National Youth Project Inspires Homelessness Education
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ANGLICAN JOURNAL Since 1875 anglicanjournal.com @anglicanjournal vol. 145 no. 9 november 2019 National Youth Project inspires homelessness education Matt Gardner STAFF WRITER Welcome … Home, the National Youth Project (NYP) for 2018-2020 focused on homelessness and affordable housing, is moving ahead with a new website and multiple new resources available online. 5Last year’s The NYP traditionally kicks off at the Canadian Lutheran Canadian Lutheran Anglican Youth (CLAY) Anglican Youth gathering, and Welcome … Home officially gathering set launched at last year’s CLAY event in the stage for Thunder Bay. With the release of a revamped PHOTO: DE VISU/SHUTTERSTOCK development of CLAY website at claygathering.ca, new and Some studies suggest up to 30% of people experience chronic or long-term loneliness. new resources existing resources to encourage education themed around on homelessness can now be found there. homelessness. While the resources are primarily PHOTO: CONTRIBUTED targeted at church youth group leaders, Sheilagh McGlynn, national youth animator B.C. priest’s study finds gratitude a for the Anglican Church of Canada, suggests that many other people could potential tool in fighting loneliness benefit. See NO PLACE, p. 10 before and after the 14 weeks, Partridge says, Loneliness lessens and found similar results. after seniors participate “I was really expecting that the results Indigenous midwives exchange would be somewhat mixed, because you had in gratitude exercises people who were in a huge variety of life knowledge: PWRDF program circumstances,” he says. “I was absolutely Tali Folkins stunned by the results.” shares best practices from STAFF WRITER The seniors’ score on the UCLA Canada, Mexico and Peru Prayers and other expressions of gratitude Loneliness Scale—which gives a higher may hold significant potential in making number for a lower degree of loneliness— 5“I was really Matt Gardner increased an average of 17.5%, according to expecting that people feel less lonely, a small study by a STAFF WRITER the results would B.C. priest suggests. Partridge’s dissertation. Pregnant Indigenous women who wish be somewhat Last summer and fall, the Rev. Eric A followup survey seven months later, for their children to be literally born into mixed, because Partridge, rector at the Anglican Church he says, found that most of the participants their culture, guided by the hands of a you had people of St. Andrew in Sidney, B.C., paired six were still using at least one gratitude practice midwife, can often face legal and linguistic research volunteers from the church’s and most were still feeling less lonely. As of who were obstacles—a problem that transcends pastoral care team with six senior press time, Partridge was planning a more in a huge national borders. parishioners. Team members measured both detailed followup for this fall. variety of life In Mexico and Peru, women who receive their own and the seniors’ levels of loneliness Partridge says his team’s research circumstances,” health services have been threatened with shows a link—though not necessarily a Partridge says. “I using an assessment system employed loss of access to social assistance programs was absolutely by loneliness researchers (the UCLA causal one—between increased feelings of if births are attended by traditional stunned by the Loneliness Scale) as well as a “narrative” gratitude and reduced feelings of loneliness. Indigenous midwives rather than doctors. results.” assessment based on conversation between And although, he adds, his study may not Indigenous midwives are also prohibited by PHOTO: KATY WEICKER the volunteers and seniors. Then they have produced results as conclusive as a 5Midwives can law from filling out birth certificates. met six times over the next 14 weeks to project involving a much higher number of offer culturally Many young Indigenous women in perform gratitude practices together. When participants, he hopes it will contribute in appropriate skills, these countries do not speak Spanish, researchers and seniors were assessed its own way toward efforts to ease people’s resources and which can create a cultural barrier with again at the end of the 14 weeks, all of the loneliness. medicines, like medical practitioners that is never felt seniors, and some of the researchers, showed “It’s a small enough sample that it doesn’t evening primose. more intensely than during pregnancy and reduced levels of loneliness. The study also tell you anything other than, ‘This may be a PHOTO: KAZAKOV- birth. MAKSIM/SHUTTERSTOCK assessed participants’ levels of gratitude See LONELINESS, p. 14 See MIDWIVES, p. 6 See p. 17 for General Synod’s 2018 annual report Clergy wellness: Walking with Burnout and prayer MAiD: BOOK OF ALTERNATIVE SERVICES 3 HOLY BIBLE Chaplains HYMNS 8 reflect on Algonquin teacher PM# 40069670 assisted dying shares thoughts 12on Anglican apology 2 anglican journal • november 2019 ANGLICAN VOICES4 Normalizing how we think about healthy diets can obscure truths about our bodies and spirits, argues the Rev. Martha Tatarnic PHOTO: CONTRIBUTED Can eating doughnuts be healthy? PHOTO: MASTER1305/SHUTTERSTOCK By Martha Tatarnic On this as an isolated question, separate from of calories—but they are also very rich, mountain the relationship that biologically exists and so they can only be enjoyed in small EECHWOOD DOUGHNUTS between me and the air, earth, water and amounts. I don’t know what kind of oil is has become one of St. Catharines’ the Lord of creatures around me is a lie. I suspect used to fry them and whether that oil is most popular and best-known small hosts will make it is the lie that makes our collective currently considered to be “good” or “bad” Bbusinesses. I don’t normally eat doughnuts, for all peoples relationship with food so dysfunctional, fat. Because they are vegan, though, every but knowing I will have the opportunity a feast of rich that sets most diets up for failure, and that ingredient in those doughnuts is carefully to enjoy a Beechwood can fill me with a causes so many people to feel relentless selected with a sense of care and concern sense of expectation for days. Amazingly, food, a feast of well-aged guilt and anxiety about the food that they for our fellow creatures on this planet, these doughnuts are vegan. I was waxing eat. I am taught to eat as if my food choices which leads me to claim that the oil is, in enthusiastic about this fact recently to a wines, are just about me. And they’re not. a profound way, “good.” The doughnuts group of out-of-town colleagues. of rich food This lie is also intimately connected are made by a local business that has been “Just because they’re vegan doesn’t filled with to the environmental crisis to which so successful that there is often a line out mean they’re healthy,” one of my marrow, of we are finally waking up, caused by the the door to get these fresh and delicious companions noted. well-aged wines notion that human prosperity could be treats—which also means that there is “It depends what you mean by healthy,” sought, human desire can be satiated, a hive of employees working good jobs I responded. strained clear. without attention to the environmental around the clock. The bulletin board inside I knew what was meant by “healthy,” (Isaiah 25:6) relationships in which that prosperity and is hung with community notices around of course. When we talk about a person desire inextricably exist. justice and artistic initiatives. All along being healthy, usually we refer to that From the pages of Scripture, we the downtown, happy people can be seen person’s individual measurements—things receive an ancient wisdom that speaks carrying their black and white Beechwood like blood pressure, sugar levels, heart to a long-standing dysfunction in how boxes, likely because each of those boxes condition and inevitably their weight— human beings eat. We learn that food represents a special occasion that will be falling within what is considered to be is rarely shared equitably, that access to enjoyed later that day. There is no rule a normal range. The food that a person food is power and that such power can against eating these doughnuts alone, but eats is understood to be a key component be manipulated, that rules around who is I’ve never heard of this happening. It is in how health is attained or maintained. “clean” dictate who can eat together and a treat almost exclusively enjoyed with Food, like health, gets reduced to a set of who must eat alone. God comes to the others. measurements: calorie, fat, carbohydrate, people as manna, as bread, as living water, Isaiah 25 doesn’t mention the presence protein and vitamin content. Depending as the sacrificial lamb, offering another of doughnuts on that mountaintop picnic, on how we currently think those numbers vision for how people are to eat and who but that may have been an oversight. should relate to the individual body (for people are to be. Isaiah 25 describes the When food becomes a means by which example: “Is this a good fat or bad fat?”), fullness of human relationship with God our care for the world around us and we assess the food choice as either healthy as a mountaintop picnic of delicious food our relationship with one another are or unhealthy. and drink. This picnic fills human bellies, strengthened, then it is also a means by The problem with this very normalized and it also welcomes all of those previously which we become more aware of the way of thinking is that it omits a left out. It lifts the shroud of death from presence and purpose of the living God.