On Saving the World

I kind of came to university to learn about how to save the world. My program is “International Development Studies” which, in my mind, translated into “the study of how to save the world”…After about the first month of study, I quickly sobered up, and was humbled by the fact that saving the world really had little to do with just ME.

As a result of my optimism (and pride), I signed up for a tonne of mailing lists for a bunch of large scale international NGOs, most of which I have yet to get off the mailing lists of, so my inbox is filled with outdated emails giving me facts about recent world events and economic statistics and how ‘my small gift of ____$’ or my electronic signature can change all of that.

Today I got a message from one that I happened to read entitled “We know how to end world hunger”. In it was a story of a woman somewhere in Africa (I wasn't told where) who had been living in a crappy little hut until she got a micro-credit loan which changed her whole life, and now she has livestock, a proper roof over her head and children that go to school. I was told that this story was "a testament to the fact that U.S. foreign aid can make a huge difference in people’s lives".

I thought: 'This is how we end hunger? By giving people micro credit loans and enabling them to get out of poverty by participating in small scale international capitalism? Isn’t the structural inequalities caused by international capitalism what made them hungry in the first place? So we are setting people free by asking them to participate in the forging of the chains that bind them...'

The fact that this kind of ‘change’ is fueled by “Churches and businesses from the US” and people like me ‘playing my part’ in the ‘fight against poverty’ kind of makes me shudder.

I’ve been thinking this week a lot about what it means to for things to really change. Can you change things without sacrifice? I don't know. Sometimes I wonder if I would rather just be comfortable, then see things change. If things changing meant sacrificing my own comfort, would I really ask for things to change?

I am a person of faith, I believe that Jesus really does and is saving the world, setting people free from poverty and the chains that bind them. Sometimes when I am praying for this world or for my city, that His justice and mercy will pour out through these streets, that His love will come down and He will set the captives free, I think, do I really want this? Do I really care if God sets people free? Does it effect me?

Sometimes I even think that it affects me in a negative way. If every poverty-stricken person in the world owned a micro-credit enterprise, it would defeat the functionings of the global market place that undermines the poor and allows us to get our stuff so cheap. I like getting my stuff so cheap! So it benefits me to keep people living in poverty across the world poor, and yet I pray for them to be lifted out of poverty, to be set free. Is this not a contradiction to the very core of my humanity? So when I pray for change, do I really mean change?

I want to. And truthfully it is very humbling, to think that if God does have his plans to save the world, that he is doing it, either through me or in spite of me, whether or not I pray for it, and this includes what he is doing to me. For are we not as much, if not even more, a captive to our wealth and our money, our pride and our vanity, as others are in chains because of their poverty?

Let me end this with a sweet quote..

"If you have come to help me, you are wasting your time. But if you have come because your liberation is bound up with mine, then let us work together."

--Ms. Lilla Watson,an Aboriginal Austrailian woman addressing a missionary serving in her country

CBC Book Club on "Nikolski"

Canadian author Nicolas Dickner will be in residence in Champlain as the 2011 Jack Matthews Fellow on Jan 26 and 27. Check out this interview from the CBC Book Club.

Author Nicolas Dickner will be the Jack Matthews Fellow in Residence January 26 and 27.

Nicolas Dickner's novel "Nikolski" was the Canada Reads selection for 2010. I loved the novel's vision of a post-modern Canadian geography. Its central characters are very much products of the wired generation of Canadians. Depicting the lives of three young Canadians, "Nikolski" maps those lives across the vast and wayward geography of this country, the Arctic, the Carribean, and the world. A generation like no other, their paths cross as pirates, lovers, nomads and wayfarers on the waters and shores of urban and ex-urban Canadian landscapes. I hope you'll love reading the book, too, and you'll provide a warm Champlain welcome to Nicolas on January 26 and 27.

Chocosol: Food of the Gods

I thought you might enjoy this latest clip featuring Champlain Fellow, Michael Sacco, on the Corporate Knights webpage.

Jill Battson, Empress of Poetry, World AIDS Day Reading at Champlain Living Learning Commons

I met Jill Battson in a bar in Buffalo, New York in 1989. Great opening line to an introduction, eh? In truth, Jill was there with Adeena Karasick, performing in a reading series for the University at Buffalo Poetics Program. Jill and I connected immediately, as we were both doing poems exploring the intersection of language, desire, pornography and performance. She blessed me by inviting me to perform in Toronto in a Weird Sisters reading along with Adeena and the inimitable Sky Gilbert. She also produced my opus, "The Porno Boy Speaks" for the Toronto Queer Culture Festival in the early '90s.

Since then Jill has achieved remarkable things as a performance poet. She's currently the poet Laureate of Cobourg, Ontario, and the opera based on her latest book, "Dark Star Requiem" opened the Luminato Festival 2010 at the Royal Conservatory of Music. She'll be reading from that book at the Champlain Living Learning Commons for World AIDS Day on Dec 1 at 3 p.m.

Over the past few years, Jill has explored in depth the relationship between spoken word performance, dance, theatre, and opera. She's done remarkable work. Here's a sample of her work with the remarkable choreoghrapher and dancer, D. A. Hoskins. (Jill, D.A., and I produced a work for Peterborough New Dance's Emergency series a few years ago entitled, "Ecce Homo").




CBC Radio 2 will broadcast a recording of the world premiere of "Dark Star Requiem" later in the evening of World AIDS Day. The dramatic oratorio by Jill Battson and composer Andrew Staniland, was co-produced by Tapestry and Luminato, Toronto Festival of Arts and Creativity, for the opening weekend of the 2010 Festival.

The Toronto Star called the oratorio “Artistically adventurous and intellectually provocative” and “exactly the kind of project that the Luminato festival wants to be about.” Classical Music Guide called it, “a ‘tapestry’ quite consistently mesmerizing to the collective senses and conscience of the rapt audience” and “a work of vital . . . lasting, thought-provoking power.” Listeners will be able to follow the text and view production images online at http://www.tapestrynewopera.com/.

Broadcast Details:
December 1, 2010
on The Signal with Laurie Brown
CBC Radio 2
Between 10 pm and midnight EST.

In Memoriam: former Master of Champlain, Jim MacAdam

As many Champlain students know, Noranne and I were very saddened to learn last week of the death of Professor Jim MacAdam, who served as Master of Champlain from 1987 to 1995. Noranne knew him very well, and I was fortunate to have met him during my first term as Head of the college. In fact, he was a part of Champlain life recently, and attended the gala opening of the Champlain Living Learning Commons early in November.

Another previous Master of Champlain, Professor Emeritus John Burbidge, gave remarks at a memorial for Professor MacAdam that was held in the former Champlain Master's Lodge yesterday, November 24, 2010. His remarks included memories shared by Professor Emeritus David Gallop, another colleague from Trent's Philosophy Department. I thought that current Champlain students and readers of this blog would appreciate reading these remarks, not only as a remembrance of an extraordinary leader of our community, but also as a window into the deep history and character of Champlain College. Many thanks to Professors Burbidge and Gallop for sharing this text with us.

JAMES MacADAM 1930-2010

A number of years ago, a young Jim MacAdam enrolled in the MA program in philosophy at Queen's University. In those glorious days, every incoming student was interviewed by the registrar, and so Jim found himself in front of the formidable Jeannie Royce. She looked at his file: “I see that you have been teaching physical education. What made you decide to take up philosophy?” “Well,” Jim replied, “I've had th-th-th-three c-c-c-concussions!”

That little story sums up a number of key features of Jim. In the first place, the fact that he was the butt of his own stories reveals how comfortable he was in his own skin. He was never overwhelmed by adversity, but always faced life with a positive and enthusiastic interest, seeing “the funny side of any situation.” As David Gallop writes: “This extended even to his own severe injury from the car accident in 1988. In recovering from that trauma, and in completing his term as Master of Champlain College, he showed the utmost fortitude and nobility of spirit.”

Second, he was a jock, playing rugby and baseball when he was young; later on, golf in the summer and curling in the winter. When his blunted left hand prevented him from holding the broom to maintain his balance on the curling rink, he would just reach out that arm as far as possible, making an interesting spectacle as he slid down the ice.

Third, he loved philosophy, even more than athletics and, quoting David Gallop again, “was unswerving in his dedication to it and inventive in its teaching. His many bold academic initiatives included the international conference on Jean-Jacques Rousseau at Trent in 1978 which initiated the North American Rousseau Society, the use of 'moots', or 'mock-trials', in philosophy-of-law courses, with collaboration from the legal profession, and two series of lectures on Great Philosophers in the Peterborough Public Library.” After he retired he discovered some unpublished writings of H.A. Prichard, an eminent Oxford philosopher, and edited them into a fine volume, published by Oxford University Press and dedicated “For the Love of my Wife, Elizabeth, and our Children”.

But there are other features that are only implicit in that little story of Jeannie Royce. Jim was committed to undergraduate teaching, maintaining a continual guerilla war against the moves made to establish graduate programs in the humanities. David Gallop: “He probably fitted, better than anyone else at Trent, the image that many people have of 'the true philosopher', a role that he filled in the most endearing fashion. [David} still remember[s] an occasion when Jim was lecturing on Thomas Hobbes, and a pneumatic drill started up right outside the lecture-theatre. He remained quite unfazed, and doggedly plunged ahead with his lecture, despite being completely inaudible for about ten minutes.” Students recall the time when, in a tutorial, he leaned back in his chair to expound on a point and, as the chair continued its arc towards the floor, Jim went on, equally unfazed, with his exposition.

Jim was committed to Champlain College. He had the only office in the university which gives directly on to the river and once, in the middle of a class, he wandered over to the window, where a bell on a fishing rod was jangling, and calmly reeled in a small bass. His interest in all aspects of college life reached its culmination when he was appointed Master in 1987, and Jim and Betty became involved closely with the many and diverse students who made up the college community welcoming them into the warmth of this room.

Finally, and most important, Jim was a friend. I don't mean simply that he was my valued friend, though that is true enough. But he was a friend to the very core of his being. As David says: “He was an ideal mentor for someone new to Trent, because he personified all that the University and its college system stood for.” The young Harry and Caroline Kitchen, uncertain as, for the first time, they approached the Master's Lodge and an initial encounter with the redoubtable William and Peg Morton, were greeted by Jim and Betty and made to feel at home. The two of them, Jim and Betty, were genial and kindly hosts, regularly entertaining supervisees and students over a meal in their home. Jim continued to follow the careers of former students and towards the end was contemplating a visit to Tony Arthur, High Commissioner from the Barbados to the Court of St. James.

Let me conclude with, once again, the words of David Gallop: “When the next history of Trent comes to be written, Jim will surely deserve to be chronicled as one of its most courageous early pioneers. For now, he will be remembered with affection by everyone who was warmed by his friendship and by his generosity of heart.”

--John Burbidge

From Trent University to the Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts in Washington DC

A shout out to Nomadic Massive who loved their stay at Champlain and the great students who helped them launch their tour this fall at Trent.

The climax of their tour (and the band's life thus far!) was this concert at the prestigious Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts in Washington DC. Champlain knows what's good, eh?

http://www.kennedy-center.org/explorer/videos/?id=M4455