Around Town: A Lament for Gaza, Bruce Milne memorial, Prayer for Burrard Inlet

The Dal Schindell Gallery will host an artist talk featuring Joy Banks, with Shadia Qubti next Wednesday evening (February 25).

They will discuss Banks’s exhibition: ‘The One and the Unfathomable Many: A Lament for Gaza,’ which will continue at the gallery until March 28:

Bringing together printmaking, carved wood and pit-fired ceramics, this installation seeks to create a space of shared lament for Gaza.

Hanging fabrics printed with over 65,000 figures, representing the number of Palestinians killed, form a grief-labyrinth to walk through, inviting visitors to witness, grieve and engage with the scale and impact of the brutality.

Joy Banks is a printmaker and multidisciplinary artist. She says in her artist statement:

As I worked, I also wondered what was being eroded within those of us outside Gaza, as we witnessed these horrors through the isolating medium of our screens.

Images of deliberate starvation and mass devastation appeared alongside advertisements promising abundance and luxury, a jarring dissonance that left me unsettled.

What does it do to our collective humanity to witness such atrocities and scroll on by, even while Palestinians continue to endure daily attacks and loss? What is the impact of witnessing intentional and systematic destruction so closely and yet so disconnectedly at the same time?

I grappled, too, with the sheer impossibility of really absorbing or processing this horrific reality as an individual, even as other atrocities unfolded in other parts of the world.

At a certain point, the scale exceeds what any individual nervous system can take in, even as we feel compelled to remain attentive.

While I created art as my own small response, I found myself wondering how embodied expressions of grief and lament could help us face what we are witnessing, and move through the overwhelm rather than becoming stuck in it, or trying to numb it away. . . .

Each unique hanging expresses aspects of lament or reflects facets of the realities in Gaza. The carved wooden elements and smoke-marked ceramic vessels extend this sense of tactile, material lament shaped by hand, fire, repetition and sorrow.

Visitors are invited, not to attend as spectators, but to move through the space as an act of keeping vigil and bearing witness to the ongoing brutality in Gaza.

In a world that often turns away or numbs itself in the face of such violence, shared lament offers a space to pause and reconnect with the wrongness of the injustice we are witnessing.

The installation provides an opportunity for participants to engage in collective lament and to attend to the weight of what is happening in Gaza. Perhaps grieving together in this embodied way will open pathways within us and among us for deeper compassion and action.

Shadia Qubti is “a Palestinian lived theologian exploring how different communities understand land, identity, and faith. Born and raised in Nazareth, I’ve had the privilege of learning from both my Palestinian Christian heritage and my studies in Indigenous and Inter-Religious Studies at Vancouver School of Theology.”

The Dal Schindell Gallery is at Regent College on the UBC campus.

Bruce Milne memorial

A memorial service for Dr. Bruce Milne will be held this Saturday (February 21, 1 pm) at First Baptist Church in downtown Vancouver “to honour the life and ministry of Bruce Milne to his Lord and Saviour, Jesus Christ.”

Here is a portion of his life story, following a description of his youth and education in Scotland, academic life at Spurgeon College, early books and more:

In 1983, Bruce sensed a divine call to return to the preaching-pastoral ministry and, after much prayer and deliberation, accepted a call from First Baptist Church, Vancouver, to become their Senior Minister.

Emigrating with the family to Canada, Bruce was inducted into this position in January 1984. Bruce threw his whole self into the church, excelling in preaching and pastoral care and the congregation grew and flourished under his pastorship over the following 17 years.

Bruce’s insightful expounding of scripture was informed by a real love, interest and attentive care to the pastoral needs of every person who walked through the doors of the church, regardless of who they were.

Every morning without fail, he would get up at 5:30 am and spend a full hour praying for each member of the congregation, the world and the wider church. As the title of the church news quarterly, First People, alludes, it was the people that mattered most to Bruce.

Special highlights from those years include the Church Centennial, Easter celebrations at the Orpheum and the attendance of Bill Clinton, then President of the United States, during a diplomatic mission to Canada.

Bruce’s favourite story about that visit was in response to one of the American security personnel. “Are you nervous about having such a powerful person in the pews?” he was asked. To which Bruce replied, “Not at all, we have the Living God in attendance every week.”

Throughout his tenure at FBC, there were many opportunities for Bruce to give expression to his passion for intercultural fellowship and encouragement on a global scale. In 1992, he became Vice President of the Canadian Baptist Federation, and then founding President of the newly formed Canadian Baptist Ministries from 1995 – 1997.

In 2000 he was appointed as Vice president of the Baptist World Alliance. He also continued reaching a wider audience through his writing, completing the commentary on the gospel of John, Here is Your King: The Message of John in 1993.

In January 2001 after numerous episodes of angina, Bruce relinquished the pastorate of First Baptist Church.

With the day to day intensity and demands of leading a downtown church over, this reduction in activity enabled Bruce to expand the geographical reach of his pastoral and teaching ministry; responding to invitations to preach, teach and encourage ministers, congregations and Christian ministries all over the world; including in Denmark, Malaysia, South Korea, North Korea, Brazil, Japan and the UK.

Also, during his ‘retirement,’ Bruce completed three additional books; The Message of Heaven and Hell: Grace and Destiny (2002) Dynamic Diversity (2007) and Acts: Witnesses to Him (2010).

Go here for the full article.

The service will be livestreamed; to join online click here.

Prayer for Burrard Inlet

Events are listed below, but there is also an Events page and a Jobs page on the Church for Vancouver site.

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