One always hesitates to ask the obvious question. If it\u2019s this immediately apparent to me, and no one else appears to be asking, then it must be a stupid question. I must be missing a critical piece of information that everyone else has factored in; so best I just keep quiet. Such is the case with a recent and avalanching sequence of events within our parish. In very short order, the \u2018grand old church on the hill\u2019 has seen its nave declared unsafe for use, necessitating a hasty shift of all church activities into the attached upper and lower halls \u2013 of equal age and, as it turns out of equal or greater compromise. No sooner had our hardy little group of parishioners adjusted to this move \u2013 no mean task for a population likely averaging three score and ten (and all the inflexibility that that might imply) \u2013 then, these (hallowed?) halls too were declared in sufficient peril to require their being evacuated. Rather like watching the flood waters\u2019 relentless rise, pushing occupants farther and farther into the corner, from floor to habitable floor, perched first on chairs, then tables, then banished to the roof. To its credit the \u2018club room\u2019 now serves as meeting hall, chapel, meditation hut \u2013 depending on chair configuration and occupancy.<\/p>\n
As with choice of up-scale restaurants, an abundance of excellent music, and a world class repertory theatre, Stratford is blessed too with a full palate of churches. The rationale for edifices of the same stripe, being built, cheek-by-jowl in a town that only now pushes 30,000 occupants, has long since receded into the mists of the late 19th and early 20th century. Two Presbyterian congregations, marginal in their numbers, worship mere blocks apart, having declared quite publically and perplexingly their inability to consolidate \u2013 quite possibly sounding their respective death knells. Two Catholic flocks, one clinging precariously on life support, steadfastly carry on, unfalteringly \u2018separate\u2019. And three Anglican buildings, a stone\u2019s healthy throw apart.<\/p>\n
And so to the obvious question: \u201cWith the aforementioned crisis at hand (that would be paragraph one, not two) and some pretty viable and consecrated options available, what are we doing scurrying about moving, cramming, compromising, and splitting what (optimistically) remains of this congregation, camping out in the Knights of Columbus Hall \u2013 having only just escaped setting up shop in the Army Navy?\u201d Even more to the point, if one is permitted two stupid questions in the same paragraph, \u201cWhy are we suddenly deaf to the obvious option of celebrating what is frequently and sanctimoniously referred to as the \u2018Anglican Communion\u2019 \u2013 this (evidently under other conditions) tight little community of like-minded folk \u2013 by joining an existing congregation five blocks away?\u201d Oh what the Hell, let\u2019s go for a third dumb query: \u201cWhy, with an Archdeacon for parish rector (that would be the nominal tie that binds together our little band of buildings in this patch), is this not the first option to be considered?\u201d<\/p>\n
Ever the advocate of collecting empirical data \u2013 that would be the scientific and grounded-in-reality alternative to sitting in one\u2019s (insular) study and hypothesizing (aka \u2018navel-gazing speculation\u2019) \u2013 I set out this past Sunday morning. First stop, St. Paul\u2019s for their BCP service, thoughtfully scheduled for 8:30 to allow me as well to attend St. James\u2019 transplanted vestry meeting, preceded by its drive-thru\u2019 (\u2018Eucharist-free\u2019) 10:00 service. There\u2019s nothing quite like a test drive. Funny how the \u2018grass is greener\u2019 applies even in February. The turmoil, the uncertainty, the concessions, the next hard on the heels of the last, are real enough \u2013 sufficiently evident to make the abstraction<\/em> of sitting in the pew of a less traumatized congregation quite appealing. But, what one leaves behind in one venue is quickly supplanted with a different set of issues in the next \u2013 once one climbs out of one\u2019s assumptions, one\u2019s conjecture, one\u2019s expectations and pulls into traffic behind the wheel. I\u2019d long forgotten this particular rector\u2019s penchant for a sing-songy, lily pad to lily pad, oral cadence. While I recognized a few faces, the \u2018community\u2019, while welcoming, was unfamiliar. And the no-nonsense, near-mechanical rhythm of the service excised a key element that had drawn me back, after forty years, to the formality of a four hundred year old liturgy: the mystery and reverence for the words. Nothing fundamental; but enough to remind me of the colour of the grass everywhere<\/em> in our land in February \u2013 that would be that drab and lifeless brown.<\/p>\n And I did say everywhere<\/em>. On to the K of C (vs. KFC \u2013 although a secret recipe would not go a wanting at this stage). Perhaps empiricism does have its drawbacks. Small, low-ceilinged, fluorescently brilliant, packed with the ubiquitous \u2018stackables\u2019 \u2013 just like every other \u2018meeting room C\u2019 in this convention centre or that \u2013 with an eclectic mix of iconography to remind us we\u2019re not in a Courtyard Marriot somewhere. And just when the pendulum was starting to reverse toward St. James. I know, I know, as Malcolm so eloquently reminded us, it\u2019s not the building, it\u2019s the community \u2013 and boy was it a tight wee community that day!<\/p>\n And so full circle, back to that big, grey, wrinkly thing in the corner. What\u2019s the harm in taking community A with all its reverence for the word, inserting it into community B with its building and trappings, and worshipping as something other than the clerical equivalent of the Sharks and the Jets? Or is that just a stupid question to which everyone else knows the answer but me? One always hesitates to ask the obvious question. If it\u2019s this immediately apparent to me, and no one else appears to be asking, then it must be a stupid question. I must be missing a critical piece of information that everyone else has factored in; so best I just keep quiet. Such is the case […]<\/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\/83"}],"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=83"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.davidhowardpsychologist.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/83\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.davidhowardpsychologist.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=83"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.davidhowardpsychologist.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=83"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.davidhowardpsychologist.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=83"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}
David Howard<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"