Whither Anglicanism Part 2

Last time, I reflected on a report by a Commission of the Anglican Church of Canada which was addressing what changes may be required in the structural organization of the Church given the declining membership.  Although I agree that this is necessary, it is not sufficient.  As I stated, I believe what must be faced and addressed is what it means to be an Anglican in the world today.  As the old generation of Anglicans – the one I am part of - dies and few members of generation x, y and z and beyond are apparently not interested in being part of a church – what is the future of the Anglican Church and what will that church look like?

The decline in membership has been ongoing since the 1960’s and various attempts in changing the liturgy and developing strategic plans have failed to reverse or even arrest this decline.  There are many reasons for this, and this situation is not unique to the Anglican Church.  It has often been something of gallows humor within the Church that ‘we don’t change – we’re Anglicans’.  Again, we are not unique in this as people generally don’t embrace change – especially as we become long in the tooth and soft in the middle as Paul Simon sings.  However, in life – particularly this post-modern life – change does seem to be inevitable at an ever-increasing rate.  I believe that God does intend humans to evolve, and we have and continue to do that.  One of the daily missives from the Society of St, John the Evangelist this week addressed just this:

Evolution - We are not card-carrying members of an institution called the Church. We are organs within a living organism, the mystical Body of Christ, an organism that evolves in response to the patterns of every successive age. Each moment we see, turn back, praise loudly, prostrate and thank, we grow in our capacity to mirror the faithfulness of God and make the evolution of the Body manifest. Br. Keith Nelson, SSJE

So, the question that we are faced with is, what does the Anglican Church do and how does it need to change if it is to survive?  What we are doing now is not working.  For Anglicans, what has been central to being an Anglican is worship.  We are called, as are all Christians, to gather together in the name of Jesus Christ and worship God.  The liturgy that we follow to do that has changed at various times over the history of the Anglican Church.  When I started to worship regularly as an Anglican in the late 1980’s , the Canadian Church had introduced a new prayer book – the Book of Alternative Services (BAS).  In effect, it replaced the 1962 Book of Common Prayer (BCP) as the primary form of liturgy.  There was much angst and anguish among many Anglicans as the BAS was put into practice and the BCP slowly faded into the fringes of worship.    The BAS was introduced, I believe, to modernize the language and make the liturgy more user friendly.  Whether this has been a good thing theologically, can be and is still debated.  However, the point here is that this has not seemed to have made a difference in the ongoing decline in membership.

The recent COVID pandemic gave Anglicans and other mainline churches an opportunity to dabble in non-face to face worship through electronic media.  This is proposed as possibly being the wave of the future for worship and the answer to address the decline.  This media has had a long history in modern worship starting with radio and moving to TV evangelism and now electronic media.  What has been apparent, in my assessment, is that if you are going to do this, it needs to be well done.  This was not the case in many examples of Anglican worship.   So, can electronic worship replace in-person worship and is that the answer to the decline in church membership?  If it is, we Anglicans will have to take a cash course in how to use it effectively and be serious about doing it well.

The need for gathering together in-person in work settings is being played out in post-pandemic Canada and probably elsewhere.  Working remotely became necessary and, therefore, acceptable during the pandemic.  However, now the need to gather together in the name of the organization is being asserted and calling the troops back to the office is being asserted.  The realization that young workers are not engaging with co-workers and the company structure has management raising a red flag about the lack of cohesion of these employees.  This was noted in a recent article about baby boomers not retiring and blocking younger employees from advancing in the organization, “In fact, the engagement of young workers may have declined because the work-from-home shift has had a negative impact on their careers in particular… Physical distance can become mental distance if it’s not managed right.”  Of course, in the church we are not dealing with careers in general.  However, I think that the experience of less engagement in remote circumstances is applicable to the church environment.  Worship in remote settings can fill a need for certain people in certain circumstances and should not be discounted.  However, the basis for community is gathering in person. 

As I stated last time, I believe that the experience of the divine i.e. the Holy - is what will engage people and keep them as part of the church community.  This will occur in worship if it is well done in the community of Christians gathered in the name of Jesus Christ.  It can also occur when people gather for other activities such as bible study, fellowship, and bake sales.  Gathering together is essential for the church to be a church.  How to gather together is for all of us to figure out.   

May you be blessed to experience the Divine in worship and in all your life.

 

 

Whither Dominion Day?

Somewhere in a dresser drawer, I have a tee shirt with the statement or demand, Bring Back Dominion Day. It has a diagram of a moose and a very large Sir John A Macdonald, Canada’s first Prime Minister. This was an appeal years ago by a journalist of the Globe and Mail newspaper to cancel the name change for our national holiday celebrated today from Dominion Day to Canada Day.  Some name changes such as these are well meaning.  However, they can sometimes be ill founded and based on a misunderstanding about the meaning of the existing name.

June 20, 1868: Governor General Lord Monck signs a proclamation that requests all Her Majesty Queen Victoria's subjects across Canada to celebrate July 1. 1879: A federal law makes July 1 a statutory holiday as the "anniversary of Confederation," which is later called "Dominion Day." Today, Dominion of Canada is the country’s formal title, though it is rarely used. It was first applied to Canada at Confederation in 1867.

Sir Samuel Leonard Tilley, Premier of New Brunswick, suggested the term Dominion, inspired by Psalm 72:8 (from the King James Bible): "He shall have dominion also from sea to sea, and from the river unto the ends of the earth." This is also echoed in Canada's motto: A Mari Usque Ad Mare (Latin for 'from sea to sea').

The change for Dominion Day to Canada Day was inspired (but not inspirational) in an effort to eliminate archaic language and make it more meaningful and proper to the times. Unfortunately, in my humble opinion, it is part of a movement to make the language we use void of anything that might be poetic and catch the imagination of people.  To my ear, Canada Day sounds lifeless and sterile compared to Dominion Day.  The excuse in changing language to make it clearer and easier to understand often kills what language should be used for – to enrich and bring meaning to something.  This kind of language is appropriate for legal documents, but it is tragic when it is used for symbols that should resonate on a deeper level. There are things which should use poetry and not prose to express the importance and meaning of the thing itself and what it represents.  It is the difference between a sign which points to one thing and a symbol which cannot be described by itself.  Canada is one of those things which should be described in a symbol and not a sign.

I could talk further on this and bring in the changes in the prayer books of the Anglican Church of Canada from the poetry of the traditional Book of Common Prayer to the less than inspired language of the modern Book of Alternative Services - the names say it all.  However, I will leave that for perhaps another time. 

May all Canadians have a wonderful Day celebrating the wonderful country of Canada and may you all be blessed celebrating this day that the Lord has made.

Experiencing the Divine

One of the deep questions which, I believe, is lurking behind or beneath life to day is, do people have an experience of God, however you want to name that experience of the divine, the ineffable other in your life?   Perhaps some people do not even have an awareness of that presence in their lives.  Perhaps they are not paying attention to that being too busy with the day-to-day routine or work and busy schedules which life seems to be organized around these days. 

In our culture for many people that experience used to be found in worship on Sunday morning or whenever the designated time was for their religion to come together and worship their God.  For those of us who attend church services today, how many of us have an experience of the presence of God/the divine in that time and place?  Organized religion, for many people, is no longer the designated institution in which people turn to for that experience.  Of course, worship is more than that – than an experience of the divine.  We come together to give thanks and praise to the source of life, to acknowledge our separation from that source, God i.e. our sinful estate, to ask for and receive forgiveness for the things we have not done that we ought to have done and the things we ought to have done and have not done.  Hopefully, we receive inspiration from hearing God’s word in scripture and being preached.  We physically receive the presence of Jesus Christ if the worship is a Eucharist. 

However, my question remains; do we experience the presence of God in our worship?  Liturgical renewal is an attempt to make worship more relevant to those participating in it.  It put worship in language which is supposed to make it easier for people to understand using the language of the day – language which is clear and easy to understand.  However, the divine and my experience of it is not clear and easy to understand and is primarily a mystery and is at its core mysterious.  Our culture does not encourage experiences which are mysterious.  Can you worship God with a Tweet or in clear simple language?  Or perhaps my question should be, can we experience God in a Tweet et al at all? 

In the work that I do with dreams we identify dreams as God’s Forgotten Language.  To understand our dreams, we need to learn the language that God speaks in dreams.  In the same way in our culture, we need to relearn the language of the experience of God.  Perhaps God can speak to people in clear, simple language.  However, that is generally not my experience with some notable exceptions such as the New Zealand Lord’s Prayer which I wrote about last week.  The genius of that prayer is its clear language which is also poetry.  It speaks to the soul and resonates at a deep level.  That is what is needed in our worship. 

Blessings on your journey. 

The Word Made Fresh and Refreshed

I have been, and continue to be, ambivalent about use of colloquial language in worship.  There is much value in the traditional but there is also much value in speaking the language of the people today.  I dislike it when traditional language is changed to make it more palatable to current sensibilities.  For example, to change the soul-wrenching confessional, “to save a wretch like me” in Amazing Grace to, “save a soul like me” defeats the powerful message in that wonderful hymn of redemption.  We are, after all, sinful people who continue to need God’s forgiveness. 

On the other hand, some people need to be reminded that Jesus did not speak in the language of the King James Version of the bible.  Language has been continually updated and the battle of the bible over the use of the language of the people has been fought many times and many people have lost their lives in those battles.

I love the poetic language of the Anglican Book of Common Prayer compared to the pedestrian prose of the Book of Alternative Services which, if effect, did replace it despite the waffling of the church officials who gave it the title of “Alternative” while intending it as a replacement for the BCP.  There are, of course, theological issues which needed to be addressed with the Book of Common Prayer which was composed by Thomas Cranmer who produced a masterpiece of liturgical prose.  It is unfortunate that those who developed the Book of Alternative Services did not have anything approaching the genius of Cranmer but I am sure they did the best they could.

That being said, it is a spiritually satisfying experience to discover a updating of liturgical prose that does justice to not only the intent of a familiar piece but also is inspirational in making the message come alive in the language of today.  One of the best examples of this is the update of Lord’s Prayer developed by the Anglican Church in New Zealand in its Prayer Book.  One source, https://livinghour.org/lords-prayer/new-zealand-maori/,   described this effort, “This prayer book was celebrated by clergy and lay people alike for the way it combined the traditional Anglican prayers and forms of worship with the rich earth-based spirituality of the Maori and other Pacific Island cultures. It is eloquent in its wonderful simplicity and diversity, and is worthy addition to anyone’s book of prayers.”   Apparently, it is possible to update a prayer book and maintain  language that is moving. 

Here is the Lord’s Prayer from the New Zealand Prayer Book:

  THE LORD’S PRAYER: MAORI & POLYNESIA

Eternal Spirit,
Earth-maker, Pain bearer, Life-giver,
Source of all that is and that shall be,
Father and Mother of us all,
Loving God, in whom is heaven:

The hallowing of your name echo through the universe;
The way of your justice be followed by the peoples of the world;
Your heavenly will be done by all created beings;
Your commonwealth of peace and freedom
sustain our hope and come on earth.

With the bread we need for today, feed us.
In the hurts we absorb from one another, forgive us.
In times of temptation and test, strengthen us.
From trial too great to endure, spare us.
From the grip of all that is evil, free us.
For you reign in the glory of the power that is love,
now and forever. Amen.

I thank God for the person who composed this wonderful addition to the prayer life of the people of God.  Blessings of your journey

The Great Comma and the Great Commandment

Last time I wrote about love being more important that doctrine.  If that is the case what do we do about the creed(s)―the statements of faith that are supposed be a foundational statement of belief that all Christians hold.  It is one of the parts of the worship service that most Christian denominations include.  Indeed, those that do are considered to be credal Christians.  The Anglican Church of Canada has both the Nicene Creed and Apostles’ Creed in the Book of Alternative Services.

The creeds are statements of what Christians are supposed to believe about God and Jesus.  However, as has been pointed out by Richard Rohr (who has become my go to guy on things theological and religious), they leave out what Jesus did in his public ministry which is primarily what the Gospels speak about; his miracles and parables and other important things in his life.  Rohr states:

If you worship in one of the liturgical Christian traditions, you probably know the opening words of the Apostles’ Creed by heart:

I believe in God, the Father Almighty, creator of heaven and earth. I believe in Jesus Christ, his only Son, our Lord, who was conceived by the Holy Spirit, born of the Virgin Mary, suffered under Pontius Pilate, was crucified, died, and was buried; he descended into hell;. .

But have you ever noticed the huge leap the creed makes between “born of the Virgin Mary” and “suffered under Pontius Pilate”? A single comma connects the two statements, and falling into that yawning gap, as if it were a mere detail, is everything Jesus said and did between his birth and his death! 

In Christian theology we have the Great Commandment, "you shall love the LORD your God with all your heart, with all your soul, with all your mind, and with all your strength. This is the first commandment. And the second, like it, is this: You shall love your neighbor as yourself.”  The Great Commandment, therefore, is an important part of what is represented by the Great Comma. IT is through Jesus life that we are shown the Way to live; it is love in action. 

If love is more important than doctrine i.e. belief, then Jesus life, is what we should be paying attention to as a model of how we should love one another.  I must be honest and confess that I am somewhat ambivalent about the creeds and having people recite them in our worship services.  Our prayer book does make it optional with the instruction that the celebrant may (my emphasis) invite the congregation to recite it.  On the one hand, it is foundational and states the things that all Christians are supposed to believe in, including the virgin birth and the (bodily) resurrection.  However, the creed can be a stumbling block to those who have trouble with these and other statements of faith.  Personally, I can reconcile the statements in the creeds with what I believe and statements such as the virgin birth mean what I intend them to mean; to take the lead from Humpty Dumpty in Alice in Wonderland, “When I use a word,” Humpty Dumpty said, in rather a scornful tone, “it means just what I choose it to mean—neither more nor less.”

That being said I do not believe that the creed should be an impediment for people being part of a Christian community.  Jesus certainly had short shrift for impediments and stumbling blocks, “It would be better for you if a millstone were hung around your neck and you were thrown into the sea than for you to cause one of these little ones to stumble”.

That does not mean that I agree that Christian clergy should believe anything and everything including being atheists as in the case of Gretta Vosper who has been confirmed as a United Church of Canada minister and who is a self declared atheist―but that is for another discussion. 

So, you can see from this the mine-field, or perhaps I should say mind-field, doctrine can lead us into.  In conclusion, I believe (that is creedal language) that we should focus on the Great Comma and the Great Commandment rather than the Creeds, as important as they are. 

Blessings on your journey

Sermon August 27, 2017 11th Sunday after Trinity

My sermon today is based on something I don’t normally do.  Now don’t get nervous and worry I am going to preach on some heresy or far out idea.  No, rather than base my sermon on the scripture passage – either the Gospel or the epistle, I want to explore the collect.  I will read it again to bring it once more to your attention:

O God, who declarest thy almighty power most chiefly in showing mercy and pity: Mercifully grant unto us such a measure of thy grace, that we, running the way of thy commandments, may obtain thy gracious promises, and be made partakers of thy heavenly treasure; through Jesus Christ our Lord. Amen.

There is much packed into a relatively short prayer.  We have concepts of grace, mercy and heavenly treasures, not to mention the commandments.  So, there is much to unpack.  Let’s begin by looking at grace and mercy.  What actually is grace and what is mercy?

One simple way of looking at them is that grace is receiving what we do not deserve.  Mercy is, you could say the opposite, not receiving what we deserve.  When I think of grace I think of the opening of the service of Holy Eucharist; the Gathering of the Community in the Book of Alternative Services; “The grace of our Lord Jesus Christ, and the love of God, and the fellowship of the Holy Spirit, be with you all”. The response is, “And also with you”.  Let’s try it…

The grace is the Grace of the Lord.  It does not say that if you have been good Christians and done certain things you have the right to wish for God’s Grace on the gathered community.  God’s Grace is offered to each of us; it is offered freely and without condition.  Think of that; we do not need to earn it or be someone we are not; it is there for the taking.  However, that is the rub.  We must be willing to receive it.  We must be open to it and not throw up barriers to that Grace working in us and in the world.  So how do we do that?  Well I did touch on that last Sunday.  We need to be open to God’s gifts in the Holy Spirit.  We can certainly not receive the Grace if we do not pay attention to what God is offering us.  We need to learn and practice understanding God’s Forgotten Language in the Gifts of God.  That is another part of the B.A.S. which I appreciate.  At the Eucharistic prayer after the concretion the bread and wine, now the body and blood are presented to the congregation as, “The gifts of God for the people of God”.  The response is, “Thanks be to God”.  That is the proper response to all of God’s gifts—thanks. 

It is important to understand in our hearts as well as our minds that these gifts are freely offered and given to us.  We do not need to earn them or do the right thing; isn’t that wonderful.  Think about it for a moment…We do not need to earn it.  We are the people of God as so it is offered to us without precondition.

However, that does not give us a free pass.  The Grace of God is freely offered.  However, it doesn’t mean that we have no part in it.  This is where God’s mercy comes in.  I noted that we are to receive Grace there are no preconditions, however, we have to be open to it.  I’m sure it is not a surprize to you that we are not always open to it. 

We live lives that are often not in relationship with God.  We do not live the lives that God intends us to live.  This is where the commandments come in.  Jesus tells us that the greatest commandment is to love God with all your heart and mind and soul and strength; the second it like it, to love our neighbours as ourselves.  Well, I certainly struggle to do that one.  I am taking a wild guess but probably you do as well. 

This is where we give thanks to God that we have the mercy of God.  We do not receive what we deserve.  If we were to be judge on our actions and even our thoughts there would be no hope for us.  However, we do have the mercy of God.  God’s mercy is also freely given.  It is given to us in the forgiveness which was offered to us in the sacrifice of Jesus on the cross when he forgave those who had murdered him.  We have the mercy that is offered to us in the confession and absolution in both our prayer book and the B.A.S.  We confess that we have not lived as God has intended us to live.  We are in a state of sin.  We ask for God’s forgiveness and God’s forgiveness is granted to us in the absolution.  Again this is freely offered to us—it is ours for the asking.

 

There is another part of the B.A.S. which I find helpful.  The baptismal covenant asks all present, “Will you persevere in resisting evil and, whenever you fall into sin, repent and return to the Lord”?  Note it states when and not if for being imperfect we will fall again into sin.  However, we will again be offered forgiveness.  The answer is, “I will, with God’s help”.  It could state, I will with God’s Grace. 

In the collect we ask to partake in God’s heavenly treasures.  That is what we are offered through God’s Grace and Mercy.  Let us be open to receive them.  Amen.    

Grace and Mercy

Sunday I was doing something I usually don’t do; nothing radical or heretical.  Rather than preaching on the epistle or Gospel appointed for the day, I based my sermon on the collect. We were celebrating the 11^th Sunday after Trinity and the collect for the day addressed the themes of grace and mercy.  I believe that these concepts are important so I want to reiterate and expand a bit on my sermon.  Not because anything I said is radical or new but grace and mercy is key to our relationship with God and each other.  For those of you who do not follow the Anglican Book of Common Prayer, here is the collect:

O God, who declarest thy almighty power most chiefly in showing mercy and pity: Mercifully grant unto us such a measure of thy grace, that we, running the way of thy commandments, may obtain thy gracious promises, and be made partakers of thy heavenly treasure; through Jesus Christ our Lord. Amen.

 As I noted in my sermon there is much to unpack in that short prayer.  First, let’s look at what grace and mercy mean.  One simple way of looking at them is that grace is receiving what we do not deserve.  Mercy is, you could say the opposite, not receiving what we deserve.   This is not original to me, I heard it some years ago and I’m sure it has been around longer than that. 

That needs some clarification.  When I say “deserve”, I mean they are not something which we earn or is based on our efforts or actions either good or bad.  Grace and mercy are offered to us by God unconditionally because we are God’s children and they are expressions of God’s love for us.  Growing up in the fifties and sixties there was a lot in the ether and culture about unconditional love.  It was something that everyone was supposed to desire in their heart of hearts.  It, unfortunately, became something of a cliché in part because I believe people realized it seemed to be impossible.  It is unfortunate because I believe it is true.  We do desire it; we want to be accepted and loved for who we truly are and not on the basis of having to earn it.

It is indeed hard to truly believe in our heart of hearts—or I could say souls—that we can be loved unconditionally.  Our experience does not generally support this idea.  We believe that we need to earn the love of others.  As I write this a song came up on the media player on my computer (which is set on shuffle).  The song is “Outrageous” by Paul Simon.  The chorus is, “who’s going to love you when your looks are gone”?   After that chorus is repeated a number of times the answer is, “God will”; thank you Paul and thank you synchronicity.  That is exactly the message and meaning of grace and mercy.  God does love us unconditionally no matter if our looks are gone or what kind of a life we live. 

That does not mean we have a free pass.  It does not mean that it doesn’t matter to God what kind of a life we live.  Grace and mercy are freely offered but it is up to us to accept them.  We need to be in relationship with God.  Often our lives can be out of relationship with God.  The grace of God is freely offered.  This is the love of God.  There are many things in our lives which prevent us from being open to the love of God and sharing it with others; past experience of being hurt by others and receiving conditional love to name a two.  We learn to put up walls to protect ourselves and those walls can seem to be almost impenetrable.   

That is where God’s mercy comes in (thank God).  God' mercy is also offered unconditionally as it is also God’s love in action.  When we are not in relationship with God we are in a state of sin.  However, God’s mercy offers us forgiveness.  We can come to God and seek to re-establish our relationship with God; it is two sided—God and each of us.  We have the assurance of God’s forgiveness when we do that.  As I noted in the sermon, we have the mercy that is offered to us in the confession and absolution in both the Book of Common Prayer and the Book of Alternative Services.  We confess that we have not lived as God has intended us to live.  We are in a state of sin.  We ask for God’s forgiveness and God’s forgiveness is granted to us in the absolution.  Again this is freely offered to us—it is ours for the asking. 

If we were to truly believe in our hearts and souls that we are unconditionally loved by God think how different our lives and the world would be.  It is hard to imagine but it is worthwhile imagining it.  That is the first step to living it.  I will close with a quote from Richard Rohr’s Daily Mediation (more synchronicity) for today which speaks of the mystery of forgiveness and the possibility of an infinite ocean of grace: 

The Spirit within us creates an unrelenting desire toward forgiveness and reconciliation. The entire Gospel reveals the unfolding mystery of forgiveness; it is the beginning, the middle, and the end of the Gospel’s transformative message. The energy of being forgiven—in our unworthiness of it—first breaks us out of our merit-badge mentality. The ongoing experience of being forgiven (when we don’t even think we need it) is necessary to renew our flagging spirit and keep us in the infinite ocean of grace. Toward the end of life a universal forgiveness of everything for being what it is becomes the only way we can see and understand reality and finally live at peace. 

Blessings and love on your journey.

Never Say Never: Exploration in Anglo-Catholic Liturgy

Never say never.   That was never truer for me than yesterday when I was presiding at St. Peter’s which is the Pro-Cathedral in Charlottetown.  St. Peter’s is the high Anglo-Catholic church on the Island.  Having been introduced to Anglican worship in mid-life at churches which are definitely not Anglo-Catholic and worshipping primarily with the new liturgy of the Book of Alternate Services — which I though was quite ‘high’ compared to my experience in the United church — St. Peter’s is quite a different world of Anglican liturgical worship.  St. Peter’s uses the traditional Book of Common Prayer which I had a little experience of and less experience of the Anglo-Catholic form of the service.  Finding myself processing into the worship service at 10:00 o’clock behind three servers with candles, a crucifer and a lay reader was something I would have said I would never experience.

How I ended up in this interesting and not entirely comfortable position is definitely a case in point of never saying never.  Lorna and I have attended St. Peter’s a few times in the past during our many vacations on PEI.  Lorna and I (especially Lorna) do enjoy the Book of Common Prayer service as the language — although rather archaic — is beautiful symbolic and complements the mystery that we both believe is an integral part of worship.  St. Peter’s also has wonderful music and a very good choir which we both enjoy.  As I have mentioned once or twice in previous editions of these emails, we have been attending services at the small Anglican Church in nearby Montague and the smaller (smallest) Anglican Church in nearer by Souris.  Both of these churches are missions of St. Peter’s and are served by the clergy from St. Peter’s.  Consequently they both use the Book of Common Prayer liturgy with an Anglo-Catholic (but not as high) form of worship.  In the last two years I have been helping out  by presiding occasionally at St. George’s Montague and St. Alban’s Souris.  I was asked by the priest from St. Peter’s, Fr. Peter Harris (the priests are all referred to as Father which I will discuss later) to preside at St. Peter’s as Peter has traditionally taken some time off at the Labour Day weekend.  His assistant who is the priest at the nearby Milton and Rustico parish was not available for the 10:00 A.M. service. 

I agreed to preside at the service with some trepidation as it was (as I noted) a liturgy with intricacies that I had no experience leading.    In anticipation Lorna and I attended the service the preceding Sunday and I paid particular attention and took copious notes on the up’s and down (lots of genuflecting) and ins and outs (lots of other actions) and the smells (incense) and bells (of the Sanctus variety).  I was planning to meet with Peter (the person not the church) after the service, however, his elderly but vigorous father died unexpectedly but peacefully and the visitation was that Sunday afternoon.  The funeral was Monday and Peter was going to be leaving for his well-deserved and now most necessary mini-holiday on Tuesday.  Peter did send me detailed notes on the intricacies of the liturgy as a sort of Coles Notes for Anglo-Catholic worship.  I must say preparation was very much like studying for a final exam in University.  Fortunately I had my sermon prepared well in advance.

With prayer book, notes, and sermon in hand I headed off to Charlottetown quite early Sunday morning.  When I arrived I found the vestments nicely laid out for me with a note to the Altar guild that the alb which had been worn at the 8:00 service should be replaced as one more suitable to my height.  Well, I was faced with a number of vestment which I was unfamiliar with having used a simple cassock-alb or a cassock and surplus throughout my Anglican ministry along with occasionally a chasuble for special occasions.  I was soon greeted by the member of the altar guild on duty for the morning who unfortunately was not able to shed much light of the intricacies of Anglo-Catholic vestments.  She was a woman of about 70 years of age who was a long service member of the altar guild but had always followed the instructions of her mother (the source of all altar guild knowledge) who had unfortunately died recently and she was soloing for the first time.  However, the lay reader arrived fairly soon after and was able to introduce me to the mysteries of the vestment.  I was able, with the assistance of a dresser, to vest with a cassock and alb (rather than a surplus), a maniple (as far as I can determine), a stole and a chasuble.  I decided not to use the maniple which is carried on the left arm.  You may not be too interested in the details of Anglo-Catholic vestments but I hope you have a taste of the intricacies involved. 

After saying a much needed prayer with the servers, crucifer and lay reader and taking a deep breath I launched into the worship procession.  The choir processes separately from the opposite side of the building.  I won’t go in to many more details of the service itself as it is already too late to make a long story short.  However, I will say that I did not have to incense the altar as occurred on the previous Sunday as it was not a feast day or special service — just the eleventh Sunday after Trinity.  The lay-reader, servers and organist were very helpful and guided me through the service so I didn’t make too many missteps. 

I enjoyed the experience and the people.  However, there is the tensions of the Anglo-Catholic tradition — particularly in this part of Canada which is still in the early part of the twentieth century for church polity and does not believe in women priest.  It would be awkward to call them ’Father’.  However, that is not the reason they don’t agree with ordaining women — St. Peter’s does not have women in any liturgical role including servers.  Of course same-sex-blessing is out of the question.  However, with I have discovered there is often a benefit from living in tension of such things as belief and practice and holding that tension which will produce interesting results.  It is unfortunate that wonderful liturgy and music seem to be incorporated with theology which seems to be missing what I see as the truth that Jesus Christ lived and taught.  That is a whole other issue which I will leave to another day.