Question: What does the Grand Philharmonic Choir of Kitchener-Waterloo and St. James’ Anglican Church have in common (other than The Rev. Lynn Mitchell)?

Answer: Members who do not take ownership.

December 13/08, the KW Records reported that the Grand Phil has an accumulated deficit in excess of $110,000 and its very existence is in jeopardy. Everyone from the outgoing President, the Artistic Director and a humble chorister were quoted as bewildered with the dilemma. They’ve done everything possible, they are very good as a performing ensemble, they’ve featured world class soloists, they use a great hall and they have an orchestra as the back-up band. Yet, the concert hall is half-empty for performances and the cash cow just died.

Choristers pay $275 per year to sing in this choir, the newspaper reported.

February 1/09, the St. James’ annual Vestry meeting is presented with a BDO Dunwoody financial statement that shows a General Fund deficit of $83,438 before inter-fund transfers and opening bank balance (hello everyone, this is the real deficit; not the questionable numbers that have previously appeared from internally generated statements). The 2008 calculated deficit (including net income from the restricted fund) was $59,729; 2007’s deficit was $32,791. According to the Treasurer, the parish has cut costs and been responsible. And, oh by the way, parish council did approve a 2.4% Diocesan recommended pay increase for 2009.

A few brave souls query the increase, given the facts that parishioners are losing jobs and retirees on fixed incomes are living with significantly reduced disposable incomes. These naysayers are soon humbled for their scrooge-like outlooks by an inner circle that is chanting the refrain of ‘but with all of these problems, the priests will have to work (note: future tense was used by the speakers) harder to help counsel the needy’.

My knitting keeps me silently absorbing the information, the dialogue, the rationalizations. A very popular parishioner promotes the idea that the parish can cover the extra costs by encouraging more than the current 26 parish families (total active families statistic for parish in 2008 = 238 families) to use the Eat To Give programme.

More knitting.

I stop to glance at the 2009 proposed (internally prepared) budget numbers. More knitting. The actual 2008 givings were $258,000 (down from $263,000 in 2007). For 2009, $269,000 has been budgeted. Wow; talk about faith!

More knitting.

From this same proposed budget chart, 2008 payroll was $193,000; the Diocesan apportionment and other expenses were 64,000. Oh, how I love the beauty of numbers: 2008 actual givings is almost the same as the total of 2008 payroll and Diocesan apportionment. The minute we turn on a light or turn on the heat or photocopy a piece of paper or (the really important stuff) like feed and shelter the poor, we have DEFICIT, Houston!

Another popular parishioner speaks up: Come on, Folks! We’ve got a million dollars in the bank; stop worrying!

More knitting. More math.

Let’s do the math, folks. At the rate of the increasing annual deficit, we are talking a dozen years, more or less, before we face the same dilemma that the Grand Phil faces today. And that does not include any capital work that requires doing (as opposed to discretionary change) or the very real fact of declining membership (hence, declining givings) or the ongoing truth of diminishing investment value and earnings.

More knitting, more math.

A Grand Phil chorister pays $275 a year to be a member of that choir. How much should a St. James’ parishioner pay to be a member of this ‘choir’? By my math, and using the 2008 actual external accountants’ numbers: $1510.27 per year or about $125 per month or about $30 a week or about $4 a day. Not really that much, is it? And, I fully understand that not everyone can afford the cost of membership at St. James’. However, using the 2008 receipted contribution chart included in the vestry report, of the 238 reported active families, 182 of those families give less than $1500 per year. That is a whopping 76% of active membership. I find it impossible to believe that more than three-quarters of the parish cannot afford to maintain their membership costs.

My thoughts to the Grand Phil and every other non-profit organization that is facing a deficit: Ante up! If I want to sing the music that I love, it is going to cost me; anything that the public contributes through ticket sales is a truly wonderful gift. If I want to be a part of a church that provides me with a venue for worship and community, then it is going to cost me. If I want two priests, a half-time paid office manager, a music director and lots of paper to hold in my hands, it is going to cost me. Manna from heaven, we feed ourselves and our souls with. Church operating costs are the responsibilities of its membership; not God.

Or the reality, like the one the Grand Phil is facing, (and I really hate to use this line but…) ‘the fat lady is singing’. The singing will stop; the doors will close.

I am going into my sewing room now. I love this part of my creative life as much as that chorister in the Grand Phil loves to sing. Every fibre, machine, needle and what-not was paid for, lovingly, happily and with hopes of sharing my ‘voice in fibre’ with others.

Amen.

Nicola Adair

David and I strongly encourage contributions to the blog: our intention is that this be a place for dialogue. Thus we thank Mackie100 for taking that risk and engaging in our digital conversations. And, as another means of engaging, we present a contribution from Fiona Wilkie. We are more than happy to add your thoughts to the blog by simply giving us them: we’ll type them. That brings us to Fiona’s contribution. We toyed with the idea of scanning her contribution and posting it as a pdf- her handwritten piece is artful in its beautiful script on crisp thick creamy-coloured paper. Alas, the timeliness factor played in and her piece has been transcribed.

Fiona’s piece underscores for me many strongly-held beliefs: life is enriched by ritual, the transcendental power of music, the liturgical mystery of divine offices, and the need to stop and listen to the still, small voice of God within us.

Thank you, Fiona, for this sharing:

Sometimes the most private experiences are meant to be shared. Nicola has so persuaded me and, as she was the instrument of my blessing, here is my story!

Last Wednesday Nicola interrupted my self-imposed week of house-bound solitude-due to a severe cold and exhaustion-by dropping off a complete, delicious, ready-to-eat, dinner and a CD. To celebrate these gifts, I lit a fire, revelled in the tasty, nourishing feast, then cleared away and tidied the kitchen and returned to the fireside. I built up a good fire, lit a number of candles in old brass candlesticks, switched off all lamps and lay down on the rug in front of the gently licking flames to listen to the CD. I had purposely read only the title: ‘Evensong for Etheldreda’ – the choir of Ely Cathedral.

There followed over an hour of perfect beauty and of heavenly bliss: lying on my back I could see the shadows of the firelight and the flickering candles on the ceiling – a shadowy, cathedral-like atmosphere evolved; I was totally absorbed into the music, its intimate calm, its soaring challenging, overwhelming magnificent passages of choral singing, its hauntingly beautiful soloists, its comforting plainsong—and the organ; as never ever before I was surrounded, wrapped, lifted up and carried inside beauty by the richness and warmth of the organ’s music. I experienced feelings that really defy my accurate or even adequate description- I just knew: beauty was God and God was beauty and I was there.

The range and depth of emotions I experienced differed from those engendered by any Evensong before, and when I read the words and titles in the CD booklet-I understood. ‘Tongues of Fire’ – the final organ solo title- perfectly described the awe, cleansing, encouragement, and even grace, that I had experienced.

Last summer in Buckfast Abbey I was blessed with an insight which has remained with me almost as a point of reference for decision making.

It happened during the middle of three Compline evenings I was able to attend. The service in the vast abbey, lit only by one candle, was one of mystery, meditation and the prayerful chanting of the brothers in their long, black, hooded habits. In that particular brief act of worship, I was unexpectedly but calmly, surely, completely and utterly filled with a certainty that all would always be well. This definite feeling was accompanied by two precise instructions for my life in the next year- totally unsought guidance. I have abided by these tenets despite persistent kindly opposition, and, quite amazingly, I can summon strength by returning in my heart to that Compline in Buckfast Abbey.

Following that memorable Compline, I pursued a slow, meaningful walk through the labyrinthine paths of the Abbey’s lavender gardens. Very separately, and silently, but very joined- so did Nicola.

Fiona Wilkie

It’s hard to escape them. The phone rings, typically as the family gathers round the dinner table; and then the query: “Can I have a few minutes of your time?” We all have strategies (some passive, some not so) for dealing with the ubiquity of telemarketing and its blood-brother, the telesurvey. Nicola’s personal favourite is to feign distress that, yes they could – but it’s usually her husband who answers all questions; and he’s not due to be released for some time. I try to stick a little closer to the facts (maybe she knows something that I don’t!). No, Mr. Adair doesn’t live here anymore (this is a true statement – as the phrasing goes). Or, in my more generous moments, I just acquiesce; as much fallout from having a possible future son in law who is one of those folks on the other end of the survey and has quite likely had all the abuse he can swallow for one day.

“On a scale of 1 to whatever, could you please rate the following statements? ‘1’ being ‘strongly agree’; ‘whatever’, being ‘I don’t ever want to hear another of your questions for as long as you may choose to live’.” “Sure, I guess.” “Are you married?” “Yes.” “No, sir; using the rating scale I described, please.” “OK, 1”. “If you answered ‘1’ to the previous question, could you please rate… ” And so it goes: a (painfully) long list of queries that produce (no doubt) a dog’s breakfast of irrelevant information that will be quantified, averaged, standard deviationed, and ultimately passed on to the company who hired this underpaid, abused individual to stick it out to the end… and then do it all again. Talk about Groundhog Day! Much as I hate to admit it, these litanies of meaningless inquiry do compel me, on those generous occasions when I agree to participate, to listen to the question and, God forbid, think about my answers.

Something approaching a high point in my week of mornings is Friday – the day the Globe and Mail includes, in their Review section, the entertaining, acerbic, droll, and frequently insightful review of the recently released movies. Time to fess up; I’m a movie nut – not just any movie but one that might steer me to the next good book on which one was based; or maybe just the next candidate for what Nicola charitably calls “treadmill fodder” (aka, something too violent, too macho, or just too inane to occupy us on a weekend evening – but suitable for David to wile away his time on the ‘mill’). Rick and Liam (two of my favourite ironists), after lauding or lacerating the video candidate (whichever is appropriate), will offer a ‘score’ as it were (somewhere between 0 and 4 stars), reflecting the global merit of the particular offering.

It shouldn’t come as much of a surprise that ‘4’s’ are relatively hard to come by; equally (believe it or not, given the parade of mindless ‘mill fodder’ that seems to fill the big screen) ‘0’s’ don’t show up too terribly often either! Most ratings are in the 2 to 2 ½ range, indicating a product of interest, but with significant shortcomings, indulgences (gratuitous gore), irrelevancies, or just plain bad acting to make it a struggle on some level for our erudite judges to sit through – without engaging their finely honed senses of humour.

What binds these seemingly quite unrelated experiences are two elements: a) the use of some kind of mechanism for ‘scoring’ as it were; and b) the (somewhat unexpected) attention that must be paid to meaningfully ‘rate’ one’s response. As one who has, in one way or another, spent a large part of his working life in the realm of ‘ratings’ and the (sometimes fruitless) attempt to have people take this exercise sufficiently seriously to enable me to draw conclusions about their personality, intellect, pain levels, and career aspirations from pages of blackened-in bubbles on the response sheets of questionnaires, this resonated indeed. Years of being called upon to quantify the subjective, to supply a number to a definition, a writing sample, a partially recalled design, to rate a mood, or to score someone’s ‘global functioning’ (“please consider the following on a hypothetical continuum of …”) can’t help but endear one to the sheer simplicity and reductionist thinking embraced by a lovely, linear, Likert scale. The kind that’s anchored by a ‘strongly something’ at one end (often the equivalent of a ‘+2’) and a ‘strongly not something’ (‘-2’) at the other. Do I hear Ebel’s “two thumbs” echoing in the background?

Now I am not so naïve as to assume that everyone attends with rapt focus to a homily from beginning to end. But I have observed that sometimes my attention is captured; and sometimes, let’s just say, less so. Sometimes the Sunday morning efforts are an “English Patient”, or a “Schindler’s List”; and sometimes, let’s just say a “Death Race 2000”. And, as with any good screen play, script, or text, one looks for the requisite component pieces: the inclusion of timely scripture (a premise), the delivery (the acting), the integrity (does it wander, does it hang together), the climax (does it consolidate), the sidebars (the self-indulgences), and the resonance (does it touch, connect). And, sad to say, mere popularity, sentimentality, familiarity, as with the movies, sell tickets but may be, what shall we call them, ‘box-office successes’, but critical failures. (For fun, I’ve correlated – another psychologist’s ‘trick’ – dollars of ticket sales with the G & M’s ‘star’ scores. Not good.)

And so was born a little device, a context, a rating scale that, for me both fosters critical listening and invites a serious, considered evaluation of a weekly (hopefully) event that has as its structure and intent a pulling together of liturgy, church calendar, scripture, proffered guidance, spiritual stimulation, and reflection. How could we afford this less importance than the relentless “On a scale of … could you please rate your enjoyment of the themes explored in this week’s episode of Becoming Jessica or Being Veronica or . . ?”

David Howard