Response to disaster addressed

Disasters, whether natural, such as earthquakes, or man-made, such as terrorist attacks, can make communities and faith leaders stumble, fall and lose direction.

“We are not well equipped as a society or a church to deal with those things that don’t lend themselves to our typical patterns of worship,” said Anglican Rev. Ansley Tucker, Dean of Christ Church Cathedral. “So how do we weep together? How can we admit, as people of faith, there are some things that will send us reeling.”

Clergy, lay-people and musicians, about 120 in total, will gather in Victoria next week, Monday to Thursday, for a conference with the theme Responding to Disaster.

The conference, held every two years, is a co-operation between the Anglican Church of Canada and the Evangelical Lutheran Church in Canada.

Tucker said this year’s theme for the conference was chosen because disasters seem to be occurring more frequently, whether they be fires, floods, droughts, hurricanes, terrorist bombings, school shootings, even the April 16 bus crash in Saskatchewan that killed 16 hockey players.

Tucker herself experienced a disaster in June 2013 while ministering to a parish in Calgary when a devastating flood hit the city. Of the 400 families in her parish, 100 were pushed out of their homes.

Her parishioners did their best to gather food, and make sure people were safe and housed. They even spent time going about Calgary with bug repellent because mosquitoes became so intense.

Her church was raised enough that it was not inundated. Despite an evacuation order, the church stayed open and became a gathering spot for the community.

On the Sunday following the flood, the parish gathered in a circle and talked about Noah and the flood and the escape of the Israelites through the Red Sea. In both cases the biblical protagonists reached safety but not without time spent in the wilderness.

With listening, discussing and praying, her parishioners got beyond helplessness, where they started asking: “What can we do?” “It was a perfect example of how worship is supposed to issue an action,” Tucker said.

“And bless the human race, because we really are at our best in these crises.”