Be Careful For Nothing and Give Thanks In All Things

 

Be Careful For Nothing and Give Thanks In All Things

Today is Canadian Thanksgiving so it is a day to give thanks (sorry if that is stating the obvious).  However, giving thanks is important as it is possible to let your troubles and things that you are naturally not thankful for dominate your thoughts and feelings.

I have noted in the past that Philippians 4: 4-9 is a good scripture passage at these times of thanksgiving.  It begins, “Rejoice in the Lord always; again, I will say, Rejoice.”  Whenever I hear that passage, I cannot help but hear the beautiful aria from Handle’s Messiah play in my head.  I do restrain myself from breaking into an attempt to sing it out loud, at least in public.

One of the beautiful aspects of the Messiah is that the text is taken from the King James Version of the Bible.  In the NRSV the next verse is ‘Do not worry about anything, but in everything by prayer and supplication with thanksgiving let your requests be made known to God’.  The words that come to me however, are from the KJV, ‘Be careful for nothing; but in every thing by prayer and supplication with thanksgiving let your requests be made known unto God’.  It does, after all, seem easier to remember song lyrics than prose passages.

For me, ‘Be careful for nothing: resonate much differently than “Do not worry about anything.”  Putting aside the beauty and poetry of the phrase '' Be careful for nothing”, the phrase has a deeper and more profound resonance and meaning.  It is interesting that Word prompted ‘be careful for’ and suggested I might use ‘careful   about’, or ‘carful with’, or ‘careful of’.  None of those are appropriate which is not surprizing but then either is ‘do not worry about anything’. 

‘Be careful for nothing’ does not mean that I should not take care or be careless―even though I’m sure Lorna would agree, if asked, that I can be careless about some things at times.  I understand it to mean that I should not let anything interfere with my giving thanks to God in all things.  I do not say that I give thanks to God for all things.  I am not able to go that far but, rather, I try and give thanks to God in all things.  The trial and tribulation and slings and arrows of outrageous fortune that life presents to me are not necessarily sent by God in my theology.  They can be a challenge and sometimes overwhelming, but I give thanks that God is with me on my journey in the good times and the not so good times and even when times are downright bad. 

Therefore, on this (Canadian) Thanksgiving Monday, “Be careful for nothing; but in every thing by prayer and supplication with thanksgiving let your requests be made known unto God.” 

May you be blessed this day and every day on your journey.

 

Are Our Relationships with God High Maintenance?

 

I recently spent a couple of days looking after our (I really should say my wife’s) cat while Lorna was away visiting a friend.  This was the first time this opportunity fell to me.  Trixie the cat and I have a rather strained relationship as she has never really trusted me after being taken in as a feral cat. We have speculated about this with no real answers’ forthcoming.  In any case, Trixie and I both survived the experience. 

However, what became clearer than ever before was that Trixie is a very high maintenance cat.  We have all probably experienced or know about relationships that are high maintenance as opposed to some that are less so.  Trixie is definitely high maintenance.  I know that Lorna has no question about it being worthwhile. 

As a result of this experience, I got to wondering about the relationship between God and people.  Is that relationship high maintenance and, if so, so what?  In my experience personally and as a Spiritual Director, it seems that the relationship between God and people takes a lot of conscious effort on the part of the people of God.  Often, we are not aware of how God is present and active in our lives.  As modern people in a secular world, we have forgotten how to recognize that presence.  We may be aware of what it takes to recognize where God is present in our lives.  However, we often do not know how to respond to that.  If people are part of a Christian community, hopefully they will be given information about how to identify and respond to that presence.  They are called to gather together as a community to worship God and, hopefully, are encouraged to study scripture, to pray regularly, study, and to share that experience of God with others through acts of kindness and Christian charity. 

However, even if we know God’s presence and blessing in our lives, we can easily ignore and avoid what it takes to maintain that relationship.  We might have good intentions about doing more to keep God in our conscious awareness and deepen that relationship but things in life seem to get in the way of doing that. We can sometimes, conveniently or not, forget to make that effort.  Sometimes life does seem to get in the way of doing those things.  If we neglect to keep up our end of the relationship, the relationship will wither and even die.  However, God is always present in our lives and that relationship can be resurrected and reestablished. 

I will use an analogy to illustrate this. Everyone dreams, and scientific studies have shown that dreams are necessary for our psychological and physiological health.  Many people will be aware that they dreamed last night when they awaken in the morning.  However, many people have difficulty remembering their dreams.  However, if they pay attention to their dreams they will begin to remember them more frequently and in more detail.  They can pay attention by recording their dreams and making associations with the images in the dream.  In that way, dreams are also high maintenance.  They require attention, and work to maintain the relationship that you have with your dreams. 

Now I believe that dreams are one way in which God maintains the relationship with us.  Culturally we have forgotten the language of dreams – dreams are, in effect, God’s forgotten language in our culture today.  But, even if you don’t subscribe to this understanding of dreams, they are important for our health and wholeness as human beings, and it is beneficial to pay attention to them.  Regardless, it takes two to tango.  We must keep our part of the bargain – our part of the relationship.  It definitely is a high maintenance relationship; it requires work to maintain but it is definitely worth it.  That is exactly with same with my relationship with God. 

My relationship with Trixie – not so sure but I will keep trying. 

May you be blessed to keep working on your relationship with God. 

 

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 Anglicanism

The current edition of the Anglican Journal – the newspaper of the Anglican Church of Canada – reported on the work of a Commission “tasked with finding solutions to the church’s structural challenges.”  The official title of the commission was Reimagining the Church: Proclaiming the Gospel in the 21st Century, Structures & Resources.  It was established by General Synod (CoGS) in March 2023.

The Commission made seven statements which are meant to generate discussion rather than recommendations to be implemented.  These statements include what could be considered rather radical approaches to the current structure of the Anglican Church e.g. eliminate funding for the very publication in which the results of the Commission’s work were reported. 

This is the latest effort to address the current circumstances facing the Anglican Church where membership has been declining for many decades – since 1960 as reported in the article.  One member of the Commission states “Every strategic plan has included steps intended to arrest this decline. None has had any demonstrable impact,”

In some respects, this report by the commission amounts to basically moving deck chairs on the Titanic.  It is commendable that this report responds to the National Church which is facing the structural challenges of an organization which cannot sustain itself due to continued and continuous decline in membership.  However, 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?

In effect, the Anglican Church does not seem to be offering to many Canadians today what they are looking for to answer the questions they may have regarding what life means beyond the material world.   Asked another way, are Canadians born after the 1960’s looking for something beyond what culture is offering through social media, with its influencers and followers, TikTok, Instagram, and God knows what else, including instant easy answers to any question that pops into their heads. 

The Anglican Church has traditionally offered a way of helping people more fully form the questions that are lying beneath their conscious awareness.  It has also provided a way to respond to the questions, and in the process develop more questions, which in turn will challenge them to live that they are intended to live.  The Anglican Church does not, at present, seem able to do this anymore.  The Anglican Church has not been able to do this in a way which will connect with those people who have no interest or intention of passing through the doors of the church building on Sunday morning at 11:00 – or whatever time Anglicans gather for worship or any other time. 

Anglicans may try to copy the apparent success of other churches but if we do that, do we stop being Anglican?  In effect, do we become simply another version of what is being offered by other denominations and probably not doing it as well as they do.  What, then, is an Anglican and can the essence of what makes us Anglican be offered to people to enable them to explore and discover who they are.  We have to know what it is that makes us Anglican in essence before we can do it.  Or perhaps we can more fully discover who we are in the process of making that effort itself. Perhaps changing the structure of the organization is a necessary step but it is not a sufficient one.

In thinking about what it means to be Anglican, I can draw on my experience of what first attracted me to the Anglican Church.  It was the liturgy and music of the worship service.  I can from an experience of worship that was not strong in these areas.  I am attracted to the traditional liturgy and music of the Anglican Church but there are also aspects of the more modern liturgy and music which are also meaningful for me.  Bottom line is that I am seeking to have an experience of worship that will give me an experience of the divine.  During the time of the COVID pandemic I saw numerous attempts to make worship available via social media.  Many were, in my view, unsuccessful.  How do we connect with people in a meaningful way that will give them an experience that I have defined as the divine but also be understood as something beyond themselves - something that will give them answers to some of the questions they have not even fully formed in their minds or bodies or souls?  In addition, how can we provide an opportunity to gather in community?  Can this be done via social media, or does it need to be in person?  That is the challenge that is facing the Anglican Church and Anglicans today. 

This is probably where I should stop for this edition.  I will pick up where I have left off next time.  May you be blessed today and until we connect again.

Other Related Duties

In my previous life - before I was ordained – I worked in a number of different jobs in the civil service.  All of the job descriptions for those positions had a final entry of “other related duties.”  I have always enjoyed how this is applied to being a priest in parish life.

 Last Sunday, I found myself in a role which I had not contemplated when I was studying theology.   Lorna and I spend our summers at our cottage in Prince Edward Island – the Island province of Canada.  While here we are part of the small (tiny actually) congregation of St. Alban the Martyr in Souris. I volunteer by presiding at Sunday worship most Sundays.  One of the traditions in this part of the Anglican world is a fundraiser called the Bakery Bingo.  In my experience as a parish priest, I have been involved in many different activities including bazaars, which can on occasion be a bit bizarre – depending on the local custom. 

The bakery bingo is an entirely different kettle of fish – or I could say lobsters given P.E.I. fame for seafood.  Now I have attended a few of these during our times at the cottage held by different groups for fundraisers, but I have never been at one in a semi-official capacity.  The premise of the bakery bingo is that volunteers donate baked goods of all sorts which are then used as prizes for the winners of each bingo game.  Now, I have never been much of a fan of bingo, and it may be on a bit of shaky ground theologically as it could be considered a mild form of gambling which is frowned upon by some in religious circles – but is acceptable in many others. 

In the case of the St. Alban’s bakery bingo, it is very much a community activity and even an ecumenical one, as the majority of the baked goods are donated by the ladies of the community, many of whom are members of the Roman Catholic Church.   

In any case, I found myself immersed in the event.  I was involved in the set up and take down of the tables and chairs – not unusual for clergy in events of a small congregation.  I was also involved in distribution of the bakery prizes to the winners working with Lorna – we make a very good team in these circumstances as we do in others.  I was reintroduced to the intricacies of bingo not realizing that there were many different kinds of games determined by the pattern of the numbers called on a bingo card.  In any case, there were many winners including a few multiple winners who needed help carrying away their winnings.  All in all, it was a very successful event, and a good time was had by all the participants and volunteers.  In addition, a nice amount of money was raised to help our little congregation carry on.  And oh yes, I also found time for quiet contemplation i.e. resting my eyes during the occasion.   

 

            May all your ‘other related duties’ be blessed on your journey.

 

 

The Beauty of Paradox

Recently, I revisited an episode of On Being on NPR radio.  The program was an interview with physicist Frank Wilczek and was entitled, Why Is the World So Beautiful?  The conversation began with an exploration of truth but turned to beauty which lies beneath the surface of things.  This is not surprising given the traditional connection between beauty and truth. 

The interviewer Krista Tippett quotes Wilczek back to him, “you say that ‘In ordinary reality and ordinary time and space, the opposite of a truth is a falsehood.’ But, you say, ‘Deep propositions have a meaning that goes beyond their surface.’ This is so interesting. You can recognize a deep truth by the feature that its opposite is also a deep truth.”  

Here we are dealing with paradox which is, for me, a hallmark of truth.  The technical definition of paradox is, “a statement or proposition that seems self-contradictory or absurd but, in reality, expresses a possible truth.” Wilczek uses the classic example in quantum physics of light being both a particle and a wave.  Both ways of looking at it are correct.  Sometimes under observation it behaves as a particle and sometimes it behaves as a wave. 

Paradox is central to the Christian story.  We worship a God who humbled himself and became human.  That fact for us is the strength of what on the surface is a really crazy act.  We worship not a God of power but one who gave up his power to become a creature; one who gave up immortality to become mortal; a God who was powerless on the cross.  And yet. God was born again to immortality and will return to rule this world.

Wilczek notes, “Deep propositions have a meaning that goes beyond their surface. You can recognize a deep truth by the feature that its opposite is also a deep truth.”

I believe that much of the problems that develop in religious doctrine come about by the belief that there is only one way of looking at things.  I have the truth and you don’t or my way of understanding this event of passage is the correct and only way.  It may very well be correct but there may be a different way which is also correct even though it seems contradictory.  There is beneath both a deeper truth which is reflected in part in the truth of both or many ways of looking at it.

The idea of paradox is an insult to our rational minds.  We want to believe desperately that our understanding of the world can only be either/or.  It must be either black or white.  We do accept that there may be shades in between but basically, they are one way or the other.  Things cannot be both.  That is why the Newtonian Universe is still the way that we understand the universe.  Quantum Physics turned that on its head but has not sunk into the foundation of our existence.  We look at the light and see only the object illuminated but not the shadow that is behind the object. 

We Christian often behave as if we do not truly believe that God could have chosen to become human and be born as a helpless baby in a lowly stable.  It fits into the romantic ideal of Christmas but we do not truly believe in the consequences of that action.  We do not truly believe that Jesus did not go to the cross without an internal struggle.  We do not truly accept the truly radical nature of a God willingly dying on the cross.  We cannot truly accept the implication of the paradox of the cross.  We do not believe that there is true power in the weakness of Jesus' surrender to the will of Father and the submission to the cruelty of the cross.  That perhaps is the ultimate paradox of where true power lies.  If we Christians truly believed that the Christian Church would be very different.

Blessings on the journey and try and embrace the paradox.

Where is the True Power?

Recently, I heard the sad news that the politics of J.D. Vance, the Republican candidate for U.S. Vice-President, was shaped by The Lord of the Rings by J.R.R. Tolkien.  J.K. Granberg-Michaelson noted in his essay that, on hearing this, his reaction was, “JD Vance doesn’t get to claim The Lord of the Rings.”

Like that writer, I have been an almost lifelong fan of Tolkien’s trilogy of the imagined Middle-Earth and his other works.  It is not a surprise that Vance and other members of the right wing Maga hoard would glom onto this epic tale of the battle between good and evil.  It is very possible to have a superficial understanding of that as a battle between the quasi-European force of good represented by the loveable Hobbit sand blond beautiful elves and even the cave dwelling dwarfs who rallied to defeat the (non-white) dark forces of monsters lead by the ultimate evil of Sauron who had gone to the dark side of the force – to use an analogy from a different imagined world. 

Tolkien, in his epic work, depicts the struggle to resist the temptation to succumb to temptation to use ultimate power to defeat the forces of evil.  This is a theme that was also explored by the other members of the famous Oxford group of writers, the Inklings – including C.S. Lewis and Charles Williams - in their works such as the Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe (Lewis) and Descent into Hell (Williams). 

In the Lord of the Rings, the humble Hobbit, Bilbo Baggins is the one selected to take the ring of ultimate power to be destroyed in Mount Doom.  He was faithful in not succumbing to the temptation to use that power for his own purposes until the very end when it is his shadow (to use Jung’s term) the despised and conflicted Gollum. who, on briefly regaining the ring, meets his destruction along with the ring of power in the eternal fires of Mount Doom. 

Many, but not exclusively, on the right of politics fail to have eyes to see the message in the Lord of the Rings and other works by the Inklings, that ultimately power cannot be defeated by using that power even if with the best of intentions.  Granberg-Michaelson noted that, “Sen. Rick Santorum (R-Pa.), even used The Lord of the Rings as late as 2006 to endorse a continued U.S. presence in Iraq.”  More recently, Republican politician Lauren Boebert (R-Colo.) recently declared in a statement that exposed a shocking ignorance of basic Christian doctrine, at a “Christian” conference no less, “Jesus didn’t have enough AR-15 rifles to “keep his government from killing him.”  Similarly, Donald Trump jr. recently declared, “We’ve turned the other cheek, and I understand, sort of, the biblical reference — I understand the mentality — but it’s gotten us nothing.”

This, of course, misses the basic message of the crucifixion and Christianity.  As Jesus told Pilot:

My kingdom is not from this world. If my kingdom were from this world, my followers would be fighting to keep me from being handed over to the Jews. But as it is, my kingdom is not from here.

Tolkien and the other Inklings were wrestling mightily with the all-too human temptation to want to use the same weapons used by evil to defeat the forces of evil.  They have shown us brilliantly that this does not work in the Kingdom that Jesus Christ proclaimed.  As much as it goes against our basic instincts, we must turn the other cheek, and go the second mile and, yes, even love our enemies.  That will be a true blessing on our journey.