I love summer food. I love preserving it; I love doing it with my family. I hate cleaning up the mess.

One of my go-to things to do when I am depressed about the state of the world is to make something in the kitchen, something, if possible, with our own garden ingredients. Not only does cooling force me to be mindful in the present moment, using ingredients we have grown also reminds me that canning salsa from the garden means no salsa shipped to me from Mexico this winter. Plus, it tastes a million times better! In addition, it reminds me of my grandma – which is nice too.

My partner and I had a friend who started dating someone with a very different diet from her. She asked us if we thought that mattered. Our initial answer was no, but then we thought about it a bit. Yes. Food was central to our relationship from the beginning: we were both vegetarian, we tried to buy local when we started living together, and now that we have a daughter we care what she eats and how she approaches food.

Furthermore, cooking together is some of our best family time. And our daughter is already helping! (which is sometimes less than helpful…). If we didn’t both care that we buy and freeze our fruit in season, it would be too big a job for one person. If we didn’t both want a million tomatoes in the freezer, I would give up!

I love that we enjoy food as a family, and I love that it is central to our togetherness. I hope as life continues to get busier and fuller, we can continue to stay grounded in food.

I wanted to share another resource with you that I have found very hopeful in our family. Dawood Wharnsby is a Muslim children’s singer from our community. We have one of his books called In Allah’s Green Garden. It is a beautiful hardcover book with colourful pictures and the poems that go along with the CD we have.

This book and CD is one of my favourite things in our home. Why? The book contains lessons that teach in a way I am much more comfortable with than many of the Christian children’s resources I have seen. For example, one song “Bismillah” – is about giving thanks to Allah before you eat. This is a practice our family shares with Muslim traditions. In reading the poem our daughter not only reinforces a lesson that we would like her to learn – giving thanks to the land and to God before eating, but also that she shares this custom with her Muslim brothers and sisters and they call it Bismillah.

The book, then, treads the line between broadening our horizons and reinforcing the lessons I hope our daughter learns at home. This is something I think is very important, especially when the context in which we often hear Islamic holy words in one of the media propagated Islamophobia. In Allah’s Green Garden puts the practices of Islam in a familiar context, which just makes sense considering how many Muslim neighbours we have!  If you would like to check out the resources, you can find them here.

It is both fun and frustrating to rediscover children’s books I loved with my daughter. Sometimes I love the books as much as I did as a child, and sometimes I am horrified by the messages in the stories! This has got me thinking about what kinds of stories I WANT my daughter to read. Today I would like to introduce you to one such example.

Shi-shi-etko by Nichola Campbell is a book about residential schools aimed at 4-8 year olds. Yes, that might seem shocking. But, the book isn’t about the horrors of residential school history per-say. Rather it focuses on the last “four sleeps” (in kid language) before Shi-she-etko leaves for residential school. She collects her memories for safe keeping while she is away. And that is where the story ends.

As an adult reading the books, we know what probably happens next … but for a child it is a way to understand what is lost by Shi-shi-etko leaving her community. – It is a conversation starter, and part of our responsibility following the Truth and Reconciliation Commission and as a church who has prioritized working towards right relationship with Indigenous peoples.

Besides the fun books and the familiar books, I would like a few of these on my shelves –books that ask new questions, that bring up new ideas. Maybe we can leave a few of the old ones behind … 

For some more books suggestions for children about residential schools see CBCs list of books found  here.

I recently participated in a series of very frustrating conversations about millennials and the future of giving in our church. This conversation revolved, not around data, but around perceptions. And I would like to take some time to elaborate what I think are helpful/unhelpful ways to approach my generation.

The opinion I was having trouble stomaching, is that millennials  are a “me” generation therefore are not going to tithe as their elders have.

I have two problems with this:

A.    No, we will not be tithing as our parents did at the moment. But you have not asked why? First of all, let me say, I think that tithing as part of jubilee economics has the potential to be a radical economic practice that redistributes wealth and forgives debt. However, this is not the way we have put it in practice. Rather we support our church institutions through 10% of our income, some of which redistributes wealth and much of it which supports aging buildings.

That aside, do you want to know what 10% of my income is: less than zero. Why? Because of student debt. I do not believe it is helpful for credit card companies and banks, who invest their money in projects that are counter to my sense of social and ecological justice, to make interest on my money so that I can donate to my church and its organization which I hope will work to counter these injustices. My friends, top of their class in high school with advanced degrees, are pushing thirty without full-time jobs, on year by year contracts, holding down debt, paying into the big black hole that is rent, no hope of buying their own home – maybe ever. The point is the game has changed since our parents were thirty and that needs to be acknowledged.

B.    This does not mean we don’t care about social/environmental change, it just means we devote our resources differently. Obviously, Millennials are short on cash. This, in itself, is motivation to bike, use public transportation, craft, makes things ourselves. We are a generation who grew up with more stuff, more privilege, and more parental support than maybe ever before. But it doesn’t look like we can provide this for our children. We are also the generation of slow food, growing up with climate change activism, and “act locally think globally.”

In short, yes, we care. It just isn’t coming out in dollars; it is coming out in volunteer hours, social media campaigns, consumer choices, “maker” campaigns, etc.

And frankly, I think that this concentration in addressing our privilege might even be more effective in producing change than giving our money away.