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ll"! Earlier this month Metro executive committee asked Metro police officials to report on a possible program of licensing bicycles and bicyclists within Metro. Police Chief Adamson replied, with thp support of the police commission, that such a program would be of little value unless instituted on a province wide scale. "viiei.iriAGiLtirnated 750,000 Bicycles in Me'tro and the number is growing at the rate of several thoutand each year. - - _ Metro police are reluctant to get involved in such a program because it would require the full-time Back to the question of the cost of living, particularly food prices. It has become so unquestionably the dominant issue in Cana.da today that a report every mont is necessary to keep up with developments. The matter becomes even more relevant in a report from Queen's Park, because the provincial govern- ment is becoming increasingly involved, at least in terms of public statements. To what extent those statements represent a meaningful effort to grapple with the problem, or to what extent they are designed chiefly to create an appearance of provincial concern, thereby maximizing the pressure for more vigorous federal action, is a matter of conjecture at this point. Next week I would like to consider in greater detail an analysis of the Davis government's position; but for the moment, let's fill in the background with developments which have taken place generally, and particularly with the federal government. Throughout the public anguishing over food prices, the real dilemma lies in the complexity of the food industry, and therefore the difficulty in fixing responsibility for excessive price increases. m short, it is so difficult an area to fix blame that everybody in- volved is in the position to say it is somebody else's fault, nothing effective is done about it, prices continue to go up, and the public frustration and outrage grows. By way of a perspective, here are a few basic statistics. In the first six months of 1973, the cost of living went up at a rate whicluamounts to an annual increase of approximately 9 per cent, The food price increase, of course, is higher: in the range of 13 per cent, and threatening to become worse when the last six months of the year are calculated. Meanwhile, wage increases which have been settled during the first six months are approximately 8 per cent, while corporate profits are in excess of 30 per Jesus responded by telling this simple tale about a man who sowed his field with good seed. But when it sprouted and grew, it was seen to contain weeds. His workmen impulsively suggested they root out the weeds. But he told them to wait until the harvest. Then the two could be separated without endangering the crop. There are two images of Jesus that dominate the popular mind today. One is characterized by the successful musical; first on the stage and now on the cinema screen: Jesus Christ Superstar. The other is the image of Jesus as the political reformer. The first has produced the Jesus Cult, whos devotees are shaggy-haired hippies. The other has produced the Jesus Party, whose devotees are the placard-waving protest marchers. But the real Jesus is neither. Look at his story about the wheat and tares for evidence. You' will find it in Matthew chapter 13, verses 24 to 30. An interpretation of it is given at verses 36 to 43. Obviously there were among the friends of Jesus some who impatiently demanded that he got on with things. Who said to him that if He was the Son of God he should assert Himself: that He was too tolerant of a degenerate society: that what was wanted was a massive clean-up campaign; that it was time to do something about bringing in the Kingdom instead of just talking about it. From this simple story I would like to draw three lessons; useful for us all; but specially important for three particular groups of people. The first is for those who find the fact of evil hard to accept. The story tells us that there is an inexplicable factor of evil in the world as we know it. Jesus speaks of an enemy sowing the weeds among the wheat. And He leaves it at that. He doesn't tell us who the enemy is. Traditionally He has been personified as the devil. And this is as far as we can go in seeking an explanation for the presence of evil in the world. There are some people who would say devil-talk Police reluctance Here we go again Police Chief Harold Adamson notes that the use of the police department as a licensing body could leave the department open to severe criticism if a youngster was licensed and shortly after was seriously injured or killed in an accident because of his inability to safely operate a bicycle in traffic. Its obvious the police department does not want to get involved in licensing bicycles. Operating a bicycle on the roadway today is a lot different than it was 20 assignment of 18 police officers and a central records system. . cent. With many people, the conventional wisdom is that wages are the main inflationary push. The evidence simply does not substantiate this. Wage in- creases are, in fact, at a rate below the rise in the cost of living, to say nothing of catching up on earlier in- creases. Of all the other developments during the past month, both in terms of federal government action or events in the market place, two stand out as having added fuel to an already-raging fire. First was the public revelation, and solid documentation, that supermarkets were generally engaging in the practice of repeated price labellings, so that customers found two or more labels with escalating prices on products which they picked up on their weekly shopping expedition. Spokesmen for the major retailers have always contended, with some validity, that they were merely passing on higher prices which they had to pay wholesalers, processors, or primary producers. But they assumed the role of villains when they were caught hiking prices on goods in stock, in addition to the new goods which they would have to buy to keep shelves full. This was deemed to be an unconscionable rip-off; and there was an added edge to the public outcry because one of the major retailers had the previous week advertized that they would not be increasing prices on goods in stock. The excuse that there had been a breakdown in communications between the head office and loca1.stores was no more convincing than President Nixon's account of the Watergate fiasco. Equally outrageous was the general air of un- concern, certainly extreme lack of urgency, on the part of the federal government and the Food Prices Review The other twin pillar of Christian truth that can sustain us when the wild wantonness of evil threatens to tear our lives apart is the belief in God's providential care. I find it best summed up in a prayer: Grant us, o heavenly Father, the peace that passes understanding, that we, amid the storms and troubles of this our life, may rest in You, knowing that all things are in You, under Your care, guarded by Your love; so that with a quiet heart we may face the storms of life, the cloud and the thick darkness; ever rejoicing to know that the darkness and the light are both alike. to You; through Jesus Christ our Lord. Amen. This story, too, has a lesson for parents of teenagers who are mystified at the way their children seem to be turning out. Gone are all the innocency and charm of their childhood. Suddenly, overnight almost, they have suffered a sea-change into something new and strange. And they incline to ask themselves: What monsters were we rearing? What can have gone wrong? The answer is nothing has gone wrong. Your children are just entering the no-man's land of adolescence. Where what they were must die in order that what they are meant to be may have birth. They are strangers to you. They are even more strangers to themselves. They are going through the shadows. They need your doesn't explain anything. I agree. But it does have one great advantage. It acts as a constant reminder of the permanent fact of evil. A fact that we ignore to our cost. Didn't someone once say that the.devil's cleverest stratagem was to persuade people to believe he didn't exist? The line taken by the Christian faith - and I have yet to find a better one - is that this world as we know it is not the way God intended it to be. Supporting that line you find the solid structure of the doctrine of sin - which is too big a thing to delve into in this short ar- ticle. But I think it was Cardinal Newman who said: It is more hopeful to believe in the doctrine of sin than to believe that the world as we know it is without remedy. mixed bag ”WC! sympathy, your support, your love. A different kind of love, perhaps, than they needed when they were in- tants. But love, no less; even maybe, greater. And the realisation that just as you have striven to sow good seeds in their young hearts, so other forces, other people, have been busy, all unknown to you, sowing seeds of a very different kind. And the only thing you can do is to hold back and hang on and hope and pray. Until the two kinds of seed come to maturity and the youngsters themselves are able to judge what is good and what is evil. ' The question, however, is should trained polite of- ficers, at a time of mounting crime, be assigned to this work? The answer is the establishment of a Metro public safety bureau, licensing bicycles, enforcing all traffic control laws and making sure that safety features are incorporated in the Metro road system. When hard-pressed pensioners or low-income families examined the limited number of staples to which they are now restricted, they were left won- dering where Mrs. Plumptre thought they should turn. But this development took on an added dimension when Mrs. Plumptre engaged in something of a counter-offensive. Obviously, and understandably, the public flak was getting to her. She revealed that, not until the federal government panicked mildly under the crescendo of public protest, and announced some strengthening of the powers granted to the Prices Review Hoard, was she able to get adequate staff to get underway. The third message of this simple story of the wheat and the tares is for the avant-guarde left-wing refor- mers. Jesus had one among His followers. He was called Simon Zealotes;.zealous for social and political reform. I sometimes wonder why Jesus himself was not a zealot. I come to the conclusion that it is because He saw the fallacy of all reformist movements. That no matter how you may clear the jungle, you can never fully eradicate the roots. years ago. There is more traffic. Any vehicle using a roadway should be licensed. Through a licensing system an effective public safety program could be developed for bicyclists. m short, the public suddenly learned that the ap- pearance of inactivity on the part of the Food Prices Review Board was in fact reality; but, explained Mrs. Plumptre, the board was inactive because the federal government refused, or at least delayed, in providing her with adequate staff. In any case who is to judge? You may remember that when someone came to Him to ask His opinion on a moral issue Jesus said: Who made me a judge and a divider among you? Who is to judge what is good and what is evil? How are we to know until both have come to maturity? m seeking to eradicate evil, may we not be guilty of destroying much that is good? These questions might be debated endlessly. So in face of life's evil don't panic, don't pressure for change. Be patient; the judgment will come. And perhaps it may hold many surprises. That kind of situation is really outrageous. Ottawa has been giving the public image for three months or more that their newly-appointed agency, the Prices Review Board, was on the job. In fact, it was withering on the vine. There had been suspicions that the federal govern- ment didn't really believe in a prices review process. Now those suspicions were confirmed by solid proof of their ina,ction. They moved after the storm broke, not in advance, in the hope that price increases might be somewhat alleviated. But the great peril in which all reformers stand is this. That in pointing the finger at evil in others or in society they forget, too, to point the finger at them- selves. Evilis not wholly in the other. It lurks in the heart of every man. Best then to think of this world as God's world. A world of mixed blessing, certainly. But, on balance, a good world. A world that perhaps needs evil to make it, finally, into the completely good world God intends. Boardwhiettithadsettqriniat-irig.Mr-t Plumptre, comfortably eeconced in her $4lk000 a you chairmanship role, seemed to have no more advice for Canadian housewives than to atop buying the products which had gone too high. Back to the issue next week. , Tht y t a, Mt--htte “m I , A I