Photo by boysoccer3

By Diana Gee

Accounting

It’s tax season here in Canada. And for the first time I’m claiming clergy status to reduce my taxes. While this seems like a good idea, it has caused me much pain and gnashing of teeth. Since I had not bothered to claim clergy status before, I had to backtrack transportation and housing expenses for the last five years. FIVE YEARS. And when the numbers didn’t seem to add up I had more headaches in a couple of months than the past decade combined. There’s no art to summing figures and matching up numbers, but it’s amazing how a few numbers can cause so much angst when discrepant, or so much satisfaction when consistent.

 History

In September 2013, Vancouver hosted the Truth and Reconciliation Commission (TRC, http://www.trc.ca). For three days, the TRC gathered stories from students and their families of Indian Residential Schools  (1876-1996). The public was invited to listen, to bear witness, and to grieve alongside the First Peoples of Canada. Residential Schools were created to take the “Indian” out of the child and to assimilate them into the dominant, white Canadian culture. The TRC’s mandate was to acknowledge the past in order to move towards a future of healing and hope. Because the Canadian government authorized several church denominations to run these residential schools, the Church was present there to apologize, to ask for forgiveness, and to honour the lives of those placed under their care. I attended the TRC for one afternoon and I could not bear all suffering I heard. How does truth-telling make up for all the evil done in the name of God? Where am I, as a Chinese Christian, in this process of renewing relationships with Indigenous Canadians?

Relationships

As a conflict-avoider, there’s nothing more uncomfortable than being caught in a fight between two friends. Well, except when you’re in direct conflict with someone. I’m not a good fighter. I’m uncomfortable with asserting myself and I’ve never learned how to negotiate terms of peace. People who I have largely disagreed with I’ve cut off like a dead branch. But what to do when you live with them or when they’re your family? Or what if you’re in a relationship and it’s not working out. At what point do you say that there are irreconcilable differences, differences so vast that nothing can bridge the two together? At what point is the vulnerability of honesty and apologizing just too painful for a relationship that seems barely worth it?

In Christ

Therefore, if anyone is in Christ, the new creation has come: The old has gone, the new is here! All this is from God, who reconciled us to himself through Christ and gave us the ministry of reconciliation: that God was reconciling the world to himself in Christ, not counting people’s sins against them. And he has committed to us the message of reconciliation.  2 Cor 5:17-19

I was driving my mother to the airport when we were stopped at a light. To the right of us we both noticed an act of kindness: A professional-looking woman handed some money to another young woman sitting on the ground with her back up against a wall. The young woman looked genuinely shocked but grateful, and for a moment her hands were held by the other’s. The lights changed colour and as I edged my car forward I took a quick glance to the side to see the young woman, on her own, weeping. My heart dropped. I wondered what circumstances led her here, how long she sat unnoticed by the people walking by, and what God may be saying to her in that moment. As we drove on in silence, I prayed that the young woman may know that she is seen by God and that she may return to those who love her.

Reconciliation doesn’t balance the account, it forgives them. We are both the reconciled and the reconcilers. The forgiven and the forgivers. The broken and the new.

Diana Gee is the Associate Pastor of Faith Community Christian Church in Vancouver, Canada. Diana is a second-generation, Chinese Canadian, born and raised in Edmonton, Alberta, Canada. She is trained as a structural engineer (B.Sc. in Civil Engineering, University of Alberta) and has worked in consulting for six years. She completed her master’s degree at Regent College (M.Div.) in 2011.