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| "Sunday Morning on the Grand River" by Gary Simmons |
Hamilton to Brantford Rail Trail
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A Greeting
"Hear my prayer, O Lord, and give ear to my cry;
do not hold your peace at my tears.
(Psalm 39:12)
A Reading
Thus says the Lord:
A voice is heard in Ramah,
lamentation and bitter weeping.
Rachel is weeping for her children;
she refuses to be comforted for her children,
because they are no more.
there is hope for your future, says the Lord:
your children shall come back to their own country.
(Jeremiah 31:15;17)
Music
Meditative Verse
This is my comfort in my distress,
that your promise gives me life.
(Psalm 119:50)
A Poem
Sweet human love for others,
Deep as the sea,
God-sent unto my neighbour --
But not to me.
Sometime I'll wrest from others
More than all this,
I shall demand from Heaven
Far sweeter bliss.
- from "In Grey Days", a peom by E. Pauline Johnson
found in her book Flint and Feather: The Complete Poems of E. Pauline Johnson
Verses for the Day
Therefore walk in the way of the good,
and keep to the paths of the just.
For the upright will abide in the land,
and the innocent will remain in it.
(Proverbs 2:20-21)
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| "Canoeing Paris to Brantford", Grand River Conservation Authority |
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A STORY
This video was created as a college media project by Hannah Saunders, a Delaware/Mohawk woman
from the Six Nations of the Grand River. In her story, the media and political voices on the issue of missing and murdered Indigenous women are contrasted with the personal voices closer to her own experience. The video was made in 2015 prior to the federal election. With grateful thanks to Hannah for sharing the film with us.
From the end of the Voyageur Trails at Spanish, a series of short linked trails brings the traveler south through Sudbury, North Bay, Huntsville, Barrie to Guelph, Kitchener, Brantford and Hamilton in southwestern Ontario. There the main trail offers two off-shoot branches: one toward Windsor and the other toward Niagara. The piece that connects on the main artery of the trail is called the Hamilton to Brantford Rail Trail and it runs on the treaty lands of the Six Nations of the Grand River, the largest reserve in Canada and the only place in North America where the six nations of the Iroquois (Onondaga, Oneida, Mohawk, Cayuga, Seneca and Tuscarora) live together. Today's storyteller is more behind the scenes than in front of the camera. Her watchful eye measures the difference between how people speak in the public space about this crisis, including political leaders and the voices of the mothers and women and girls of her own community. The children of today's music video live near the Highway of Tears in British Columbia reminding us of the nation-wide aspect of this crisis. Towards the end of Hannah's video, we see the word "thank you" in the six languages of her community, even as we see a woman writing the words "Am I Next?" With the call for justice, the film expresses gratitude for those who make space to listen. How can we honour this?
How does youthful hopefulness amid fear challenge you today?
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| The Hamilton to Brantford Rail Trail forms the connecting piece of The Trans Canada Trail between the main east-west artery and the two offshoot trails to Windsor and Niagara. (Source) |
LC† Stories of the Land is a project of
Lutherans Connect / Lutheran Campus Ministry Toronto
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