Patriotism II: My Country, RIGHT or Wrong.

George Elliot Clarke is Canada’s poet Laureate.

I do not think that I would want to be a poet laureate. Poet laureates get no respect. The pay is bad, too. Only 20,000 dollars per annum.

Worse, our parliamentarians who choose the poet laureate do not really care either. They didn’t even ask George Clarke for a poem to commemorate Canada’s 150^th birthday, though telling him what to write about is part of an MP’s job.

 

George Elliot Clarke

It is also hard to be a poet laureate because you have to write nice about silly events. There is not much artistic gravitas in that. For example, Andrew Motion, a recent British poet Laureate, was asked to write a poem about Lady Camilla Bowles’ and Prince Charles’ wedding. Well, you tell me. What rhymes with Camilla? Vanilla, flotilla, gorilla, Godzilla? This is difficult, silly stuff. So, a bit of doggerel was once written about poet laureate’s that went like this:

In merry old England, it once was a rule

The King had his Poet, and also his fool

But now we’re so frugal, I’d have you know it

That the laureate can serve both for Poet and for Fool.

Still, some distinguished poets gave it a try. For example, one of the greatest English poets of the last century was Ted Hughes. Still, Hughes didn’t really shine. As poet laureate, he was asked to write about Prince Andrew’s wedding to Lady Sarah Ferguson. Here is what he came up with.

A helicopter snatched you up.

The pilot, it was me.

The marriage, as you know, ended in divorce.

As a preacher, I have learned that having to make nice is also the enemy of a good sermon. There isn’t much drama in “nice.” So, this morning, I’m faced with a conundrum. I set myself the goal of writing a patriotic sermon about Canada, my nation—not right or wrong—but Canada, my nation, right! A “make nice” sermon! For this Sunday, just before Canada’s 150^th anniversary, I chose to write a sermon that dimly echoes the language of Psalm 96, a sermon about the roaring Pacific Ocean, about how the aurora borealis is glad, about how the trees in our woods sing for joy on account of Canada’s righteousness and truth, blessings and beauty. This Sunday, no thundering Jeremiads. No demand that the congregation repent. No prophetic warnings about war in Syria or Iraq. No stern lectures about racism or fidelity. No, this Sunday, I want to preach a sermon about Canada the good. I want to be a Preacher Laureate. And yet, I don’t want, like most Poet Laureates, to be silly or ignored.

What can I say?

I suppose a great poet, an Irving Layton or Margaret Atwood—like a Group of Seven Artist—a really great poet could briefly pry our attention away from the regular stuff poets plumb, like the despicable and immoral, away from cataclysm, impossible love, or disaster long enough to focus our attention, however briefly, on the wonder of the everyday blessings we Canadians usually take for granted.

Blessings like the safe neighbourhoods to walk in, blessings like being able to find an emergency dentist even on a long weekend, or the trails along Lake Ontario. Perhaps the best Canadian poet could pry our attention away from everything about Canada that has to be fixed or rightly condemned and could instead help us see Canada for what it really is, but is also too often ignored.

We have street lights that work. I’ve visited many places where they never do, like Haiti or Honduras. We have roads that are repaired, even while the inconvenience of construction irritates us. I’ve driven roads in Nigeria that can swallow cars whole. We have food on grocery store shelves. I’ve seen people lined up all the way around the block to get into a butcher shop that had only chicken neck bones and sinew for sale because I bought all the chicken thighs and breasts.

A masterful Canadian poet would be one who really could help us see black and white and First Nations people working together in a bank office as a historically significant and precious development, even if also only a beginning, and even if that seems, well, sort of boring. Such a poet would help us see the luxury, by world standards at least, of being able to afford mosquito repellant or coffee that comes a cup at a time from a brew machine.

Well, and just forget poets. What if, when we woke up, and faced all the regular struggles people in Toronto face: too long a commute, or lake levels so high that we can’t get our yacht safely moored at the dock; regular struggles like the occasional slightly-below-average teacher for our kids; what if we woke up and faced all the regular struggles people in Toronto face but we also saw with a divine second sight the wonder of ruling authorities that we generally don’t mind being subject to, the confidence we have in banking and sewage systems, enough natural resources to keep the world’s industries humming. What we could see with our spiritual eyes the leisure we have to read a good book, never mind the money to buy one; to see the wonder of hospitals that see you after just six or eight hours of waiting. I’ve visited hospitals where people camp for three or four days in the hallway to merely to book an appointment with the doctor the next day.

I’m no poet. I’m barely an aspiring novelist. But I’m a Canadian, and what I love about the old Israelite Psalms, such as Psalm 96, is the unabashed and fulsome ways in which those ancient Israelites came back, time and again, in their worship, to the blessings that they had and how they thanked God for them while also being called to keep working for right. Such Psalms are full of gratitude, and so should we be full of gratitude on this day and every Sunday. Gratitude for our land of promise whose hills flow, if not with milk and honey, well at least with oil and gold, whose rivers—if you choose carefully—are full of salmon and beavers; gratitude for a nation whose poor have a safety net, whose First Nations are slowly but surely getting a hearing; gratitude for universities and courts and police and Timmies that are the envy of the world.

Are blessings the whole story? Of course not. Canada, like ancient Israel, has never fully lived up to its potential. But consider what the Apostle Paul said in Romans 13. He called Christians to be subject to the ruling authorities. So, when things are not to your liking in Canada, and even when they mostly are, engage our rules democratically. Vote. Volunteer. Do civic good. That’s what “being subject,” means in a democracy.

Besides the Apostle Paul, I can’t think of a better encouragement to do so than I found in a poem by our poet Laureate and patriot. George Elliott Clarke is a black man with First Nation blood whose family came here as refugees from slavery during the war of 1812. Clarke is a Duke, Harvard, McGill and UofT professor. He is one of Canada’s most celebrated and prolific writers. And with this Psalm about Canada’s Charter of Rights and Freedoms, he’s made the office of Poet Laureate relevant again. Listen.

On the 35^th Anniversary of the Promulgation of the Charter of Rights and Freedoms

I.

Because we believe in a supreme Being


And Language’s power that makes Law our king,

Canadians may explore Freedoms plural


To draft a Just Society—moral


In its decisions, charitable


In its deeds, so that everyone’s able


To flesh out a dream, live for a Vision—


In “freedom of conscience and religion,”


To worship and think as one judges wise,


To invent new techniques, or improvise


New ways of doing, or earning a wage,


New ways of living well in each language

Official, new ways of sharing problems


And solutions, thanks to our shared Freedoms....

II.

You are free to believe and express what

You know as Right; to justify or rebut;

Free to assemble with whomever else

Seconds your perspectives; free to repulse

Contrary thought peacefully; free to vote;

Free to live in Canada, or go out

To gird the globe and return; free to roam

From province to province; keep a home

Anywhere and work anywhere: To be

Mobile is the essence of being free.

III.

You are free to disagree with police


(So long as you don’t contradict Justice

Elemental), and not face billy clubs


Or handcuffs or fired shots or Taser stubs,

Unreasonable searches, seizures, stops:

Only suspects need be eyed by Cyclops.

You are free, if arrested, to retain


A lawyer and seek bail, and not remain


In jail, and to deserve a speedy trial


So that Innocence attains acquittal.


You are right, upon arrest, to expect


Your body’s Dignity merits Respect,


And not be threatened with Harm or Woe,

Or suffer rank, uncivilized Sorrow....

IV.

You are right to expect Equality—


Impartial non-prejudice, Civility,


No matter how you look or what you speak:

Equality Rights for all lets one be unique.


Not every group has always forever been


Free of governmental Persecution;


And so Affirmative Action’s declared


The right way past wrongs may now be repaired.

V.

English and French are the authorized speech


In Canada—and through New Brunswick’s reach;

And English or French, where minorities,


May ask for schools in their communities.

VI.

To be Indigenous is a status


Treaties endorse, and so Indigenous


Peoples may explore privileges granted


By accords, Crown-and-First-Nations-planted,

When Canada was colonies, a realm

Of settlements upon which settlements


Were made, twixt First Peoples and governments

Monarchical. These original rights


Are guaranteed in The Charter of Rights


And Freedoms, and cannot be extinguished


Nor cancelled, nor naysaid, nor relinquished.

VII.

Happily, the Charter does recognize


This multicultural mosaic we prize,


And the absolute, pure Equality


Between male and female and every Body,

And also the power of the Parliament

To grant services to each resident,

Regardless of region, so that income

Or locale, do not determine the sum

Of Health Care, or Welfare, or Equity

Available to every polity.

Coda

What came into force, April 17, 1982,

was the People’s keen

Desire to continue to imagine

A Native-Land democracy, akin

To popular sovereignty, where all


Are equal, and Rights and Freedoms enthrall—

So long as they enable possible


Utopia and/or dreams plausible,

Notwithstanding the “Reasonable” clause

That sanctions liberties that scoff at laws.

George Elliot Clarke

Parliamentary Poet Laureate (2016-17)

Patriotism 1: My Country, Right or WRONG.

From the fall of the Roman Empire, right through to the early 1800s, Berber residents of North Africa made a living as pirates on the Mediterranean Sea. History calls them the Barbary Pirates. They were notorious slave traders. They pillaged coastal villages on the European side of the Sea so frequently that Europeans abandoned their coastal towns for hundreds of years.

The United States, France, and many other nations either paid bribes to keep the pirates at bay, or paid ransoms to release captured ships. In fact, at that time, the United States was paying up to 20 percent of its annual budget to the pirates, if you can imagine that.

Burning of the Philadelphia

In 1803 these pirates captured an American ship, the Philadelphia, that was caught on a reef near Algiers. A few months later, Captain Stephen Decatur captured a local boat. The pirates, not expecting an attack from a local boat, were surprised when it docked it beside the Philadelphia, and Decatur stormed aboard with 60 American soldiers, captured the ship and burned it to the water line. Decatur escaped without loss of life, and came back to the States as a huge hero.

Years later, after a treaty was finally signed with Algeria to end the Barbary Wars, Stephen Decatur offered this toast at a banquet honoring him for his heroics. Decatur said, “Our country! In her intercourse with foreign nations, may she always be in the right; but our country right or wrong.”

Very patriotic. But Decatur’s toast was soon simplified in the public mind to just the words, “my country, right or wrong.” And that phrase has often been taken to mean that it doesn’t matter what your country does, how it does it, for what ends it does it . . . if you’re a patriot, you approve and celebrate your country, no matter what.

Is that really patriotism, though? Giving your country a moral blank cheque, right or wrong? Can we be critical of Canada and still be patriots?

In a backhand sort of way, I ran into this problem in a very personal way. Some years ago, while I was living in Cobourg, I had a weekly column in the Cobourg paper. In one of my columns, I noted that Israeli and Palestinian peace activists were meeting in Jerusalem, and that they had together condemned some aspects of the Israeli occupation of the West Bank. I listed those Israeli injustices. The very next week, a response to my column came from an Israeli lobby group that argued, basically, that any criticism of Israeli policy was anti-Semitic. That group, at least, believed that any criticism of their country, right or wrong, was very, very bad—racist, in fact.

            Now, I wasn’t an Israeli citizen, but you can see the problem. Can we, as Canadians, both love our country and criticize it when it is wrong?

            Well, there is Biblical precedent for doing so. Ironically, in view of my own critical column about Israel, ancient Israel’s sternest critic—at least according to the stories we read in the Bible, was God himself--or herself.

            Take the story found in Exodus 33, for example. Israel is in the Sinai desert. This is soon after—again, according to the scriptural legends—God personally turned the world upside down to free the Israelite slaves from Egypt. God chose Moses to liberate them. Moses performed great magical signs. God rained down the ten plagues on Egypt in order to get Pharaoh to see things his way. When the Israelites escaped to the Red Sea, God split the sea in two to let the Israelites pass through on dry ground, and then flooded it again when the Egyptians tried the same trick. In the desert, God led the Israelites to freedom with a pillar of fire by night and a pillar of cloud by day. In the desert God provided the Israelites with mana and birds to eat, and provided water from a dry rock to drink. Amazing stuff.

So finally, free from slavery, the Israelites end up at Mt. Sinai. God calls Moses up the mountain to give him the ten commandments. There is more thunder and lightning, say the stories, because the glory of the Lord descended on the mountain. Moses was up there for a long time.

And the Israelites? Well, in spite of all the miracles I’ve just told you about, they become impatient and decide that Moses had been up the mountain for too long. They feel alone and abandoned, so they build themselves two large golden calves to worship instead of the God of Israel.

God is not impressed. God is so upset that God decides to abandon the Israelites. In our scripture God says, okay, you can still, “Go up to a land flowing with milk and honey; but I will not go up among you, or I would consume you on the way, for you are a stiff-necked people.” God sends an angel to go with the Israelites instead.

            But the other amazing thing is that in spite of their stupidity and stiff-necks, in spite of their faithlessness and idolatry, God still loves these people. They rejected God, but God still offers an angel and the Promised Land. It seems that, when it comes to Israel, God knows both how to be divinely patriotic, but fiercely critical, too.

And that is pretty much how it was for the rest of Israel’s history. The walls of Jericho fall, but the people loot the ruins rather than leave them alone, as God had instructed them to do. Samson defeats the Philistines, but falls for Delilah instead of governing wisely. David defeats Goliath . . . but kills Bathsheba’s husband Uriah and generally lives as depraved a life as Henry VIII did. Israel conquers territory but worships the idols of the conquered, turning its back on God, over and over again. Israel is blessed with wealth, but ignores the poor, the displaced, the widow, the homeless, the alien.

Time and again, the ancient Israelite legends tell of the same repeated historical patterns. Israel is blessed and thrives. But Israel turns away from the just laws of God. God punishes. Israel repents. God restores Israel, so she is blessed and thrives once more. But Israel again turns away from the just laws of God. And so, the cycle repeats, over and over again, until finally, totally fed up, God sends the people he liberated from Egypt back into exile and slavery in Babylon. Which should have been the end of the story, but because God loves these people, he liberates them from slavery a second time, and tries again to get them to be a just nation.

And all along the way, on every occasion that Israel failed to do justice, love mercy, or pay attention to the greater matters of the law, God sent patriotic but honest prophets to condemn Israel’s behavior. Prophets like Amos. So, in Amos 5, ironically, for once, the Israelites are actually doing all the little things right—the sacrifices, the rules and regulations, the singing, the worship and all that. But they are condemned by the prophet Amos because they do not let “justice roll down like waters, and righteousness like an ever-flowing stream.” Which is the whole point of being a nation, as far as God is concerned.

The legends of Israel are all about a nation that is constantly doing wrong, and as a result is constantly visited by prophets who condemn the nation and call it back to being all that it should be. Samuel, Elijah, Elisha, Isaiah, Jeremiah, Ezekiel, Amos . . . it is always the same, prophetic patriots criticizing their country because it refuses to do right.

And, thinking about modern patriotism—I’d say, whether in modern Israel, or modern Canada (or modern USA, my other nationality)—there is still plenty of room for prophetic patriots.  There is plenty of room for straight talk about moral values, about the least and the last, about the environment, about the deficit, about transparency, about universal health care, about racism—there is plenty of room for straight talk in this country as it approaches its 150^th birthday. Not because we, like the ancient Israelites, worry that God will ring us up if we do wrong. No, we need straight talk because as followers of Jesus we still believe in justice, and mercy, and kindness for all, just like the Old Testament prophets did. We need straight talk because while our country is often right, it is often wrong, too—especially wrong when it comes to the most vulnerable, to those on the bottom rungs of the ladder.

Not “my country right or wrong,” but “my country, so I’m going to help her right the wrongs.” Not always fun. Not always the most popular stance. Not always the easiest path. Prophets, whether they are prophets over the watercooler at work, or over the fence at home, or in the election campaign—prophets are not always the most popular people in the room. But then, rather than follow a pillar of fire by night or cloud by day, we follow Jesus.

It’s the right, and patriotic, thing to do.