Rejoice with me

I had planned to use the phrase “More joy in Heaven” as a title for this post.  The words have been bouncing around in my head for the past few days, but it wasn’t until today when I sat down to get started that I actually looked the phrase up in Luke 15 and found that it wasn’t quite the way I thought it was.  The story was there, and it was as relevant as I remembered, but the use of the phrase just wasn’t right.  However, a quick read of the chapter led me to the words “Rejoice with me”, which is what I am now inviting you to do.

Here’s why.

Tomorrow at this time I will have been a Canadian citizen for exactly two weeks.  However, the occasion for rejoicing with me over that accomplishment has passed.  As I mentioned in my last post, “The party’s over”, and it’s starting to feel like time to get down to the hard work of actually being Canadian.   

I’m not sure how well I’m doing: so far I haven’t managed to pay attention to a single hockey score, let alone watch a game, though I did notice the headlines about that unexpected third period debacle in the Juniors against Russia, but of course I was only a Permanent Resident back then.  I am still passing by every Tim Horton’s without a pang of desire or regret, though I still remember the first one I went to back when Tim's served fifteen cent hamburgers near the bottom of Yonge Street in 1964.  And what I haven’t been able to divine is whether the revulsion I feel at any mention or appearance of Harper and his Conservatives is truly Canadian or just a manifestation of my non-Canadian immigrant experience. 

One of the benefits of this new identity I have achieved, besides being able to vote legally (as soon as I have the chance), is to carry a Canadian passport.  Since there are no elections that I know of coming up, I decided that one truly Canadian thing I could do was to apply for a passport.  It’s not the only time I’ve done that; in fact, my unsuccessful passport application in the fall of 2002 was the first official notification I ever got that I wasn’t actually a Canadian, something that sent me scrambling to obtain my current British/Bermudian one but not to actually get the paperwork done to become Canadian right then (something I have often regretted since).

As you might expect, I have plenty of experience with the nooks and crannies of the CIC website, so it was no problem to find and download the right form.  The instructions and cautions are lengthy and detailed, but the form itself is pretty straightforward, and the crux of the issue is being able to show that you are in fact a Canadian citizen.  Should be easy now!

And everything was easy until Section 4 on page 2, Proof of Canadian Citizenship.  Actually Section 4 A, Did you acquire citizenship of another country before JANUARY 1, 1947?, was still easy.  4 B did not apply to me, since I was not born in Canada.  It was 4 C, where I was given four options for proving I was Canadian, that ended up stopping me, because I couldn’t find the wallet-sized laminated card that was the Certificate of Canadian Citizenship I had been presented by Her Honour Linda Carvery only a week previous. 

I could give a very long and painful account of my days of looking for it, trying to track down the last occasion I had shown the card to somebody and to understand the faint physical memory that I had put it in my wallet and finding it just wasn’t there, taking apart my thick citizenship file over and over again, searching all the adjacent hanging files and the bottom of the file drawer, looking in every possible place inside the car, worrying that somehow it had gone out with the recyclables, checking the pockets of everything I wore to the ceremony, waking up at 4 a.m. with another sudden idea of where it might possibly be and then not finding it when I looked after day broke, e-mailing my CIC officer to find out how long it takes to get a replacement card (10 months!) and whether they could issue a temporary replacement (no), and just feeling stupider and stupider about losing the thing after spending so much time and effort to get it.

So, you may be able to imagine my happiness when I went through my wallet one final desperate time, decided to pull out my Blue Cross group insurance card even though there was no suggestion that anything else could be in that slot, and discovered my slim but perfect Certificate of Canadian Citizenship stuck to the back of it.  I looked at both sides of the card, I kissed it, I jumped in the air and shouted, I hugged Lorraine (kissed her too, of course), and I thought of the parable of “More joy in Heaven”, all of which led me to Luke 15, part of which goes like this:

8  Either what woman having ten pieces of silver, if she lose one piece, doth not light a candle, and sweep the house, and seek diligently until she find it?

9 And when she hath found it, she calleth her friends and her neighbours together, saying, Rejoice with me; for I have found the piece which I had lost.

Forget the parts about the prodigal son or the sinner that repenteth, because the thing that was lost has been found, and my application can proceed.

So, after all that, and if you still care to do so, please

Rejoice with me!