Hanging Baskets

I am a gardener.  I love this time of year; the way fresh growth pushes its’ way through the bare earth, and so I was delighted to notice new life in the hanging baskets that had graced the front of the church last summer. In the back garden, there were young bright creeping jenny shoots growing amongst all the dead leaves and twigs. God’s touch! It made me smile.

The week before, my spring gardening joy had been shattered somewhat by the discovery of the bodies of native children who had attended the former residential school in Kamloops, bringing back to my mind all the horrors that some children endured at these schools.

I felt a triple-whammy of guilt, being white and British and being an Anglican, knowing that my forebears had taken children away from their families and tried to strip them of their culture and spirituality.   

I stopped at Canadian Tire for some grass seed, and there in the greenhouse was a new shipment of orange impatiens. Here was the colour that brought tears to my eyes, yet also made me smile. So, I decided to buy a few and put them in those hanging baskets so that others seeing them might smile too, and feel the love for our indigenous sisters and brothers.

Rita