{"id":114,"date":"2008-08-01T20:26:00","date_gmt":"2008-08-02T00:26:00","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.davidhowardpsychologist.com\/blog\/?p=114"},"modified":"2008-08-01T20:26:00","modified_gmt":"2008-08-02T00:26:00","slug":"whos-your-church","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.davidhowardpsychologist.com\/blog\/?p=114","title":{"rendered":"Who’s Your Church?"},"content":{"rendered":"
I\u2019ve always been a John \u2013 as it were. Despite my mother\u2019s best efforts to have me haled by my given name, David, the world has consistently conspired to make me a John. I\u2019ve managed to avoid the police lineups and the small town newspaper\u2019s court columns (usually associated with those so \u2018christened\u2019) \u2013 but beyond that, I\u2019ve pretty much resigned myself to being John. (A close second, of course, being the man with two \u2013 three if you count the middle one \u2013 first names, is Howard. In those take \u2018em by surprise moments, acquaintances of some years revert to the \u2018hi Howard\u2019 \u2013 but I can live with that too.) My college roommate, John Macmillan, and I apparently exchange monikers early on in first year. Evidently not a one-off.<\/p>\n

It certainly didn\u2019t help that at my first real job at Stratford General, I was preceded by John Howard. How confusing was that for folks already predisposed to that salutive tic? Aside from ordering a few extra blood tests and fielding calls from time to time from salesman pushing lab supplies instead of psychological tests, no real fallout from that one either. Ever the leader in this informal dyad, John, however, jumped the name queue by some years in the second incarnation of our relationship, he a long time member of St. James. (Funny, nobody\u2019s called Nicola Sheila yet \u2013 but that\u2019s another story.) Lorne+\u2019s first call to our household opened with, you guessed it, \u2018hello John, this is. . .\u2019 I can cut him a little slack, already having the neural pathways well-trodden with his long time parishioner\u2019s name. I have to say though that, at sixty plus, Jim MacDougal\u2019s greeting \u2018in kind\u2019 did give me pause. Hard on the heels of our neighbours inviting \u2018John and Nicola\u2019 to an evening of music with close friends from the street. Johnny Cash\u2019s closing to one of his signature (poor choice of words, that) tunes \u2013 \u201cCall me Bill or Bob or . . . anything but Sue!\u201d started to carry new meaning. I\u2019m sure folks were always mixing up John and Jesus as well. Beards, sandals, hanging out with a suspect crowd. Must have been no end of irritation!<\/p>\n

And so to the point \u2013 I suppose there is one. I was cruising through the Weekend Globe a while back and stumbled on a derivative piece around Richard Florida\u2019s book, the darling of U of T\u2019s new \u2018Prosperity Institute\u2019. In Who\u2019s Your City?<\/em>, he maintains that folks tend to collect in certain geographic areas congruent or consistent with their personality types. Extroverts evidently populate the Eastern Seaboard. Neurotics the Northeast; conscientious folk the Southeast; and (surprise, surprise) Open-to-Experience people the West Coast \u2013 I personally have never heard that California is the fountain head of all things fringe and flakey!<\/p>\n

We\u2019d gone through \u2018round 1\u2019 of Ed Leidel (VIP \u2013 Values, Identity, Purpose) and were poised for the second visit wherein the identity<\/em> of St. James would be sussed out. So, having our values clarified (accepting, questing, safe, and service-driven), I was indeed curious, against Mr. Florida\u2019s background commentary, just \u2018who\u2019 we would be deemed to be. Nicola\u2019s blog (preceding) has taken a look at the point Ed had suggested first considering: who is the patron saint and what\u2019s he embody? So far, so good.<\/p>\n

I have to say that small group, meeting at the end of May, nailed it. The signature ambivalence of the Anglican community was named \u2013 well, maybe not actually named, but certainly drawn in sufficiently clear terms to be identified in a closet at midnight with the door closed and the light off. St. James is female (oh, wait for it \u2013 here comes the ambivalence) \u2013 but with strong male characteristics. The church is remarkably similar \u2013 but diverse. She \/ he is middle-aged, but still behaving as if she\u2019s (he\u2019s) thirty. She \/ he dresses up (and down); likes the current CBC (in passing, anyone who has listened to the \u2018vibrant, new CBC\u2019 radio 1 and 2 cannot possibly have missed that the brain trust behind this dog\u2019s breakfast of identity crisis \u2013 talk about trying to be 30 when it\u2019s 50! \u2013 does indeed share a great deal with our current, fence-sitting, navel-gazing, ambivalent community which seems enamoured of the idea of being all things to all people); and drinks Scotch (well thank the wee man for small mercies). And her name (I guess the male parts, as it were, got 86\u2019d at some point) is Jamie! So we\u2019ve got a trans-gendered, cross-dressing, mid-life crisis ridden drinker as the personality. Oh dear. Richard would have something to say about this I\u2019m sure.<\/p>\n

I thought my<\/em> identity crisis was crippling \u2013 but maybe I\u2019ll just go back to being a John. <\/div>\n

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Definitely the views of the Web Master (and not his Scribe)!<\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

I\u2019ve always been a John \u2013 as it were. Despite my mother\u2019s best efforts to have me haled by my given name, David, the world has consistently conspired to make me a John. I\u2019ve managed to avoid the police lineups and the small town newspaper\u2019s court columns (usually associated with those so \u2018christened\u2019) \u2013 but […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[1],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.davidhowardpsychologist.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/114"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.davidhowardpsychologist.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.davidhowardpsychologist.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.davidhowardpsychologist.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.davidhowardpsychologist.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=114"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.davidhowardpsychologist.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/114\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.davidhowardpsychologist.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=114"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.davidhowardpsychologist.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=114"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.davidhowardpsychologist.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=114"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}