Two very different activities done while standing.

Last night was Toronto's Nuit Blanche, which is sort of an arts festival that goes all night long. Different events and exhibits were set up all around the city and I went with a group of friends from the CMS to see about as many as we could. Some of the stuff was just pretty weird, but some of it was really interesting as well. You can see pictures of some of the stuff here.

One of the exhibits I remember most is the Royal Conservatory's piece, which was basically the orchestra playing James Tenney's In a Large Open Space with the musicians spread throughout the hallways of the conservatory. It made you hear every instrument individually and was very effective in making the listener pay attention to every different sound as they walked through the place. Also, outside there were Morris Dancers. They were not dancing to In a Large Open Space, although that would have been very interesting.

There were also these people dressed as ghosts (sheets over their heads with eye holes) in one part of the city standing in a circle while reciting defunct slang terms. Only slightly entertaining. One of the guys in our group had a friend with an exhibition of kissing robots, so we wandered around for a long time trying to find the booth/thingy. We got a bit lost, but ended up stopping at what is apparently Canada's most Canadianest coffee chain (Tim Hortons), where I was pressured into buying a "large double double", being told that it was essential to the Canadian experience (this was at 1am, btw).

We found the kissing bots, I swallowed my hatred of robots, thought about WALL-E, and it turned out that they were pretty awesome, though some were a bit coy and refused to deliver the promised kisses. Oh well, you can only expect so much out of robots made from tongue depressors. They didn't actually kiss people, they just flopped over in your general direction and kissed the table in front of you when you made kissy noises at them.

I did not stay out all night and ended up going to bed around 3:30, since I had activity #2 to do today. Today was the yearly pro-life demonstration Life Chain and I had agreed to participate in St. Silouan's group. Basically, we just stood silently at an intersection holding signs that said things like "Abortion kills children" and "Adoption, the Loving Solution" (if I had my druthers, my sign would have said "Abortion ends human life," since that is fairly impossible to argue against). We got about the response that one would expect in a city like Toronto. Its always sort of comforting to be reminded that half the people who identify as "liberals" are just as rude and hate-spewing as half the people who identify as "conservatives." It is unfortunately a common human trait to simply want to yell abuse at others with whom you disagree and not engage in reasonable discourse seeking after truth.

Here is my reasoning for participating in an event like this:

Granted, this event probably did not change anyone's mind regarding abortion. The way to do that is through relationships and reasonable argumentation, not signs with one line phrases. However, what it did do was raise visibility of the issue and remind people on the other side that there are reasonable looking people who disagree with them, and that they are not all hate-mongering lunatics. This was a sort of "rhetorical" event, not an actual argument or dialogue. I wanted to dialogue with some of the more vocal detractors, but they were content to keep walking/driving and ignore my invitation.

People think they "know" what a pro-life person looks like: a crazed look, yelling, grimacing, accusing, judging. An event like this with people quietly holding signs with straightforward statements, smiling, and making an effort to show love challenges the stereotype. It is not a logical argument, but a rhetorical counter to the rhetoric of the opposing side. And it is (I believe through reasonable consideration) a rhetoric that supports and shows the beauty of Truth, and not an instance of rhetoric misused to fool others.