Congratulations to the 2009 graduates of Morden Collegiate Institute. Thank you for the humbling honour of praying the prayer of invocation here today.

An invocation is a time honored tradition that is a calling upon God for assistance. It is a recognition of God’s presence in this place and a public witness of God’s role in the lives of these graduating students. Most importantly it is a welcoming of God’s presence into this moment and a seeking of God’s blessing upon these proceedings and all who are involved.

To invoke God at the beginning of this celebration is surely a good thing. The challenge that each of you, the graduating class, must consider however is to ask yourselves if this is enough and to invoke God’s presence and seek God’s blessing every moment of every day for the rest of your lives and not merely on this one occasion, as important as it is. I know you are up to that challenge and I know God desires to meet you each time you call.

Would you bow with me in prayer?

Almighty God and Loving Lord,

We come before you today in the spirit of anticipation and celebration as we seek to honour the hard work and perseverance of the 2009 graduating class of Morden Collegiate Institute, these your children assembled here before You.

It is our humble request that you gift us with an awareness of your gracious presence and call upon your blessing in the lives of each of these students gathered here, all of the teachers and dignitaries present and every friend and family member as well.

My prayer Lord is that the blessing you bestow here today be carried forward in each of these lives and that it become an empowering strength guiding these young women and men to become a movement of unity, love, justice and compassion rooted and founded upon you.

May each person here, especially the graduating class, take hold of the spirit you offer them and may you be their strength, comfort and guide all the days of their lives. May they learn to invoke your blessing and presence in every moment of every day from this day forward and may they carry you into the world transforming it by your power along the way.

Finally Lord may each one here today come to know that the greatest knowledge to be found is the knowledge of your love and forgiveness freely offered to all who call to you.

Thank you for this graduating class, may they reflect your glory in the lives of all that they encounter.

In Jesus name I pray – Amen.

Sanger was a proponent of negative eugenics, a social philosophy which claims that human hereditary traits can be improved through social intervention. Methods of social intervention (targeted at those seen as "genetically unfit") advocated by some negative eugenicists have included selective breeding, sterilization and euthanasia. In A Plan for Peace (1932), for example, Sanger proposed a congressional department to:

Keep the doors of immigration closed to the entrance of certain aliens whose condition is known to be detrimental to the stamina of the race, such as feebleminded, idiots, morons, insane, syphilitic, epileptic, criminal, professional prostitutes, and others in this class barred by the immigration laws of 1924.^[20]

And, following:

Apply a stern and rigid policy of sterilization and segregation to that grade of population whose progeny is already tainted or whose inheritance is such that objectionable traits may be transmitted to offspring.^[21]

Her first pamphlet read:

It is a vicious cycle; ignorance breeds poverty and poverty breeds ignorance. There is only one cure for both, and that is to stop breeding these things. Stop bringing to birth children whose inheritance cannot be one of health or intelligence. Stop bringing into the world children whose parents cannot provide for them. Herein lies the key of civilization. For upon the foundation of an enlightened and voluntary motherhood shall a future civilization emerge.

Hitler had similar ideas about the need to purify race as did the Greek city state of Sparta and countless other people and civilizations.

I believe a society that is built upon or allows a graident scale of value to human life is doomed to ultimately devalue all life. I believe God values all life from conception onward and that unless we strive for the same sense of value we are going to repeat the same eugenic patterns laid before us.

It is also important to note that this same flawed system of human value leads to programs of euthanasia (greek meaning "good death"). Although both abortion and euthanasia have been rationalized as being systems of mercy helping women deal with unwanted and potentially dangerous pregnancies and giving the elderly, the infirm, the critically ill and in some cases the severely physically/mentally disabled a dignified death.

No matter the rationalizations it is the foundations that ultimately direct the systems that we put in place.

I had a friendly conversation this morning with someone about the value of life and I was moaning about how we put in place barriers of value to the unborn and the parents of children who die as a result of miscarriage (the very term infers fault to the mother). I was saying that if a child were to die one day after birth we would unquestionably have a full funeral but a child who dies in-utero often has no such ceremony and it is ceremony that helps us (parents and others) deal with the grief of loss. Attitudes I have encountered when it comes to memorial services for the unborn run the gamut from annoyance to downright anger that parents would "inconvenience" people with such requests when after all it was "only three months along" as though the child were not human; as though the child was not loved. It is such attitudes that create a barrier within the minds of mothers and fathers who have lost children before birth. They fear even asking for a memorial service. They do not want to inconvenience or burden others with their grief and are condemned to carry the pain within for the restof their days.

 For the past three years we have had Korean students living with us. One of the things I have learned and appreciated about Korean culture is that when a child is born they are considered one year old. In Korea they measure life not from the day it exits the womb but from conception. I believe this makes a huge difference in attitudes toward the unborn.

When I think about the child who died at three months in-utero I am reminded of my sister April who I love dearly. My sister was born three months premature. A mere twelve weeks further along then the child who died in-utero. I wonder - when did she achieve full human value? Was it not from the moment of conception or was it at some nebulous point afterward arbitrarily determined by well-meaning (and sometimes not so well meaning) philosophers and medical ethicists? There are so many people today who would argue that perhaps she should have been allowed to die. After all her birth and ultimate survival came at great cost to society. Her mother a single mother on welfare did not pay for her care. She was flown by helicopter from Guelph to Macmaster Medical Centre in Hamilton no doubt at enormous cost. She spent three months in an incubator being cared for by a public health care system. There are many who would and have argued in hypotheticals that such expenditures are not worth the cost. She was born with cerebral palsy, is slowly losing her eyesight and continues to require assistance from our public health care system. The question in some people's mind is was she worth it? Had she been aborted or died in-utero what would we have lost?

We would have lost:

- a brilliant mind who has a Bachelor's degree in Criminology
- a remarkable public servant who has risen very quickly in the federal department of Border Services
- a supremely talented writer
- a deeply loving sister, daughter, and friend
- a passionate Canadian
- a child of God

What are these things worth? Is she somehow less valuable then the conductor of the New York Philharmonic Orchestra? If we apply arbitrary human standards of value to a life then for some yes but not for me.

I was asked the hypothetical question - if I were to run into a burning building and could save either an in-utero child or a full grown human which would I save? I cannot answer the question. No matter who I save the loss to society in my mind is the same. There is no greater value in me then in the 1 minute old fertized human egg.

The only way we can see human life in such a way is through the eyes of God. Humanity cannot understand such value without a Godly perspective. People of varying cultues nd belief systems wonder if we're losing much by discarding God...well one of the things we will lose is people like my sister because without God and an absolute measure of value people like her rapidly become disposable and discardable. This is horrific. It is inhuman.

All life is of equal value from God's perspective and this is the perspective we need to strive to attain if we wish to sustain anything resembling humanity within us.

For you created my inmost being; 
you knit me together in my mother's womb.

I praise you because I am fearfully and wonderfully made; 
your works are wonderful, 
I know that full well.

Psalm 139:13,14

I walked through the bedroom door to the deck and leaned on the railing. I looked out and as far as the eye could see was green flat prairie under a bright overcast sky. In the distance on the horizon a fair ways off I saw eight tornados form in a row. I knew they were all headed my way. Not sure how. No sense of fear or worry but a great sense of needing to be prepared.

Lord, now you let your servant depart in peace according to your word.

For my eyes have seen your salvation,

which you have prepared before the face of all people,

a light to lighten the Gentiles and the glory of your people Israel.

The question we should ask ourselves is not "what" are you waiting for but rather "how" are you waiting for it?

          The Act of Contrition

O my God, I am heartily sorry

for having offended Thee

and I detest all my sins

above every other evil

because they displease Thee, my God,

Who, in Thy infinite wisdom,

art so deserving of all my love

and I firmly resolve

with the help of Thy grace

never more to offend Thee

and to amend my life.

Amen.

The Confiteor is a corporate prayer which opens every mass and is started by the priest while the entire congregation joins him in finishing it. The Act of Contrition is the prayer said after having participated in confession (the sacrament of reconciliation/penance).

For no reason that I am aware I often find the words of these prayers bouncing around in my mind in the midst of daily thoughts some 27 years after my last regular attendance of mass and confession. The words are in some way comforting because they offer a kind of formal apology to God and the community for harms I have done them. They are also something of a period at the end of confession and yet they continue to come back. It is as though, of all the prayers I have learned, these two are the strongest reminders of our endless need of God's grace.

We seek forgiveness, repent and are forgiven by a gracious God. The stubborn return of these prayers to my mind is a constant reminder of my need to live in His grace because my state is one of constant brokenness. A state of healed, being healed and will be healed. A state of forgiven, being forgiven and will be forgiven. The struggle is always to allow the awareness of my sin to drive me to the joy of His grace and not to hopelessness.