Appreciating one’s teachers 3: Hanns Skoutajan

I had dinner with Hanns and Marlene Skoutajan tonight here in Ottawa.   Hanns was the my minister at my church when I was a teenager and he was largely responsible for supporting my call which was at one time to join the United Church of Canada as a minister.   He was also responsible for introducing me to church politics and structure such that I decided not to pursue my career for that employer.

Hanns and Marlene were a particular anamoly in my upper middle class neighbourhood, where they stood out as the most visible members of the New Democratic Party I knew.   They, along with another mininster at our chruch, John Lawson, were my introduction to progressive politics and it is largely to them that I owe my political consciousness raising.   Here’s an Op Ed he wrote last month for the Ottawa Citizen. on alternatives to appeasement. You can see that he is unwavering in his commitment to peace.

The name of our church was – wait for it – St. James-Bond United Church, so named because it was the result of a merger between St. James Presbyterian and Bond Street Congregationalist back in the early days of the United Church.   The congregation itself folded up in 2005 and the building was torn down.   At the corner of Avenue Road and Willowbank in Toronto there is still a great hole where this formative structure in my life once stood.   As a gift to me tonight, Hanns gave me one of three bricks that his son saved from the old church.   While it seems at first glance like a whimsical gift, I told Hanns that I would receive it as a deep symbol of the foundation that he gave me in life as a spiritual teacher and a teacher of activism in the world.

The most enduring teaching I have from Hanns comes from the benediction he used to give at the end of every service on Sunday.   Hanns told me tonight that the benediction actually came from another very well known progressive United Church minister Cliff Elliott by way of Marlene who brought it home one Sunday.   It goes like this:

Go into the world with a daring and a tender heart.   The world is waiting for you.   Go in peace and may all that you do be done because of love.

That continues to stand as a deep motto for me to this day.