so much to be unsure about.
Today we offer A Prayer for the Day After Canada Day from President Rev Blair Odney as a way for you to pause in the routine this day and find a moment for guided reflection. May it ease worry and bring comfort, held in the ever-with-us enduring Love of God.
In addition to our prayers for the people of Lyttton, other communities that have been evacuated and those who are living with the tension of wild fire or flooding being too close for comfort, we lift up the swift responsiveness of emergency responders and leaders in all communities challenged by wildfires and flooding.
A Prayer for the Day After Canada Day (PDF)
Blessings,
PMRC staff and leaders
A Prayer for the Day After Canada Day:
Holy, Healing, Loving God. Creator. Heavenly Father. Gracious Mother. We call you by many names, we sing of your mystery revealed in all creation. You are known by faithful people around the world through other practices and through no practice at all.  It is breathtakingly beautiful how you find every way possible to be in relationship with what you have created. In you, we discover that you are the ground of our being. And oh, how we wish we could be as faithful to you as you are to us.Â
It’s a very hard day Oh God. It’s hard to be a Canadian; a citizen of this land. It’s hard to be the church, to claim our relationship with your living Christ. It’s hard to sing the songs of our faith and speak of your healing grace when both Canada and the church have conspired against your holy creation. It’s hard to hold the beautiful benefits of being Canadian with the weight of its cost. It’s hard to hold the promise of this land in all its glorious beauty with the truth that collectively we are destroying it.Â
The details are staggering and we can barely breathe.Â
1505 bodies hidden in unmarked graves at sites operated by our brothers and sisters in faith. Kamloops. Brandon. Marieval, Cranbrook.
A stifling heat wave, so intense that the entire village of Lytton was destroyed by a flash fire
Statues toppled and churches burned
And so for today Oh God, we pray. We cry out sadness and lament, we seek your holy grace as we attempt to find a better way. May the words of our mouths match the actions of steps so that your holy kin-dom has a chance. May we not be so consumed by our horror and grief, that we are blocked from taking one step. A phone call. A letter. A rainbow painted. An orange t-shirt worn. An invitation into allyship extended.
Oh God empower our living when we are powerless. Guide our feet when they have lost their way.   May we be the church of Christ’s own way for your creation’s mending.
For its in that holy name we pray.
Amen.
Rev. S. Blair Odney
President, Pacific Mountain Regional Council