A ‘reverent’ reflection on A Christmas Carol today

Written By MARNI WALSH

Last Friday evening, Trinity United Church, on Owen Sound Street, hosted a performance reading of Charles Dickens' classic tale A Christmas Carol. The evening raised funds for Partera International, a locally run, charitable organization with which the Shelburne Pastoral Charge of Trinity and Primrose United Churches have partnered. 

The director of Partera International, Reverend LeeAnn McKenna of Mono Township, reminded the audience, “that just as the industrial revolution in Dickens' time was built on the backs of child labour, the inequalities of economics and social/gender status continues today - only in different parts of the world. The deplorable labour conditions that were prevalent in the time of Dickens still exist in our world today.”

“Partera and other NGO's and groups throughout the world are making efforts where they can to realign humanity with a more compassionate nature,” says Rev. Bist. “It is hard, tedious and seemingly small work. But then, so was the writing of A Christmas Carol, and still, all these years later, it is teaching us to reconsider our value system.” 

Reverend Bist called “A Dickens of an Evening” a “delight and joy.”  Jeff Cottam, Aromatica therapist, performer, and Rev. McKenna's husband, “embraced the character of Scrooge, a role he seems destined to play,” said Candice Bist.

For Mr. Cottam, the performance is a dream come true and he is grateful to the Shelburne Pastoral Charge and Reverend Bist for encouraging him, and, he says, for allowing him “express this story my way.” 

“Nobody else would ever provide a platform for me to do this,” says Jeffrey Cottam, “but I tell Reverend Bist my dream once, and she says “that's a great idea; we should do that!” In fact, the Dickens' performance at Trinity last year has launched eight new performances of Mr. Cottam's show with musician Bruce Ley. This year the performers travelled and performed the show in many locations from Toronto to Collingwood.

Although Jeffrey Cottam embodies “Scrooge,” Reverend Bist says his personality is quite the opposite. “Jeff is well known in the community for his generosity and cheerful spirit. But as an actor, he simply becomes “Scrooge,” weeping with remorse and desolation, laughing with surprise at his redemption, overcome in the end with gratitude and pure unadulterated joy.”

“And isn't this what the season is about?” asks the Reverend. “This time was first celebrated - long before the time of Christianity - as a reminder that from the darkness comes a bounty of good as perennial as the spring. Seeds must lie in a time of darkness to bring forth new bounty. A growing creature must spend a time in the quiet and dark of its mother's womb before bursting forth with new life. All great art and ingenuity spend time in the dark cloister of their creator's mind and spirit, before ever being brought to the light of day to show others.”

“So it is with A Christmas Carol,” she says, “written as it was when Dickens had bill collectors pounding at the door, his wife pregnant with yet another child in a family he was struggling to support, and his publishers demanding a hit after the last three of his novels had been flops. It was a time of struggle, darkness, and self-doubt for Charles Dickens. And yet, in the midst of it all, the redemptive story of Scrooge emerged - a story of a man living in unhappiness, who, when shown another way, took it, and found himself on the lightened highway of grace.”

“There are many in our community and in the world,” says the reverend, “who find the Christian church a difficult place to be. Their reasons are many, and most of them valid. But this last Friday night, both those who attend church and those who avoid it, gathered together to listen to a well known story of a man coming to see he was wandering down the wrong path. He had the good fortune to be turned from that path, back to a place of goodness and generosity. Everyone understands this story. There is no doctrine to bicker over. It is the heart of the Christian ethos and ethics, but as it does not require that we hold to a particular belief, is available to everyone.  It is a story that resonates with our own knowledge of life, our own experience, and as such, we were all bound together in the redeeming arc of the story, in the beauty of Jeff Cottam's performance, in Bruce Ley's on the spot composition - original music never to be heard again, only that one very night.” 

After the performance reading, the audience stayed for plum pudding and Christmas cookies. “It was a lovely, lovely evening,” says Rev. Bist. “And I for one, felt uplifted and hopeful in a season when all too often I feel the heaviness of burdened hearts.” For more information on the peace building efforts of Partera International, visit their website:  http://www.partera.ca/ If you wish to support their work through the church a tax receipt is given – visit: https://www.shelburneprimrose.com/donate.html